SIGHTED: A Framework for Semantic Integration of Heterogeneous Sensor Data on the Internet of Things

AbstractSensors are embedded nowadays in a growing number of everyday life objects. Smartphones, wearables, and sensor networks together play an important role in bridging the gap between physical and cyber worlds, a fundamental aspect of the Internet of Things vision. The ability to reuse sensor data integrated from multiple heterogeneous sources is a step towards building innovative applications and services. In this paper SIGHTED, a sensor data integration framework, is proposed exploiting semantic web technologies and linked data principles. It provides a layered structure as a guideline for integrating sensor data from various sources supporting accessibility and usability. DotThing, a demo platform, is implemented as an instantiation of SIGHTED framework and evaluated. Smartphones and sensor nodes are connected to DotThing showing the ability to query and reuse integrated sensor data from multiple sources to create more flexible horizontal applications. DotThing implementation also demonstrates the need for adding a semantic layer to existing IoT cloud-based platforms, like Xively, that generally lack such layer resulting in proprietary vertical solutions with limited data integration and discovery capabilities. DotThing makes use of vocabularies from existing ontologies on the linked data cloud providing a unified model to annotate data and link it to existing resources on the web

NANO-PARTICLE/QUANTUM DOT BASED OPTICAL DODE

A particle based optical diode having at least two cavities or at least two regions of a single cavity, wherein the regions contain different types of particles

Impact of opioid-free analgesia on pain severity and patient satisfaction after discharge from surgery: multispecialty, prospective cohort study in 25 countries

Background: Balancing opioid stewardship and the need for adequate analgesia following discharge after surgery is challenging. This study aimed to compare the outcomes for patients discharged with opioid versus opioid-free analgesia after common surgical procedures.Methods: This international, multicentre, prospective cohort study collected data from patients undergoing common acute and elective general surgical, urological, gynaecological, and orthopaedic procedures. The primary outcomes were patient-reported time in severe pain measured on a numerical analogue scale from 0 to 100% and patient-reported satisfaction with pain relief during the first week following discharge. Data were collected by in-hospital chart review and patient telephone interview 1 week after discharge.Results: The study recruited 4273 patients from 144 centres in 25 countries; 1311 patients (30.7%) were prescribed opioid analgesia at discharge. Patients reported being in severe pain for 10 (i.q.r. 1-30)% of the first week after discharge and rated satisfaction with analgesia as 90 (i.q.r. 80-100) of 100. After adjustment for confounders, opioid analgesia on discharge was independently associated with increased pain severity (risk ratio 1.52, 95% c.i. 1.31 to 1.76; P < 0.001) and re-presentation to healthcare providers owing to side-effects of medication (OR 2.38, 95% c.i. 1.36 to 4.17; P = 0.004), but not with satisfaction with analgesia (beta coefficient 0.92, 95% c.i. -1.52 to 3.36; P = 0.468) compared with opioid-free analgesia. Although opioid prescribing varied greatly between high-income and low- and middle-income countries, patient-reported outcomes did not.Conclusion: Opioid analgesia prescription on surgical discharge is associated with a higher risk of re-presentation owing to side-effects of medication and increased patient-reported pain, but not with changes in patient-reported satisfaction. Opioid-free discharge analgesia should be adopted routinely

Burnout among surgeons before and during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic: an international survey

Background: SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has had many significant impacts within the surgical realm, and surgeons have been obligated to reconsider almost every aspect of daily clinical practice. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study reported in compliance with the CHERRIES guidelines and conducted through an online platform from June 14th to July 15th, 2020. The primary outcome was the burden of burnout during the pandemic indicated by the validated Shirom-Melamed Burnout Measure. Results: Nine hundred fifty-four surgeons completed the survey. The median length of practice was 10 years; 78.2% included were male with a median age of 37 years old, 39.5% were consultants, 68.9% were general surgeons, and 55.7% were affiliated with an academic institution. Overall, there was a significant increase in the mean burnout score during the pandemic; longer years of practice and older age were significantly associated with less burnout. There were significant reductions in the median number of outpatient visits, operated cases, on-call hours, emergency visits, and research work, so, 48.2% of respondents felt that the training resources were insufficient. The majority (81.3%) of respondents reported that their hospitals were included in the management of COVID-19, 66.5% felt their roles had been minimized; 41% were asked to assist in non-surgical medical practices, and 37.6% of respondents were included in COVID-19 management. Conclusions: There was a significant burnout among trainees. Almost all aspects of clinical and research activities were affected with a significant reduction in the volume of research, outpatient clinic visits, surgical procedures, on-call hours, and emergency cases hindering the training. Trial registration: The study was registered on clicaltrials.gov "NCT04433286" on 16/06/2020

