Jabber-based cross-domain efficient and privacy-ensuring context management framework.

In pervasive environments, context-aware applications require a global knowledge of the context information distributed in different spatial domains in order to establish context-based interactions. Therefore, the design of distributed storage, retrieval, and dissemination mechanisms of context information across domains becomes vital. In such environments, we envision the necessity of collaboration between different context servers distributed in different domains; thus, the need for generic APIs and protocol allowing context information exchange between different entities: context servers, context providers, and context consumers. As a solution this paper proposes ubique, a distributed middleware for contextaware computing that allows applications to maintain domain-based context interests to access context information about users, places, events, and things - all made available by or brokered through the home domain server. This paper proposes also a new cross-domain protocol for context management which ensures the privacy and the efficiency of context information dissemination. It has been robustly built upon the Jabber protocol which is a widely adopted open protocol for instant messaging and is designed for near real-time communication. Simulation and experimentation results show that ubique framework well supports robust cross-domain context management and collaboratio

CHORUS Deliverable 2.1: State of the Art on Multimedia Search Engines

Based on the information provided by European projects and national initiatives related to multimedia search as well as domains experts that participated in the CHORUS Think-thanks and workshops, this document reports on the state of the art related to multimedia content search from, a technical, and socio-economic perspective. The technical perspective includes an up to date view on content based indexing and retrieval technologies, multimedia search in the context of mobile devices and peer-to-peer networks, and an overview of current evaluation and benchmark inititiatives to measure the performance of multimedia search engines. From a socio-economic perspective we inventorize the impact and legal consequences of these technical advances and point out future directions of research

Feature-based generation of pervasive systems architectures utilizing software product line concepts

As the need for pervasive systems tends to increase and to dominate the computing discipline, software engineering approaches must evolve at a similar pace to facilitate the construction of such systems in an efficient manner. In this thesis, we provide a vision of a framework that will help in the construction of software product lines for pervasive systems by devising an approach to automatically generate architectures for this domain. Using this framework, designers of pervasive systems will be able to select a set of desired system features, and the framework will automatically generate architectures that support the presence of these features. Our approach will not compromise the quality of the architecture especially as we have verified that by comparing the generated architectures to those manually designed by human architects. As an initial step, and in order to determine the most commonly required features that comprise the widely most known pervasive systems, we surveyed more than fifty existing architectures for pervasive systems in various domains. We captured the most essential features along with the commonalities and variabilities between them. The features were categorized according to the domain and the environment that they target. Those categories are: General pervasive systems, domain-specific, privacy, bridging, fault-tolerance and context-awareness. We coupled the identified features with well-designed components, and connected the components based on the initial features selected by a system designer to generate an architecture. We evaluated our generated architectures against architectures designed by human architects. When metrics such as coupling, cohesion, complexity, reusability, adaptability, modularity, modifiability, packing density, and average interaction density were used to test our framework, our generated architectures were found comparable, if not better than the human generated architectures

An approach to cross-domain situation-based context management and highly adaptive services in pervasive environments

The concept of context-awareness is widely used in mobile and pervasive computing to reduce explicit user input and customization through the increased use of implicit input. It is considered to be the corner stone technique for developing pervasive computing applications that are flexible, adaptable, and capable of acting autonomously on behalf of the user. This requires the applications to take advantage of the context in order to infer the user’s objective and relevant environmental features. However, context-awareness introduces various software engineering challenges such as the need to provide developers with middleware infrastructure to acquire the context information available in distributed domains, reasoning about contextual situations that span one or more domains, and providing tools to facilitate building context-aware adaptive services. The separation of concerns is a promising approach in the design of such applications where the core logic is designed and implemented separately from the context handling and adaptation logics. In this respect, the aim of this dissertation is to introduce a unified approach for developing such applications and software infrastructure for efficient context management that together address these software engineering challenges and facilitate the design and implementation tasks associated with such context-aware services. The approach is based around a set of new conceptual foundations, including a context modelling technique that describes context at different levels of abstraction, domain-based context management middleware architecture, cross-domain contextual situation recognition, and a generative mechanism for context-aware service adaptation.Prototype tool has been built as an implementation of the proposed unified approach. Case studies have been done to illustrate and evaluate the approach, in terms of its effectiveness and applicability in real-life application scenarios to provide users with personalized services

Search engine bias: the structuration of traffic on the World-Wide Web

Search engines are essential components of the World Wide Web; both commercially and in terms of everyday usage, their importance is hard to overstate. This thesis examines the question of why there is bias in search engine results – bias that invites users to click on links to large websites, commercial websites, websites based in certain countries, and websites written in certain languages. In this thesis, the historical development of the search engine industry is traced. Search engines first emerged as prototypical technological startups emanating from Silicon Valley, followed by the acquisition of search engine companies by major US media corporations and their development into portals. The subsequent development of pay-per-click advertising is central to the current industry structure, an oligarchy of virtually integrated companies managing networks of syndicated advertising and traffic distribution. The study also shows a global landscape in which search production is concentrated in and caters for large global advertising markets, leaving the rest of the world with patchy and uneven search results coverage. The analysis of interviews with senior search engine engineers indicates that issues of quality are addressed in terms of customer service and relevance in their discourse, while the analysis of documents, interviews with search marketers, and participant observation within a search engine marketing firm showed that producers and marketers had complex relationships that combine aspects of collaboration, competition, and indifference. The results of the study offer a basis for the synthesis of insights of the political economy of media and communication and the social studies of technology tradition, emphasising the importance of culture in constructing and maintaining both local structures and wider systems. In the case of search engines, the evidence indicates that the culture of the technological entrepreneur is very effective in creating a new megabusiness, but less successful in encouraging a debate on issues of the public good or public responsibility as they relate to the search engine industry

