Improving Access to Information through Conceptual Classification

Overwhelming the users with large amount of information on the Web has resulted in users' inability to find the information and their dissatisfaction with available information searching and filtering systems. On the other hand, the information is distributed over many websites and a large part of it (for example news) is updated frequently. Keeping track of the changes in huge amount of information is a real problem for users.   Due to the great impact the information has on people's lives and business decision-making, much research has been done on the efficient ways of accessing and analyzing the information. This thesis will propose a conceptual classification method and ranking of the information in order to provide better user access to a wider range of information, it also provides the information that may help in analyzing the global trends in various fields. In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of this method, a feed aggregator system has been developed and evaluated through this thesis.   To improve the flexibility and adaptability of the system, we have adopted the agent-oriented software engineering architecture that has also helped facilitating the development process. In addition, since the system deals with storing and processing large amounts of information, that requires a large number of resources the cloud platform service has been used as a platform for deploying the application. The result was a cloud based software service that benefited from the unlimited on-demand resources.   To take advantage of the available features of public cloud computing platforms, those supporting the agent-oriented design, the multi-agent system was implemented by mapping the agents to the cloud computing services. In addition, the cloud queue service that is provided by some cloud providers such as Microsoft and Amazon was used to implement indirect communication among the agents in the multi-agent system.  M.S

Delivering elder-care environments utilizing TV-channel based mechanisms

In this paper, we present a smart environment for elderly. What makes the development of such system challenging is that the concept of smartness for elderly brings to the extreme the idea of invisibility of the technology. In our experience, elders are well-disposed to new technologies, provided that those will not require significant changes - namely, they are invisible - to their habits. Starting from this consideration, 200 caregivers responses were collected by questionnaire, so as to better understand elders' needs and habits. A system was subsequently developed allowing elders to access a number of "modern web services" as standard TV channels: at channel 43 there is the health status, at channel 45 the photos of the family, at 46 the agenda of the week, just to mention few of the available services. The content of such services is automatically generated by the smart devices in the environment and is managed by the caregivers (e.g., family members) by simple web apps. Fourteen families were asked to install the system in their house. The results of these experiments confirm that the proposed system is considered effective and user-friendly by elders

EdgeEcho: An Architecture for Echocardiology at the Edge

Edge computing technologies have improved delays and privacy of several applications, including in medical imaging and eHealth. In this paper, we consider ultrasound technology and echocardiology (echo) and empower it with edge computing. Despite the many advances that ultrasound technology has seen recently, e.g., it is possible to perform echo scans using wireless ultrasound probes, the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques is becoming a necessity, for faster and more accurate echo diagnosis (not limited to heart diseases). While a few proprietary solutions exist that embed AI within echo devices, none of them uses resource-intensive tasks on handheld devices, and none of them is open-source. To this end, we propose EdgeEcho, an architecture that captures ultrasound data originated from handheld ultrasound probes and tags it using semantic segmentation performed on edge cloud. Our prototype focuses on optimizing the management of edge resources to address the specific requirements of echocardiology and the challenges of serving AI algorithms responsively. As a use case, we focus on a ventricular volume detection operation. Our performance evaluation results show that EdgeEcho can support multiple parallel medical video processing streaming sessions for continuing medical education, demonstrating a promising edge computing application with life-saving potential

The NASA SBIR product catalog

The purpose of this catalog is to assist small business firms in making the community aware of products emerging from their efforts in the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. It contains descriptions of some products that have advanced into Phase 3 and others that are identified as prospective products. Both lists of products in this catalog are based on information supplied by NASA SBIR contractors in responding to an invitation to be represented in this document. Generally, all products suggested by the small firms were included in order to meet the goals of information exchange for SBIR results. Of the 444 SBIR contractors NASA queried, 137 provided information on 219 products. The catalog presents the product information in the technology areas listed in the table of contents. Within each area, the products are listed in alphabetical order by product name and are given identifying numbers. Also included is an alphabetical listing of the companies that have products described. This listing cross-references the product list and provides information on the business activity of each firm. In addition, there are three indexes: one a list of firms by states, one that lists the products according to NASA Centers that managed the SBIR projects, and one that lists the products by the relevant Technical Topics utilized in NASA's annual program solicitation under which each SBIR project was selected

