Consciência do contexto do aprendiz em um ambiente de educação pervasiva

Este trabalho apresenta uma infra-estrutura para suporte a consciênciado contexto do aprendiz em um ambiente para suporte à educação pervasivadenominado GlobalEdu. O contexto é gerenciado através de ServiçosEducacionais (SE), que manipulam, também, o perfil do aprendiz e seu modelo deconhecimento. O aprendiz é acompanhado no ambiente pervasivo por um AgentePedagógico Pessoal Pervasivo – A3P. Neste trabalho, a consciência do contextodo aprendiz no GlobalEdu é aprofundada e uma aplicação educacionaldesenvolvida para validação da proposta é apresentada

Qos‐aware approximate query processing for smart cities spatial data streams

Large amounts of georeferenced data streams arrive daily to stream processing systems. This is attributable to the overabundance of affordable IoT devices. In addition, interested practitioners desire to exploit Internet of Things (IoT) data streams for strategic decision‐making purposes. However, mobility data are highly skewed and their arrival rates fluctuate. This nature poses an extra challenge on data stream processing systems, which are required in order to achieve prespecified latency and accuracy goals. In this paper, we propose ApproxSSPS, which is a system for approximate processing of geo‐referenced mobility data, at scale with quality of service guarantees. We focus on stateful aggregations (e.g., means, counts) and top‐N queries. ApproxSSPS features a controller that interactively learns the latency statistics and calculates proper sampling rates to meet latency or/and accuracy targets. An overarching trait of ApproxSSPS is its ability to strike a plausible balance between latency and accuracy targets. We evaluate ApproxSSPS on Apache Spark Structured Streaming with real mobility data. We also compared ApproxSSPS against a state‐of‐the‐art online adaptive processing system. Our extensive experiments prove that ApproxSSPS can fulfill latency and accuracy targets with varying sets of parameter configurations and load intensities (i.e., transient peaks in data loads versus slow arriving streams). Moreover, our results show that ApproxSSPS outperforms the baseline counterpart by significant magnitudes. In short, ApproxSSPS is a novel spatial data stream processing system that can deliver real accurate results in a timely manner, by dynamically specifying the limits on data samples

Infraestrutura de software Continuum para a computação ubíqua: uma abordagem baseada em serviço

The latest technological advances, which introduced innovative and more affordable devices, have contributed to boost the practical application of research in the field of ubiquitous computing (ubicomp). For the development of applications in this area, we need an adequate software infrastructure. In order to do so, we have proposed Continuum, an infrastructure based on service-oriented architecture (SOA), making use of framework and middleware, and employing a redefinition of follow-me semantics. In this redefined vision, users can go anywhere carrying the data and application they want, which they can use in a seamlessly integrated fashion with the real world. In this article, we focus on the description of the service-based architecture proposed for Continuum. The proposal widens the web services standards to support the mobility of services, allowing them to be deployed, copied, or moved. Besides, the abstraction provided enables the adaptation of legacy applications as Continuum pluggable services. We conduct some experimental analysis, using case study methodology. Based on these assessments, we present lessons learned and draw the conclusion of our work.Keywords: software infrastructure, middleware, web services, service oriented architecture, ubiquitous computing.Os mais recentes avanços tecnológicos, com a introdução de dispositivos inovadores e mais baratos, contribuem para o aumento da aplicação prática das pesquisas na área de computação ubíqua (ubicomp). Para o desenvolvimento de aplicativos nessa área, é necessária uma infraestrutura de software adequada. Para atingir esse objetivo, esse artigo propõe o Continuum, uma infraestrutura baseada na arquitetura orientada a serviços (SOA), fazendo uso de framework e middleware. Além disso, a arquitetura emprega uma visão redefinida da semântica siga-me, na qual usuários podem ir aonde quiserem carregando os dados e aplicativos desejados, utilizando-os de forma integrada com o mundo real. Nesse artigo, é dado foco para a descrição da arquitetura orientada a serviços proposta para o Continuum. A proposta amplia os padrões de serviços web para suportar a mobilidade de serviços, permitindo que eles sejam instalados, copiados ou movidos. Adicionalmente, a abstração fornecida permite a adaptação de aplicações legadas como serviços plugáveis do Continuum. Algumas análises experimentais foram conduzidas, usando a metodologia de estudo de caso. Baseada nessas avaliações, algumas lições que foram aprendidas são apresentadas e algumas conclusões do trabalho são definidas.Palavras-chave: infraestrutura de software, middleware, serviços web, arquitetura orientada a serviços, computação ubíqua

