Semantic Gateway as a Service architecture for IoT Interoperability

The Internet of Things (IoT) is set to occupy a substantial component of future Internet. The IoT connects sensors and devices that record physical observations to applications and services of the Internet. As a successor to technologies such as RFID and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), the IoT has stumbled into vertical silos of proprietary systems, providing little or no interoperability with similar systems. As the IoT represents future state of the Internet, an intelligent and scalable architecture is required to provide connectivity between these silos, enabling discovery of physical sensors and interpretation of messages between things. This paper proposes a gateway and Semantic Web enabled IoT architecture to provide interoperability between systems using established communication and data standards. The Semantic Gateway as Service (SGS) allows translation between messaging protocols such as XMPP, CoAP and MQTT via a multi-protocol proxy architecture. Utilization of broadly accepted specifications such as W3C's Semantic Sensor Network (SSN) ontology for semantic annotations of sensor data provide semantic interoperability between messages and support semantic reasoning to obtain higher-level actionable knowledge from low-level sensor data.Comment: 16 page

A Semantic Situation Awareness Framework for Indoor Cyber-Physical Systems

Recently, the domain of cyber-physical systems (CPSs) has emerged as a successor to the traditional embedded systems and the wireless sensor networks. The relatively new cyber-physical domain offers tight integration of control, communication and computation components to develop advanced web based application in various heterogeneous domains such as health care, disaster management, automation and environment monitoring. The applications of indoor CPSs include remote patient monitoring, smart home, etc. with focus on situation awareness via event identification from context information. The principal challenges associated with the development of situation awareness applications include uncertainty in contextual data, incomplete domain knowledge, interoperability between interconnected systems and effective utilization of spatial information. This dissertation addresses these challenges by providing a comprehensive situation awareness framework for event comprehension utilizing raw sensor data and spatial information. Semantic web based annotation and mapping techniques are used to provide interoperability. The framework contains contextual situation awareness and location awareness stages towards achieving effective event assessment. The contextual situation awareness stage provides fuzzy abductive reasoning based architecture to transform raw physical sensor data to low-level fuzzy abstraction. These abstractions are used for event assessment with associated degree of certainty. The location awareness stage includes methodologies to hierarchically map indoor objects and define the object-event relationship in ontology, which is further exploited for event discrimination. This dissertation also presents a fusion based indoor positioning algorithm to provide accurate spatial information to assist location awareness. The algorithm uses extensive training of received signal strength (RSS) and time difference of arrival (TDoA) signals to estimate distance and position. The comprehensive framework is evaluated through an implementation of simulated indoor fire in a controlled environment

Variations in seasonal solar insolation are associated with a history of suicide attempts in bipolar I disorder

Background Bipolar disorder is associated with circadian disruption and a high risk of suicidal behavior. In a previous exploratory study of patients with bipolar I disorder, we found that a history of suicide attempts was associated with differences between winter and summer levels of solar insolation. The purpose of this study was to confirm this finding using international data from 42% more collection sites and 25% more countries. Methods Data analyzed were from 71 prior and new collection sites in 40 countries at a wide range of latitudes. The analysis included 4876 patients with bipolar I disorder, 45% more data than previously analyzed. Of the patients, 1496 (30.7%) had a history of suicide attempt. Solar insolation data, the amount of the sun's electromagnetic energy striking the surface of the earth, was obtained for each onset location (479 locations in 64 countries). Results This analysis confirmed the results of the exploratory study with the same best model and slightly better statistical significance. There was a significant inverse association between a history of suicide attempts and the ratio of mean winter insolation to mean summer insolation (mean winter insolation/mean summer insolation). This ratio is largest near the equator which has little change in solar insolation over the year, and smallest near the poles where the winter insolation is very small compared to the summer insolation. Other variables in the model associated with an increased risk of suicide attempts were a history of alcohol or substance abuse, female gender, and younger birth cohort. The winter/summer insolation ratio was also replaced with the ratio of minimum mean monthly insolation to the maximum mean monthly insolation to accommodate insolation patterns in the tropics, and nearly identical results were found. All estimated coefficients were significant at p < 0.01. Conclusion A large change in solar insolation, both between winter and summer and between the minimum and maximum monthly values, may increase the risk of suicide attempts in bipolar I disorder. With frequent circadian rhythm dysfunction and suicidal behavior in bipolar disorder, greater understanding of the optimal roles of daylight and electric lighting in circadian entrainment is needed.Peer reviewe

Variations in seasonal solar insolation are associated with a history of suicide attempts in bipolar I disorder

