Cloud-assisted body area networks: state-of-the-art and future challenges

Body area networks (BANs) are emerging as enabling technology for many human-centered application domains such as health-care, sport, fitness, wellness, ergonomics, emergency, safety, security, and sociality. A BAN, which basically consists of wireless wearable sensor nodes usually coordinated by a static or mobile device, is mainly exploited to monitor single assisted livings. Data generated by a BAN can be processed in real-time by the BAN coordinator and/or transmitted to a server-side for online/offline processing and long-term storing. A network of BANs worn by a community of people produces large amount of contextual data that require a scalable and efficient approach for elaboration and storage. Cloud computing can provide a flexible storage and processing infrastructure to perform both online and offline analysis of body sensor data streams. In this paper, we motivate the introduction of Cloud-assisted BANs along with the main challenges that need to be addressed for their development and management. The current state-of-the-art is overviewed and framed according to the main requirements for effective Cloud-assisted BAN architectures. Finally, relevant open research issues in terms of efficiency, scalability, security, interoperability, prototyping, dynamic deployment and management, are discussed

Understanding Web 3.0 - the Semantic Web : how the evolution to a third generation of the Web will impact upon the Internet and media environment within a global and South African context

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 158-174).This thesis examines the potential evolution of the current version of the Internet, popularly referred to as Web 2.0, to a third generation of the Web, referred to as the Semantic Web or Web 3.0. The paper provides an overview of the change in architecture and structure that the current version of the Web will need to undergo in the form of a standardised ontology development in order for the Web to evolve. The evolution to a third generation of the Web will ultimately improve the overall user experience both within a global and South African online context, through the innovation and development of Semantic Web technologies and capabilities. The thesis also discusses the role of the political economy of media and how this concept needs to be refreshed in terms of dealing with the advent of 'new' or digital media which are characterised by the Internet. The role of traditional media is also discussed and how, due to the advent of the Internet, there has been a movement away from a model of traditional centralised media to one of a more decentralised model. The challenges of intellectual property rights and copyright are analysed in terms of online users developing their own content online in the form of user generated content and how, through the evolution to a Web 3.0 version of the Internet, these challenges can be potentially solved through the use of Semantic Web innovation and technologies. One of the major challenges which Web 2.0 currently faces is that of privacy infringement, but through the adoption of Semantic Web technology these challenges which currently affect all users on the Web can potentially be solved. Finally, the paper looks at the way that South African online users interact with the Internet and how the potential evolution to a third generation of the Web could potentially impact their user behaviour online

A Cloud-Based Architecture with embedded Pragmatics Renderer for Ubiquitous and Cloud Manufacturing

The paper presents a Cloud-based architecture for Ubiquitous and Cloud Manufacturing as a multilayer communicational architecture designated as the Communicational Architecture. It is characterised as (a) rich client interfaces (Rich Internet Application) with sufficient interaction to allow user agility and competence, (b) multimodal, for multiple client device classes support and (c) communicational to allow pragmatics, where human-to-human real interaction is completely supported. The main innovative part of this architecture is sustained by a semiotic framework organised on three main logical levels: (a) device level, which allows the user `to use' pragmatics with the system, (b) application level which results for a set of tools which allows users pragmatics-based interaction and (c) application server level that implements the Pragmatics renderer,a pragmatics supporting engine that supports all pragmatics services. The Pragmatics renderer works as a communication enabler, and consists of a set of integrated collaboration technology that makes the bridge between the user/devices and the `system'. A federated or community cloud is developed using a particular cloud REST ful Application Programming Interface that supports (cloud) services registration, composition and governance (pragmatics services behaves as SaaS in the cloud).The work is supported by the Portuguese National Funding Agency for science, research and technology (FCT), (1) Grant No. UID/CEC/00319/2013, and (2) `Ph.D. Scholarship Grant' reference SFRH/BD/85672/2012.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Entwicklungen im Web 2.0 aus technischer, ökonomischer und sozialer Sicht

Inhalt: I User-Generated Content 1 Tagging vs. Ontologies 3 David Stadler; Semantic Web vs. Web 2.0 13 Armin Stein; User-Generated Advertising 23 Burkhard Weiß; Qualitätsaspekte im User-Generated Content 39 Jens Feldkamp; Data Mining im User-Generated Content 51 Nico Albrecht; II Business-Aspekte 59 AdSense, verwandte Geschäftsmodelle und ihre Long-Tail-Effekte 61 Michael Räckers; SaaS-Geschäftsmodelle im Web 2.0 73 Sebastian Hallek; Monetisierung großer Datenmengen 85 Jan Lammers; Second Life 97 Gereon Strauch; Sicherheit und Vertrauen im Wandel vom Read zum Read/WriteWeb 115 Gunnar Thies; III Suchen und Sozialisieren 127 Universelles Suchen im Web Eine technische, ökonomische und soziale Betrachtung 129 Sebastian Herwig; Spezialisiertes Suchen im Web 141 Felix Müller-Wienbergen; Personalisierte Suche 153 Milan Karow; Blogging vs. Knowledge Management Wie Blogs zu gutem Wissensmanagement in Organisationen beitragen können 167 Daniel Beverungen; IV Technische Aspekte 179 Akamaiisierung von Applikationen 181 Ingo Düppe; IPTV 189 Philipp Bergener; Die Infrastruktur von Suchmaschinen am Fallbeispiel Google 197 Philipp Ciechanowicz; Amazon-Webservices Eine Betrachtung technischer, ökonomischer und sozialer Aspekte 207 Oliver Müller; P2P und VoIP 221 Christian Hermanns --

