REST Web Services in Collaborative Work Environments

This paper presents a case study for the development of an integration framework in the area of collaborative work environments. This framework is based on REST Web services, and has been designed and implemented as part of the Laboranova European project.Peer ReviewedPreprin

Design and development of a REST-based Web service platform for applications integration

Web services have attracted attention as a possible solution to share knowledge and application logic among different heterogeneous agents. A classic approach to this subject is using SOAP, a W3C protocol aimed to exchange structured information. The Web Services Interoperability organization (WS-I), defines a set of extensions, commonly called WS-*, which further enhance this knowledge exchange defining mechanisms and functionalities such as security, addressability or service composition. This thesis explores a relatively new alternative approach to the SOAP/WS-I stack: REST-based Web services. The acronym REST stands for Representational state transfer; this basically means that each unique URL is a representation of some object. You can get the contents of that object using an HTTP GET; you then might use a POST, PUT or DELETE to modify the object (in practice most of the services use a POST for this). All of Yahoo’s Web services use REST, including Flickr; del.icio.us API uses it; pubsub [http://www.pubsub.com/], Bloglines [http://www.bloglines.com/], Technorati [http://technorati.com/] and both, eBay and Amazon, have Web services for both REST and SOAP. Google seems to be consistent in implementing their Web services to use SOAP, with the exception of Blogger, which uses XML-RPC. The companies and organization that are using REST APIs have not been around for very long, and their APIs came out in the last seven years mostly. So REST is a new way to create and integrate Web services, whose main advantages are: being lightweight (not a lot of extra xml mark-up), human readable results, easy to build services (no toolkits required). Although REST is still generating discussion about possible implementations, and different proposals have been put forward, it provides enough mechanisms to allow knowledge-representations sharing among heterogeneous intelligent services. In this thesis, a novel way to integrate intelligent Web-services is designed and developed, and the resulting system is deployed in the domain of recommendation. Through a mashup, how different services are integrated and how a simple recommendation system consumes data coming from them to provide relevant information to users is presented. Part of this work has been carried out within the context of the Laboranova European project [http://www.laboranova.com/], and has been deployed to integrate a set of applications to create a virtual space to support innovation processes

An idea model for distributed Idea Management

Processes of Open Innovation and innovation in Living-Labs applying the co-creation paradigm do involve many participating innovators across different organisations and stakeholder groups. This is especially true when dealing with disruptive or radical innovations instead of incremental ones. Any methodology and/or tools supporting such processes are distributed and need to be able to transfer knowledge artefacts such as ideas from one application to another. This paper describes how a repository storing ideas has to be organised in order to address the most important requirements coming from the tasks of creating and evaluating ideas. A model is presented which can be implemented using Internet standards like REST.Peer ReviewedPreprin

Towards a goal-oriented agent-based simulation framework for high-performance computing

Currently, agent-based simulation frameworks force the user to choose between simulations involving a large number of agents (at the expense of limited agent reasoning capability) or simulations including agents with increased reasoning capabilities (at the expense of a limited number of agents per simulation). This paper describes a first attempt at putting goal-oriented agents into large agentbased (micro-)simulations. We discuss a model for goal-oriented agents in HighPerformance Computing (HPC) and then briefly discuss its implementation in PyCOMPSs (a library that eases the parallelisation of tasks) to build such a platform that benefits from a large number of agents with the capacity to execute complex cognitive agents.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Personalized fully multimodal journey planner

We present an advanced journey planner designed to help travellers to take full advantage of the increasingly rich, and consequently more complex offering of mobility services available in modern cities. In contrast to existing systems, our journey planner is capable of planning with the full spectrum of mobility services; combining individual and collective, fixed-schedule as well as on-demand modes of transport, while taking into account individual user preferences and the availability of transport services. Furthermore, the planner is able to personalize journey planning for each individual user by employing a recommendation engine that builds a contextual model of the user from the observation of user’s past travel choices. The planner has been deployed in four large European cities and positively evaluated by hundreds of users in field trialsPeer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Social network data analysis for event detection

Cities concentrate enough Social Network (SN) activity to empower rich models. We present an approach to event discovery based on the information provided by three SN, minimizing the data properties used to maximize the total amount of usable data. We build a model of the normal city behavior which we use to detect abnormal situations (events). After collecting half a year of data we show examples of the events detected and introduce some applications.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Making smart cities smarter using artificial intelligence techniques for smarter mobility

The term Smart City is tipically applied to urban and metropolitan areas where Information and Communication Technologies provide ways to enable social, cultural and urban development, improving social and political capacities and/or efficiency. In this paper we will show the potential of Artificial Intelligence techniques for augmenting ICT solutions to both increase the cities competiveness but also the active participation of citizens in those processes, making Smart Cities smarter. As example we will describe the usage of Artificial Intellgence techniques to provide Smart Mobility in the context of the SUPERHUB Project.Postprint (published version