Mobile Learning na Sala de Aula Presencial: Repositório Semântico de Objetos de Aprendizagem para Dispositivos Móveis

Objetos de Aprendizagem (OA) são abordagens pedagógicas de grande valia no ensino, facilitando a aprendizagem de conteúdos de forma animada e interativa. Com o advento da Mobile Learning, OA estão sendo criados ou adaptados para execução em dispositivos móveis. Diante das características da computação Móvel, este artigo propõe um Repositório semântico de Objetos de Aprendizagem para dispositivos móveis que, automaticamente, pesquisa por OA em função do contexto do aprendiz, sem sua interferência, levando em consideração as características do dispositivo móvel a ser utilizado

The Impact of the Separation Wall on the Social Capital of the Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the West Bank

This doctoral thesis is about the study of the social capital, its effects on the local development and on the socio-economic resilience of the Palestinians trapped, socially, politically, and economically, in the East Jerusalem's al-'Eizariyah area. The transformation of al-'Eizariyah since 2002 through the Israeli encroachment on Palestinian land by instrumental use of the Separation Wall policies were analyzed and re-stated through the lenses of the sociological theory and concepts. Based on the accounts of life stories and interviews with various members of the al-'Eizariyah's former and current community and through the visual data of the changes in al-'Eizariyah and the areas adjacent to the Separation Wall an analysis of the Palestinian coping and survival strategies was undertaken. The thesis demonstrates how the reality of al-'Eizariyah was changed dramatically in the last two decades despite and in the opposite direction of the Oslo Accords of 1993. To be sure, al-‘Eizariyah, which is located two miles east of Jerusalem, had expanded to adjust to the economic boom of the early post-Oslo years coupled with the political expectations of it being part of the future Palestinian capital. This was disrupted by the failure of the Oslo Accords, and the construction of the Israeli Separation Wall in 2002, which served as an instrument of intimidation and harassment to make Palestinians leave Jerusalem, as this thesis demonstrates. The Wall did not only cut off al-'Eizariyah from the main road that used to connect East Jerusalem to Jericho. The Wall's more sinister and long-term damage has been in the physical and psychological isolation of al-‘Eizariyah and in preventing its residents from being fully integrated in the economic, social, cultural, and political life of the East Jerusalem and of the West Bank. This two-sided effect of the Separation Wall started when most of the people who used to work in East Jerusalem and Israel lost their Jobs, students could no longer study in Jerusalem and had to change schools; the sick no longer could use the healthcare facilities, etc. Former residents of al-'Eizariyah could no longer do any of these basic necessities neither their shopping and entertainment in Jerusalem freely without being humiliated with denial of access to Jerusalem based on the persons' ability to present a Blue ID at the checkpoint, the only ID that is recognized by the Israeli regime. While some social capital forms helped in coping with the difficulties caused by this new reality it was the difference in the pre- and post-Wall situations that were examined in order to understand the impact of the adversity represented by the Wall on the social capital of the Palestinians. The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate the implications of the construction of the Wall on the socio-economic life of al-‘Eizariyah residents and to study the Israel-Palestine conflict from sociological lens using a case study setting and qualitative analysis approach. This thesis demonstrates positive impact of the Wall on social capital types by where the bonding social capital became stronger yet the trend got reversed. At the community level, the challenges were too large to be handled only by bonding social capital. Therefore, there is a combined effort between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the local civil society associations and the private sector to overcome problems related to education, health care services, trade and labor in addition to social security caused by the Wall. It was found that bridging social capital and linking social capital were strongly present after the Wall was completed. Although civil society associations are strongly present in al-‘Eizariyah but because the Palestinian society is structured along patrimonial, familial, clannish, tribal and contradictory geographical cleavages, most of these associations work in a way that transformed the intended outcome of bridging social capital to some kind of bonding social capital as the beneficiaries and the participants are mostly from their family, clan members, or those who belong to the same political party, and not the community as a whole. However, observations and the empirical evidence show that bonding is stronger than bridging social capital. The social fragmentation caused by several social forces such as the local-stranger relationship, between the locals of al-‘Eizariyah and the displaced residents, prevented efficient cooperation in solving community problems. Lack of the sense of belonging is not only because the locals always express superiority over the displaced, but also because the displaced themselves do not want to lose their rooted original identity, especially the refugees who settled in the town after the 1948 war. This had a great overall impact on the unity of the Palestinian society especially that ‘the refugees’ communities constitute approximately 42 percent of the total population of the West Bank. The future challenge of the Palestinians in areas such as al-‘Eizariyah is to find ways of detecting defragmentation and manipulation policies and develop strategies that would prevent defragmentation of the Palestinians being orchestrated by the Israeli Wall policies and that only become apparent with a time lapse when it can be too late.I am grateful and indebted to Prof. Giuseppe Folloni for his stand and continuous support and efforts. My deepest gratitude goes to my supervisor Dr. Natalia Magnani for her invaluable comments, insightful and constructive suggestions, patience and encouragements

