Middleware for mobile computing: awareness vs. transparency (position summary)

Middleware solutions for wired distributed systems cannot be used in a mobile setting, as mobile applications impose new requirements that run counter to the principle of transparency on which current middleware systems have been built. We propose the use of reflection capabilities and meta-data to pave the way for a new generation of middleware platforms designed to support mobility

Content source selection in Bluetooth networks

Large scale market penetration of electronic devices equipped with Bluetooth technology now gives the ability to share content (such as music or video clips) between members of the public in a decentralised manner. Achieved using opportunistic connections, formed when they are colocated, in environments where Internet connectivity is expensive or unreliable, such as urban buses, train rides and coffee shops. Most people have a high degree of regularity in their movements (such as a daily commute), including repeated contacts with others possessing similar seasonal movement patterns. We argue that this behaviour can be exploited in connection selection, and outline a system for the identification of long-term companions and sources that have previously provided quality content, in order to maximise the successful receipt of content files. We utilise actual traces and existing mobility models to validate our approach, and show how consideration of the colocation history and the quality of previous data transfers leads to more successful sharing of content in realistic scenarios

Q-CAD: QoS and Context Aware Discovery framework for adaptive mobile systems

This paper presents Q-CALl, a resource discovery framework that enables pervasive computing applications to discover and select the resource(s) best satisfying the user needs, taking the current execution context and quality-ofservice (QoS} requirements into account. The available resources are first screened, so that only those suirable to the current execution context of the application will be considered; the shortlisted resources are then evaluated against the QoS needs of the application, and a binding is established to the best available

Towards a mobile computing middleware: a synergy of reflection and mobile code techniques

The increasing popularity of wireless devices, such as mobile phones, personal digital assistants, watches and the like. is enabling new classes of applications that present challenging problems to designers. Applications have to be aware of, and adapt to, frequent variations in the context of execution, such as fluctuating network bandwidth, decreasing batten, power, changes in location or device capabilities, and so on. In this paper, we argue that middleware solutions for wired distributed systems cannot be used in a mobile setting, as the principle of transparency that has driven their design runs counter to the new degrees of awareness imposed by mobility: We propose a synergy of reflection and code mobility as a means for middleware to give applications the desired level of flexibility to react to changes happening in the environment, including those that have not necessarily been foreseen by middleware designers. We ruse the sharing and processing of images as an application scenario to highlight the advantages of our approach

Learning and Noisy Equilibrium Behavior in an Experimental Study of Imperfect Price Competition

This paper considers a duopoly price-choice game in which the unique Nash equilibrium is the Bertrand outcome. Price competition, however, is imperfect in the sense that the market share of the high-price firm is not zero. Economic intuition suggests that price levels should be positively related to the market share of the high-price firm. Although this relationship is not predicted by standard game theory, it is implied by a generalization of the Nash equilibrium that results when players make noisy (logit) best responses to expected payoff differences. This logit equilibrium model was used to design a laboratory experiment with treatments that correspond to changing the market share of the high-price firm. The model predicts the final-period price averages for both treatments with remarkable accuracy. Moreover computer simulations of a naive learning model were used, ex ante, to predict the observed differences in the time paths of average prices.laboratory experiments, simulation, decision error, learning, logit equilibrium.

Beyond the baseline: Establishing the value in mobile phone based poverty estimates

Within the remit of 'Data for Development' there have been a number of promising recent works that investigate the use of mobile phone Call Detail Records (CDRs) to estimate the spatial distribution of poverty or socio-economic status. The methods being developed have the potential to offer immense value to organisations and agencies who currently struggle to identify the poorest parts of a country, due to the lack of reliable and up to date survey data in certain parts of the world. However, the results of this research have thus far only been presented in isolation rather than in comparison to any alternative approach or benchmark. Consequently, the true practical value of these methods remains unknown. Here, we seek to allay this shortcoming, by proposing two baseline poverty estimators grounded on concrete usage scenarios: one that exploits correlation with population density only, to be used when no poverty data exists at all; and one that also exploits spatial autocorrelation, to be used when poverty data has been collected for a few regions within a country. We then compare the predictive performance of these baseline models with models that also include features derived from CDRs, so to establish their real added value. We present extensive analysis of the performance of all these models on data acquired for two developing countries -- Senegal and Ivory Coast. Our results reveal that CDR-based models do provide more accurate estimates in most cases; however, the improvement is modest and more significant when estimating (extreme) poverty intensity rates rather than mean wealth