A Survey on Inter-Cell Interference Coordination Techniques in OFDMA-Based Cellular Networks

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing Access (OFDMA) has been increasingly deployed in various emerging and evolving cellular systems to reduce interference and improve overall system performance. However, in these systems Inter- Cell Interference (ICI) still poses a real challenge that limits the system performance, especially for users located at the cell edge. Inter-cell interference coordination (ICIC) has been investigated as an approach to alleviate the impact of interference and improve performance in OFDMA-based systems. A common ICIC technique is interference avoidance in which the allocation of the various system resources (e.g., time, frequency, and power) to users is controlled to ensure that the ICI remains within acceptable limits. This paper surveys the various ICIC avoidance schemes in the downlink of OFDMA-based cellular networks. In particular, the paper introduces new parameterized classifications and makes use of these classifications to categorize and review various static (frequency reuse-based) and dynamic (cell coordination-based) ICIC schemes

Nonblocking WDM optical switching networks: Design and analysis of new classes

Over the past decade or so, many bandwidth intensive applications have evolved and the demand for telecommunications as well as computational power has increased dramatically. Consequently, optical communication, and in particular Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) technology, has become a versatile transmission medium for many applications. The introduction of WDM technology has resulted in increasing the dimensionality of switching by addition of the wavelength switching domain. A main challenge in designing WDM optical switching networks is to provide a nonblocking space wavelength switching capability with optimum hardware and switching complexity. In this dissertation, we address this challenge, and accordingly investigate the problem of designing nonblocking WDM optical switching networks with reduced hardware complexity. We propagate a new design philosophy that exploits the unique capability of optical technologies to reduce switching complexity and enhance scalability, and show that such a design philosophy enables novel classes of WDM switching networks with many interesting and useful features. We introduce a novel concept of Wavelength-Exchanging WDM switching networks that are capable of switching signals simultaneously and seamlessly both in space and wavelength domains. This concept leads to switching networks that have the following advantages: (1) reduced size and complexity, (2) a shorter signal path, (3) strict wavelength conversion between two predefined and fixed wavelengths, and (4) transparency to routing algorithms. We introduce a new design approach for multicast WDM switching networks based on concentrators and multi-wavelength converters (MWCs) technologies to enhance the design flexibility of nonblocking multicast switching networks. For example, we show that it is possible to design a nonblocking WDM switching network with full-multicast capability without using any power splitters

In Association with the 3 rd ACS/IEEE International Conference on Computer Systems and Applications

The increasing complexity of software systems coupled with the time-to-market constraints and condensed development budgets all have imposed a real challenge on the future of software development. It becomes a matter of survivability for a business to be able to deliver a highquality and cost-effective software product in a timely manner. This goal can be greatly precluded by the rapid advances in technology as well as the increasing pace of changes in market needs and customer requirements. Such changes while cannot be avoided; their impact on the system development should be alleviated. A system that requires a major redesign effort in order to adapt to new requirements and emerging technologies is considered to be unstable. A stable system, on the other hand, can handle changes to the system with minimal cost by avoiding unnecessarily changes when redesigning the system. However, developing systems that can evolve gracefully to accommodate necessarily changes without inducing unnecessarily cost is still a challenge in software community. The motivation of this workshop is to investigate both theoretical and practical aspects of accomplishing stability in the different levels of software development. In this workshop, we have 11 original contributions that highlight the state-of-the-art and practice in developing stabl