Personal mobile grids with a honeybee inspired resource scheduler

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.The overall aim of the thesis has been to introduce Personal Mobile Grids (PMGrids) as a novel paradigm in grid computing that scales grid infrastructures to mobile devices and extends grid entities to individual personal users. In this thesis, architectural designs as well as simulation models for PM-Grids are developed. The core of any grid system is its resource scheduler. However, virtually all current conventional grid schedulers do not address the non-clairvoyant scheduling problem, where job information is not available before the end of execution. Therefore, this thesis proposes a honeybee inspired resource scheduling heuristic for PM-Grids (HoPe) incorporating a radical approach to grid resource scheduling to tackle this problem. A detailed design and implementation of HoPe with a decentralised self-management and adaptive policy are initiated. Among the other main contributions are a comprehensive taxonomy of grid systems as well as a detailed analysis of the honeybee colony and its nectar acquisition process (NAP), from the resource scheduling perspective, which have not been presented in any previous work, to the best of our knowledge. PM-Grid designs and HoPe implementation were evaluated thoroughly through a strictly controlled empirical evaluation framework with a well-established heuristic in high throughput computing, the opportunistic scheduling heuristic (OSH), as a benchmark algorithm. Comparisons with optimal values and worst bounds are conducted to gain a clear insight into HoPe behaviour, in terms of stability, throughput, turnaround time and speedup, under different running conditions of number of jobs and grid scales. Experimental results demonstrate the superiority of HoPe performance where it has successfully maintained optimum stability and throughput in more than 95% of the experiments, with HoPe achieving three times better than the OSH under extremely heavy loads. Regarding the turnaround time and speedup, HoPe has effectively achieved less than 50% of the turnaround time incurred by the OSH, while doubling its speedup in more than 60% of the experiments. These results indicate the potential of both PM-Grids and HoPe in realising futuristic grid visions. Therefore considering the deployment of PM-Grids in real life scenarios and the utilisation of HoPe in other parallel processing and high throughput computing systems are recommended

