Monitoring Moving Queries inside a Safe Region

With mobile moving range queries, there is a need to recalculate the relevant surrounding objects of interest whenever the query moves. Therefore, monitoring the moving query is very costly. The safe region is one method that has been proposed to minimise the communication and computation cost of continuously monitoring a moving range query. Inside the safe region the set of objects of interest to the query do not change; thus there is no need to update the query while it is inside its safe region. However, when the query leaves its safe region the mobile device has to reevaluate the query, necessitating communication with the server. Knowing when and where the mobile device will leave a safe region is widely known as a difficult problem. To solve this problem, we propose a novel method to monitor the position of the query over time using a linear function based on the direction of the query obtained by periodic monitoring of its position. Periodic monitoring ensures that the query is aware of its location all the time. This method reduces the costs associated with communications in client-server architecture. Computational results show that our method is successful in handling moving query patterns

Context-Aware Recommendation Systems in Mobile Environments

Nowadays, the huge amount of information available may easily overwhelm users when they need to take a decision that involves choosing among several options. As a solution to this problem, Recommendation Systems (RS) have emerged to offer relevant items to users. The main goal of these systems is to recommend certain items based on user preferences. Unfortunately, traditional recommendation systems do not consider the user’s context as an important dimension to ensure high-quality recommendations. Motivated by the need to incorporate contextual information during the recommendation process, Context-Aware Recommendation Systems (CARS) have emerged. However, these recent recommendation systems are not designed with mobile users in mind, where the context and the movements of the users and items may be important factors to consider when deciding which items should be recommended. Therefore, context-aware recommendation models should be able to effectively and efficiently exploit the dynamic context of the mobile user in order to offer her/him suitable recommendations and keep them up-to-date.The research area of this thesis belongs to the fields of context-aware recommendation systems and mobile computing. We focus on the following scientific problem: how could we facilitate the development of context-aware recommendation systems in mobile environments to provide users with relevant recommendations? This work is motivated by the lack of generic and flexible context-aware recommendation frameworks that consider aspects related to mobile users and mobile computing. In order to solve the identified problem, we pursue the following general goal: the design and implementation of a context-aware recommendation framework for mobile computing environments that facilitates the development of context-aware recommendation applications for mobile users. In the thesis, we contribute to bridge the gap not only between recommendation systems and context-aware computing, but also between CARS and mobile computing.<br /

Modelling spatio-temporal relevancy in urban context-aware pervasive systems using voronoi continuous range query and multi-interval algebra

Space and time are two dominant factors in context-aware pervasive systems which determine whether an entity is related to the moving user or not. This paper specifically addresses the use of spatio-temporal relations for detecting spatiotemporally relevant contexts to the user. The main contribution of this work is that the proposed model is sensitive to the velocity and direction of the user and applies customized Multi Interval Algebra (MIA) with Voronoi Continuous Range Query (VCRQ) to introduce spatio-temporally relevant contexts according to their arrangement in space. In this implementation the Spatio-Temporal Relevancy Model for Context-Aware Systems (STRMCAS) helps the tourist to find his/her preferred areas that are spatio-temporally relevant. The experimental results in a scenario of tourist navigation are evaluated with respect to the accuracy of the model, performance time and satisfaction of users in 30 iterations of the algorithm. The evaluation process demonstrated the efficiency of the model in real-world applications

A Statistical Approach to the Alignment of fMRI Data

Multi-subject functional Magnetic Resonance Image studies are critical. The anatomical and functional structure varies across subjects, so the image alignment is necessary. We define a probabilistic model to describe functional alignment. Imposing a prior distribution, as the matrix Fisher Von Mises distribution, of the orthogonal transformation parameter, the anatomical information is embedded in the estimation of the parameters, i.e., penalizing the combination of spatially distant voxels. Real applications show an improvement in the classification and interpretability of the results compared to various functional alignment methods

A comparison of the CAR and DAGAR spatial random effects models with an application to diabetics rate estimation in Belgium

When hierarchically modelling an epidemiological phenomenon on a finite collection of sites in space, one must always take a latent spatial effect into account in order to capture the correlation structure that links the phenomenon to the territory. In this work, we compare two autoregressive spatial models that can be used for this purpose: the classical CAR model and the more recent DAGAR model. Differently from the former, the latter has a desirable property: its ρ parameter can be naturally interpreted as the average neighbor pair correlation and, in addition, this parameter can be directly estimated when the effect is modelled using a DAGAR rather than a CAR structure. As an application, we model the diabetics rate in Belgium in 2014 and show the adequacy of these models in predicting the response variable when no covariates are available

Proceedings of the 21st International Congress of Aesthetics, Possible Worlds of Contemporary Aesthetics Aesthetics Between History, Geography and Media

The Faculty of Architecture, University of Belgrade and the Society for Aesthetics of Architecture and Visual Arts of Serbia (DEAVUS) are proud to be able to organize the 21st ICA Congress on “Possible Worlds of Contemporary Aesthetics: Aesthetics Between History, Geography and Media”. We are proud to announce that we received over 500 submissions from 56 countries, which makes this Congress the greatest gathering of aestheticians in this region in the last 40 years. The ICA 2019 Belgrade aims to map out contemporary aesthetics practices in a vivid dialogue of aestheticians, philosophers, art theorists, architecture theorists, culture theorists, media theorists, artists, media entrepreneurs, architects, cultural activists and researchers in the fields of humanities and social sciences. More precisely, the goal is to map the possible worlds of contemporary aesthetics in Europe, Asia, North and South America, Africa and Australia. The idea is to show, interpret and map the unity and diverseness in aesthetic thought, expression, research, and philosophies on our shared planet. Our goal is to promote a dialogue concerning aesthetics in those parts of the world that have not been involved with the work of the International Association for Aesthetics to this day. Global dialogue, understanding and cooperation are what we aim to achieve. That said, the 21st ICA is the first Congress to highlight the aesthetic issues of marginalised regions that have not been fully involved in the work of the IAA. This will be accomplished, among others, via thematic round tables discussing contemporary aesthetics in East Africa and South America. Today, aesthetics is recognized as an important philosophical, theoretical and even scientific discipline that aims at interpreting the complexity of phenomena in our contemporary world. People rather talk about possible worlds or possible aesthetic regimes rather than a unique and consistent philosophical, scientific or theoretical discipline