A privacy-aware and secure system for human memory augmentation

The ubiquity of digital sensors embedded in today's mobile and wearable devices (e.g., smartphones, wearable cameras, wristbands) has made technology more intertwined with our life. Among many other things, this allows us to seamlessly log our daily experiences in increasing numbers and quality, a process known as ``lifelogging''. This practice produces a great amount of pictures and videos that can potentially improve human memory. Consider how a single photograph can bring back distant childhood memories, or how a song can help us reminisce about our last vacation. Such a vision of a ``memory augmentation system'' can offer considerable benefits, but it also raises new security and privacy challenges. Maybe obviously, a system that captures everywhere we go, and everything we say, see, and do, is greatly increasing the danger to our privacy. Any data breach of such a memory repository, whether accidental or malicious, could negatively impact both our professional and private reputation. In addition, the threat of memory manipulation might be the most worrisome aspect of a memory augmentation system: if an attacker is able to remove, add, or change our captured information, the resulting data may implant memories in our heads that never took place, or, in turn, accelerate the loss of other memories. Starting from such key challenges, this thesis investigates how to design secure memory augmentation systems. In the course of this research, we develop tools and prototypes that can be applied by researchers and system engineers to develop pervasive applications that help users capture and later recall episodic memories in a secure fashion. We build trusted sensors and protocols to securely capture and store experience data, and secure software for the secure and privacy-aware exchange of experience data with others. We explore the suitability of various access control models to put users in control of the plethora of data that the system captures on their behalf. We also explore the possibility of using in situ physical gestures to control different aspects regarding the capturing and sharing of experience data. Ultimately, this thesis contributes to the design and development of secure systems for memory augmentation

Queering Virtual Groups: Exploring Facebook Groups as a space for identity construction and social justice among the LGBTQ community in India

India has emerged as one of the top users of the Internet. However, the question is how the rise of the Internet influences a society like India, which is still struggling with issues like poverty, literacy, employment, religion, and gender. This research endeavors to explore one aspect of that question by studying the role of the social media platform – Facebook Groups, for the LGBTQ community in India against the backdrop of the societal taboos and lack of legal support for the queer community, coupled with the existing infrastructural loopholes like education and technology. Over the past couple of decades, India has been witnessing a wave of change as conversations surrounding non-normative gender and sexuality is on the rise. Following from the social identity theory, social identity model of de-individuation effects (SIDE), and the theory of counterpublics, this sequential mixed methods research analyzes and presents an understanding of the relationship that exists between social media, identity, LGBTQ community, and the Indian social context. It is hoped that it will add to the conversation surrounding social media and identity, particularly queer identity, and enable an understanding into how social media can be used for identity construction for a minority population like the queer community, in a socio-cultural context like India

Assessment of a novel computer aided learning tool in neuroanatomy education

Impaired understanding of intricate neuroanatomical concepts and structural inter-relationships has been associated with a fear of managing neurology patients, called neurophobia, among medical trainees. As technology advances, the role of e-learning pedagogies becomes more important to supplement the traditional dissection / prosection and lecture-based pedagogies for teaching neuroanatomy to undergraduate students. However, despite the availability of a myriad of e-learning resources, the neuro (-anatomy-) phobia – neurophobia nexus prevails. The focus of the PhD was to investigate the difficulties associated with learning neuroanatomy and to develop and assess the efficacy of a novel e-learning tool for teaching neuroanatomy, in the context of the strengths and pitfalls of the currently available e-learning resources. Firstly, we sought to provide direct evidence of the medical and health science students’ perception regarding specific challenges associated with learning neuroanatomy. The initial results showed that neuroanatomy is perceived as a more difficult subject compared to other anatomy topics, with spinal pathways being the most challenging to learn. Participants believed that computer assisted learning and online resources could enhance neuroanatomy understanding and decrease their neurophobia. Next, in the context of the significance of e-learning for supplementing traditional pedagogies, we identified features of neuroanatomy web-resources that were valued by students and educators with regards to learning neuroanatomy of the spinal pathways. Participants identified strengths and weaknesses of existing neuroanatomy web-resources and ranked one resource above the others in terms of information delivery and integration of clinical, physiological and medical imaging correlates. This provides a novel user perspective on the influence of specific elements of neuroanatomy web-resources to improve instructional design and enhance learner performance. Finally, considering the data acquired from students and educators, a novel, interactive, neuroanatomy learning e-resource was developed to support teaching of the neuroanatomy of the spinal pathways. The instructional design included a discussion of the clinical interpretation of basic neuroanatomical facts to aid in neurological localization. The e-learning tool was assessed and evaluated by undergraduate medical and neuroscience students using neuroanatomy knowledge quizzes and Likert-scale perception questionnaires and compared to the previously identified best-ranked neuroanatomy e-resource. Participants’ opinion regarding the usefulness of various components of the tools was also gauged. The results showed that usage of the UCC e-resource led to a significant increase in participants’ knowledge of the neuroanatomy of the spinal pathways compared to students’ who did not use e-resources. Moreover, the participants reported a greater interest in learning neuroanatomy with the novel tool, showing a greater appreciation for it while learning clinical neurological correlates compared to those using the best available e-resource identified earlier. In summary, the prevailing problem of neurophobia could be addressed by enhancing student-interest. Technological e-learning pedagogies, with intelligently designed interactive user-interface and clinical correlation of basic neuroanatomical facts can play a pivotal role in helping students learn neuroanatomy and breaking the nexus between neuro (-anatomy-) phobia and neurophobia