3,961 research outputs found
Context Aware Computing for The Internet of Things: A Survey
As we are moving towards the Internet of Things (IoT), the number of sensors
deployed around the world is growing at a rapid pace. Market research has shown
a significant growth of sensor deployments over the past decade and has
predicted a significant increment of the growth rate in the future. These
sensors continuously generate enormous amounts of data. However, in order to
add value to raw sensor data we need to understand it. Collection, modelling,
reasoning, and distribution of context in relation to sensor data plays
critical role in this challenge. Context-aware computing has proven to be
successful in understanding sensor data. In this paper, we survey context
awareness from an IoT perspective. We present the necessary background by
introducing the IoT paradigm and context-aware fundamentals at the beginning.
Then we provide an in-depth analysis of context life cycle. We evaluate a
subset of projects (50) which represent the majority of research and commercial
solutions proposed in the field of context-aware computing conducted over the
last decade (2001-2011) based on our own taxonomy. Finally, based on our
evaluation, we highlight the lessons to be learnt from the past and some
possible directions for future research. The survey addresses a broad range of
techniques, methods, models, functionalities, systems, applications, and
middleware solutions related to context awareness and IoT. Our goal is not only
to analyse, compare and consolidate past research work but also to appreciate
their findings and discuss their applicability towards the IoT.Comment: IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials Journal, 201
Ancient Urban Ecology Reconstructed from Archaeozoological Remains of Small Mammals in the Near East
Acknowledgments We especially thank the many archaeologists who collaborated closely with our project and invested pioneering efforts in intensive fine-scale retrieval of the archaeozoological samples that provided the basis for this study: Shai Bar, Amnon Ben-Tor, Amit Dagan, Yosef Garfinkel, Ayelet Gilboa, Zvi Greenhut, Amihai Mazar, Stefan Munger, Ronny Reich, Itzhaq Shai, Ilan Sharon, Joe Uziel, Sharon Zuckerman, and additional key excavation personnel who were instrumental in collection of the samples or in assisting the work including: Shimrit Bechar, Jacob Dunn, Norma Franklin, Egon Lass and Yiftah Shalev. Funding:The research was funded by a post-doctoral grant awarded to L.W. from the European Research Council under the European Community’s Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007e2013)/ERC grant agreement number 229418. The laboratory work was also supported by funding by the Israel Science Foundation (Grant 52/10). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD
The Small Animals of Maasai Settlements: Ethnoarchaeological Investigations of the Commensalism Model
This research was designed to test Tchernov\u27s model of commensalism and the idea that remains of commensal species that today coexist with humans in settlement environments could be used to detect early sedentism in the archaeological record. The validity of the model has been questioned due to the lack of empirical knowledge on commensalism in a wide range of settlement environments including sedentary and more mobile ones. This study examined the commensalism model by focusing on seasonally occupied settlements of Maasai pastoralists in East Africa. Methods from ecology, ethnography, and archaeology were used to document the impact of Maasai settlements on associated communities of small rodents and shrews: micromammals), to measure the intensity of human occupation in settlements, and to relate settlement intensity to micromammalian communities. Taphonomic approaches were also used to evaluate the potential for accumulation and preservation of evidence on commensalism in the substrate of the settlements. The results of the study showed that, in contrast to what we might expect in highly sedentary settings, Maasai settlements increased rather than decreased the biological diversity of local micromammalian communities. Along a gradient of increasing duration of human occupation, but continued seasonal use of settlements, there was no manifest increase in the population of any single species that would amount to pronounced commensalism. This supports the commensalism/sedentism linkage but also suggests more broadly that it should be possible to demarcate distinct contexts of commensalism and related levels of biological diversity in relation to varying intensities of site occupation. These results call for greater investment in systematic fine-recovery and study of variability of micromammalian assemblages at archaeological excavations
Desing and Validation of a Light Inference System to Support Embedded Context Reasoning
Embedded context management in resource-constrained devices (e.g. mobile phones, autonomous sensors or smart objects) imposes special requirements in terms of lightness for data modelling and reasoning. In this paper, we explore the state-of-the-art on data representation and reasoning tools for embedded mobile reasoning and propose a light inference system (LIS) aiming at simplifying embedded inference processes offering a set of functionalities to avoid redundancy in context management operations. The system is part of a service-oriented mobile software framework, conceived to facilitate the creation of context-aware applications—it decouples sensor data acquisition and context processing from the application logic. LIS, composed of several modules, encapsulates existing lightweight tools for ontology data management and rule-based reasoning, and it is ready to run on Java-enabled handheld devices. Data management and reasoning processes are designed to handle a general ontology that enables communication among framework components. Both the applications running on top of the framework and the framework components themselves can configure the rule and query sets in order to retrieve the information they need from LIS. In order to test LIS features in a real application scenario, an ‘Activity Monitor’ has been designed and implemented: a personal health-persuasive application that provides feedback on the user’s lifestyle, combining data from physical and virtual sensors. In this case of use, LIS is used to timely evaluate the user’s activity level, to decide on the convenience of triggering notifications and to determine the best interface or channel to deliver these context-aware alerts.
Relationship between diet and reproductive success in the Israeli barn owl
The effect of diet on barn owl (Tyto alba) breeding biology has been well studied in the temperate regions but not in the more arid Middle East. In temperate regions, barn owls are darker colored and mainly prey upon Cricetidae rodents, whereas in arid regions, they are lighter colored and prey to a larger degree upon Muridae rodents. In this study we analyzed the diet and breeding success of 261 barn owl pairs nesting in Israel. The reproductive success of barn owls declined from March to August, and fledged more young when they consumed a larger proportion of social voles (Microtus socialis guentheri). Although the diet of the lighter colored barn owls in Israel comprises more Muridae than that of the darker morphs in temperate regions, in both regions the number of barn owl young increases with an increased proportion of voles in the diet
Relationship between diet and reproductive success in the Israeli barn owl
The effect of diet on barn owl (Tyto alba) breeding biology has been well studied in the temperate regions but not in the more arid Middle East. In temperate regions, barn owls are darker colored and mainly prey upon Cricetidae rodents, whereas in arid regions, they are lighter colored and prey to a larger degree upon Muridae rodents. In this study we analyzed the diet and breeding success of 261 barn owl pairs nesting in Israel. The reproductive success of barn owls declined from March to August, and fledged more young when they consumed a larger proportion of social voles (Microtus socialis guentheri). Although the diet of the lighter colored barn owls in Israel comprises more Muridae than that of the darker morphs in temperate regions, in both regions the number of barn owl young increases with an increased proportion of voles in the diet
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