Observing the clouds : a survey and taxonomy of cloud monitoring

This research was supported by a Royal Society Industry Fellowship and an Amazon Web Services (AWS) grant. Date of Acceptance: 10/12/2014Monitoring is an important aspect of designing and maintaining large-scale systems. Cloud computing presents a unique set of challenges to monitoring including: on-demand infrastructure, unprecedented scalability, rapid elasticity and performance uncertainty. There are a wide range of monitoring tools originating from cluster and high-performance computing, grid computing and enterprise computing, as well as a series of newer bespoke tools, which have been designed exclusively for cloud monitoring. These tools express a number of common elements and designs, which address the demands of cloud monitoring to various degrees. This paper performs an exhaustive survey of contemporary monitoring tools from which we derive a taxonomy, which examines how effectively existing tools and designs meet the challenges of cloud monitoring. We conclude by examining the socio-technical aspects of monitoring, and investigate the engineering challenges and practices behind implementing monitoring strategies for cloud computing.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Small business innovation research. Abstracts of completed 1987 phase 1 projects

Non-proprietary summaries of Phase 1 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) projects supported by NASA in the 1987 program year are given. Work in the areas of aeronautical propulsion, aerodynamics, acoustics, aircraft systems, materials and structures, teleoperators and robotics, computer sciences, information systems, spacecraft systems, spacecraft power supplies, spacecraft propulsion, bioastronautics, satellite communication, and space processing are covered

Blend of Biodiesel from Refined Corn Oil and treated Jatropha Curcas L. Oil : Effect on Oxidation Stability, Pour Point and Cloud Point

The purpose of this project is to find an alternative to the usage of edible oil in the biodiesel production. It is evident that biodiesel, an alternative renewable fuel made from transesterification of oil with alcohol is a norm worldwide. However, mostly edible oils are used in the production biodiesel and this caused a concern in different parts of the world (e.g Asian countries) as they are not self sufficient in edible oil. Hence, non-edible oil options are being viewed, for example Jatropha Curcas L. Oil. In this report, the type of edible oil chosen is refined corn oil (RCO) and the type of inedible oil chosen is Jatropha Curcas L. Oil (JCO). The first part of the report contains the acidity value checking for both RCO and JCO. Then, it is followed by pre-esterification reaction procedures to reduce the acidity value of the oil with high acid content (> 3%). This is continued by the transesterification procedure to produce refined corn oil biodiesel (RCBD) and Jatropha Curcas oil biodiesel (JCBD) from RCO and JCO respectively. Next, the water content of RCBD and JCBD are checked and after that gas chromatography tests are done on both biodiesels. The next segment discusses the blending between RCBD and JCBD into various compositions (JCBD, JCBD-1. JCBD-2, JCBD-3, JCBD-4 and RCBD). Three important aspects that are taken into considerations are the oxidation stability (OS), cloud point (CP) and pour point (PP) of the blending. Since the OS of RCBD is inferior compared to JCBD, it is to be determined if it is possible to adhere to EN-14112 specifications while blending of various composition is done. Whereas, since the PP and CP of JCBD is inferior compared to RCBD, it is to be made sure that the blending meets the required standard

Personal Information Center(PIC) - A Data Integration Service for the Private Cloud

Managing information has become an extra load for our everyday life but creating a personal information center (PIC) solves this problem easily. A PIC makes it easier to see content such as email messages, weather information, news items, and even information from local storage by using one view or user interface. Additionally, it fulfills the real world requirements like accessibility, around-the-clock availability of service, and it solves the device constraints problem by creating a common presentation format for all kinds of devices. An importer works spontaneously as a fetcher, parser and processor to process the information to create the nodes content. An analyzer works as an extractor and creates vocabulary terms automatically to auto tag the node content. Finally, a filtering system works for finding similar nodes to create one common presentation with all matched contents. All the works in the PIC is done automatically without any users’ interaction, only the source of information is defined by the users. The analyzer uses machine learning Naive Bayes approach to extract key phrases from the contents. The PIC uses an advanced filtering system to find similarity between nodes and to create a common presentation for all devices