The Impact of Simple Institutions in Experimental Economies with Poverty Traps

We introduce an experimental approach to study the effect of institutions on economic growth. In each period, agents produce and trade output in a market, and allocate it to consumption and investment. Productivity is higher if total capital stock is above a threshold. The threshold externality generates two steady states – a suboptimal poverty trap and an optimal steady state. In a baseline treatment, the economies converge to the poverty trap. However, the ability to make public announcements or to vote on competing and binding policies, increases output, welfare and capital stock. Combining these two simple institutions guarantees that the economies escape the poverty trap

3D Reconstruction of rock paintings: a cost-effective approach based on modern photogrammetry for rapidly mapping archaeological findings

The work describes a cost-effective methodology for the creation of 3D virtual models with both metric and photo-realistic content developed for archaeologists who need to rapidly map new findings during their field prospections. The potential of modern photogrammetry approach, based on Structure from Motion (SfM) and dense image matching algorithms, coupled with the use of low-cost cameras is evaluated for the creation of 3D models and orthophotos of rock paintings. The case study is located in Brealito valley, in the Calchaqui basin of the Province of Salta, Argentina. In these wide areas, actually known for the naturalistic value, a huge amount of archeological remains was found and surveyed for the first time in August 2013 within a research project funded by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A methodological approach to record the findings in a cost-effective and reliable way is defined, acquisitions are performed with common use instruments such as digital cameras (off-the-shelf and single lens reflex - SLR) and measuring tapes. The novelty of the work lies in defining, experiencing and transferring to operators a simple methodology for digitizing and mapping the archeological heritage in order to provide 2D orthophotos and 3D models. Such methodology allows anyone, archaeologists or unprofessional personnel, to be trained and easily perform a survey in order to document, survey and study the investigated site

Cluster of legionnaires’ disease in an Italian prison

Background: Legionella pneumophila (Lp) is the most common etiologic agent causing Legionnaires’ Disease (LD). Water systems offer the best growth conditions for Lp and support its spread by producing aerosols. From 2015 to 2017, the Regional Reference Laboratory of Clinical and Environmental Surveillance of Legionellosis of Palermo monitored the presence of Lp in nine prisons in Western Sicily. During this investigation, we compared Lp isolates from environmental samples in a prison located in Palermo with isolates from two prisoners in the same prison. Methods: We collected 93 water samples from nine Sicilian prisons and the bronchoalveolar lavages (BALs) of two prisoners considered cases of LD. These samples were processed following the procedures described in the Italian Guidelines for the Prevention and Control of Legionellosis of 2015. Then, genotyping was performed on 19 Lp colonies (17 from water samples and 2 from clinical samples) using the Sequence-Based Typing (SBT) method, according to European Study Group for Legionella Infections (ESGLI) protocols. Results: Lp serogroup (sg) 6 was the most prevalent serogroup isolated from the prisons analyzed (40%), followed by Lp sg 1 (16%). Most of all, in four penitentiary institutions, we detected a high concentration of Lp >104 Colony Forming Unit/Liter (CFU/L). The environmental molecular investigation found the following Sequence Types (STs) in Lp sg 6: ST 93, ST 292, ST 461, ST 728, ST 1317 and ST 1362, while most of the isolates in sg 1 belonged to ST 1. We also found a new ST that has since been assigned the number 2451 in the ESGLI-SBT database. From the several Lp sg 1 colonies isolated from the two BALs, we identified ST 2451. Conclusions: In this article, we described the results obtained from environmental and epidemiological investigations of Lp isolated from prisons in Western Sicily. Furthermore, we reported the first cluster of Legionnaires’ in an Italian prison and the molecular typing of Lp sg 1 from one prison’s water system and two BALs, identified the source of the contamination, and discovered a new ST

Sens-Us: Designing Innovative Civic Technology for the Public Good

How can civic technology be designed to encourage more public engagement? What new methods of data collection and sharing can be used to engender a different relationship between citizens and the state? One approach has been to design physical systems that draw people in and which they can trust, leading them to give their views, opinions or other data. So far, they have been largely used to elicit feedback or votes for one or two questions about a given topic. Here, we describe a physical system, called Sens-Us, which was designed to ask a range of questions about personal and sensitive information, within the context of rethinking the UK Census. An in-the-wild study of its deployment in a city cultural center showed how a diversity of people approached, answered and compared the data that had been collected about themselves with others. We discuss the findings in relation to the pros and cons of using this kind of innovative technology when wanting to promote civic engagement or other forms of public engagement