RFID Localisation For Internet Of Things Smart Homes: A Survey

The Internet of Things (IoT) enables numerous business opportunities in fields as diverse as e-health, smart cities, smart homes, among many others. The IoT incorporates multiple long-range, short-range, and personal area wireless networks and technologies into the designs of IoT applications. Localisation in indoor positioning systems plays an important role in the IoT. Location Based IoT applications range from tracking objects and people in real-time, assets management, agriculture, assisted monitoring technologies for healthcare, and smart homes, to name a few. Radio Frequency based systems for indoor positioning such as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a key enabler technology for the IoT due to its costeffective, high readability rates, automatic identification and, importantly, its energy efficiency characteristic. This paper reviews the state-of-the-art RFID technologies in IoT Smart Homes applications. It presents several comparable studies of RFID based projects in smart homes and discusses the applications, techniques, algorithms, and challenges of adopting RFID technologies in IoT smart home systems.Comment: 18 pages, 2 figures, 3 table

Antennas and Propagation of Implanted RFIDs for Pervasive Healthcare Applications

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Penilaian kualiti persekitaran dalaman (IEQ) bangunan Akademik Institusi Pengajian Tinggi Awam (IPTA) Malaysia dalam konteks pengurusan fasiliti

Kualiti Persekitaran Dalaman atau Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) merupakan komponen penting dalam konteks bangunan mesra alam yang akan menentukan tahap kualiti penghuni di dalam sesebuah bangunan. Secara purata dianggarkan 80% kehidupan seharian manusia adalah berada di dalam bangunan. Ketidakseimbangan IEQ menyumbang kepada Sindrom Bangunan Sakit (Sick Building Syndrome) sekali gus memberi kesan kepada produktiviti para penghuni juga kepada struktur bangunan. Sehubungan itu, kajian ini dilaksanakan untuk mengenal pasti tahap kesedaran pihak pengurusan harta dan fasiliti di Institusi Pengajian Tinggi Awam (IPTA) terhadap IEQ dalam konteks bangunan akademik. Kajian ini juga bertujuan untuk mengukur tahap IEQ dan tahap kepuasan pengguna dalam bangunan akademik di IPTA. Kajian ini melibatkan bangunan akademik di 20 IPTA di Malaysia. Metodologi kajian ini menggunakan pendekatan kualitatif, kajian saintifik dan juga pendekatan secara kuantitatif. Pendekatan Kualitatif digunakan bagi menilai tahap kesedaran pihak pengurusan harta dan fasiliti IPTA melalui proses temubual yang melibatkan 20 orang responden. Manakala pendekatan kedua adalah melalui kajian saintifik ke atas bangunan akademik yang memfokuskan kepada pengukuran elemen keselesaan terma, keselesaan bunyi, kualiti udara dalaman dan pencahayaan. Hasil pengukuran elemen tersebut dibandingkan dengan piawaian dari Malaysia Standard (MS 1525;2007) dan UNESCO. Bagi setiap IPTA, lima buah bilik kuliah dijadikan sampel dengan tiga kali bacaan setiap hari selama dua hari diperolehi bagi mendapatkan bacaan purata. Seterusnya, melalui pendekatan kuantitatif, data yang diperolehi melalui kaji selidik melibatkan 500 responden dan dianalisis menggunakan perisian Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS). Hasil kajian menunjukkan kesedaran para pengurus harta dan fasililti di IPTA terhadap IEQ adalah baik tetapi masih ada beberapa kelemahan yang perlu ditambahbaik. Hasil ujian saintifik yang diperolehi menunjukkan bacaan bagi suhu dalaman, hanya UniSZA, UTHM dan UniMAS yang menepati piawaian, manakala bagi pencahayaan, UM, UIAM, UPSI, USM, UniSZA, UTM, UTHM, UTeM, UMS dan UniMAS berada di bawah tahap piawaian ditetapkan. Bagi keamatan bunyi, hanya UM, UPM, UPSI, USM dan UniMAP yang menunjukkan bacaan pada piawaian ditetapkan. Keseluruhannya menunjukkan bacaan berada pada tahap yang sederhana dan masih lagi memerlukan pernambahbaikan. Kajian ini turut mempamerkan bacaan purata bagi setiap elemen IEQ bagi bangunan akademik seluruh IPTA. Penemuan hasil kajian ini dijangka dapat membantu pihak pengurusan harta dan fasiliti IPTA dalam usaha menambahbaik tahap IEQ dalam bangunan akademik di kampus universiti sekaligus dapat meningkatkan tahap pengurusan fasiliti dalam mencapai tahap kelestarian kampus IPTA di Malaysia

