A Context Aware Framework for User Centered Services

In this paper, we introduce a context aware middleware framework that has been developed over the years to serve as an enabler for user centered services. Firstly, we will discuss about a sensory API mechanism developed to allow an abstraction of sensing elements to report information in a structured manner. We will then proceed to discuss how this sensed information is represented in an ontology, replicating a virtual model of the environment. This will facilitate reasoning capabilities, where entities that are inter-related can be resolved and used by the service. And finally we will describe how context specific to a user-centered service could be subscribed from the middleware. The context, once subscribed, will enable actions to be fired off when the particular context is met. The three core components when put together, will allow for services to react more specific to the users needs, based on the user’s ever changing context

Donald Trump’s use of post-truth double-think politics is a threat to liberal democratic norms.

The election of Donald Trump to the presidency has sparked new debates over the nature of “truth” as the new administration uses “alternative facts” to support its own narratives. Simon Kaye and Clayton Chin write that the wider implications of this new discourse about truth have been largely missed. They argue that Trump and his followers’ use of “alternative facts” is an anti-democratic refusal to engage in liberal democracy under its established norms

A Rotating Disk in the HH 111 Protostellar System

The HH 111 protostellar system is a young Class I system with two sources, VLA 1 and VLA 2, at a distance of 400 pc. Previously, a flattened envelope has been seen in C18O to be in transition to a rotationally supported disk near the VLA 1 source. The follow-up study here is to confirm the rotationally supported disk at 2-3 times higher angular resolutions, at ~ 0.3" (or 120 AU) in 1.33 mm continuum, and ~ 0.6" (or 240 AU) in 13CO (J=2-1) and 12CO (J=2-1) emission obtained with the Submillimeter Array. The 1.33 mm continuum emission shows a resolved dusty disk associated with the VLA 1 source perpendicular to the jet axis, with a Gaussian deconvolved size of ~ 240 AU. The 13CO and 12CO emissions toward the dusty disk show a Keplerian rotation, indicating that the dusty disk is rotationally supported. The density and temperature distributions in the disk derived from a simple disk model are found to be similar to those found in bright T-Tauri disks, suggesting that the disk can evolve into a T-Tauri disk in the late stage of star formation. In addition, a hint of a low-velocity molecular outflow is also seen in 13CO and 12CO coming out from the disk.Comment: 16 pages including 5 figure

Surface functionalized titanium scaffolds for orthopaedic application: learning from nature

C

(Quantum) complexity of testing signed graph clusterability

This study examines clusterability testing for a signed graph in the bounded-degree model. Our contributions are two-fold. First, we provide a quantum algorithm with query complexity $\tilde{O}(N^{1/3})$ for testing clusterability, which yields a polynomial speedup over the best classical clusterability tester known [arXiv:2102.07587]. Second, we prove an $\tilde{\Omega}(\sqrt{N})$ classical query lower bound for testing clusterability, which nearly matches the upper bound from [arXiv:2102.07587]. This settles the classical query complexity of clusterability testing, and it shows that our quantum algorithm has an advantage over any classical algorithm

Global Optimization of Minority Game by Smart Agents

We propose a new model of minority game with so-called smart agents such that the standard deviation and the total loss in this model reach the theoretical minimum values in the limit of long time. The smart agents use trail and error method to make a choice but bring global optimization to the system, which suggests that the economic systems may have the ability to self-organize into a highly optimized state by agents who are forced to make decisions based on inductive thinking for their limited knowledge and capabilities. When other kinds of agents are also present, the experimental results and analyses show that the smart agent can gain profits from producers and are much more competent than the noise traders and conventional agents in original minority game.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Personalized Mobile System Application: A Case Study

This paper presents an overview of the components, approaches and techniques which are used to build a mobile phone- application that uses short messaging service (SMS) text messages to improve interaction, information distribution and communication of stakeholders in a university setting. The proposed application is built upon a multiple compatible mobile phone menu-based subscription management application that is also customizable.  Since SMS has the potential to fill significant connectivity and service gaps, this application can provide support for them to become more ubiquitous. Event-based approach towards context-aware personalized notification service is adopted, i.e. user will receive relevant immediate SMS to his/her mobile phone based on his/her subscription for preferred notifications. A trigger enables event management system to send out (semi-) automated personalized notification. Notification services that understand the context within which their users operate, i.e. identity, activity and time are derived based on a set of predetermined rules. This will benefit the stakeholders in terms of getting up-to-date notifications via the delivery system which implements SysMan TellMe V8.04 as the delivery protocol and SMS server