Semantic Web and the Web of Things: concept, platform and applications

The ubiquitous presence of devices with computational resources and connectivity is fostering the diffusion of the Internet of Things (IoT), where smart objects interoperate and react to the available information providing services to the users. The pervasiveness of the IoT across many different areas proves the worldwide interest of researchers from academic and enterprises worlds. This Research has brought to new technologies and protocols addressing different needs of emerging scenarios, making difficult to develop interoperable applications. The Web of Things is born to address this problem through the standard protocols responsible for the success of the Web. But a greater contribution can be provided by standards of the Semantic Web. Semantic Web protocols grant univocal identification of resources and representation of data in a way that information is machine understandable and computable and such that information from different sources can be easily aggregated. Semantic Web technologies are then interoperability enablers for the IoT. This Thesis investigates how to employ Semantic Web protocols in the IoT, to realize the Semantic Web of Things (SWoT) vision of an interoperable network of applications. Part I introduces the IoT, Part II investigates the algorithms to efficiently support the publish/subscribe paradigm in semantic brokers for the SWoT and their implementation in Smart-M3 and SEPA. The preliminary work toward the first benchmark for SWoT applications is presented. Part IV describes the Research activity aimed at applying the developed semantic infrastructures in real life scenarios (electro-mobility, home automation, semantic audio and Internet of Musical Things). Part V presents the conclusions. A lack of effective ways to explore and debug Semantic Web datasets emerged during these activities. Part III describes a second Research aimed at devising of a novel way to visualize semantic datasets, based on graphs and the new concept of Semantic Planes.La presenza massiva di dispositivi dotati di capacità computazionale e connettività sta alimentando la diffusione di un nuovo paradigma nell'ICT, conosciuto come Internet of Things. L'IoT è caratterizzato dai cosiddetti smart object che interagiscono, cooperano e reagiscono alle informazioni a loro disponibili per fornire servizi agli utenti. La diffusione dell'IoT su così tante aree è la testimonianza di un interesse mondiale da parte di ricercatori appartenenti sia al mondo accademico che a quello industriale. La Ricerca ha portato alla nascita di tecnologie e protocolli progettati per rispondere ai diversi bisogni degli scenari emergenti, rendendo difficile sviluppare applicazioni interoperabili. Il Web of Things (WoT) è nato per rispondere a questi problemi tramite l'adozione degli standard che hanno favorito il successo del Web. Ma un contributo maggiore può venire dal Semantic Web of Things (SWoT). Infatti, i protocolli del Semantic Web permettono identificazione univoca delle risorse e una rappresentazione dei dati tale che le informazioni siano computabili e l'informazione di differenti fonti facilmente aggregabile. Le tecnologie del Semantic Web sono quindi degli interoperability enabler per l'IoT. Questa Tesi analizza come adottare le tecnologie del Semantic Web nell'IoT per realizzare la visione del SWoT di una rete di applicazioni interoperabile. Part I introduce l'IoT, Part II analizza gli algoritmi per supportare il publish-subscribe nei broker semantici e la loro implementazione in Smart-M3 e SEPA. Inoltre, viene presentato il lavoro preliminare verso il primo benchmark per applicazioni SWoT. Part IV discute l'applicazione dei risultati a diversi domini applicativi (mobilità elettrica, domotica, semantic audio ed Internet of Musical Things). Part V presenta le conclusioni sul lavoro svolto. La Ricerca su applicazioni semantiche ha evidenziato carenze negli attuali software di visualizzazione. Quindi, Part III presenta un nuovo metodo di rappresentazione delle basi di conoscenza semantiche basato sull’approccio a grafo che introduce il concetto di Semantic Plane

Personal mobile grids with a honeybee inspired resource scheduler

The overall aim of the thesis has been to introduce Personal Mobile Grids (PMGrids) as a novel paradigm in grid computing that scales grid infrastructures to mobile devices and extends grid entities to individual personal users. In this thesis, architectural designs as well as simulation models for PM-Grids are developed. The core of any grid system is its resource scheduler. However, virtually all current conventional grid schedulers do not address the non-clairvoyant scheduling problem, where job information is not available before the end of execution. Therefore, this thesis proposes a honeybee inspired resource scheduling heuristic for PM-Grids (HoPe) incorporating a radical approach to grid resource scheduling to tackle this problem. A detailed design and implementation of HoPe with a decentralised self-management and adaptive policy are initiated. Among the other main contributions are a comprehensive taxonomy of grid systems as well as a detailed analysis of the honeybee colony and its nectar acquisition process (NAP), from the resource scheduling perspective, which have not been presented in any previous work, to the best of our knowledge. PM-Grid designs and HoPe implementation were evaluated thoroughly through a strictly controlled empirical evaluation framework with a well-established heuristic in high throughput computing, the opportunistic scheduling heuristic (OSH), as a benchmark algorithm. Comparisons with optimal values and worst bounds are conducted to gain a clear insight into HoPe behaviour, in terms of stability, throughput, turnaround time and speedup, under different running conditions of number of jobs and grid scales. Experimental results demonstrate the superiority of HoPe performance where it has successfully maintained optimum stability and throughput in more than 95% of the experiments, with HoPe achieving three times better than the OSH under extremely heavy loads. Regarding the turnaround time and speedup, HoPe has effectively achieved less than 50% of the turnaround time incurred by the OSH, while doubling its speedup in more than 60% of the experiments. These results indicate the potential of both PM-Grids and HoPe in realising futuristic grid visions. Therefore considering the deployment of PM-Grids in real life scenarios and the utilisation of HoPe in other parallel processing and high throughput computing systems are recommended.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

