Standardization of measles, mumps and rubella assays to enable comparisons of seroprevalence data across 21 European countries and Australia

The aim of the European Sero-Epidemiology Network is to establish comparability of the serological surveillance of vaccine-preventable diseases in Europe. The designated reference laboratory (RL) for measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) prepared and tested a panel of 151 sera by the reference enzyme immunoassay (rEIA). Laboratories in 21 countries tested the panel for antibodies against MMR using their usual assay (a total of 16 different EIAs) and the results were plotted against the reference results in order to obtain equations for the standardization of national serum surveys. The RL also tested the panel by the plaque neutralization test (PNT). Large differences in qualitative results were found compared to the RL. Well-fitting standardization equations with R20·8 were obtained for almost all laboratories through regression of the quantitative results against those of the RL. When compared to PNT, the rEIA had a sensitivity of 95·3%, 92·8% and 100% and a specificity of 100%, 87·1% and 92·8% for measles, mumps and rubella, respectively. The need for standardization was highlighted by substantial inter-country differences. Standardization was successful and the selected standardization equations allowed the conversion of local serological results into common units and enabled direct comparison of seroprevalence data of the participating countrie

Context-aware service selection using graph matching

The current evolution of Ubiquitous Computing and of ServiceOriented Computing is leading to the development of context-aware services. Context-aware services are services whose description is enriched with context information related to the service execution environment, adaptation capabilities, etc. This information is often used for discovery and adaptation purposes. However, context information is naturally dynamic and incomplete, which represents an important issue when comparing service description and user requirements. Actually, uncertainty of context information may lead to inexact matching between provided and required service capabilities, and consequently to the non-selection of services. In order to handle incomplete context information, we propose in this paper a graph-based algorithm for matching contextual service descriptions using similarity measures, allowing inexact matches. Service description and requirements are compared using two kinds of similarity measures: local measures, which compare individually required and provided properties (represented as graph nodes), and global measures, which take into account the context description as a whole, by comparing two graphs corresponding to two context descriptions.status: publishe

Privacy in tijden van internet, sociale netwerken en big data

Contains fulltext : 181649.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)65 p

Context-aware adaptation in an ecology of applications

In recent years, many researchers have studied context-awareness to support non-intrusive adaptability of context-aware applications. Context-aware applications benefit from emerging technology that connects everyday objects and provides opportunities to collect and use context information from various sources. Context-awareness helps to adapt continuously to new situations and to turn a static computing environment into a dynamic ecology of smart and proactive applications. In this chapter, we present our framework that manages and uses context information to adapt applications and the content they provide. We show how application adaptation can be handled at the composition level, by reconfiguring, redeploying and rewiring components, e.g. to fall back into reduced functionality mode when redeploying an application on a handheld. The key features of our context-aware adaptation framework not only include local adaptations of context-aware applications and content, but also the addressing of context in large scale networks and the contextaware redeployment of running applications in a distributed setting. We discuss how adaptation is handled along various levels of abstraction (user, content, application, middleware, network) and illustrate the flexibility of context-aware content and application adaptation by means of a realistic use case scenario. © 2009, IGI Global.status: publishe

A basic taxonomy for role composition

Roles are the basic building blocks for defining the behavior of agents in multi-agent systems. Agents typically perform several roles. In this paper, we describe analysis and design issues in defining agents as compositions of roles. In short, specifying the behavior of an agent entails in essence two issues: which roles are assigned to a particular agent, and how does an agent select a role in a particular situation. Both issues can be decided upon either by the designer (i.e. at design time) or by the agent (i.e. at run-time). This paper describes a basic taxonomy for role composition based on both issues, and illustrates the different composition approaches using a case study in the domain of manufacturing control. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2004.Book subtitle: RESEARCH ISSUES AND PRACTICAL APPLICATIONSstatus: publishe