Enabling IoT ecosystems through platform interoperability

Today, the Internet of Things (IoT) comprises vertically oriented platforms for things. Developers who want to use them need to negotiate access individually and adapt to the platform-specific API and information models. Having to perform these actions for each platform often outweighs the possible gains from adapting applications to multiple platforms. This fragmentation of the IoT and the missing interoperability result in high entry barriers for developers and prevent the emergence of broadly accepted IoT ecosystems. The BIG IoT (Bridging the Interoperability Gap of the IoT) project aims to ignite an IoT ecosystem as part of the European Platforms Initiative. As part of the project, researchers have devised an IoT ecosystem architecture. It employs five interoperability patterns that enable cross-platform interoperability and can help establish successful IoT ecosystems.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Positioning and Sensing in 6G: Gaps, Challenges, and Opportunities

Among the key differentiators of 6G compared to 5G will be the increased emphasis on radio-based positioning and sensing. These will be utilized not only for conventional location-aware services and for enhancing communication performance but also to support new use case families with extreme performance requirements. This article presents a unified vision from stakeholders across the value chain in terms of both opportunities and challenges for 6G positioning and sensing as well as use cases, performance requirements, and gap analysis. Combined, this motivates the technical advances in 6G and guides system design

6G Positioning and Sensing Through the Lens of Sustainability, Inclusiveness, and Trustworthiness

6G promises a paradigm shift in which positioning and sensing are inherently integrated, enhancing not only the communication performance but also enabling location- and context-aware services. Historically, positioning and sensing have been viewed through the lens of cost and performance trade-offs, implying an escalated demand for resources, such as radio, physical, and computational resources, for improved performance. However, 6G goes beyond this traditional perspective to encompass a set of broader values, namely sustainability, inclusiveness, and trustworthiness. This paper aims to: (i) shed light on these important value indicators and their relationship with the conventional key performance indicators, and (ii) unveil the dual nature of 6G in relation to these key value indicators (i.e., ensuring operation according to the values and enabling services that affect the values)

Digital Twins for Industry 4.0 in the 6G Era

Having the Fifth Generation (5G) mobile communication system recently rolled out in many countries, the wireless community is now setting its eyes on the next era of Sixth Generation (6G). Inheriting from 5G its focus on industrial use cases, 6G is envisaged to become the infrastructural backbone of future intelligent industry. Especially, a combination of 6G and the emerging technologies of Digital Twins (DT) will give impetus to the next evolution of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) systems. This article provides a survey in the research area of 6G-empowered industrial DT system. With a novel vision of 6G industrial DT ecosystem, this survey discusses the ambitions and potential applications of industrial DT in the 6G era, identifying the emerging challenges as well as the key enabling technologies. The introduced ecosystem is supposed to bridge the gaps between humans, machines, and the data infrastructure, and therewith enable numerous novel application scenarios.Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE Open Journal of Vehicular Technolog

Fatty Liver, Insulin Resistance, and Features of Metabolic Syndrome:Relationships with coronary artery calcium in 10,153 people

OBJECTIVE: Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) coexists with insulin resistance (IR), but it is uncertain whether NAFLD and IR contribute independently to atherosclerosis. We tested whether fatty liver, IR, and metabolic syndrome (MetS) features (waist, glucose, triglyceride, HDL cholesterol [HDL-C], and blood pressure) were associated with a marker of atherosclerosis (coronary artery calcium [CAC] score >0), independently of cardiovascular risk factors and cardiovascular disease (CVD). RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: Data were analyzed from a South Korean occupational cohort of 10,153 people who all received ultrasound measurements of fatty liver and a cardiac computed tomography CAC score. IR was defined by homeostasis model assessment of IR (HOMA-IR) ≥75th percentile. Odds ratios (ORs) (95% CIs) for the presence of a CAC score >0 were estimated using logistic regression. RESULTS: There were 915 people with a CAC score >0. MetS features were increased (glucose, blood pressure, triglyceride, and waist) or decreased (HDL-C) among people with a CAC score >0 (all comparisons against CAC score ≤0; P < 0.0001). Of subjects with a CAC score >0, 55% had fatty liver and 33.7% were insulin resistant. Fatty liver (OR 1.21 [95% CI 1.01–1.45]; P = 0.04) and HOMA-IR (1.10 [1.02–1.18]; P = 0.02) were associated with CAC score >0, independently of all MetS features, conventional cardiovascular risk factors, and prior evidence of CVD. The presence of IR and fatty liver combined was associated with CAC score >0 (1.53 [1.20–1.95]; P = 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Fatty liver and HOMA-IR are both associated with a CAC score >0 (independently of each other), features of MetS, conventional cardiovascular risk factors, and existing CVD

