Localization to Enhance Security and Services in Wi-Fi Networks under Privacy Constraints

Developments of seamless mobile services are faced with two broad challenges, systems security and user privacy - access to wireless systems is highly insecure due to the lack of physical boundaries and, secondly, location based services (LBS) could be used to extract highly sensitive user information. In this paper, we describe our work on developing systems which exploit location information to enhance security and services under privacy constraints. We describe two complimentary methods which we have developed to track node location information within production University Campus Networks comprising of large numbers of users. The location data is used to enhance security and services. Specifically, we describe a method for creating geographic firewalls which allows us to restrict and enhance services to individual users within a specific containment area regardless of physical association. We also report our work on LBS development to provide visualization of spatio-temporal node distribution under privacy considerations

Developing Adaptive and Personalized Mobile Applications: A Framework and Design Issues

The rapid growth of mobile technology has expedited ubiquitous information access via handheld devices. However, the fundamental natures of mobile information systems are different from those of desktop applications in terms of purpose of use, device features, communication networks, and working environments. This poses various challenges to mobile information systems on how to deliver and present multimedia content in an effective and adaptive manner. One of the major challenges is to deliver personalized information to the right person in a preferred format based on the changing environment. This paper proposes an innovative framework for developing mobile applications that deliver personalized, context-aware, and adaptive content to mobile users. The framework consists of four major components: information selection, content analysis, media transcoding, and customized presentation. It can be applied to a variety of mobile applications such as mobile web, news alert services, and mobile commerce

Delivery of Personalized and Adaptive Content to Mobile Devices:A Framework and Enabling Technology

Many innovative wireless applications that aim to provide mobile information access are emerging. Since people have different information needs and preferences, one of the challenges for mobile information systems is to take advantage of the convenience of handheld devices and provide personalized information to the right person in a preferred format. However, the unique features of wireless networks and mobile devices pose challenges to personalized mobile content delivery. This paper proposes a generic framework for delivering personalized and adaptive content to mobile users. It introduces a variety of enabling technologies and highlights important issues in this area. The framework can be applied to many applications such as mobile commerce and context-aware mobile services

Applying a framework for assessing the health system challenges to scaling up mHealth in South Africa

Background: Mobile phone technology has demonstrated the potential to improve health service delivery, but there is little guidance to inform decisions about acquiring and implementing mHealth technology at scale in health systems. Using the case of community-based health services (CBS) in South Africa, we apply a framework to appraise the opportunities and challenges to effective implementation of mHealth at scale in health systems. Methods: A qualitative study reviewed the benefits and challenges of mHealth in community-based services in South Africa, through a combination of key informant interviews, site visits to local projects and document reviews. Using a framework adapted from three approaches to reviewing sustainable information and communication technology (ICT), the lessons from local experience and elsewhere formed the basis of a wider consideration of scale up challenges in South Africa. Results: Four key system dimensions were identified and assessed: government stewardship and the organisational, technological and financial systems. In South Africa, the opportunities for successful implementation of mHealth include the high prevalence of mobile phones, a supportive policy environment for eHealth, successful use of mHealth for CBS in a number of projects and a well-developed ICT industry. However there are weaknesses in other key health systems areas such as organisational culture and capacity for using health information for management, and the poor availability and use of ICT in primary health care. The technological challenges include the complexity of ensuring interoperability and integration of information systems and securing privacy of information. Finally, there are the challenges of sustainable financing required for large scale use of mobile phone technology in resource limited settings. Conclusion: Against a background of a health system with a weak ICT environment and limited implementation capacity, it remains uncertain that the potential benefits of mHealth for CBS would be retained with immediate large-scale implementation. Applying a health systems framework facilitated a systematic appraisal of potential challenges to scaling up mHealth for CBS in South Africa and may be useful for policy and practice decision-making in other low- and middle-income settings.Web of Scienc

