Ubiquitous Semantic Applications

As Semantic Web technology evolves many open areas emerge, which attract more research focus. In addition to quickly expanding Linked Open Data (LOD) cloud, various embeddable metadata formats (e.g. RDFa, microdata) are becoming more common. Corporations are already using existing Web of Data to create new technologies that were not possible before. Watson by IBM an artificial intelligence computer system capable of answering questions posed in natural language can be a great example. On the other hand, ubiquitous devices that have a large number of sensors and integrated devices are becoming increasingly powerful and fully featured computing platforms in our pockets and homes. For many people smartphones and tablet computers have already replaced traditional computers as their window to the Internet and to the Web. Hence, the management and presentation of information that is useful to a user is a main requirement for today’s smartphones. And it is becoming extremely important to provide access to the emerging Web of Data from the ubiquitous devices. In this thesis we investigate how ubiquitous devices can interact with the Semantic Web. We discovered that there are five different approaches for bringing the Semantic Web to ubiquitous devices. We have outlined and discussed in detail existing challenges in implementing this approaches in section 1.2. We have described a conceptual framework for ubiquitous semantic applications in chapter 4. We distinguish three client approaches for accessing semantic data using ubiquitous devices depending on how much of the semantic data processing is performed on the device itself (thin, hybrid and fat clients). These are discussed in chapter 5 along with the solution to every related challenge. Two provider approaches (fat and hybrid) can be distinguished for exposing data from ubiquitous devices on the Semantic Web. These are discussed in chapter 6 along with the solution to every related challenge. We conclude our work with a discussion on each of the contributions of the thesis and propose future work for each of the discussed approach in chapter 7

The Mole & The Snake

This article starts from the Foucaultanian notions of biopower and discipline, deal- ing with the strategies of the modern and contemporary capitalism. Introducing the term biopower into his research, Foucault is alluding to a series of transformations re- lated to the capitalist system: life enters into the scope of power in terms of \u201ccontrolled insertion of bodies\u201d in the social apparatus of production, as well as in terms of an \u201cadaptation of population phenomena to economic processes\u201d. It involves the exchange of services on which the Fordist social pact was founded in the twentieth century. The life that is claimed in and against the relationship of capital concerns \u201cneeds\u201d that refer to a \u201cconcrete essence of man\u201d. In the undeniable awareness of a \u201ctriangulation\u201d between sovereignty, discipline and biopower, the author, as a criterion for reading the dynamics of contemporary power, analyzes the theme of control referring to Deleuze. This is de- lineated in the double form of \u201cbiopolitical algorithms\u201d and of the normalization that by means of the selection and targeted processing of big data and information packages, incessantly produced by social activity in and on the network, capture forms of life at the service of capitalism

Cooperative ITS communications architecture: the FOTsis project approach and beyond

With the continuous development in the fields of sensors, advanced data processing and communications, road transport oriented intelligent applications and services have reached a significant maturity and complexity. Cooperative ITS services, based on the idea of sharing accurate information among road entities, are currently being tested on a large scale by different initiatives. The field operational test (FOTsis) project contributes to the deployment environment with services that involve a significant number of entities out of the vehicle. This made necessary the specification of an architecture which, based on the ISO ITS station reference architecture for communications, could support the requirements of the services proposed in the project. During the project, internal implementation tests and external interoperability tests have resulted in the validation of the proposed architecture. At the same time, these tests have had as a result the awareness of areas in which the FOTsis architecture could be completed, mainly to take full advantage of all the emerging and foreseeable data sources which may be relevant in the road environment. In this study, the authors will outline an approach that, based on the current cooperative ITS architecture and the SmartCities and Internet Of Things (IoT) architectures, can provide a common convergence platform to maximise the information available for ITS purposes

Study of Proteoforms, DNA and Complexes using Trapped Ion Mobility Spectrometry-Mass Spectrometry