Health recommender system design in the context of CAREGIVERSPRO-MMD project

CAREGIVERSPRO-MMD an EU H2020 funded project aims to build a digital platform focusing on people living with dementia and their caregivers, offering a selection of advanced, individually tailored services enabling them to live well in the community for as long as possible. This paper provides an outline of a health recommender system designed in the context of the project to provide tailored interventions to caregivers and people living with dementia.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

All Roads Lead to Rome: Results of Non-Invasive Respiratory Therapies Applied in a Tertiary-Care Hospital Without an Intermediate Care Unit During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Introducción. Las terapias respiratorias no invasivas (TRNI) fueron ampliamente utilizadas en la primera ola de la pandemia de COVID-19, en escenarios distintos según los medios disponibles. El objetivo fue presentar la supervivencia a 90 días y los factores asociados a esta de los pacientes tratados con TRNI en un centro de tercer nivel sin Unidad de Cuidados Respiratorios Intermedios. Como objetivo secundario comparar los resultados obtenidos de las distintas terapias. Métodos. Estudio observacional de pacientes tratados con TRNI fuera de un ambiente de Cuidados Intensivos o Unidad de Cuidados Respiratorios Intermedios, diagnosticados de COVID-19 y con síndrome de distrés respiratorio agudo por criterios radiológicos y de ratio SpO2/FiO2. Se desarrolló un modelo multivariante de regresión logística para determinar las variables independientemente asociadas, y se compararon los resultados de la terapia de alto flujo con cánula nasal y la presión positiva continua en la vía aérea. Resultados. Se trataron 107 pacientes y sobrevivieron 85 (79,4%) a los 90 días. Antes de iniciar la TRNI el ratio medio de SpO2/FiO2 fue de 119,8±59,4. Un mayor score de SOFA se asoció significativamente a la mortalidad (OR 2,09; IC95% 1,34 – 3,27), mientras que la autopronación fue un factor protector (OR 0,23; IC95% 0,06 – 0,91). La terapia de alto flujo con cánula nasal fue utilizada en 63 sujetos (58,9%), y la presión positiva continua en la vía aérea en 41 (38,3%). No se encontraron diferencias entre ellas. Conclusión. Aproximadamente cuatro de cada cinco pacientes tratados con TRNI sobrevivieron a los 90 días, y no se encontraron diferencias significativas entre la terapia de alto flujo con cánula nasal y la presión positiva continua en la vía aérea.S

Risk factors associated with adverse fetal outcomes in pregnancies affected by Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19): a secondary analysis of the WAPM study on COVID-19.

Objectives To evaluate the strength of association between maternal and pregnancy characteristics and the risk of adverse perinatal outcomes in pregnancies with laboratory confirmed COVID-19. Methods Secondary analysis of a multinational, cohort study on all consecutive pregnant women with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 from February 1, 2020 to April 30, 2020 from 73 centers from 22 different countries. A confirmed case of COVID-19 was defined as a positive result on real-time reverse-transcriptase-polymerase-chain-reaction (RT-PCR) assay of nasal and pharyngeal swab specimens. The primary outcome was a composite adverse fetal outcome, defined as the presence of either abortion (pregnancy loss before 22 weeks of gestations), stillbirth (intrauterine fetal death after 22 weeks of gestation), neonatal death (death of a live-born infant within the first 28 days of life), and perinatal death (either stillbirth or neonatal death). Logistic regression analysis was performed to evaluate parameters independently associated with the primary outcome. Logistic regression was reported as odds ratio (OR) with 95% confidence interval (CI). Results Mean gestational age at diagnosis was 30.6+/-9.5 weeks, with 8.0% of women being diagnosed in the first, 22.2% in the second and 69.8% in the third trimester of pregnancy. There were six miscarriage (2.3%), six intrauterine device (IUD) (2.3) and 5 (2.0%) neonatal deaths, with an overall rate of perinatal death of 4.2% (11/265), thus resulting into 17 cases experiencing and 226 not experiencing composite adverse fetal outcome. Neither stillbirths nor neonatal deaths had congenital anomalies found at antenatal or postnatal evaluation. Furthermore, none of the cases experiencing IUD had signs of impending demise at arterial or venous Doppler. Neonatal deaths were all considered as prematurity-related adverse events. Of the 250 live-born neonates, one (0.4%) was found positive at RT-PCR pharyngeal swabs performed after delivery. The mother was tested positive during the third trimester of pregnancy. The newborn was asymptomatic and had negative RT-PCR test after 14 days of life. At logistic regression analysis, gestational age at diagnosis (OR: 0.85, 95% CI 0.8-0.9 per week increase; pPeer reviewe