Norm-based and commitment-driven agentification of the Internet of Things

There are no doubts that the Internet-of-Things (IoT) has conquered the ICT industry to the extent that many governments and organizations are already rolling out many anywhere,anytime online services that IoT sustains. However, like any emerging and disruptive technology, multiple obstacles are slowing down IoT practical adoption including the passive nature and privacy invasion of things. This paper examines how to empower things with necessary capabilities that would make them proactive and responsive. This means things can, for instance reach out to collaborative peers, (un)form dynamic communities when necessary, avoid malicious peers, and be “questioned” for their actions. To achieve such empowerment, this paper presents an approach for agentifying things using norms along with commitments that operationalize these norms. Both norms and commitments are specialized into social (i.e., application independent) and business (i.e., application dependent), respectively. Being proactive, things could violate commitments at run-time, which needs to be detected through monitoring. In this paper, thing agentification is illustrated with a case study about missing children and demonstrated with a testbed that uses different IoT-related technologies such as Eclipse Mosquitto broker and Message Queuing Telemetry Transport protocol. Some experiments conducted upon this testbed are also discussed

Trends in Smart City Development

This report examines the meanings and practices associated with the term 'smart cities.' Smart city initiatives involve three components: information and communication technologies (ICTs) that generate and aggregate data; analytical tools which convert that data into usable information; and organizational structures that encourage collaboration, innovation, and the application of that information to solve public problems

Applying an unified access control for IoT-based Intelligent Agent Systems

IEEE 8th International Conference on Service-Oriented Computing and Applications (SOCA), 19/10/2015-21/10/2015, Roma, ItaliaThe rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm has allowed the design and development of new services interconnecting heterogeneous devices. However, the complexity of these new systems hasn"t been followed by the increase of intelligence and reasoning of the devices connected. On the other hand, intelligent agent systems have developed precisely these characteristics so the combination of both paradigms by modelling intelligent agents in IoT devices is a very promising approach that will enable a more powerful and smart IoT. The interconnection of agents through a Internet-based network implies addressing critical issues that affect all network communications, such as security, privacy and access control, specially given the sensitivity of the information exchanged by agents. In this paper, we propose the application of User-Managed Access (UMA) to provide an unified access control schema for an heterogeneous hybrid architecture of IoT devices and intelligent agents.Ministerio de Economía y Competitivida

Pseudobacterial nanocarriers for intracellular delivery of anti-infectives

Difficulties in the access and effective treatment of sheltered intracellular bacterial infections may potentially be overcome by encapsulating drugs into delivery systems functionalised with bacteria-derived invasive proteins. Although the potential of these proteins is clear, the promising application and indeed characteristics of invasive particles remains to be fully explored. The objectives of this study were therefore to determine the influence of shape on bacteriomimetic system characteristics, using invasive spherical and aspherical polymeric nanocarriers. Aspherical nanoparticles were prepared by an optimised combination of chemical functionalisation and thermomechanical stretching. InvA497, a C-terminal fragment of the Yersinia-derived protein invasin, was covalently coupled onto the surface of both spherical and aspherical nanoparticles. In vitro studies using drug-free nanoparticles indicated shape-dependent differences on receptor-mediated uptake by epithelial cells, being slightly faster for spherical nanoparticles. Both types of nanoparticles were then loaded with a preparation of antibiotic gentamicin, and tested for their ability to kill intracellular Shigella flexneri in human epithelial cells. Aspherical systems led to a higher killing of intracellular bacteria, potentially due to a more favorable drug release profile. This study provides a proof of concept that InvA497-functionalised aspherical bacteriomimetic nanocarriers may efficiently deliver otherwise non-permeable antibiotics across host cell membranes, enabling effective treatment of intracellular infections.Eine wirksame Behandlung von intrazellulärer lokalisierten und auf diese Weise geschützten bakteriellen Infektionen kann mit Hilfe von spezieller nanopartikulären Systemen, die mit invasiven, von Bakterien abgeleiteten Proteinen funktionalisiert sind, erreicht werden. Obwohl das Potenzial dieser Proteinen bereits bekannt ist, sind vielversprechende Anwendungen und Eigenschaften dieser bakteriomimetischen Transportsysteme noch gründlich zu erforschen. Ziel dieser Arbeit war es, den Einfluss von zwei unterschiedlichen Partikelformen (sphärisch und asphärisch) auf die Wirksamkeit dieser bakteriomimetischen Systeme zu untersuchen. Asphärische Nanopartikel wurden durch eine optimale Kombination von chemischer Funktionalisierung und thermomechanischer Dehnung vorbereitet. InvA497, ein C-Endfragment des invasiven, von Yersinia abgeleiteten Proteins «Invasin», wurde kovalent an die Nanopartikeloberfläche gekoppelt. In vitro Untersuchungen mit wirkstofffreien Nanopartikeln zeigten formabhängige Unterschiede in der Rezeptor-vermittelten Aufnahme bei Epithelzellen Hep-2. Bei sphärischen Nanopartikeln war die Aufnahme etwas schneller. Beide Nanopartikelsysteme wurden daraufhin mit dem Antibiotikum Gentamicin geladen und auf deren Fähigkeit geprüft, intrazelluläre Shigella flexneri Erreger in menschlichen Epithelzellen zu töten. Asphärische Systeme zeigten eine höhere Fähigkeit zur Abtötung der intrazellulären Bakterien, möglicherweise bedingt durch ein vorteilhaftes Wirkstofffreisetzungsprofil. Mit dieser Untersuchung konnte nachgewiesen werden, dass InvA497-funktionalisierte, asphärische, bakteriomimetische Nanoträger nicht permeable Antibiotika durch die Wirtszellmembran effizient transportieren können, um intrazelluläre Infektionen behandeln zu können

