Yarta: A Middleware for Managing Mobile Social Ecosystems

International audienceWith the increased prevalence of advanced mobile devices (the so-called \smart" phones), interest has grown in mobile social ecosystems, where users not only access traditional Web-based social networks using their mobile devices, but are also able to use the context information provided by these devices to further enrich their interactions. In complex mobile social ecosystems of the future the heterogeneity of software platforms on constituent nodes, combined with their intrinsic distributed nature and heterogeneity of representation of data and context raises the need for middleware support for the development of mobile social applications. In this paper, we propose Yarta, a novel middleware designed for mobile social ecosystems (MSE), which takes into account the heterogeneity of both deployment nodes and available data, the intrinsic decentralized nature of mobile social applications, as well as users' privacy concerns. To validate our approach, we show how we developed two mobile social applications over Yarta, and report on both its e ciency and ease-of use by way of extensive evaluation on smart phones and laptops

Mashup Ecosystems: Integrating Web Resources on Desktop and Mobile Devices

The Web is increasingly used as an application platform, and recent development of it has introduced software ecosystems where different actors collaborate. This collaboration is international from day one, and it evolves and grows rapidly. In web ecosystems applications are provided as services, and interdependencies between ecosystem parts can vary from very strong and obvious to loose and recondite. Mashups -- web application hybrids that combine resources from different services into an integrated system that has increased value from user perspective -- are exploiting services of the Web and creating ecosystems where end-users, mashup authors, and service providers collaborate. The term "resources" is used here in a broad sense, and it can refer to user's local data, infinite content of the Web, and even executable code. This dissertation presents mashups as a new breed of web applications that are intended for parsing the web content into an easily accessed form on both regular desktop computers as well as on mobile devices. Constantly evolving web technologies and new web services open up unforeseen possibilities for mashup development. However, developing mashups with current methods and tools for existing deployment environments is challenging. First, the Web as an application platform faces numerous shortcomings, second, web application development practices in general are still immature, and third, development of mashups has additional requirements that need to be addressed. In addition, mobility sets even more challenges for mashup authoring. This dissertation describes and addresses numerous issues regarding mashup ecosystems and client-side mashup development. To achieve this, we have implemented technical research artifacts including mashup ecosystems and different kinds of mashup compositions. The artifacts are developed with numerous runtime environments and tools and targeted at different end-user platforms. This has allowed us to evaluate methods, tools, and practises used during the implementation. As result, this dissertation identifies the fundamental challenges of mashup ecosystems and describes how service providers and mashup ecosystem authors can address these challenges in practice. In addition, example implementation of a specialized multimedia mashup ecosystem for mobile devices is described. To address mashup development issues, this dissertation introduces practical guidelines and a reference architecture that can be applied when mashups are created with traditional web development tools. Moreover, environments that can be used on mobile devices to create mashups that have access to both web and local resources are introduced. Finally, a novel approach to web software development -- creating software as a mashup -- is introduced, and a realization of such concept is described

Towards a fully mobile publish/subscribe system

93 p.This PhD thesis makes contributions to support mobility and fault tolerance in a publish/subscribe system. Two protocols are proposed in order to support mobility of all devices in the system, including inside the event notification service. The protocols are designed with the idea that any change due to mobility is completely beyond our control and ability to predict. Moreover, the proposed solutions do not need to know neither the amount of nodes in the system nor their identities before starting, the system is able to adapt to new devices or disconnections and is able to keep operating correctly in a partitioned network. To do so we extend a previously proposed framework called Phoenix that already supported client mobility. Both protocols use a leader election mechanism to create a communication tree in a highly dynamic environment, and use a characteristic of that algorithm to detect topology changes and migrate nodes accordingly

Engineered Wood Products for Construction

Wood is a gift from nature. It is a sustainable and renewable bio-composite material that possesses a natural ability to mitigate carbon dioxide. However, due to deforestation and climate change, it has become necessary to develop alternative building and construction materials. Engineered wood products (EWPs) such as parallel strand lumber, laminated veneer lumber, and cross-laminated timber are promising substitutions for conventional lumber products. This book presents a comprehensive overview of EWPs, including information on their classification, design, synthesis, properties, and more. It is divided into two sections: “General Overviews and Applications of EWPs” and “Recent Research and Development of EWPs”. The book is a valuable reference for manufacturers, engineers, architects, builders, researchers, and students in the field of construction

Risk Management for the Future

A large part of academic literature, business literature as well as practices in real life are resting on the assumption that uncertainty and risk does not exist. We all know that this is not true, yet, a whole variety of methods, tools and practices are not attuned to the fact that the future is uncertain and that risks are all around us. However, despite risk management entering the agenda some decades ago, it has introduced risks on its own as illustrated by the financial crisis. Here is a book that goes beyond risk management as it is today and tries to discuss what needs to be improved further. The book also offers some cases

Intelligent Sensor Networks

In the last decade, wireless or wired sensor networks have attracted much attention. However, most designs target general sensor network issues including protocol stack (routing, MAC, etc.) and security issues. This book focuses on the close integration of sensing, networking, and smart signal processing via machine learning. Based on their world-class research, the authors present the fundamentals of intelligent sensor networks. They cover sensing and sampling, distributed signal processing, and intelligent signal learning. In addition, they present cutting-edge research results from leading experts

Cooperative Radio Communications for Green Smart Environments

The demand for mobile connectivity is continuously increasing, and by 2020 Mobile and Wireless Communications will serve not only very dense populations of mobile phones and nomadic computers, but also the expected multiplicity of devices and sensors located in machines, vehicles, health systems and city infrastructures. Future Mobile Networks are then faced with many new scenarios and use cases, which will load the networks with different data traffic patterns, in new or shared spectrum bands, creating new specific requirements. This book addresses both the techniques to model, analyse and optimise the radio links and transmission systems in such scenarios, together with the most advanced radio access, resource management and mobile networking technologies. This text summarises the work performed by more than 500 researchers from more than 120 institutions in Europe, America and Asia, from both academia and industries, within the framework of the COST IC1004 Action on "Cooperative Radio Communications for Green and Smart Environments". The book will have appeal to graduates and researchers in the Radio Communications area, and also to engineers working in the Wireless industry. Topics discussed in this book include: • Radio waves propagation phenomena in diverse urban, indoor, vehicular and body environments• Measurements, characterization, and modelling of radio channels beyond 4G networks• Key issues in Vehicle (V2X) communication• Wireless Body Area Networks, including specific Radio Channel Models for WBANs• Energy efficiency and resource management enhancements in Radio Access Networks• Definitions and models for the virtualised and cloud RAN architectures• Advances on feasible indoor localization and tracking techniques• Recent findings and innovations in antenna systems for communications• Physical Layer Network Coding for next generation wireless systems• Methods and techniques for MIMO Over the Air (OTA) testin