IoT requirements and architecture for personal health

Personal health devices and wearables have the potential to drastically change the current landscape of wellness and care delivery. As these devices become commonplace, more and more patients are gaining access to new forms of simplified health monitoring and data collection, empowering them to engage in their own health and well-being in unprecedented ways. Cheap and easy-to-use health IoT devices are leading the transformation towards a continuum-of-care health system—focused on detection and prevention—where health issues can be caught before hospital care or professional intervention is needed. However, this vision is set to outpace the expectations and capabilities of today’s connected health devices, challenging existing ecosystems with unique requirements on functionality, connectivity, and usability. This thesis presents a set of health IoT requirements that are especially relevant to the design of a connected device’s low-level software features: its thing architecture. These requirements represent shared concerns in health-related IoT scenarios that can be solved with the features and capabilities of smart things. The thesis presents an architectural design and implementation of concrete features influenced by some of these requirements—leading to the Atlas Health IoT Architecture—which explores the role of safe and meaningful interactions between devices and users, referred to as IoTility. The thesis also considers the IoTility of smartphone applications in health scenarios, called Mobile Apps As Things (MAAT), resulting in a programming enabler that more closely integrates app features with those of physical thing devices. Alongside these implementations, this thesis presents a set of experimental evaluations investigating the feasibility of both MAAT and the architectural requirements as a whole

Service-Relationship Programming Framework for the Social IoT

We argue that for a true realization of innovative programming opportunities for smart spaces, the developers should be equipped with informative tools that assist them in building domain-related applications. Such tools should utilize the services offered by the space's smart things and consider the different relationships that may tie these services opportunistically to build applications. In this paper, we utilize our Inter-thing relationships programming framework to present a distributed programming ecosystem. The framework broadens the restricted set of thing-level relationships of the evolving social IoT paradigm with a set of service-level relationships. Such relationships provide guidance into how services belonging to different things can be combined to build meaningful applications. We also present a uniform way of describing the thing services and the service-level relationships along with new capabilities for the things to dynamically generate their own services, formulate the corresponding programmable interfaces (APIs) and create an ad-hoc network of socially related smart things at runtime. We then present the semantic rules that guide the establishment of IoT applications and finally demonstrate the features of the framework through a proof-of-concept application

The Importance of Being Thing:Or the Trivial Role of Powering Serious IoT Scenarios

In this article, we call for a "Walk Before You Run" adjustment in the Internet-of-Things (IoT) research and development exercise. Without first settling the quest for what thing is or could be or do, we run the risk of presumptuous visions, or hypes, that can only fail the realities and limits of what is actually possible, leading to customers and consumers confusion as well as market hesitations. Specifically, without a carefully-designed Thing architecture in place, it will be very difficult to find the “magic” we are so addicted and accustomed to – programming! Programming the IoT, as we once programmed the mainframe, the workstation, the PC and the mobile devices, is the natural way to realize a fancy IoT scenario or an application. Without Thing architectures and their enablement of new programming models for IoT – we will continue to only envision fancy scenarios but unable to unleash the IoT full potential. This article raises these concerns and provides a view into the future by first looking back into our short history of pervasive computing. The article focuses on the domain of “Personal” IoT and will address key new requirements for such Thing architecture. Also, practicing what we preach, we present our ongoing efforts on the Atlas Thing Architecture showing how it supports a variety of thing notions, and how it enables novel models for programmability

IoT-DDL—Device Description Language for the “T” in IoT

We argue that the success of the Internet of Things (IoT) vision will greatly depend on how its main ingredient—the “thing”—is architected and prepared to engage. The IoT’s fragmented and wide-varying nature introduces the need for additional effort to homogenize these things so they may blend together with the surrounding space to create opportunities for powerful and unprecedented IoT applications. We introduce the IoT Device Description Language (IoT-DDL), a machine- and human-readable descriptive language for things, seeking to achieve such integration and homogenization. IoT-DDL explicitly tools things to self-discover and securely share their own capabilities, entities, and services, including the various cloudbased accessories that may be attached to them. We also present the Atlas thing architecture—a lightweight architecture for things that fully exploits IoT-DDL and its specifications. Our architecture provides new OS layers, services, and capabilities we believe a thing must have in order to be prepared to engage in IoT scenarios and applications. The architecture and IoT-DDL enable things to generate their offered services and self-formulate APIs for such services, on the fly, at power-on or whenever a thing description changes. The architecture takes advantage of widely used device management, micro-services, security, and communication standards and protocols. We present details of IoT-DDL and corresponding parts of the thing architecture. We demonstrate some features of IoT-DDL and the architecture through proof-of-concept implementations. Finally, we present a benchmarking study to measure and assess time performance and energy consumption characteristics of our architecture and IoT-DDL on real hardware platforms

Evidence for the Higgs-boson Yukawa coupling to tau leptons with the ATLAS detector

Results of a search for H → τ τ decays are presented, based on the full set of proton-proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the LHC during 2011 and 2012. The data correspond to integrated luminosities of 4.5 fb−1 and 20.3 fb−1 at centre-of-mass energies of √s = 7 TeV and √s = 8 TeV respectively. All combinations of leptonic (τ → `νν¯ with ` = e, µ) and hadronic (τ → hadrons ν) tau decays are considered. An excess of events over the expected background from other Standard Model processes is found with an observed (expected) significance of 4.5 (3.4) standard deviations. This excess provides evidence for the direct coupling of the recently discovered Higgs boson to fermions. The measured signal strength, normalised to the Standard Model expectation, of µ = 1.43 +0.43 −0.37 is consistent with the predicted Yukawa coupling strength in the Standard Model

