Towards Activity Context using Software Sensors

Service-Oriented Computing delivers the promise of configuring and reconfiguring software systems to address user's needs in a dynamic way. Context-aware computing promises to capture the user's needs and hence the requirements they have on systems. The marriage of both can deliver ad-hoc software solutions relevant to the user in the most current fashion. However, here it is a key to gather information on the users' activity (that is what they are doing). Traditionally any context sensing was conducted with hardware sensors. However, software can also play the same role and in some situations will be more useful to sense the activity of the user. Furthermore they can make use of the fact that Service-oriented systems exchange information through standard protocols. In this paper we discuss our proposed approach to sense the activity of the user making use of software

Multi-Agent System (MAS) Applications in Ambient Intelligence (AmI) Environments

Proceedings of: 8th Conference on Practical Applications of Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (PAAMS`10). Salamanca (Spain), 28-30 April 2010Research in context-aware systems has been moving towards reusable and adaptable architectures for managing more advanced human-computer interfaces. Ambient. Intelligence (AmI) investigates computer-based services, which are ubiquitous and based on a variety of objects and devices. Their intelligent and intuitive interfaces act as mediators through which people can interact with the ambient environment. In this paper we present an agent-based architecture which supports the execution of agents in AmI environments. Two case studies are also presented, an airport information system and a railway information system, which uses spoken conversational agents to respond to the user's requests using the contextual information that includes the location information of the user.This work has been partially supported by CICYT TIN2008-06742-C02-02/TSI, CICYT TEC2008-06732-C02-02/TEC, SINPROB, CAM MADRINET S-0505/TIC/0255 and DPS2008-07029-C02-02Publicad

A novel context ontology to facilitate interoperation of semantic services in environments with wearable devices

The LifeWear-Mobilized Lifestyle with Wearables (Lifewear) project attempts to create Ambient Intelligence (AmI) ecosystems by composing personalized services based on the user information, environmental conditions and reasoning outputs. Two of the most important benefits over traditional environments are 1) take advantage of wearable devices to get user information in a nonintrusive way and 2) integrate this information with other intelligent services and environmental sensors. This paper proposes a new ontology composed by the integration of users and services information, for semantically representing this information. Using an Enterprise Service Bus, this ontology is integrated in a semantic middleware to provide context-aware personalized and semantically annotated services, with discovery, composition and orchestration tasks. We show how these services support a real scenario proposed in the Lifewear project

Addressing the evolution of automated user behaviour patterns by runtime model interpretation

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10270-013-0371-3The use of high-level abstraction models can facilitate and improve not only system development but also runtime system evolution. This is the idea of this work, in which behavioural models created at design time are also used at runtime to evolve system behaviour. These behavioural models describe the routine tasks that users want to be automated by the system. However, users¿ needs may change after system deployment, and the routine tasks automated by the system must evolve to adapt to these changes. To facilitate this evolution, the automation of the specified routine tasks is achieved by directly interpreting the models at runtime. This turns models into the primary means to understand and interact with the system behaviour associated with the routine tasks as well as to execute and modify it. Thus, we provide tools to allow the adaptation of this behaviour by modifying the models at runtime. This means that the system behaviour evolution is performed by using high-level abstractions and avoiding the costs and risks associated with shutting down and restarting the system.This work has been developed with the support of MICINN, under the project EVERYWARE TIN2010-18011, and the support of the Christian Doppler Forschungsgesellschaft and the BMWFJ, Austria.Serral Asensio, E.; Valderas Aranda, PJ.; Pelechano Ferragud, V. (2013). Addressing the evolution of automated user behaviour patterns by runtime model interpretation. Software and Systems Modeling. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10270-013-0371-3SWeiser, M.: The computer of the 21st century. Sci. Am. 265, 66–75 (1991)Serral, E., Valderas, P., Pelechano, V.: Context-adaptive coordination of pervasive services by interpreting models during runtime. Comput. 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A Dynamic Contextual Change Management Application for Real Time Decision-Making Support

Decision making is a fundamental process within organizations for many reasons. It is indeed involved at all levels (new product decisions, management and marketing decisions, etc.) and has a direct impact on companies’ efficiency and effectiveness. Many researches are conducted to enhance the decision-making process by proposing decision support systems where the most frequent challenge is the change management. Indeed, all businesses operate within an environment that is subject to constant changes (like new customers’ needs and requirements, organisational and technological changes, changes in key information used to derive decisions, etc.). These changes have a major impact on the quality and accuracy of the proposed decision if they are not detected and propagated, at the right time, during the decision-making process. The present work attempts to resolve this challenge by proposing a dynamic change management technique that allows three tasks to be automatically performed. First, continuously detect changes and note them. Second, retrieve from the detected changes those that are related to the decision rules. Finally, propagate them by computing the new value of the decision rule. The proposal has been fully implemented and tested in the supervision process of gas network exploitation.projet FUI Gontran