On reliable and secure RPL (routing protocol low-power and lossy networks) based monitoring and surveillance in oil and gas fields

Different efforts have been made to specify protocols and algorithms for the successful operation of the Internet of things Networks including, for instance, the Low Power and Lossy Networks (LLNs) and Linear Sensor Networks (LSNs). Into such efforts, IETF, the Internet Engineering Task Force, created a working group named, ROLL, to investigate the requirement of such networks and devising more efficient solutions. The effort of this group has resulted in the specification of the IPv6 Routing Protocol for LLNs (RPL), which was standardized in 2012. However, since the introduction of RPL, several studies have reported that it suffers from various limitations and weaknesses including scalability, slow convergence, unfairness of load distribution, inefficiency of bidirectional communication and security, among many others. For instance, a serious problem is RPL’s under-specification of DAO messages which may result in conflict and inefficient implementations leading to a poor performance and scalability issues. Furthermore, RPL has been found to suffer from several security issues including, for instance, the DAO flooding attack, in which the attacker floods the network with control messages aiming to exhaust network resources. Another fundamental issue is related to the scarcity of the studies that investigate RPL suitability for Linear Sensor Networks (LSN) and devising solution in the lieu of that.Motivated by these observations, the publications within this thesis aim to tackle some of the key gaps of the RPL by introducing more efficient and secure routing solutions in consideration of the specific requirements of LLNs in general and LSNs as a special case. To this end, the first publication proposes an enhanced version of RPL called Enhanced-RPL aimed at mitigating the memory overflow and the under-specification of the of DAOs messages. Enhanced-RPL has shown significant reduction in control messages overhead by up to 64% while maintaining comparable reliability to RPL. The second publication introduces a new technique to address the DAO attack of RPL which has been shown to be effective in mitigating the attack reducing the DAO overhead and latency by up to 205% and 181% respectively as well as increasing the PDR by up to 6% latency. The third and fourth publications focus on analysing the optimal placement of nodes and sink movement pattern (fixed or mobile) that RPL should adopt in LSNs. It was concluded based on the results obtained that RPL should opt for fixed sinks with 10 m distance between deployed nodes

Special oils for halal and safe cosmetics

Three types of non conventional oils were extracted, analyzed and tested for toxicity. Date palm kernel oil (DPKO), mango kernel oil (MKO) and Ramputan seed oil (RSO). Oil content for tow cultivars of dates Deglect Noor and Moshkan was 9.67% and 7.30%, respectively. The three varieties of mango were found to contain about 10% oil in average. The red yellow types of Ramputan were found to have 11 and 14% oil, respectively. The phenolic compounds in DPKO, MKO and RSO were 0.98, 0.88 and 0.78 mg/ml Gallic acid equivalent, respectively. Oils were analyzed for their fatty acid composition and they are rich in oleic acid C18:1 and showed the presence of (dodecanoic acid) lauric acid C12:0, which reported to appear some antimicrobial activities. All extracted oils, DPKO, MKO and RSO showed no toxic effect using prime shrimp bioassay. Since these oils are stable, melt at skin temperature, have good lubricity and are great source of essential fatty acids; they could be used as highly moisturizing, cleansing and nourishing oils because of high oleic acid content. They are ideal for use in such halal cosmetics such as Science, Engineering and Technology 75 skin care and massage, hair-care, soap and shampoo products