A New Approach to Tagging Data in the Astronomical Literature

Data Tags are strings used in journals to indicate the origin of the archival data and to enable the reader to recover the data. The NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive (IRSA) has recently introduced a new approach to production of data tags and recovery of data from them. Many of the data access services at the IRSA return filtered data sets (such as subsets of source catalogs) and dynamically created products (such as image cutouts); these dynamically created products are not saved permanently at the archive. Rather than tag the data sets from which the query result sets are drawn, the archive tags the query that generates the results. A single tag can, then, encode a complex dynamic data set and simplifies the embedding of tags in manuscripts and journals. By logging user queries and all the parameters for those query as Data Tags, IRSA can re-create the query and rerun the IRSA service using the same search parameters used when the Data Tag was created. At the same time, the logs give a simple count of the actual numbers of queries made to the archive, a powerful metric of archive usage unobtainable from the Apache web server logs. Currently, IRSA creates tags for queries to more than 20 data sets, including the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS), Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS) and Spitzer Space Telescope Legacy Data Sets. These tags are returned by the spatial query engine, Atlas. IRSA plans to create tags for queries to the rest of its services in late Spring 2007. The archive provides a simple web interface which recovers a data set that corresponds to the input data tag. Archived data sets may evolve in time due to improved calibrations or augmentations to the data set. IRSA’s query based approach guarantees that users always receive the best available data sets

Online banking customization via tag-based interaction

In this paper, we describe ongoing work on online banking customization with a particular focus on interaction. The scope of the study is confined to the Australian banking context where the lack of customization is evident. This paper puts forward the notion of using tags to facilitate personalized interactions in online banking. We argue that tags can afford simple and intuitive interactions unique to every individual in both online and mobile environments. Firstly, through a review of related literature, we frame our work in the customization domain. Secondly, we define a range of taggable resources in online banking. Thirdly, we describe our preliminary prototype implementation with respect to interaction customization types. Lastly, we conclude with a discussion on future work

CamFlow: Managed Data-sharing for Cloud Services

A model of cloud services is emerging whereby a few trusted providers manage the underlying hardware and communications whereas many companies build on this infrastructure to offer higher level, cloud-hosted PaaS services and/or SaaS applications. From the start, strong isolation between cloud tenants was seen to be of paramount importance, provided first by virtual machines (VM) and later by containers, which share the operating system (OS) kernel. Increasingly it is the case that applications also require facilities to effect isolation and protection of data managed by those applications. They also require flexible data sharing with other applications, often across the traditional cloud-isolation boundaries; for example, when government provides many related services for its citizens on a common platform. Similar considerations apply to the end-users of applications. But in particular, the incorporation of cloud services within `Internet of Things' architectures is driving the requirements for both protection and cross-application data sharing. These concerns relate to the management of data. Traditional access control is application and principal/role specific, applied at policy enforcement points, after which there is no subsequent control over where data flows; a crucial issue once data has left its owner's control by cloud-hosted applications and within cloud-services. Information Flow Control (IFC), in addition, offers system-wide, end-to-end, flow control based on the properties of the data. We discuss the potential of cloud-deployed IFC for enforcing owners' dataflow policy with regard to protection and sharing, as well as safeguarding against malicious or buggy software. In addition, the audit log associated with IFC provides transparency, giving configurable system-wide visibility over data flows. [...]Comment: 14 pages, 8 figure

Reconfigurable phased microstrip antenna array with defected ground structure and defected microstrip structure for beam steering application

Beam steering is defined as the ability to electronically steer the beam maximum of an antenna electric field pattern to some predefined point in space. The performance of a phased antenna array for beam steering without moving the antennas is important to military and civil applications. A steerable antenna with tunable phase shifter continues to be a popular choice to provide such systems. However, this additional device makes the structure more complicated, bulky and it represent a great part of the production cost of a phased array antenna. Therefore, it creates new challenges to find an alternative approach. This work proposed two alternative approaches to steer the main beam. The first is based on a defected ground structure (DGS), while the second is a defected microstrip structure (DMS), which due to their slow wave effect and band-stop property, are able to disturb surface current distribution, then change the element phase and hence steer the main beam. This work started with investigating and applying new method for beam steering based on using DGS and DMS, where this reflects the first objective. As a second objective, this work proposed new approach for beam steering, where DGS is integrated between two patches for the bandwidth within X-band. The simulated results revealed the achievement of the target to steer the main beam to 50° along H-plane. For the third objective, a spiral antenna array (SAA) has been proposed, and it was observed that the best choice for selecting feed network for feeding circular antenna array is a common sequential feed network (SFN), which has a circular shape with four ports to feed four elements. In order to increase the number of ports and hence design suitable feed network for feeding SAA, this study proposed new spiral sequential feed network (SSFN). As a dual structure of DGS, and compared with DGS, DMS is of great advantage in design due to its reduced size and the feature of electromagnetic interference noise immunity. Furthermore, DMS has higher effective inductance compared to DGS. Therefore, this work proposed new reconfigurable SAA with DMS fed by SSFN within C-band. The simulated results showed the achievement of the target to steer the main beam to 61° and 84° along E-plane and H-plane, respectively. Furthermore, as the last objective, a new approach was proposed for extracting equivalent circuit model for DGS with dual patches, SSFN and SAA. Two prototypes of dual patches with and without DGS, SSFN and two prototypes of SAA with DMS were fabricated for scattering parameter and far-field radiation pattern measurements. The results showed close agreement with the predicted results, where array with DGS confirmed a beam steering of 36° along H-plane, while SAA with DMS displayed 45° beam steering along E-plane, respectively. Future works will focus on increasing the array gain and reducing the array beam width which will give a clear vision for beam steering of array

Proximal business intelligence on the semantic web

This is the post-print version of this article. The official version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2010 Springer.Ubiquitous information systems (UBIS) extend current Information System thinking to explicitly differentiate technology between devices and software components with relation to people and process. Adapting business data and management information to support specific user actions in context is an ongoing topic of research. Approaches typically focus on providing mechanisms to improve specific information access and transcoding but not on how the information can be accessed in a mobile, dynamic and ad-hoc manner. Although web ontology has been used to facilitate the loading of data warehouses, less research has been carried out on ontology based mobile reporting. This paper explores how business data can be modeled and accessed using the web ontology language and then re-used to provide the invisibility of pervasive access; uncovering more effective architectural models for adaptive information system strategies of this type. This exploratory work is guided in part by a vision of business intelligence that is highly distributed, mobile and fluid, adapting to sensory understanding of the underlying environment in which it operates. A proof-of concept mobile and ambient data access architecture is developed in order to further test the viability of such an approach. The paper concludes with an ontology engineering framework for systems of this type – named UBIS-ONTO

Mobile banking customization via user-defined tags

In this paper, we describe on-going work on mobile banking customization, particularly in the Australian context. The use of user-defined tags to facilitate personalized interactions in the mobile context is explored. The aim of this research is to find ways to improve mobile banking interaction. Customization is more significant in the mobile context than online due to factors such as smaller screen sizes and limited software and hardware capabilities, placing an increased emphasis on usability. This paper explains how user-defined tags can aid different types of customization at the interaction level. A preliminary prototype has been developed to demonstrate the mechanics of the proposed approach. Potential implications, design decisions and limitations are discussed with an outline of future work