Measures to slow the spread of COVID-19 are affecting the food supply chain in many ways including the availability of inputs, labor, transport, and cross-border trade. Earth Observation (EO) from satellites can provide timely and transparent evidence on the extent and impact these measures have on the agricultural activities and related food systems. EO capabilities required to address information needs related to global food supply, national harvesting statistics, national relief programs and labor-intensive crop production were made available over the trilateral COVID-19 Earth Observing Dashboard. The presented use cases make full use of the combined satellites fleet of NASA, ESA and JAXA as well as the expertise of the EO community.

The severely handicapped often uses breath pressure for an input method to control various instruments such as TV, motorized bed, curtain, air conditioner in everyday life. Most of the input devices are ON/OFF (digital) type for the control of equipments. Considering the application of electrically powered wheelchair, the ON/OFF type interface is not desirable. Because the control of powered wheelchair needs preciseness and quickness for safe operation. A new input device using breath pressure is proposed for such purposes. The paper examines basic performances of human breath pressure control as an analog input device. Then possibility of two-dimensional input device by the breath pressure is discussed for the control of powered wheelchair. Basic experiments to study performance of the two-dimensional analog input device by breath pressure for an operation of the powered wheelchair are shown.

Design and experimental results of a 2-V operation single-chip GaAs T/R-MMIC front-end are described for 1.9-GHz personal communication terminals. This chip, fabricated with planar self-aligned gate FET process useful for low-cost and high-volume production, integrates RF front-end analog circuits-a power amplifier, a T/R-switch, and a low-noise amplifier. Additionally integrated are a newly designed voltage doubler-negative voltage generator (VDNVG) and a control logic circuit to control transmit and receive functions. The chip is capable of delivering 21-dBm output power at 39 % efficiency with 2-V single power supply in transmit mode. By utilizing up-voltage and negative voltages generated from the generator, the new interface circuit enables the switch to handle high power outputs over 24 dBm with 0.55-dB insertion loss.