ENABLING MOBILE DEVICES TO HOST CONSUMERS AND PROVIDERS OF RESTFUL WEB SERVICES

The strong growth in the use of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets in Enterprise Information Systems has led to growing research in the area of mobile Web services. Web services are applications that are developed based on network standards such as Services Oriented Architecture and Representational State Transfer (REST). The mobile research community mostly focused on facilitating the mobile devices as client consumers especially in heterogeneous Web services. However, with the advancement in mobile device capabilities in terms of processing power and storage, this thesis seeks to utilize these devices as hosts of REST Web services. In order to host services on mobile devices, some key challenges have to be addressed. Since data and services accessibility is facilitated by the mobile devices which communicate via unstable wireless networks, the challenges of network latency and synchronization of data (i.e. the Web resources) among the mobile participants must be addressed. To address these challenges, this thesis proposes a cloud-based middleware that enables reliable communication between the mobile hosts in unreliable Wi-Fi networks. The middleware employs techniques such as message routing and Web resources state changes detection in order to push data to the mobile participants in real time. Additionally, to ensure high availability of data, the proposed middleware has a cache component which stores the replicas of the mobile hosts’ Web resources. As a result, in case a mobile host is disconnected, the Web resources of the host can be accessed on the middleware. The key contributions of this thesis are the identification of mobile devices as hosts of RESTful Web services and the implementation of middleware frameworks that support mobile communication in unreliable networks

О новом роде верхнепалеозойских растений Brovuchkia Parfenova gen. nov. из Кемеровского района Кузбасса

Multimedia information systems have been developed into service-ware. With the paradigms of web services, service oriented architectures (SOA), and Web 2.0 widgets, multimedia has become truly ubiquitous. However, interoperability, scalability, reliability and security are arising challenges at mobile multimedia service development. This paper focuses on the analysis, design, development and evaluation of a middleware that allows access from mobile devices to a bundle of multimedia services. The services are based on the international multimedia metadata description standard MPEG-7. The implementation is based on new generation of service-oriented application servers called Lightweight Application Server (LAS). Mobile web services refer to the fact that mobile servers host web services. A prototype was developed as a proof of concept, showing how to access MPEG-7 based multimedia services from a Mobile Host and the analysis results of providing MPEG-7 based multimedia services in the form of web services from the Mobile Host to other mobile devices. An alternative solution is to apply enterprise service bus technology as the middleware. The performance evaluation results of both approaches show the reliable accessibility of MPEG-7 based multimedia services via the enterprise service bus solution

Регулятор-стабилизатор постоянного напряжения мощностью 150 квт с естественным ограничением тока цепи нагрузки

This paper, discusses the confluence of two major recent trends in distributed information systems engineering: the evolution from static content via personalized adaptive information provisioning to Web Services, and the emergence of mobile terminals with sufficient speed to serve as parts of information systems. The combination of both trends yields the idea of mobile Web Services. While a few pioneering mobile Web Service client systems have appeared recently, this paper explores the logical next step. Whether it is feasible to use mobile terminals such as Smart Phones also as Web Service providers ("Mobile Hosts"). We first discuss the desirability of such Mobile Hosts, then discuss the challenges for design and implementation, and finally present a prototype implementation that has been developed and evaluated in cooperation with a major mobile phone vendor

Identifying the Possibilities of Integrating Speed Train and the Bus Rapid Transit System through Mobile Payment and Information Dissemination

South Africa’s public transport has been formalised in the past years in order to provide a good flow for travelling. However, commuters struggle with taking formal public transport on the anticipated stations and reaching the desired destination. One of the challenges identified is the lack of integration between the different modes of formal public transport in the Gauteng province, South Africa. Previous studies conducted has shown that there is spatial connection between these systems. Though, this study explores beyond physical integration but electronic integration. This work therefore investigates the possibilities of how mobile information distribution and payment systems can integrate the Speed train and the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems in Gauteng to create a convenient public transport system for commuters. Accordingly, introducing integrated mobile payment system and integrated mobile information distribution for BRT system and the Speed train. A qualitative research study design was used to enable gathering, analysing and data presentation. Explorative, comparative and content analysis were used to collect information. Preliminary results indicate that the formal public transport systems (High speed train and BRT systems) are not integrated, the use of mobile payment systems are not developed, mobile information distribution are only used by the speed train and the integration of formal public transport services through mobile technology are yet to be established. The paper concludes by acknowledging the significance of integrated public transport systems and identifying possibilities of these systems working together promoting viable transportation network. The study recommends the use of integrated mobile technology for public transport as it is safe, fast, reliable, and convenient for both commuters and authorities