Ontologies for the Internet of Things

International audienceChallenges the Internet of Things (IoT) is facing are directly inherited from today's Internet. However, they are amplified by the anticipated large scale deployments of devices and ser- vices, information flow and involved users in the IoT. Chal- lenges are many and we focus on addressing those related to scalability, heterogeneity of IoT components, and the highly dynamic and unknown nature of the network topology. In this paper, we give an overview of a service-oriented middle- ware solution that addresses those challenges using semantic technologies to provide interoperability and flexibility. We especially focus on modeling a set of ontologies that describe devices and their functionalities and thoroughly model the domain of physics. The physics domain is indeed at the core of the IoT, as it allows the approximation and estimation of functionalities usually provided by things. Those function- alities will be deployed as services on appropriate devices through our middleware

Service-Oriented Middleware for Large-Scale Mobile Participatory Sensing

International audienceIn this paper, we introduce MobIoT, a service-oriented middleware that enables large-scale mobile participatory sensing. Scalability is achieved by limiting the participation of redundant sensing devices. Precisely, MobIoT allows a new device to register its services only if it increases the sensing coverage of a physical attribute, along its expected path, for the set of registered devices. We present the design and implementation of MobIoT, which mobile devices use to determine their registration decision and become accessible for their services. Through experiments performed on real datasets, we show that our solution scales, while meeting sensing coverage requirements

Probabilistic Registration for Large-Scale Mobile Participatory Sensing

International audienceOne of the main benefits of mobile participatory sensing becoming a reality is the increased knowledge it will provide about the real world, as it is expected to rely on a large number of smart and mobile devices. Nowadays, those devices have the ability to host different types of sensors that will be incorporated in every aspect of our daily lives. However, given the constantly increasing number of capable mobile devices, any participatory sensing approach should be, first and foremost, scalable. To address this challenge, we present an approach to decrease the participation of devices (in sensing tasks) in a manner that does not compromise the accuracy of the real-world information while increasing the efficiency of the overall system. To reduce the number of the devices involved, we present a probabilistic registration approach enabling only a subset of devices to register their services while still providing adequate coverage of the deployment area. Our techniques, based on a re- alistic human mobility model, allow devices to decide whether or not to register their sensing services depending on the probability of other, equivalent devices being present at the locations of their expected path. We present the design and implementation of a registration middleware based on our techniques, using which mobile devices can base their registration decision. Through experiments performed on real and simulated datasets, we show that our approach scales, while not sacrificing significant amounts of sensing coverage

Service-Oriented Middleware for the Mobile Internet of Things: A Scalable Solution

International audienceThe Internet of Things (IoT) is characterized by a wide penetration in the regular user's life through an increasing number of mobile Things, such as mobile phones hosting sensors and actuators. However, the shift to the mobile IoT does not come without challenges, as many already existing issues remain unresolved and are amplified by the IoT scale and the mobility of its Things. The most challenging issues are handling the abundance of users and Things, providing interoperability across the heterogeneous Things, and overcoming the unknown dynamic environment due to the mobility of Things. This paper addresses the above challenges as we revisit the commonly used Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). This leads to the design, implementation and evaluation of MobIoT, a new service-oriented middleware. MobIoT modifies standard SOA functionalities, namely service discovery, composition and access, to better address the challenges posed by the IoT, especially its scale. Specifically, MobIoT adopts probabilistic methods to decrease the number of involved devices, while building on semantic knowledge to support interoperability and fulfill users' queries for Thing-based measurements/actions

Anti-inflammatory, antibacterial and antioxidant activities of the medicinal species <em>Atractylis cancellata</em>