Measurements of fiducial and differential cross sections for Higgs boson production in the diphoton decay channel at s√=8 TeV with ATLAS

Measurements of fiducial and differential cross sections are presented for Higgs boson production in proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of s√=8 TeV. The analysis is performed in the H → γγ decay channel using 20.3 fb−1 of data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The signal is extracted using a fit to the diphoton invariant mass spectrum assuming that the width of the resonance is much smaller than the experimental resolution. The signal yields are corrected for the effects of detector inefficiency and resolution. The pp → H → γγ fiducial cross section is measured to be 43.2 ±9.4(stat.) − 2.9 + 3.2 (syst.) ±1.2(lumi)fb for a Higgs boson of mass 125.4GeV decaying to two isolated photons that have transverse momentum greater than 35% and 25% of the diphoton invariant mass and each with absolute pseudorapidity less than 2.37. Four additional fiducial cross sections and two cross-section limits are presented in phase space regions that test the theoretical modelling of different Higgs boson production mechanisms, or are sensitive to physics beyond the Standard Model. Differential cross sections are also presented, as a function of variables related to the diphoton kinematics and the jet activity produced in the Higgs boson events. The observed spectra are statistically limited but broadly in line with the theoretical expectations

Measurement of χ c1 and χ c2 production with s√ = 7 TeV pp collisions at ATLAS

The prompt and non-prompt production cross-sections for the χ c1 and χ c2 charmonium states are measured in pp collisions at s√ = 7 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC using 4.5 fb−1 of integrated luminosity. The χ c states are reconstructed through the radiative decay χ c → J/ψγ (with J/ψ → μ + μ −) where photons are reconstructed from γ → e + e − conversions. The production rate of the χ c2 state relative to the χ c1 state is measured for prompt and non-prompt χ c as a function of J/ψ transverse momentum. The prompt χ c cross-sections are combined with existing measurements of prompt J/ψ production to derive the fraction of prompt J/ψ produced in feed-down from χ c decays. The fractions of χ c1 and χ c2 produced in b-hadron decays are also measured

Search for squarks and gluinos in events with isolated leptons, jets and missing transverse momentum at s√=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

The results of a search for supersymmetry in final states containing at least one isolated lepton (electron or muon), jets and large missing transverse momentum with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider are reported. The search is based on proton-proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy s√=8 TeV collected in 2012, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 20 fb−1. No significant excess above the Standard Model expectation is observed. Limits are set on supersymmetric particle masses for various supersymmetric models. Depending on the model, the search excludes gluino masses up to 1.32 TeV and squark masses up to 840 GeV. Limits are also set on the parameters of a minimal universal extra dimension model, excluding a compactification radius of 1/R c = 950 GeV for a cut-off scale times radius (ΛR c) of approximately 30

Measurement of the production of a W boson in association with a charm quark in pp collisions at √s = 7 TeV with the ATLAS detector

The production of a W boson in association with a single charm quark is studied using 4.6 fb−1 of pp collision data at s√ = 7 TeV collected with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. In events in which a W boson decays to an electron or muon, the charm quark is tagged either by its semileptonic decay to a muon or by the presence of a charmed meson. The integrated and differential cross sections as a function of the pseudorapidity of the lepton from the W-boson decay are measured. Results are compared to the predictions of next-to-leading-order QCD calculations obtained from various parton distribution function parameterisations. The ratio of the strange-to-down sea-quark distributions is determined to be 0.96+0.26−0.30 at Q 2 = 1.9 GeV2, which supports the hypothesis of an SU(3)-symmetric composition of the light-quark sea. Additionally, the cross-section ratio σ(W + +c¯¯)/σ(W − + c) is compared to the predictions obtained using parton distribution function parameterisations with different assumptions about the s−s¯¯¯ quark asymmetry

Measurement of the cross-section of high transverse momentum vector bosons reconstructed as single jets and studies of jet substructure in pp collisions at √s = 7 TeV with the ATLAS detector

This paper presents a measurement of the cross-section for high transverse momentum W and Z bosons produced in pp collisions and decaying to all-hadronic final states. The data used in the analysis were recorded by the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider at a centre-of-mass energy of √s = 7 TeV;{\rm Te}{\rm V}$and correspond to an integrated luminosity of$4.6\;{\rm f}{{{\rm b}}^{-1}}$. The measurement is performed by reconstructing the boosted W or Z bosons in single jets. The reconstructed jet mass is used to identify the W and Z bosons, and a jet substructure method based on energy cluster information in the jet centre-of-mass frame is used to suppress the large multi-jet background. The cross-section for events with a hadronically decaying W or Z boson, with transverse momentum${{p}_{{\rm T}}}\gt 320\;{\rm Ge}{\rm V}$and pseudorapidity$|\eta |\lt 1.9$, is measured to be${{\sigma }_{W+Z}}=8.5\pm 1.7$ pb and is compared to next-to-leading-order calculations. The selected events are further used to study jet grooming techniques