Context based content aggregation for Social Life Networks

Better decisions can be made in the profession of the users if they can filter out the relevant information from all the available information sources. The mass availability of the mobile devices has enabled the users to quickly access timely information from any location. The aim of this work is to identify a suitable way to provide timely information in context by capturing contextual information through the mobile device, to support the activities of the user. The context model tries to identify the context of the user by identifying the task being performed by the user. The system is aware of the information need and the information source for each task of the user and the relevant information is filtered out of the information source, by using the users context. The context model was designed and tested for the farming domain, to support the livelihood activities of the farmer, by extending the concepts of Social Life Networks. Social Life Networks aggregates information from various sensors on a mobile phone, other published data sources and micro blogs such as Twitter to detect evolving situations and make that information available to the users in real time. This initial prototype was evaluated with a sample of farmers to check usefulness of provided information and usability of the application in order to support their day to day decision making process. The sample group strongly endorsed the various aspects of the proto-type application and provided valuable insights for improvement. The current application is a specific instance of the SLN project and we plan to create more application for SLN to test and refine the context models

From Artifacts to Aggregations: Modeling Scientific Life Cycles on the Semantic Web

In the process of scientific research, many information objects are generated, all of which may remain valuable indefinitely. However, artifacts such as instrument data and associated calibration information may have little value in isolation; their meaning is derived from their relationships to each other. Individual artifacts are best represented as components of a life cycle that is specific to a scientific research domain or project. Current cataloging practices do not describe objects at a sufficient level of granularity nor do they offer the globally persistent identifiers necessary to discover and manage scholarly products with World Wide Web standards. The Open Archives Initiative's Object Reuse and Exchange data model (OAI-ORE) meets these requirements. We demonstrate a conceptual implementation of OAI-ORE to represent the scientific life cycles of embedded networked sensor applications in seismology and environmental sciences. By establishing relationships between publications, data, and contextual research information, we illustrate how to obtain a richer and more realistic view of scientific practices. That view can facilitate new forms of scientific research and learning. Our analysis is framed by studies of scientific practices in a large, multi-disciplinary, multi-university science and engineering research center, the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS).Comment: 28 pages. To appear in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (JASIST

Guidelines for the presentation and visualisation of lifelog content

Lifelogs offer rich voluminous sources of personal and social data for which visualisation is ideally suited to providing access, overview, and navigation. We explore through examples of our visualisation work within the domain of lifelogging the major axes on which lifelogs operate, and therefore, on which their visualisations should be contingent. We also explore the concept of ‘events’ as a way to significantly reduce the complexity of the lifelog for presentation and make it more human-oriented. Finally we present some guidelines and goals which should be considered when designing presentation modes for lifelog conten

Sex differences in the structure and stability of children’s playground social networks and their overlap with friendship relations

Gender segregated peer networks during middle childhood have been highlighted as important for explaining later sex differences in behaviour, yet few studies have examined the structural composition of these networks and their implications. This short-term longitudinal study of 119 children (7-8 years) examined the size and internal structure of boys' and girls' social networks, their overlap with friendship relations, and their stability over time. Data collection at the start and end of the year involved systematic playground observations of pupils' play networks during team and non-team activities and measures of friendship from peer nomination interviews. Social networks were identified by aggregating play network data at each time point. Findings showed that the size of boy's play networks on the playground, but not their social networks, varied according to activity type. Social network cores consisted mainly of friends. Girl's social networks were more likely to be composed of friends and boys' networks contained friends and non-friends. Girls had more friends outside of the social network than boys. Stability of social network membership and internal network relations were higher for boys than girls. These patterns have implications for the nature of social experiences within these network contexts

Multimedia delivery in the future internet

The term “Networked Media” implies that all kinds of media including text, image, 3D graphics, audio and video are produced, distributed, shared, managed and consumed on-line through various networks, like the Internet, Fiber, WiFi, WiMAX, GPRS, 3G and so on, in a convergent manner [1]. This white paper is the contribution of the Media Delivery Platform (MDP) cluster and aims to cover the Networked challenges of the Networked Media in the transition to the Future of the Internet. Internet has evolved and changed the way we work and live. End users of the Internet have been confronted with a bewildering range of media, services and applications and of technological innovations concerning media formats, wireless networks, terminal types and capabilities. And there is little evidence that the pace of this innovation is slowing. Today, over one billion of users access the Internet on regular basis, more than 100 million users have downloaded at least one (multi)media file and over 47 millions of them do so regularly, searching in more than 160 Exabytes1 of content. In the near future these numbers are expected to exponentially rise. It is expected that the Internet content will be increased by at least a factor of 6, rising to more than 990 Exabytes before 2012, fuelled mainly by the users themselves. Moreover, it is envisaged that in a near- to mid-term future, the Internet will provide the means to share and distribute (new) multimedia content and services with superior quality and striking flexibility, in a trusted and personalized way, improving citizens’ quality of life, working conditions, edutainment and safety. In this evolving environment, new transport protocols, new multimedia encoding schemes, cross-layer inthe network adaptation, machine-to-machine communication (including RFIDs), rich 3D content as well as community networks and the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) overlays are expected to generate new models of interaction and cooperation, and be able to support enhanced perceived quality-of-experience (PQoE) and innovative applications “on the move”, like virtual collaboration environments, personalised services/ media, virtual sport groups, on-line gaming, edutainment. In this context, the interaction with content combined with interactive/multimedia search capabilities across distributed repositories, opportunistic P2P networks and the dynamic adaptation to the characteristics of diverse mobile terminals are expected to contribute towards such a vision. Based on work that has taken place in a number of EC co-funded projects, in Framework Program 6 (FP6) and Framework Program 7 (FP7), a group of experts and technology visionaries have voluntarily contributed in this white paper aiming to describe the status, the state-of-the art, the challenges and the way ahead in the area of Content Aware media delivery platforms