Integrated context-aware and cloud-based adaptive home screens for android phones

This is the post-print version of this Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2011 Springer VerlagThe home screen in Android phones is a highly customizable user interface where the users can add and remove widgets and icons for launching applications. This customization is currently done on the mobile device itself and will only create static content. Our work takes the concept of Android home screen [3] one step further and adds flexibility to the user interface by making it context-aware and integrated with the cloud. Overall results indicated that the users have a strong positive bias towards the application and that the adaptation helped them to tailor the device to their needs by using the different context aware mechanisms

Human computer interaction with a PIM application: Merging activity, location and social setting into context

This is the post-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2009 Springer VerlagPersonal Information Managers exploit the ubiquitous paradigm in mobile computing technology to integrate services and programs for business and leisure. Recognizing that every situation is constituted by information and events, this context will vary depending on the situation users are in, and the tasks they are about to commit. The value of context as a source of information is highly recognized and for individual dimensions context has been both conceptually described and prototypes implemented. The novelty in this paper is a new implementation of context by integrating three dimensions of context: social information, activity information and geographical position. Based on an application developed for Microsoft Window Mobile these three dimensions of context are explored and implemented in an application for mobile telephone users. Experiment conducted show the viability of tailoring contextual information in three dimensions to provide user with timely and relevant information

Synthesis of Corrosion-resistant Nanocrystalline Nickle-copper Alloy Coatings by Pulse-plating Technique

Bright and smooth nanocrystalline Monel-type Ni-Cu alloy gets deposited from complex citrate electrolyte by pulse electrolysis. Transmission electron microscopy studies have revealedthat the deposited Ni-Cu alloy was nanocrystalline in nature and it comprised a two-phase (fcc+Ll,) mixture. The presence of twins could be seen in the nanocrystals. The Ni-Cu alloysprepared by pulse electrolysis were finer grained (- 2.5-28.5 nm) than those deposited by direct current method. Nelson-Riley function has been used to calculate the lattice parameters for both the pulse current-plated and direct current-plated alloys from x-ray diffraction analysis. The microhardness values for pulse current-plated alloys were higher than for the direct currentplated alloys. The internal stresses of both the pulse current-deposited and the direct currentdeposited alloys have also been measured; the values were lower for pulse current-plated alloys. Potentiodynamic polarisation studies were carried out in aerated and deaerated neutral 3.0 Wt per cent NaCl solution and instantaneous corrosion current density of the plated alloy was determined and compared with the Monel-400 alloy. It was found that nanocrystalline pulse current-N,-35 8 Wt p;r cent copper alloy uxh~bitedlo wer instantaneous value of corros~onc urrent densirv than that of soeclrnens with direct current method and Monel-400 allov The d~ssolut~on ~ ~~~~-~ behaviour ofthe deposited nanocrystalline material was found to be more like general corrosion rather than localised corrosion as in the case of Monel-400 alloy

A Regulatory Model for Context-Aware Abstract Framework

Proceedings of: 23rd International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Other Applications of Applied Intelligent Systems, IEA/AIE 2010, Cordoba, Spain, June 1-4, 2010.This paper presents a general framework to define a context aware application and analyzes social guarantees to be considered to develop this kind of applications following legal assumptions as privacy, human rights, etc. We present a review of legal issues in biometric user identification where several legal aspects have been developed in European Union regulation and a general framework to define context aware applications. As main result, paper presents a legal framework to be taken into account in any context-based application to ensure a harmonious and coherent system for the protection of fundamental rights.This work was supported in part by Projects CICYT TIN2008-06742-C02-02/TSI, CICYT TEC2008-06732-C02-02/TEC, CAM CONTEXTS (S2009/TIC-1485) and DPS2008-07029- C02-02.Publicad

A contextual modeling approach for model-based recommender systems

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40643-0_5Proceedings of 15th Conference of the Spanish Association for Artificial Intelligence, CAEPIA 2013, Madrid, Spain, September 17-20, 2013.In this paper we present a contextual modeling approach for model-based recommender systems that integrates and exploits both user preferences and contextual signals in a common vector space. Differently to previous work, we conduct a user study acquiring and analyzing a variety of realistic contextual signals associated to user preferences in several domains. Moreover, we report empirical results evaluating our approach in the movie and music domains, which show that enhancing model-based recommender systems with time, location and social companion information improves the accuracy of generated recommendations

Context-aware movie recommendations: An empirical comparison of pre-filtering, post-filtering and contextual modeling approaches

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-39878-0_13Proceedings of 14th International Conference, EC-Web 2013, Prague, Czech Republic, August 27-28, 2013.Context-aware recommender systems have been proven to improve the performance of recommendations in a wide array of domains and applications. Despite individual improvements, little work has been done on comparing different approaches, in order to determine which of them outperform the others, and under what circumstances. In this paper we address this issue by conducting an empirical comparison of several pre-filtering, post-filtering and contextual modeling approaches on the movie recommendation domain. To acquire confident contextual information, we performed a user study where participants were asked to rate movies, stating the time and social companion with which they preferred to watch the rated movies. The results of our evaluation show that there is neither a clear superior contextualization approach nor an always best contextual signal, and that achieved improvements depend on the recommendation algorithm used together with each contextualization approach. Nonetheless, we conclude with a number of cues and advices about which particular combinations of contextualization approaches and recommendation algorithms could be better suited for the movie recommendation domain.This work was supported by the Spanish Government (TIN2011-28538-C02) and the Regional Government of Madrid (S2009TIC-1542

Data Modeling for Ambient Home Care Systems

Ambient assisted living (AAL) services are usually designed to work on the assumption that real-time context information about the user and his environment is available. Systems handling acquisition and context inference need to use a versatile data model, expressive and scalable enough to handle complex context and heterogeneous data sources. In this paper, we describe an ontology to be used in a system providing AAL services. The ontology reuses previous ontologies and models the partners in the value chain and their service offering. With our proposal, we aim at having an effective AAL data model, easily adaptable to specific domain needs and services

Reversible, repeatable and low phase transition behaviour of spin coated nanostructured vanadium oxide thin films with superior mechanical properties

Smooth, uniform and crystalline vanadium oxide thin films were deposited on quartz by spin coating technique with four different rpm i.e., 1000, 2000, 3000 and 4000 and subsequently post annealed at 350, 450 and 550 °C in vacuum. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) techniques were utilized for microstructural characterizations and phase analysis, respectively, for vanadium oxide powder and deposited film. Nanorods were observed to be grown after vacuum annealing. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) technique was utilized to study the elemental oxidation state of deposited vanadium oxide films. Thermo-optical and electrical properties such as solar transmittance (τs), reflectance (ρs), absorptance (αs), infrared (IR) emittance (εir) and sheet resistance (Rs) of different thin films were evaluated. Based on the optical characteristics the optimized condition of the film processing was identified to be spin coated at 3000 rpm. Subsequently, the nanoindentation technique was utilized to measure hardness and Young's modulus of the optimized film. The measured nanomechanical properties were found to be superior to those reported for sputtered vanadium oxide films. Finally, temperature dependent phase transition characteristics of optimized vanadium oxide films were studied by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) technique. Reversible and repeatable phase transition was found to occur in the range of 44–48 °C which was significantly lower than the phase transition temperature (i.e., 68 °C) of bulk VO2