This research is focused on the estimation of total bioactive contents and the evaluation of in vitro pharmacological activities of crude extracts (petroleum ether, ethyl acetate and n-butanol) obtained from the species Atractylis cancellata. The antioxidant activity was assessed by three different techniques. The antibacterial activity was determined using the agar disk diffusion assay against five bacterial strains. Furthermore, the anti-inflammatory activity was evaluated by the ovalbumin method. According to the results, A. cancellata extracts are rich in several classes of secondary metabolites, especially steroids, triterpenoids, flavonoids, and alkaloids. In addition, the tested extracts showed very interesting antioxidant activities in DPPH and FRAP assays and important correlation coefficients between the results of antioxidant activities and total phenolic and flavonoid contents were found. Moreover, all the tested extracts displayed an antibacterial effect at least against three bacterial strains. The petroleum ether extract inhibited the growth of all the tested bacteria in a dose-dependent manner except Escherichia coli ATCC 25922 and it revealed a strong anti-inflammatory activity (81.77±0.05%). We conclude that A. cancellata could be an important source of natural pharmacological candidates against oxidative stress, inflammatory and microbial diseases

Service-Oriented Middleware for the Future Internet: State of the Art and Research Directions

International audienceService-oriented computing is now acknowledged as a central paradigm for Internet computing, supported by tremendous research and technology development over the last ten years. However, the evolution of the Internet, and in particular, the latest Future Internet vision, challenges the paradigm. Indeed, service-oriented computing has to face the ultra large scale and heterogeneity of the Future Internet, which are orders of magnitude higher than those of today's service-oriented systems. This article aims at contributing to this objective by identifying the key research directions to be followed in light of the latest state of the art. This article more specifically focuses on research challenges for service-oriented middleware design, therefore investigating service description, discovery, access and composition in the Future Internet of services

Final CHOReOS Architectural Style and its Relation with the CHOReOS Development Process and IDRE

This is Part b of Deliverable D1.4, which specifies the final CHOReOS architectural style, that is, the types of components, connectors, and configurations that are composed within the Future Internet of services, as enabled by the CHOReOS technologies developed in WP2 to WP4 and integrated in the WP5 IDRE. The definition of the CHOReOS architectural style is especially guided by the objective of meeting the challenges posed by the Future Internet, i.e.: (i) the ultra large base of services and of consumers, (ii) the high heterogeneity of the services that get composed, from the ones offered by tiny things to the ones hosted on powerful cloud computing infrastructures, (iii) the increasing predominance of mobile consumers and services, which take over the original fixed Inter- net, and (iv) the required awareness of, and related adaptation to, the continuous environmental changes. Another critical challenge posed by the Future Internet is that of security, trust and privacy. However, the study of technologies dedicated to enforcing security, privacy and trust is beyond the scope of the CHOReOS project; instead, state of the art technologies and possibly latest results from projects focused on security solutions are built upon for the development of CHOReOS use cases -if and when needed-. The CHOReOS architectural style that is presented in this deliverable refines the definition of the early style introduced in Deliverable D1.3. Key features of the CHOReOS architectural elements are as follows: (1) The CHOReOS service-based components are technology agnostic and allow for the abstraction of the large diversity of Future Internet services, and particularly traditional Business services as well as Thing-based services; a key contribution of the component formalization lies in the inference of service abstractions that allows grouping services that are functionally similar in a systematic way, and thereby contributes to facing the ULS of the Future Internet together with dealing with system adaptation through service substitution. (2) The CHOReOS middleware-layer connectors span the variety of interaction paradigms, both discrete and continuous, which are used in today's increasingly complex distributed systems, as opposed to enforcing a single interaction paradigm that is commonly undertaken in traditional SOA; a central contribution of the connector formalization is the introduction of a multi-paradigm connector type, which not solely allows having highly heterogeneous services composed in the Future Internet but also having those heterogeneous services interoperating even if based on distinct interaction paradigms. (3) The CHOReOS coordination protocols introduce the third and last type of architectural elements char- acterizing the CHOReOS style. They specifically define the structure and behavior of service-oriented systems within the Future Internet as the fully distributed composition of services, i.e., choreographies; the key contribution of the work lies in a systematic model-based solution to choreography realizability, which synthesizes dedicated coordination delegates that govern the coordination of services

Integrated CHOReOS middleware - Enabling large-scale, QoS-aware adaptive choreographies