Single cell analysis of neutrophils NETs by Microscopic LSPR imaging system

A simple microengraving cell monitoring method for neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) released from single neutrophils has been realized using a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) microwell array (MWA) sheet on a plasmon chip platform. An imbalance between NETs formation and the succeeding degradation (NETosis) are considered associated with autoimmune disease and its pathogenesis. Thus, an alternative platform that can conduct monitoring of this activity on single cell level at minimum cost but with great sensitivity is greatly desired. The developed MWA plasmon chips allow single cell isolation of neutrophils from 150 μL suspension (6.0 × 105 cells/mL) with an efficiency of 36.3%; 105 microwells with single cell condition. To demonstrate the utility of the chip, trapped cells were incubated between 2 to 4 h after introducing with 100 nM phorbol 12- myristate 13-acetate (PMA) before measurement. Under observation using a hyperspectral imaging system that allows high-throughput screening, the neutrophils stimulated by PMA solution show a significant release of fibrils and NETs after 4 h, with observed maximum areas between 314–758 μm2. An average absorption peak wavelength shows a redshift of Δλ = 1.5 nm as neutrophils release NETs

Traceability system for capturing, processing and providing consumer-relevant information about wood products: System solution and its economic feasibility

Current research and practice reports indicate the existence of purchase barriers concerning eco-friendly products, e.g. wood products. These can be ascribed to consumers' mistrust regarding the non-observable environmental impact of wood products. To counter the mistrust, wood products are commonly endowed with eco-labels, which may be perceived mostly as a marketing tool, therefore not fulfilling their intended purpose. Current studies have shown that providing consumers with wood product information based on traceability systems increases product trust and purchase intentions, with those information items most valued by consumers being identified as well. Based on this, the paper proposes a traceability information system for the capturing, processing, and provision of product information using examples of wood furniture. Furthermore, a cost-benefit model for the proposed solution is developed. The calculations indicate the possibility of implementing traceability at the item level based on a four-layer system architecture enabling the capture and delivery of all information valued by consumers at acceptable costs. The proposed system helps to overcome purchase barriers of eco-friendly products, increasing consumers' product trust and purchase intentions

Proximal business intelligence on the semantic web

This is the post-print version of this article. The official version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2010 Springer.Ubiquitous information systems (UBIS) extend current Information System thinking to explicitly differentiate technology between devices and software components with relation to people and process. Adapting business data and management information to support specific user actions in context is an ongoing topic of research. Approaches typically focus on providing mechanisms to improve specific information access and transcoding but not on how the information can be accessed in a mobile, dynamic and ad-hoc manner. Although web ontology has been used to facilitate the loading of data warehouses, less research has been carried out on ontology based mobile reporting. This paper explores how business data can be modeled and accessed using the web ontology language and then re-used to provide the invisibility of pervasive access; uncovering more effective architectural models for adaptive information system strategies of this type. This exploratory work is guided in part by a vision of business intelligence that is highly distributed, mobile and fluid, adapting to sensory understanding of the underlying environment in which it operates. A proof-of concept mobile and ambient data access architecture is developed in order to further test the viability of such an approach. The paper concludes with an ontology engineering framework for systems of this type – named UBIS-ONTO

When Things Matter: A Data-Centric View of the Internet of Things

With the recent advances in radio-frequency identification (RFID), low-cost wireless sensor devices, and Web technologies, the Internet of Things (IoT) approach has gained momentum in connecting everyday objects to the Internet and facilitating machine-to-human and machine-to-machine communication with the physical world. While IoT offers the capability to connect and integrate both digital and physical entities, enabling a whole new class of applications and services, several significant challenges need to be addressed before these applications and services can be fully realized. A fundamental challenge centers around managing IoT data, typically produced in dynamic and volatile environments, which is not only extremely large in scale and volume, but also noisy, and continuous. This article surveys the main techniques and state-of-the-art research efforts in IoT from data-centric perspectives, including data stream processing, data storage models, complex event processing, and searching in IoT. Open research issues for IoT data management are also discussed