Metropolitan Wi-Fi Research Network at the Los Angeles State Historic Park

UCLA is deploying a metropolitan-scale Wi-Fi mesh network near Downtown Los Angeles. It supports research in community-based urban participatory sensing, which focuses on how people can use their everyday mobile phones as sensors for data gathering on personal, community, and urban scales.  Moreover, we will use it to explore Cultural Civic Computing, a service-oriented urban computing model in which neighborhoods power the processes of imagining, specifying, and designing technology infrastructure for public places. This work provides infrastructure with which to explore the potential that a large scale Wi-Fi deployment offers multicultural communities in investigating and reclaiming their own environments, and creating healthy and livable cities.  It also enables public exploration of creativity and cultural identity, as well as the diverse histories of our cities and neighborhoods

Narreme: Tools for Telling Tales with Participatory Sensing Data

The proliferation of sensors in consumer mobile phones has made them a powerful data collection platform. We have become more interested in collecting data to document and learn about our own lives, our relationships with the community, and the environment we live in. However, current research is mostly focused on analysis of quantitative data, and a lot of important information that can be extracted from qualitative data such as images and text annotations is being ignored. The focus of this dissertation was to research and build techniques based on narratology to help users analyze and make sense of the qualitative data they have collected and to communicate the information and knowledge they extract from the data though narratives. More specifically, our main contribution was in the creation and evaluation of two techniques that were fundamental to narration tools: clustering and conflict discovery. We used these techniques to build the Narreme toolset that enables user-assisted creation of compelling narratives with participatory sensing data. The toolset consists of three tools: (a) Narreme clustering tool which helps a user organize her thoughts and identify supporting qualitative data consisting of images and text for her narratives, (b) Narreme conflict discovery tool helps the user better understand where conflict could be introduced in her narratives, and, (c) Narreme video editing tool which is used to create a video slideshow narrative and adjust the order based on a narrative ten- sion curve. We evaluated the effectiveness of our techniques and toolset through user studies

Prevalence of High and Low -level Mupirocin, resistance against MRSA from a tertiary care hospital in eastern UP

Aim: To determine the prevalence of High and Low -level Mupirocin, resistance against MRSA from a tertiary care hospital in eastern UP was the aim of this study. Methods and Material: A total of 62 non duplicate previously confirmed MRSA isolates were included in this study. The Susceptibility testing andresult interpretation for determining the high and low level of mupirocin resistance was performed by disk diffusion method using 200 µg and 5 µg disc respectively as per Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) M100-S25 recommendations. Results: A total of 60 isolates (96.8 %) were found sensitive to mupirocin, 2 isolates (3.2 %) had low-level mupirocin resistance whereas none of the isolates was found to have high-level mupirocin resistance. Conclusion: The high-level mupirocin-resistant is uncommon in our patient population. The Periodic monitoring is useful for detecting changing trends in mupirocin resistance as a risk of emergence of high level mupirocin resistant strains is there

Metropolitan Wi-Fi Research Network

We are deploying a metropolitan scale Wi-Fi mesh network near downtown Los Angeles to support the design and development of a data-centric network-fabric for urban participatory sensing. Participatory sensing employs software and network technology to enable people’s everyday mobile devices to act as credible sensors of the natural, built, and cultural environments. Current research focuses on how to make it easy and secure for both the public and professional users to define sensing ‘campaigns,’ recruit participants to collect data, to help ‘make a case’ with data they collect, and digitally publish the results. To further research in this area, our architecture will enable embedding network–attested location and time context in sensor readings. The network will also provide a research framework for developing policy-based privacy, and related security mechanisms for participatory sensing

Metropolitan Wi-Fi Research Network

We are deploying a metropolitan scale Wi-Fi mesh network near downtown Los Angeles to support the design and development of a data-centric network-fabric for urban participatory sensing. Participatory sensing employs software and network technology to enable people’s everyday mobile devices to act as credible sensors of the natural, built, and cultural environments. Current research focuses on how to make it easy and secure for both the public and professional users to define sensing ‘campaigns,’ recruit participants to collect data, to help ‘make a case’ with data they collect, and digitally publish the results. To further research in this area, our architecture will enable embedding network–attested location and time context in sensor readings. The network will also provide a research framework for developing policy-based privacy, and related security mechanisms for participatory sensing

Abstract Impact of Video Encoding Parameters on Dynamic Video

Currently there are a wide variety of devices with different screen resolutions, color support, processing power, and network connectivity, capable of receiving streaming video from the Internet. In order to serve different multimedia content to all these devices, middleware proxy servers which transcode content to fit different types of devices are becoming popular. In this paper, we present result of several tests conducted with different combination of video encoding parameters and show their impact on network, CPU and energy resource usage of a transcoding server. For this purpose, we implemented a dynamic video trancoding server, which enables dynamic changes in different trancoding parameters during a video streaming session

Participatory Design of Sensing Networks: Strengths and Challenges

Participatory design (PD) involves users in all phases of design to build systems that fit user needs while simultaneously helping users understand complex systems. We argue that traditional PD techniques can benefit participatory sensing: community-based participatory research (CBPR) projects in which complex technologies, such as sensing networks using mobile phones, are the research instruments. Based on our pilot work on CycleSense, a community-based data gathering system for bicycle commuters, we discuss the benefits and challenges of PD in participatory sensing settings, and outline a method to integrate PD into the research process

Participatory Design of Sensing Networks: Strengths and Challenges

Participatory design (PD) involves users in all phases of design to build systems that fit user needs while simultaneously helping users understand complex systems. We argue that traditional PD techniques can benefit participatory sensing: community-based participatory research (CBPR) projects in which complex technologies, such as sensing networks using mobile phones, are the research instruments. Based on our pilot work on CycleSense, a community-based data gathering system for bicycle commuters, we discuss the benefits and challenges of PD in participatory sensing settings, and outline a method to integrate PD into the research process