Everything-as-a-Thing for Abstracting the Internet-of-Things

Copyright © 2018 by SCITEPRESS - Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved This paper discusses Everything-as-a-Thing (*aaT) as a novel way for abstracting the Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications. Compared to other forms of abstraction like Everything-as-a-Service (*aaS) and Everything-as-a-Resource (*aaR), *aaT puts emphasis on living things, on top of non-living things, that populate these applications. On the one hand, living things take over roles that are defined in terms of rights and duties. On the other hand, non-living things offer capabilities that are defined in terms of functional and non-functional properties. Interactions that occur between living and non-living things are specified as stories that define who does what, when, and where. For illustration purposes, *aaT is put into action using a healthcare case study

Molding the Physical World Upon Francis Bacon's Anvil

This examination of the division of the sciences offered by Thomas Aquinas and Francis Bacon compares the ontological approach to the sciences proposed by Aquinas and the modern pragmatic scientific theory of Bacon. The author weighs a proposed elimination of metaphysics from the thinking of Bacon and its implications for modem scientific thought, concluding finally that metaphysics is extremely important as the governing agent of the sciences

Information: What Is It? How Is It Organized?

Overview of information in regards to academic research

Can models of agents be transferred between different areas?

One of the main reasons for the sustained activity and interest in the field of agent-based systems, apart from the obvious recognition of its value as a natural and intuitive way of understanding the world, is its reach into very many different and distinct fields of investigation. Indeed, the notions of agents and multi-agent systems are relevant to fields ranging from economics to robotics, in contributing to the foundations of the field, being influenced by ongoing research, and in providing many domains of application. While these various disciplines constitute a rich and diverse environment for agent research, the way in which they may have been linked by it is a much less considered issue. The purpose of this panel was to examine just this concern, in the relationships between different areas that have resulted from agent research. Informed by the experience of the participants in the areas of robotics, social simulation, economics, computer science and artificial intelligence, the discussion was lively and sometimes heated

Models of everywhere revisited: a technological perspective

The concept ‘models of everywhere’ was first introduced in the mid 2000s as a means of reasoning about the environmental science of a place, changing the nature of the underlying modelling process, from one in which general model structures are used to one in which modelling becomes a learning process about specific places, in particular capturing the idiosyncrasies of that place. At one level, this is a straightforward concept, but at another it is a rich multi-dimensional conceptual framework involving the following key dimensions: models of everywhere, models of everything and models at all times, being constantly re-evaluated against the most current evidence. This is a compelling approach with the potential to deal with epistemic uncertainties and nonlinearities. However, the approach has, as yet, not been fully utilised or explored. This paper examines the concept of models of everywhere in the light of recent advances in technology. The paper argues that, when first proposed, technology was a limiting factor but now, with advances in areas such as Internet of Things, cloud computing and data analytics, many of the barriers have been alleviated. Consequently, it is timely to look again at the concept of models of everywhere in practical conditions as part of a trans-disciplinary effort to tackle the remaining research questions. The paper concludes by identifying the key elements of a research agenda that should underpin such experimentation and deployment