Background: Bipolar disorder is associated with circadian disruption and a high risk of suicidal behavior. In a previous exploratory study of patients with bipolar I disorder, we found that a history of suicide attempts was associated with differences between winter and summer levels of solar insolation. The purpose of this study was to confirm this finding using international data from 42% more collection sites and 25% more countries. Methods: Data analyzed were from 71 prior and new collection sites in 40 countries at a wide range of latitudes. The analysis included 4876 patients with bipolar I disorder, 45% more data than previously analyzed. Of the patients, 1496 (30.7%) had a history of suicide attempt. Solar insolation data, the amount of the sun’s electromagnetic energy striking the surface of the earth, was obtained for each onset location (479 locations in 64 countries). Results: This analysis confirmed the results of the exploratory study with the same best model and slightly better statistical significance. There was a significant inverse association between a history of suicide attempts and the ratio of mean winter insolation to mean summer insolation (mean winter insolation/mean summer insolation). This ratio is largest near the equator which has little change in solar insolation over the year, and smallest near the poles where the winter insolation is very small compared to the summer insolation. Other variables in the model associated with an increased risk of suicide attempts were a history of alcohol or substance abuse, female gender, and younger birth cohort. The winter/summer insolation ratio was also replaced with the ratio of minimum mean monthly insolation to the maximum mean monthly insolation to accommodate insolation patterns in the tropics, and nearly identical results were found. All estimated coefficients were significant at p &lt; 0.01. Conclusion: A large change in solar insolation, both between winter and summer and between the minimum and maximum monthly values, may increase the risk of suicide attempts in bipolar I disorder. With frequent circadian rhythm dysfunction and suicidal behavior in bipolar disorder, greater understanding of the optimal roles of daylight and electric lighting in circadian entrainment is needed

Localization and Surveillance using Wireless Sensor Network and Pan/Tilt Camera

The ever growing challenges in hostile environments, health care and warzone require accurate indoor localization and surveillance. The de facto localization technique using GPS has poor indoor performance due to the complexity of the indoor environment. Other Radio frequency based indoor localization techniques are unable of accurate localization due to multipath fading. In this thesis, a system consisting of Cricket wireless sensor motes, a camera and a Pan/Tilt gimbal is proposed to solve the indoor localization and surveillance problems. The system is easy to deploy, is cost effective and gives accurate results. The Crickets motes use the Time Difference of Arrival (TDoA) between the RF and the ultrasound signals to estimate the distance of the object. Multilateration is used to calculate the position of the object in the reference beacon coordinate system. This position is then transformed to the object coordinate system to calculate the pan and tilt angles of the gimbal which are then used to direct the camera to the object. The programming language JAVA was used to develop a GUI program to interface the gimbal, the camera and the Cricket motes. The localization and tracking of the object was successfully carried out in the laboratory. The accuracy of the system was tested using a laser pointer mounted on top of the camera and was shown that the system tracked the object with negligible error

Demonstration: SECURE - Semantics Empowered resCUe Environment

This paper demonstrates a Semantic Web enabled system for collecting and processing sensor data within a rescue environment. The real-time system collects heterogeneous raw sensor data from rescue robots through a wireless sensor network. The raw sensor data is converted to RDF using the Semantic Sensor Network (SSN) ontology and further processed to generate abstractions used for event detection in emergency scenarios

A study of 100 cases of PAP’s Smear examination in different age groups

Background: Cervical cancer is one of the most common malignancies among women in developing countries. In India, one in five women is diagnosed with cervical cancer. India has the greatest load of cervical cancer patients.Aims and Objectives: To study PAP’s Smear examination findings and compare them with different age groups.Materials and Methods: Hundred women aged 20 years and above having a history of amenorrhoea were studied in the Department of Pathology between May 2018 to December 2019. Slides were prepared and stained using the modified Papanicolaou staining method. Smear was observed for epithelial cells, red blood cells, white blood cells, bacteria, trichomonas, monilial hyphae, mucus, and neoplasm. The cervix's histology and cytology were performed to observe epithelial lining, original stratified squamous epithelium, metaplastic squamous epithelium, and cervical stroma. Cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) was also observed.Results: Majority (80%) had gynecological complaints. Out of 100 cases, 33 cases were reported normal, 56 cases were reported inflammatory, while one case was reported as metaplastic. Three cases were reported as CIN-I, 1 as CIN-II, 3 as CIN-III, and 3 as positive for malignancy. The highest incidence of dysplasia was seen between the age group 31-40 years. Smear positive for dysplasia of all degrees were found in 3rd and 4thpara, positive smears for malignancy were found maximum in 4th para, and one positive case was seen in 2nd para.Conclusion: Incidence of dysplasia was highest in the young working-age group. The Pap smear test is the most effective cervical cancer screening test since it is moderately priced, simple to do, and widely available to patients