Applications that involve monitoring of water quality parameters require measuring devices to be placed at different geographical locations but are controlled centrally at a remote site. The measuring devices in such applications need to be small, consume low power, and must be capable of local processing tasks facilitating the mobility to span the measuring area in a vast geographic area. This paper presents the design of a generalized, low-cost and re-configurable, re-programmable smart sensor node using a Zigbee with a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) that embeds all processing and communication functionalities based on the IEEE 1451 family of standards. Design of the sensor nodes includes communication, processing and transducer control functionalities in a single core increasing the speedup of processing power due to inter-process communication taking place within the chip itself. Results obtained by measuring the pH value and temperature of water samples verify the performance of the proposed sensor node
This paper presents the first record of fatty acids recovered from archaeological sediment samples in Southeast Asia. Fatty acid analysis in archaeology provides a good source of evidence for the identificationand interpretation of prehistoric dietary patterns by identifying organic remains of animal and plant foods. Prehistoric hard floor sediment samples excavated from prehistoric sites of Ban NonWat andNong Hua Raet located in the upper catchment of the Mun River valley in Thailand, were analysed for this study. The samples are from compressed sediment features identified during excavation as ‘floors’ and interpreted as some form of living or working surfaces, dated to the Iron Age and Neolithic periods, around 2000 BCeAD 500. Triglycerides were extracted in hexane, derivatized to fatty acid methyl estersand analysed using Gas Chromatography-Flame Ionization Detector and Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry. Twenty fatty acids, including saturated and unsaturated counterparts, were identified in the hard floor sediments. Comparison with control samples indicate that the floor samples have distinctive fatty acid assemblages, interpreted to relate to the anthropogenic activity associated with the formation of the floors. Results suggest that many of the fatty acids are mainly of degraded animal origin, possibly from ruminants, including cow and deer.