End-user empowerment in lifelogging activities

With the widespread of Internet of Things\u2019 devices, sensors, and applications, the quantity of collected data grows enormously and the need of extracting, merging, analyzing, visualizing, and sharing it paves the way for new research challenges. This ongoing revolution of how personal devices are used and how they are becoming more and more wearable has important influences on the most well established definitions of end user and end-user development. The paper presents an analysis of the most diffused applications that allow end users to aggregate quantified-self data, originated by several sensors and devices, and to use it in personalized ways. From the outcomes of the analysis, we present a new EUD paradigm and language that extends the ones existing in the current state of the art Internet of Things

A Storytelling-Driven Framework for Cultural Heritage Dissemination

This paper aims at introducing a new dissemination framework for cultural heritage (CH) making possible affordable solutions for small and medium museums to cooperate/collaborate in the creation of exhibitions. The framework also makes possible new data-based communication strategies able to combine content belonging to different cultural archives and accessed through an ontology-based integration and discovery mechanism, and fosters new data sharing and distribution policies that preserve intellectual property rights. The proposed dissemination model redefines the concept of digital storytelling with the aim of increasing the participation of domain experts in the dissemination of CH. The framework is designed around a graph-based architecture for creating attractive and engaging multimedia narratives that will be transformed in real experiences personalized according to the user\u2019s profile, interests and context of use. Recommender and digital right management services are provided to authors and users for helping them in the creation, personalization and navigation of stories and for guaranteeing the adoption of suitable sharing and distribution policies

Ontology-Based Consistent Specification of Sensor Data Acquisition Plans in Cross-Domain IoT Platforms

Nowadays there is an high number of IoT applications that seldom can interact with each other because developed within different Vertical IoT Platforms that adopt different standards. Several efforts are devoted to the construction of cross-layered frameworks that facilitate the interoperability among cross-domain IoT platforms for the development of horizontal applications. Even if their realization poses different challenges across all layers of the network stack, in this paper we focus on the interoperability issues that arise at the data management layer. Specifically, starting from a flexible multi-granular Spatio-Temporal-Thematic data model according to which events generated by different kinds of sensors can be represented, we propose a Semantic Virtualization approach according to which the sensors belonging to different IoT platforms and the schema of the produced event streams are described in a Domain Ontology, obtained through the extension of the well-known Semantic Sensor Network ontology. Then, these sensors can be exploited for the creation of Data Acquisition Plans by means of which the streams of events can be filtered, merged, and aggregated in a meaningful way. A notion of consistency is introduced to bind the output streams of the services contained in the Data Acquisition Plan with the Domain Ontology in order to provide a semantic description of its final output. When these plans meet the consistency constraints, it means that the data they handle are well described at the Ontological level and thus the data acquisition process over passed the interoperability barriers occurring in the original sources. The facilities of the StreamLoader prototype are finally presented for supporting the user in the Semantic Virtualization process and for the construction of meaningful Data Acquisition Plans

Evaluation of hypophysectomy for treatment of hypersomatotropism in 25 cats

Background: Successful treatment of cats with hypersomatotropism by transsphenoidal hypophysectomy is described in small numbers of cats. Objectives: To describe the endocrine profile, survival, and remission rates of hypersomatotropism and diabetes mellitus in a cohort of cats with hypersomatotropism that underwent hypophysectomy between 2008 and 2020. Animals: Twenty-five client-owned cats with spontaneous hypersomatotropism. Methods: Retrospective study. Diagnosis of hypersomatotropism was based on clinical signs, plasma insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) concentration, and imaging of the pituitary gland. Growth hormone (GH) and IGF-1 concentrations were measured repeatedly after surgery. Survival times were calculated based on follow-up information from owners and referring veterinarians. Results: Median postoperative hospital stay was 7 days (range, 3-18 days). One cat died within 4 weeks of surgery. Median plasma GH concentration decreased significantly from 51.0 ng/mL (range, 5.0-101.0 ng/mL) before surgery to 3.8 ng/mL (range, 0.6-13.0 ng/mL) at 5 hours after surgery. Remission of hypersomatotropism, defined as normalization of plasma IGF-1 concentration, occurred in 23/24 cats (median, 34 ng/mL; range, 14-240 ng/mL) and 22/24 cats entered diabetic remission. Median survival time was 1347 days (95% confidence interval, 900-1794 days; range, 11-3180 days) and the overall 1-, 2-, and 3-year all-cause survival rates were 76%, 76%, and 52%, respectively. Conclusions and Clinical Importance: This study shows the beneficial outcome of hypophysectomy in cats with hypersomatotropism, marked by low death rate and a high percentage of diabetic remission and definitive cure