A Rule-Based Contextual Reasoning Platform for Ambient Intelligence Environments

The special characteristics and requirements of intelligent environments impose several challenges to the reasoning processes of Ambient Intelligence systems. Such systems must enable heterogeneous entities operating in open and dynamic environments to collectively reason with imperfect context information. Previously we introduced Contextual Defeasible Logic (CDL) as a contextual reasoning model that addresses most of these challenges using the concepts of context, mappings and contextual preferences. In this paper, we present a platform integrating CDL with Kevoree, a component-based software framework for Dynamically Adaptive Systems. We explain how the capabilities of Kevoree are exploited to overcome several technical issues, such as communication, information exchange and detection, and explain how the reasoning methods may be further extended. We illustrate our approach with a running example from Ambient Assisted Living. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

PCNA directs type 2 RNase H activity on DNA replication and repair substrates

Ribonuclease H2 is the major nuclear enzyme degrading cellular RNA/DNA hybrids in eukaryotes and the sole nuclease known to be able to hydrolyze ribonucleotides misincorporated during genomic replication. Mutation in RNASEH2 causes Aicardi–Goutières syndrome, an auto-inflammatory disorder that may arise from nucleic acid byproducts generated during DNA replication. Here, we report the crystal structures of Archaeoglobus fulgidus RNase HII in complex with PCNA, and human PCNA bound to a C-terminal peptide of RNASEH2B. In the archaeal structure, three binding modes are observed as the enzyme rotates about a flexible hinge while anchored to PCNA by its PIP-box motif. PCNA binding promotes RNase HII activity in a hinge-dependent manner. It enhances both cleavage of ribonucleotides misincorporated in DNA duplexes, and the comprehensive hydrolysis of RNA primers formed during Okazaki fragment maturation. In addition, PCNA imposes strand specificity on enzyme function, and by localizing RNase H2 and not RNase H1 to nuclear replication foci in vivo it ensures that RNase H2 is the dominant RNase H activity during nuclear replication. Our findings provide insights into how type 2 RNase H activity is directed during genome replication and repair, and suggest a mechanism by which RNase H2 may suppress generation of immunostimulatory nucleic acids

Cooperation of breast cancer proteins PALB2 and piccolo BRCA2 in stimulating homologous recombination.

Inherited mutations in human PALB2 are associated with a predisposition to breast and pancreatic cancers. PALB2's tumor-suppressing effect is thought to be based on its ability to facilitate BRCA2's function in homologous recombination. However, the biochemical properties of PALB2 are unknown. Here we show that human PALB2 binds DNA, preferentially D-loop structures, and directly interacts with the RAD51 recombinase to stimulate strand invasion, a vital step of homologous recombination. This stimulation occurs through reinforcing biochemical mechanisms, as PALB2 alleviates inhibition by RPA and stabilizes the RAD51 filament. Moreover, PALB2 can function synergistically with a BRCA2 chimera (termed piccolo, or piBRCA2) to further promote strand invasion. Finally, we show that PALB2-deficient cells are sensitive to PARP inhibitors. Our studies provide the first biochemical insights into PALB2's function with piBRCA2 as a mediator of homologous recombination in DNA double-strand break repair

Multiple ATR-Chk1 Pathway Proteins Preferentially Associate with Checkpoint-Inducing DNA Substrates

The ATR-Chk1 DNA damage checkpoint pathway is a critical regulator of the cellular response to DNA damage and replication stress in human cells. The variety of environmental, chemotherapeutic, and carcinogenic agents that activate this signal transduction pathway do so primarily through the formation of bulky adducts in DNA and subsequent effects on DNA replication fork progression. Because there are many protein-protein and protein-DNA interactions proposed to be involved in activation and/or maintenance of ATR-Chk1 signaling in vivo, we systematically analyzed the association of a number of ATR-Chk1 pathway proteins with relevant checkpoint-inducing DNA structures in vitro. These DNA substrates included single-stranded DNA, branched DNA, and bulky adduct-containing DNA. We found that many checkpoint proteins show a preference for single-stranded, branched, and bulky adduct-containing DNA in comparison to undamaged, double-stranded DNA. We additionally found that the association of checkpoint proteins with bulky DNA damage relative to undamaged DNA was strongly influenced by the ionic strength of the binding reaction. Interestingly, among the checkpoint proteins analyzed the checkpoint mediator proteins Tipin and Claspin showed the greatest differential affinity for checkpoint-inducing DNA structures. We conclude that the association and accumulation of multiple checkpoint proteins with DNA structures indicative of DNA damage and replication stress likely contribute to optimal ATR-Chk1 DNA damage checkpoint responses