Contextual Social Networking

The thesis centers around the multi-faceted research question of how contexts may be detected and derived that can be used for new context aware Social Networking services and for improving the usefulness of existing Social Networking services, giving rise to the notion of Contextual Social Networking. In a first foundational part, we characterize the closely related fields of Contextual-, Mobile-, and Decentralized Social Networking using different methods and focusing on different detailed aspects. A second part focuses on the question of how short-term and long-term social contexts as especially interesting forms of context for Social Networking may be derived. We focus on NLP based methods for the characterization of social relations as a typical form of long-term social contexts and on Mobile Social Signal Processing methods for deriving short-term social contexts on the basis of geometry of interaction and audio. We furthermore investigate, how personal social agents may combine such social context elements on various levels of abstraction. The third part discusses new and improved context aware Social Networking service concepts. We investigate special forms of awareness services, new forms of social information retrieval, social recommender systems, context aware privacy concepts and services and platforms supporting Open Innovation and creative processes. This version of the thesis does not contain the included publications because of copyrights of the journals etc. Contact in terms of the version with all included publications: Georg Groh, [email protected] zentrale Gegenstand der vorliegenden Arbeit ist die vielschichtige Frage, wie Kontexte detektiert und abgeleitet werden können, die dazu dienen können, neuartige kontextbewusste Social Networking Dienste zu schaffen und bestehende Dienste in ihrem Nutzwert zu verbessern. Die (noch nicht abgeschlossene) erfolgreiche Umsetzung dieses Programmes führt auf ein Konzept, das man als Contextual Social Networking bezeichnen kann. In einem grundlegenden ersten Teil werden die eng zusammenhängenden Gebiete Contextual Social Networking, Mobile Social Networking und Decentralized Social Networking mit verschiedenen Methoden und unter Fokussierung auf verschiedene Detail-Aspekte näher beleuchtet und in Zusammenhang gesetzt. Ein zweiter Teil behandelt die Frage, wie soziale Kurzzeit- und Langzeit-Kontexte als für das Social Networking besonders interessante Formen von Kontext gemessen und abgeleitet werden können. Ein Fokus liegt hierbei auf NLP Methoden zur Charakterisierung sozialer Beziehungen als einer typischen Form von sozialem Langzeit-Kontext. Ein weiterer Schwerpunkt liegt auf Methoden aus dem Mobile Social Signal Processing zur Ableitung sinnvoller sozialer Kurzzeit-Kontexte auf der Basis von Interaktionsgeometrien und Audio-Daten. Es wird ferner untersucht, wie persönliche soziale Agenten Kontext-Elemente verschiedener Abstraktionsgrade miteinander kombinieren können. Der dritte Teil behandelt neuartige und verbesserte Konzepte für kontextbewusste Social Networking Dienste. Es werden spezielle Formen von Awareness Diensten, neue Formen von sozialem Information Retrieval, Konzepte für kontextbewusstes Privacy Management und Dienste und Plattformen zur Unterstützung von Open Innovation und Kreativität untersucht und vorgestellt. Diese Version der Habilitationsschrift enthält die inkludierten Publikationen zurVermeidung von Copyright-Verletzungen auf Seiten der Journals u.a. nicht. Kontakt in Bezug auf die Version mit allen inkludierten Publikationen: Georg Groh, [email protected]

JPEG: the quadruple object

The thesis, together with its practice-research works, presents an object-oriented perspective on the JPEG standard. Using the object-oriented philosophy of Graham Harman as a theoretical and also practical starting point, the thesis looks to provide an account of the JPEG digital object and its enfolding within the governmental scopic regime. The thesis looks to move beyond accounts of digital objects and protocols within software studies that position the object in terms of issues of relationality, processuality and potentiality. From an object-oriented point of view, the digital object must be seen as exceeding its relations, as actual, present and holding nothing in reserve. The thesis presents an account of JPEG starting from that position as well as an object-oriented account of JPEG’s position within the distributed, governmental scopic regime via an analysis of Facebook’s Timeline, tagging and Haystack systems. As part of a practice-research project, the author looked to use that perspective within photographic and broader imaging practices as a spur to new work and also as a “laboratory” to explore Harman’s framework. The thesis presents the findings of those “experiments” in the form of a report alongside practice-research eBooks. These works were not designed to be illustrations of the theory, nor works to be “analysed”. Rather, following the lead of Ian Bogost and Mark Amerika, they were designed to be “philosophical works” in the sense of works that “did” philosophy

Net Neutrality

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Chris Marsden maneuvers through the hype articulated by Netwrok Neutrality advocates and opponents. He offers a clear-headed analysis of the high stakes in this debate about the Internet's future, and fearlessly refutes the misinformation and misconceptions that about' Professor Rob Freiden, Penn State University Net Neutrality is a very heated and contested policy principle regarding access for content providers to the Internet end-user, and potential discrimination in that access where the end-user's ISP (or another ISP) blocks that access in part or whole. The suggestion has been that the problem can be resolved by either introducing greater competition, or closely policing conditions for vertically integrated service, such as VOIP. However, that is not the whole story, and ISPs as a whole have incentives to discriminate between content for matters such as network management of spam, to secure and maintain customer experience at current levels, and for economic benefit from new Quality of Service standards. This includes offering a ‘priority lane' on the network for premium content types such as video and voice service. The author considers market developments and policy responses in Europe and the United States, draws conclusions and proposes regulatory recommendations