Separation of single-walled carbon nanotubes by gel-based chromatography using surfactant step-gradient techniques and development of new instrumentation for studying SWCNT reaction processes

Single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) synthesis methods such as CoMoCATTM, HiPcoTM, pulsed laser vaporization (PLV), and catalytic chemical vapor deposition (CCVD) produce several different distributions of (n,m) SWCNT structures, where (n,m) defines the nanotube diameter and chiral wrapping angle. Post-synthesis processing such as functionalization and/or separations must therefore be employed to yield high purity electronic or single (n,m) samples. Through the use of a surfactant gradient across a gel-based chromatographic column, separations of single (n,m) species can be achieved. Anionic surfactants such as SDS, SDBS, and AOT display different separation effectiveness for single (n,m) species. Results of near-infrared optical absorption for separated SWCNT surfactant suspensions will be discussed, leading to a broader understanding of the important factors necessary for the gel chromatography separation technique. In particular, the effects of SWCNT/surfactant micelle structure are found to be key to achieving fast, simple SWCNT electronic type separations. Additionally, development of new instrumentation for the near-infrared spectrofluorimetric analysis (NIR-SFA) of SWCNTs is useful to the advancement of fundamental SWCNT research and applications. NIR-SFA, for instance, allows for the (n,m) structures of a sample to be identified and monitored during the progress of a chemical reaction or separation experiment. Seeking to achieve the time resolutions necessary for such experiments, the design and optimizations of a system utilizing single-wavelength excitation by diode lasers coupled with a fast NIR detection system are presented

Towards the internet of agents: an analysis of the internet of things from the intelligence and autonomy perspective

Recently, the scientific community has demonstrated a special interest in the process related to the integration of the agent-oriented technology with Internet of Things (IoT) platforms. Then, it arises a novel approach named Internet of Agents (IoA) as an alternative to add an intelligence and autonomy component for IoT devices and networks. This paper presents an analysis of the main benefits derived from the use of the IoA approach, based on a practical point of view regarding the necessities that humans demand in their daily life and work, which can be solved by IoT networks modeled as IoA infrastructures. It has been presented 24 study cases of the IoA approach at different domains ––smart industry, smart city and smart health wellbeing–– in order to define the scope of these proposals in terms of intelligence and autonomy in contrast to their corresponding generic IoT applications.En los últimos años, la comunidad científica ha mostrado un interés especial en torno al proceso de integración de la tecnología orientada a agentes sobre plataformas de Internet de las Cosas (IoT, por sus siglas en inglés). Surge así, un nuevo enfoque denominado Internet de los Agentes (IoA, por sus siglas en inglés) como una alternativa para añadir un componente de inteligencia y autonomía sobre los dispositivos y redes de IoT. El presente trabajo muestra un análisis de los principales beneficios derivados del uso del enfoque del IoA, visto desde las actuales necesidades que el ser humano demanda en su trabajo y vida cotidiana, las cuales pueden ser resueltas por redes de IoT modeladas como infraestructuras de IoA. Se plantea un total de 24 casos prácticos de aplicaciones de IoA en diferentes dominios ––industria, ciudad, y salud y bienestar inteligente–– a fin de determinar el alcance de dichas aplicaciones en términos de inteligencia y autonomía respecto a sus correspondientes aplicaciones genéricas de IoT.This study was founded by the Ecuadorian Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Technology and Innovation (SENESCYT)

Norm-based and Commitment-driven Agentification of the Internet of Things

There are no doubts that the Internet-of-Things (IoT) has conquered the ICT industry to the extent that many governments and organizations are already rolling out many anywhere,anytime online services that IoT sustains. However, like any emerging and disruptive technology, multiple obstacles are slowing down IoT practical adoption including the passive nature and privacy invasion of things. This paper examines how to empower things with necessary capabilities that would make them proactive and responsive. This means things can, for instance reach out to collaborative peers, (un)form dynamic communities when necessary, avoid malicious peers, and be “questioned” for their actions. To achieve such empowerment, this paper presents an approach for agentifying things using norms along with commitments that operationalize these norms. Both norms and commitments are specialized into social (i.e., application independent) and business (i.e., application dependent), respectively. Being proactive, things could violate commitments at run-time, which needs to be detected through monitoring. In this paper, thing agentification is illustrated with a case study about missing children and demonstrated with a testbed that uses di_erent IoT-related technologies such as Eclipse Mosquitto broker and Message Queuing Telemetry Transport protocol. Some experiments conducted upon this testbed are also discussed

Sensing the City : Designing for Privacy and Trust in the Internet of Things

Acknowledgments: The work described here was funded by the award made by the RCUK Digital Economy programme to the University of Aberdeen (EP/N028074/1).Peer reviewedPostprin