Ontology-based context-aware model for event processing in an IoT environment

The Internet of Things (IoT) is more and more becoming one of the fundamental sources of data. The observations produced by these sources are made accessible with heterogeneous vocabularies, models and data formats. The heterogeneity factor in such an enormous environment complicates the task of sharing and reusing this data in a more intelligent way (other than the purposes it was initially set up for). In this research, we investigate these challenges, considering how we can transform raw sensor data into a more meaningful information. This raw data will be modelled using ontology-based information that is accessible through continuous queries for sensor streaming data.Interoperability among heterogeneous entities is an important issue in an IoT environment. Semantic modelling is a key element to support interoperability. Most of the current ontologies for IoT mainly focus on resources and services information. This research builds upon the current state-of-the-art ontologies to provide contextual information and facilitate sensor data querying. In this research, we present an Ontology to represent an IoT environment, with emphasis on temporal and geospatial context enrichment. Furthermore, the Ontology is used alongside a proposed syntax based on Description Logic to build an Event Processing Model. The aim of this model is to interconnect ontology-based reasoning with event processing. This model enables to perform event processing over high-level ontological concepts.The Ontology was developed using the NeOn methodology, which emphasises on the reuse and modularisation. The Competency Questions techniques was used to develop the requirements of this Ontology. This was later evaluated by domain experts in software engineering and cloud computing. The ontology was evaluated based on its completeness, conciseness, consistency and expandability, over 70% of the domain experts agreed on the core modules, concepts and relationships within the ontology. The resulted Ontology provides a core IoT ontology that could be used for further development within a specific IoT domain. IIThe proposed Ontology-Based Context-Aware model for Event-Processing in an IoT environment “OCEM-IoT”, implements all the time operators used in complex event processing engines. Throughput and latency were used as performance comparison metrics for the syntax evaluation; the results obtained show an improved performance over existing event processing languages

Sky Imager-Based Forecast of Solar Irradiance Using Machine Learning

Ahead-of-time forecasting of the output power of power plants is essential for the stability of the electricity grid and ensuring uninterrupted service. However, forecasting renewable energy sources is difficult due to the chaotic behavior of natural energy sources. This paper presents a new approach to estimate short-term solar irradiance from sky images. The~proposed algorithm extracts features from sky images and use learning-based techniques to estimate the solar irradiance. The~performance of proposed machine learning (ML) algorithm is evaluated using two publicly available datasets of sky images. The~datasets contain over 350,000 images for an interval of 16 years, from 2004 to 2020, with the corresponding global horizontal irradiance (GHI) of each image as the ground truth. Compared to the state-of-the-art computationally heavy algorithms proposed in the literature, our approach achieves competitive results with much less computational complexity for both nowcasting and forecasting up to 4 h ahead of time.Comment: Published in MDPI Electronics Journa

E. coli-Produced BMP-2 as a Chemopreventive Strategy for Colon Cancer: A Proof-of-Concept Study

Colon cancer is a serious health problem, and novel preventive and therapeutical avenues are urgently called for. Delivery of proteins with anticancer activity through genetically modified bacteria provides an interesting, potentially specific, economic and effective approach here. Interestingly, bone morphogenetic protein 2 (BMP-2) is an important and powerful tumour suppressor in the colon and is thus an attractive candidate protein for delivery through genetically modified bacteria. It has not been shown, however, that BMP production in the bacterial context is effective on colon cancer cells. Here we demonstrate that transforming E. coli with a cDNA encoding an ileal-derived mature human BMP-2 induces effective apoptosis in an in vitro model system for colorectal cancer, whereas the maternal organism was not effective in this respect. Furthermore, these effects were sensitive to cotreatment with the BMP inhibitor Noggin. We propose that prevention and treatment of colorectal cancer using transgenic bacteria is feasible

Home-based pulmonary rehabilitation for people with COPD: A qualitative study reporting the patient perspective

This study aimed to document the perspective of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) who underwent home-based pulmonary rehabilitation (HBPR) in a clinical trial. In this qualitative study, open-ended questions explored participants' views regarding HBPR. Thirteen semi-structured interviews were analysed using a thematic analysis approach. Major themes from interviews included the positive impact of HBPR on physical fitness, breathing and mood. Participants valued the flexibility and convenience of the programme. Participants also highlighted the importance of social support received, both from the physiotherapist over the phone and from family and friends who encouraged their participation. Reported challenges were difficulties in initiating exercise, lack of variety in training and physical incapability. While most participants supported the home setting, one participant would have preferred receiving supervised exercise training at the hospital. Participants also reported that HBPR had helped establish an exercise routine and improved their disease management. This study suggests that people with COPD valued the convenience of HBPR, experienced positive impacts on physical fitness and symptoms and felt supported by their community and programme staff. This highly structured HBPR model may be acceptable to some people with COPD as an alternative to centre-based pulmonary rehabilitation

SPARC 2018 Internationalisation and collaboration : Salford postgraduate annual research conference book of abstracts

Welcome to the Book of Abstracts for the 2018 SPARC conference. This year we not only celebrate the work of our PGRs but also the launch of our Doctoral School, which makes this year’s conference extra special. Once again we have received a tremendous contribution from our postgraduate research community; with over 100 presenters, the conference truly showcases a vibrant PGR community at Salford. These abstracts provide a taster of the research strengths of their works, and provide delegates with a reference point for networking and initiating critical debate. With such wide-ranging topics being showcased, we encourage you to take up this great opportunity to engage with researchers working in different subject areas from your own. To meet global challenges, high impact research inevitably requires interdisciplinary collaboration. This is recognised by all major research funders. Therefore engaging with the work of others and forging collaborations across subject areas is an essential skill for the next generation of researchers