The characterization of biomolecules and biomolecular complexes represents an area of significant research activity because of the link between structure and function. Drug development relies on structural information in order to target certain domains. Many traditional biochemical techniques, however, are limited by their ability to characterize only certain stable forms of a molecule. As a result, multidimensional approaches, such as ion mobility mass spectrometry coupled to mass spectrometry (IMS-MS), are becoming very attractive tools as they provide fast separation, detection and identification of molecules, in addition to providing three-dimensional shape for structural elucidation. The present work expands the use and application of trapped ion mobility spectrometry-coupled to mass spectrometry (TIMS-MS) by analyzing a range of biomolecules (including proteoforms, intrinsically disordered peptides, DNA and molecular complexes). The aim is to i) evaluate the TIMS platform measuring sensitivity, selectivity, and separation of targeted compounds, ii) pioneer new applications of TIMS for a more efficient and higher throughput methodologies for identification and characterization of biomolecular ions, and iii) characterize the dynamics of selected biomolecules for insight into the folding pathways and the intra-or intermolecular interactions that define their conformational space

From Cloud to Edge: Seamless Software Migration at the Era of the Web of Things

open5noThis work was supported by the INAIL within the BRIC/2018, ID D 11D 11 framework, Project MAC4PRO (``Smart maintenance of industrial plants and civil structures via innovative monitoring technologies and prognostic approaches'').The Web of Things (WoT) standard recently promoted by the W3C constitutes a promising approach to devise interoperable IoT systems able to cope with the heterogeneity of software platforms and devices. The WoT architecture envisages interconnected IoT scenarios characterized by a multitude of Web Things (WTs) that interact according to well-defined software interfaces; at the same time, it assumes static allocations of WTs to hosting devices, and it does not cope with the intrinsic dynamicity of IoT environments in terms of time-varying network and computational loads. In this paper, we extend the WoT paradigm for cloud-edge continuum deployments, hence supporting dynamic orchestration and mobility of WTs among the available computational resources. Differently from state-of-art Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) approaches, we heavily exploit the W3C WoT, and specifically its capability to standardize the software interfaces of the WTs, in order to propose the concept of a Migratable WoT (M-WoT), in which WTs are seamlessly allocated to hosts according to their dynamic interactions. Three main contributions are proposed in this paper. First, we describe the architecture of the M-WoT framework, by focusing on the stateful migration of WTs and on the management of the WT handoff process. Second, we rigorously formulate the WT allocation as a multi-objective optimization problem, and propose a graph-based heuristic. Third, we describe a container-based implementation of M-WoT and a twofold evaluation, through which we assess the performance of the proposed migration policy in a distributed edge computing setup and in a real-world IoT monitoring scenario.openAguzzi C.; Gigli L.; Sciullo L.; Trotta A.; Di Felice M.Aguzzi C.; Gigli L.; Sciullo L.; Trotta A.; Di Felice M

“The King of Tramps:” Moniker Writing and the Publicity-Seeking Tramp

As the hobo and tramp emerged in late nineteenth century North America, the two subcultural groups had developed their own distinct cultural traditions that included marking graffiti as a communication tool. Hobo and tramp literature suggests one of the forms of graffiti, the stylized signatory pseudonyms known as “monikers,” were marked upon railroad structures as a way of staying in touch with others travelling by rail across the continent. This thesis explores further the subcultural practice of moniker writing, suggesting another motivation for the tramp’s moniker; to achieve publicity. Using examples documented by the author in North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, California, and Texas, monikers are analyzed alongside historical newspaper articles in five case studies on tramps “Sailor Kid,” “Mover,” “A-No.1,” “Penn, the Rambler,” and “Tex K.T..” The findings propose that for some tramps, moniker writing was a means to make themselves known beyond the subculture, marked more for notoriety than correspondence. Additionally, some tramps developed relationships with the press to advance their fame and tell the story of how they are the “King of Tramps,” a title attributed to those who hold records in speed, distance, most places travelled, or at times self-bestowed. That is, both the moniker and the press were instruments of publicity-seeking that allowed a subset of tramps to be seen from the railroad to mountaintops. This study offers several theoretical contributions, particularly to the history of North American graffiti from an art historical and material culture perspective. As well, the research lends to the history of tramp culture generally, highlighting the career tramp as an overlooked member of the roving class

