CAMMD: Context Aware Mobile Medical Devices

Telemedicine applications on a medical practitioners mobile device should be context-aware. This can vastly improve the effectiveness of mobile applications and is a step towards realising the vision of a ubiquitous telemedicine environment. The nomadic nature of a medical practitioner emphasises location, activity and time as key context-aware elements. An intelligent middleware is needed to effectively interpret and exploit these contextual elements. This paper proposes an agent-based architectural solution called Context-Aware Mobile Medical Devices (CAMMD). This framework can proactively communicate patient records to a portable device based upon the active context of its medical practitioner. An expert system is utilised to cross-reference the context-aware data of location and time against a practitioners work schedule. This proactive distribution of medical data enhances the usability and portability of mobile medical devices. The proposed methodology alleviates constraints on memory storage and enhances user interaction with the handheld device. The framework also improves utilisation of network bandwidth resources. An experimental prototype is presented highlighting the potential of this approach

Quality assessment technique for ubiquitous software and middleware

The new paradigm of computing or information systems is ubiquitous computing systems. The technology-oriented issues of ubiquitous computing systems have made researchers pay much attention to the feasibility study of the technologies rather than building quality assurance indices or guidelines. In this context, measuring quality is the key to developing high-quality ubiquitous computing products. For this reason, various quality models have been defined, adopted and enhanced over the years, for example, the need for one recognised standard quality model (ISO/IEC 9126) is the result of a consensus for a software quality model on three levels: characteristics, sub-characteristics, and metrics. However, it is very much unlikely that this scheme will be directly applicable to ubiquitous computing environments which are considerably different to conventional software, trailing a big concern which is being given to reformulate existing methods, and especially to elaborate new assessment techniques for ubiquitous computing environments. This paper selects appropriate quality characteristics for the ubiquitous computing environment, which can be used as the quality target for both ubiquitous computing product evaluation processes ad development processes. Further, each of the quality characteristics has been expanded with evaluation questions and metrics, in some cases with measures. In addition, this quality model has been applied to the industrial setting of the ubiquitous computing environment. These have revealed that while the approach was sound, there are some parts to be more developed in the future

A user-centric approach for developing and deploying service front-ends in the future internet of services

Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs) based on web services have attracted a great deal of interest and Internet Technology (IT) investment over the last few years, principally in the context of business-to-business integration within corporate intranets. However, they are now evolving and breaking through enterprise boundaries in a revolutionary attempt to make the approach pervasive. This is leading to what we call a user-centric SOA. A user-centric SOA is an SOA conceived as an internet of services made up of compositional resources empowering end users to collaboratively remix and ubiquitously exploit these resources. In this paper we explore the architectural basis, technologies, frameworks and tools considered necessary to tackle this novel vision of SOA. We also present the rationale behind Ez Web/FAST, an ongoing EU-funded project whose first outcomes could serve as a preliminary proof of concept

An Open Internet of Things System Architecture Based on Software-Defined Device

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.The Internet of Things(IoT) connects more and more devices and supports an ever-growing diversity of applications. The heterogeneity of the cross-industry and cross-platform device resources is one of the main challenges to realize the unified management and information sharing, ultimately the large-scale uptake of the IoT. Inspired by software-defined networking(SDN), we propose the concept of software-defined device(SDD) and further elaborate its definition and operational mechanism from the perspective of cyber-physical mapping. Based on the device-as-a-software concept, we develop an open Internet of Things system architecture which decouples upper-level applications from the underlying physical devices through the SDD mechanism. A logically centralized controller is designed to conveniently manage physical devices and flexibly provide the device discovery service and the device control interfaces for various application requests. We also describe an application use scenario which illustrates that the SDD-based system architecture can implement the unified management, sharing, reusing, recombining and modular customization of device resources in multiple applications, and the ubiquitous IoT applications can be interconnected and intercommunicated on the shared physical devices

Pervasive handheld computing systems

The technological role of handheld devices is fundamentally changing. Portable computers were traditionally application specific. They were designed and optimised to deliver a specific task. However, it is now commonly acknowledged that future handheld devices need to be multi-functional and need to be capable of executing a range of high-performance applications. This thesis has coined the term pervasive handheld computing systems to refer to this type of mobile device. Portable computers are faced with a number of constraints in trying to meet these objectives. They are physically constrained by their size, their computational power, their memory resources, their power usage, and their networking ability. These constraints challenge pervasive handheld computing systems in achieving their multi-functional and high-performance requirements. This thesis proposes a two-pronged methodology to enable pervasive handheld computing systems meet their future objectives. The methodology is a fusion of two independent and yet complementary concepts. The first step utilises reconfigurable technology to enhance the physical hardware resources within the environment of a handheld device. This approach recognises that reconfigurable computing has the potential to dynamically increase the system functionality and versatility of a handheld device without major loss in performance. The second step of the methodology incorporates agent-based middleware protocols to support handheld devices to effectively manage and utilise these reconfigurable hardware resources within their environment. The thesis asserts the combined characteristics of reconfigurable computing and agent technology can meet the objectives of pervasive handheld computing systems