Past&Present at Tarchna&Tarquinia: a flexible approach to make visible the invisible

This contribution falls within the topic of the “development of guidelines and best practices” and deals with the study case of the ancient Etruscan city of Tarchna (Tarquinia, central Italy). The “Tarquinia Project” started here in 1982 with the investigations carried out by the Università degli Studi di Milano in two sacred areas and along the fortifications. The Project was endowed since its beginnings with the collaboration of several experts in disciplines other than Archaeology which number has increased in the past years. Their aim is to find out as much as possible about the material aspects of Archaeology to decode their relationship with the invisibility of ancient life. This contribution aims at presenting our approach addressed to put scholars in the condition to handle data according to their own procedures, within the same environment, through an ecosystem of benchmarks and references in ways close to the individual practices, supported by ICTs. This is meant to avoid the use of predetermined terminologies and categories, enhancing the proper methods of every single discipline involved in a multidisciplinary environment, beyond the current work of every individual scholar. We propose a radical change of perspective, starting from the collection of raw data in several fields (material aspects of Archaeology, Geoarchaeology, Architecture, Topography) to grasp the underlining model, thanks to the assessment of recurrent associations among different categories of evidence, instead of starting from preconceived theoretic models and using data to confirm them. Distinct small, medium and large scale investigation methods are integrated for the first time to produce a significant interdisciplinary cognitive tool to shift from the materiality of the leftovers of Ancient Past, to its integrity, to what lies behind at a metaphysical level and is, therefore, invisible to us. This is related to the materiality of rituals, based on the recurrence of cultic practices in the above-mentioned sacred areas, whose gestures might also be revealed by sediments and organic remains, in addition to other archaeological and epigraphic issues. Tarquinia strongly challenges researchers to be open to unconventional and unexploited issues due to the complexity of the site. It is the ideal place to create awareness among the general public about the results of Archaeological research and to disseminate and make visible its acquirements, according to the European Charter for Researchers. The support of Environmental Psychologists helps to ensuring outreach entails initiatives directed to the local population, in order to introduce them to an equilibrated connection between their invisible Past and the local present culture. In this framework students from high school are involved in the Archaeological field activities, since 2012. Our best practices are therefore addressed to give back to the ancient Etruscan city its value of prominent cultural and natural landmark in the Past, to make it possible for the modern community to assess it in the same way. According to current theories of “place identity” and "place attachment" the modern community is in the condition to feeling and experiencing the continuity between past, present and future

End-user development for smart environments (EUD4SE)

Preface

Metaservizi per la produzione collaborativa di moduli didattici in ambienti sociali = Social metaservices for the collaborative production of learning modules

In queste pagine si introduce una piattaforma a servizio degli usuali Learning Management Systems (LMS) per consentirne un utilizzo facile e proficuo da parte dei docenti di un determinato settore. Nello specifico la piattaforma costituisce il supporto informativo a un ampio progetto di promozione dell\u2019educazione all\u2019imprenditorialit\ue0 lanciato dalla Comunit\ue0 Europea. La chiave di volta \ue8 costituta dai metadati con cui sono descritti i suoi contenuti. Questi metadati sono alla base delle procedure d\u2019interrogazione e raccomandazione, nonch\ue9 di altre azioni \u201csocial\u201d sulle quali i docenti possono contare per reperire il materiale su cui fondare i corsi che intendono erogare. In tal prospettiva la piattaforma s\u2019identifica con una social network per utenti esigenti, appunto i docenti, che si aspettano di reperire nel sistema materiali autorevoli e appropriati, essendo capaci di valutarne tali aspetti e al contempo desiderosi di venire guidati nella loro ricerca all\u2019interno dell\u2019ampio repertorio messo a disposizione dalla piattaforma.In this paper we introduce a platform designed to help educators make profitable use of current LMSs for teaching in a particular domain. The platform has been developed within a major European Commission funded project for the promotion of Entrepreneurship Education (EE). The conceptual core of the platform is the metadata for describing content. These metadata form the basis for query and recommender systems, as well as for other socially oriented services designed to help teachers retrieve suitable material for their courses. Seen in this light, the platform is a social network for a very demanding user group, namely teachers. They use the environment as a means to locate material considered authoritative and appropriate, and at the same time seek platform support for searching the system\u2019s considerable repository