User Space Socket Migration for Mobile Applications

Nowadays, individuals are surrounded by several personal multimedia capable devices. This can leverage ubiquitous computing. Yet, in recent years, multimedia applications have increased their popularity and demand. These two factors have been the main motivation forces to retake process migration research. We focus on process migration to enable ubiquitous computing with multimedia application requirements, such as bandwidth and time constrains. We call applications designed for process migration mobile applications. This thesis addresses the connection mobility challenges in process migration between networked devices, while fulfilling multimedia applications requirements. We present the design, implementation and evaluation of a user-space socket migration solution called SOCKMAND. SOCKMAND enables mobile applications to resume their connections on other remote nodes after a migration. The work is motivated by research on process migration for regular consumers within their own Migration Community, an overlay of personal devices. SOCKMAND supports legacy corresponding hosts, hosts which do not include any logic concerning the socket migration. This is achieved by introducing a Migration Community Access Point (MCAP). An MCAP acts as a proxy server between the two endpoints of a socket. SOCKMAND uses IP in UDP tunnels to transfer packets between the node with the mobile application and the MCAP. We utilize libpcap and raw sockets to achieve a user-space implementation. Libpcap and raw sockets can capture and send raw IP packets from user-space. TCP and UDP are implemented in user-space. UNIX domain sockets provide the inter-process communication between mobile applications and SOCKMAND. We do our evaluation of SOCKMAND both by using analytical modeling as well as measurements on our implementation. The measurements are done on heterogeneous devices to determine if these devices are capable of running SOCKMAND with multimedia applications, like video conferencing. Our evaluation shows that SOCKMAND is capable of utilizing the full bandwidth of various devices given a large enough packet size. We show that CPU load in MCAP and endpoints correlate to the number of packets per second, and not the bandwidth. This shows that application programmers should use larger packet sizes, when possible, to reduce CPU load. The round-trip time overhead introduced by Migration Community Access Points is negligible. SOCKMAND is able to support multimedia applications based on our requirements

New York City in Early Films: An Iconographical and Iconological Analysis

Accounts of early film have more often than not tended to observe the period less in regards to the films produced and more in a way that privileges formal developments, modes of exhibition, and audiences as the primary subjects of their investigations. This thesis aims to restore a critical interest in the films themselves as complex vessles of protean cultural meaning by placing them, and the city they capture, at the epicentre of a network of images and ideas concerning modern life. This thesis employs the early films of New York as a means of evaluating the multifaceted and multifarious ways in which modernity was impacting upon the city during the period of film’s cultural ascension. By surveying a large corpus of films with an oft-neglected method, this thesis finds that many of the films capture aspects of the radically transforming city in their iconography in ways which foreground modernity’s considerable impact upon the city and, contingently, modern life. This thesis applies an extensive iconographical-iconological method to the early films of New York to assess the ways in which the emerging medium enshrined the architectural, technological, and social transformations that the city fostered in light of modernity. This thesis consists of three large chapters that focus firstly on modernity’s impression on New York during the period mostly associated with actuality filmmaking, secondly on the city’s diverse social transformations that were articulated in early fiction filmmaking, and finally on the ways in which Coney Island on film embodies many of the principle ideas discussed throughout the preceding chapters. The research carried out over the course of this thesis demonstrates the ways in which the city was positioned as a primary subject of early New York film and anticipates the ways in which the city would come to figure as a primary structuring principle for filmmaking throughout the century

Policy Patterns for Usage Control in Data Spaces

Data-driven technologies have the potential to initiate a transportation related revolution in the way we travel, commute and navigate within cities. As a major effort of this transformation relies on Mobility Data Spaces for the exchange of mobility data, the necessity to protect valuable data and formulate conditions for data exchange arises. This paper presents key contributions to the development of automated contract negotiation and data usage policies in the Mobility Data Space. A comprehensive listing of policy patterns for usage control is provided, addressing common requirements and scenarios in data sharing and governance. The use of the Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL) is proposed to formalize the collected policies, along with an extension of the ODRL vocabulary for data space-specific properties.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figure, 1 table, 2 listing