Resource provisioning in Science Clouds: Requirements and challenges

Cloud computing has permeated into the information technology industry in the last few years, and it is emerging nowadays in scientific environments. Science user communities are demanding a broad range of computing power to satisfy the needs of high-performance applications, such as local clusters, high-performance computing systems, and computing grids. Different workloads are needed from different computational models, and the cloud is already considered as a promising paradigm. The scheduling and allocation of resources is always a challenging matter in any form of computation and clouds are not an exception. Science applications have unique features that differentiate their workloads, hence, their requirements have to be taken into consideration to be fulfilled when building a Science Cloud. This paper will discuss what are the main scheduling and resource allocation challenges for any Infrastructure as a Service provider supporting scientific applications

MIDDLEWARE FOR SMART HETEROGENEOUS CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE NETWORKS INTERCOMMUNICATION

Svrha je ovog preglednog rada objasniti princip i izložiti rezultate dosadašnjih istraživanja nove SWEEPS tehnike ispiranja korijenskog kanala. Standardna obrada korijenskih kanala tijekom endodontskog liječenja uključuje mehaničku instrumentaciju ručnim ili strojnim instrumentima te kemijsku obradu sredstvima za ispiranje poput NaOCl i EDTA. Tijekom instrumentacije kanala formiraju se debris i zaostatni sloj, koje je potrebno ukloniti. U dezinfekciji endodontskog prostora zuba ključan je raspad bakterijskog biofilma koji se postiže brzim strujanjem sredstva za ispiranje u kanalu. Dinamičan protok sredstva za ispiranje u kanalu potreban je za dosezanje svih dijelova endodontskog prostora, održavanje učinkovite koncentracije sredstva i za stvaranje smičnog stresa na stijekama koji uklanja biofilm. Zbog ograničenja pasivnog ispiranja špricom i iglom (nedovoljna izmjena tekućine u korijenskom kanalu) došlo je do razvoja brojnih tehnika aktivacije sredstva za ispiranje, poput zvučno i ultrazvučno aktiviranog ispiranja. Noviji doprinos poboljšanju učinkovitosti dezinfekcije korijenskih kanala predstavlja laserski aktivirano ispiranje (engl. laser-activated irrigation, LAI) pomoću erbij lasera. Posebna tehnika LAI zove se fotonima inducirano fotoakustično strujanje (engl. photon-induced photoacoustic streaming, PIPS), a temelji se na nastanku kavitacija i šok-valova koji čiste stijenke kanala. Tehnološkim napretkom postavki lasera omogućen je razvoj novih tehnika. Emisija fotoakustičnog strujanja pojačana udarnim valom (engl. Shock Wave Enchanced Emission of Photoacoustic Streaming, SWEEPS) nova je tehnika ispiranja korijenskih kanala koja se temelji na pojačanju šok-valova dodatnim pulsom laserske zrake. U literaturi još nema dovoljno radova na temelju kojih bi se mogao jasno definirati učinak SWEEPS tehnike.The aim of this study is to explain the principles and present the results of past research of the new SWEEPS root canal irrigation technique. Standard procedure during endodontic therapy involves mechanical instrumentation using hand or rotary files and chemical treatment that uses irrigants such as NaOCl and EDTA. During root canal instrumentation, debris and smear layer are formed and they need to be removed. Deattachment of bacterial biofilm plays a key role in endodontic disinfection and is originated by a fast stream of irrigant inside the root canal. Dinamic flow of irrigant inside the root canal is necessary for reaching all parts of endodontic space, maintaining an effective irrigant concentration and producing shear stress on root canal walls, which removes the biofilm. Limitations of passive needle irrigation (insufficient exchange of irrigant in the root canal) induced the development of numerous irrigation activation techniques, such as sonic and ultrasonic activation of irrigation. A new contribution to improving the efficiency of root canal disinfection is laser-activated irrigation (LAI) using erbium lasers. A special technique that LAI uses is photon-induced photoacoustic streaming (PIPS) and it is based on producing cavitations and shockwaves which debride the root canal walls. Technological progress of laser settings enabled the development of new techniques. Shock Wave Enchanced Emission of Photoacoustic Streaming (SWEEPS) is a new irrigation activation technique based on the enchancement of shockwaves by using additional laser pulse. There have not been enough papers published to clearly define the efficacy of SWEEPS technique