This document describes the final implementation and the evaluation of the CHOReOS middleware. Evaluation is achieved both via the use of the middleware on CHOReOS use-cases and via synthetic experiments and simulation. The conclusion was that the implementation of the CHOReOS middleware has achieved a good level of maturity for an open source project and it is ready to be used in real-world, complex choreographies

CHOReOS Middleware Specification (D3.1)

This deliverable specifies the main concepts of the CHOReOS middleware architecture. Starting from the Future Internet (FI) challenges for scalability, heterogeneity, mobility, awareness, and adaptation that have been investigated in prior work done in WP1, we introduce the aforementioned concepts to deal with the requirements derived from the FI challenges. In particular, we propose an extensible and scalable service discovery approach for the organization and discovery of services that relies on multiple service discovery protocols. Moreover, we introduce an extensible and scalable approach, based on the service bus paradigm, for service access that features the integration and adaptation of multiple interaction protocols. Furthermore, we propose solutions that enable the execution of FI service compositions that range from compositions of choreographed services, developed according to the CHOReOS development process, to massive compositions of things. Finally, we detail the Cloud & Grid middleware facilities that support the overall middleware and the choreographies that are built on it, via a unified API that provides access to multiple cloud infrastructures (e.g., Amazon EC2, HP Open Cirrus, private clouds)

Effect of Algorithm-Based Therapy vs Usual Care on Clinical Success and Serious Adverse Events in Patients with Staphylococcal Bacteremia: A Randomized Clinical Trial

Importance: The appropriate duration of antibiotics for staphylococcal bacteremia is unknown. Objective: To test whether an algorithm that defines treatment duration for staphylococcal bacteremia vs standard of care provides noninferior efficacy without increasing severe adverse events. Design, Setting, and Participants: A randomized trial involving adults with staphylococcal bacteremia was conducted at 16 academic medical centers in the United States (n = 15) and Spain (n = 1) from April 2011 to March 2017. Patients were followed up for 42 days beyond end of therapy for those with Staphylococcus aureus and 28 days for those with coagulase-negative staphylococcal bacteremia. Eligible patients were 18 years or older and had 1 or more blood cultures positive for S aureus or coagulase-negative staphylococci. Patients were excluded if they had known or suspected complicated infection at the time of randomization. Interventions: Patients were randomized to algorithm-based therapy (n = 255) or usual practice (n = 254). Diagnostic evaluation, antibiotic selection, and duration of therapy were predefined for the algorithm group, whereas clinicians caring for patients in the usual practice group had unrestricted choice of antibiotics, duration, and other aspects of clinical care. Main Outcomes and Measures: Coprimary outcomes were (1) clinical success, as determined by a blinded adjudication committee and tested for noninferiority within a 15% margin; and (2) serious adverse event rates in the intention-to-treat population, tested for superiority. The prespecified secondary outcome measure, tested for superiority, was antibiotic days among per-protocol patients with simple or uncomplicated bacteremia. Results: Among the 509 patients randomized (mean age, 56.6 [SD, 16.8] years; 226 [44.4%] women), 480 (94.3%) completed the trial. Clinical success was documented in 209 of 255 patients assigned to algorithm-based therapy and 207 of 254 randomized to usual practice (82.0% vs 81.5%; difference, 0.5% [1-sided 97.5% CI, -6.2% to ∞]). Serious adverse events were reported in 32.5% of algorithm-based therapy patients and 28.3% of usual practice patients (difference, 4.2% [95% CI, -3.8% to 12.2%]). Among per-protocol patients with simple or uncomplicated bacteremia, mean duration of therapy was 4.4 days for algorithm-based therapy vs 6.2 days for usual practice (difference, -1.8 days [95% CI, -3.1 to -0.6]). Conclusions and Relevance: Among patients with staphylococcal bacteremia, the use of an algorithm to guide testing and treatment compared with usual care resulted in a noninferior rate of clinical success. Rates of serious adverse events were not significantly different, but interpretation is limited by wide confidence intervals. Further research is needed to assess the utility of the algorithm. Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT01191840