A Hubble Space Telescope Survey of H2 Emission in the Circumstellar Environments of Young Stars

The formation timescale and final architecture of exoplanetary systems are closely related to the properties of the molecular disks from which they form. Observations of the spatial distribution and lifetime of the molecular gas at planet-forming radii (r < 10 AU) are important for understanding the formation and evolution of exoplanetary systems. Towards this end, we present the largest spectrally resolved survey of H2 emission around low-mass pre-main sequence stars compiled to date. We use a combination of new and archival far-ultraviolet spectra from the COS and STIS instruments on the Hubble Space Telescope to sample 34 T Tauri stars (27 actively accreting CTTSs and 7 non-accreting WTTSs) with ages ranging from roughly 1-10 Myr. We observe fluorescent H2 emission, excited by LyA photons, in 100 of the accreting sources, including all of the transitional disks in our sample (CS Cha, DM Tau, GM Aur, UX Tau A, LkCa15, HD 135344B and TW Hya). The spatial distribution of the emitting gas is inferred from spectrally resolved H2 line profiles. Some of the emitting gas is produced in outflowing material, but the majority of H2 emission appears to originate in a rotating disk. For the disk-dominated targets, the H2 emission originates predominately at r < 3 AU. The emission line-widths and inner molecular radii are found to be roughly consistent with those measured from mid-IR CO spectra.Comment: ApJ - accepted. 19 pages, 12 figure

Towards joint communication and sensing (Chapter 4)

Localization of user equipment (UE) in mobile communication networks has been supported from the early stages of 3rd generation partnership project (3GPP). With 5th Generation (5G) and its target use cases, localization is increasingly gaining importance. Integrated sensing and localization in 6th Generation (6G) networks promise the introduction of more efficient networks and compelling applications to be developed

Resistance training and redox homeostasis: Correlation with age-associated genomic changes

Regular physical activity is effective as prevention and treatment for different chronic conditions related to the ageing processes. In fact, a sedentary lifestyle has been linked to a worsening of cellular ageing biomarkers such as telomere length (TL) and/or specific epigenetic changes (e.g. DNA methylation), with increase of the propensity to aging-related diseases and premature death. Extending our previous findings, we aimed to test the hypothesis that 12 weeks of low frequency, moderate intensity, explosive-type resistance training (EMRT) may attenuate age-associated genomic changes. To this aim, TL, global DNA methylation, TRF2, Ku80, SIRT1, SIRT2 and global protein acetylation, as well as other proteins involved in apoptotic pathway (Bcl-2, Bax and Caspase-3), antioxidant response (TrxR1 and MnSOD) and oxidative damage (myeloperoxidase) were evaluated before and after EMRT in whole blood or peripheral mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of elderly subjects. Our findings confirm the potential of EMRT to induce an adaptive change in the antioxidant protein systems at systemic level and suggest a putative role of resistance training in the reduction of global DNA methylation. Moreover, we observed that EMRT counteracts the telomeres’ shortening in a manner that proved to be directly correlated with the amelioration of redox homeostasis and efficacy of training regime, evaluated as improvement of both muscle's power/strength and functional parameters

γ-Glutamyltransferase, but not markers of hepatic fibrosis, is associated with cardiovascular disease in older people with type 2 diabetes mellitus: the Edinburgh Type 2 Diabetes Study

AIMS/HYPOTHESIS: We examined the association of prevalent and incident cardiovascular disease (CVD) with chronic liver disease in a cohort of community-based people with type 2 diabetes, in order to clarify the relationship between these two important conditions. METHODS: 1,066 participants with type 2 diabetes aged 60–75 years underwent assessment of a range of liver injury markers (non-specific injury, steatosis, steatohepatitis, fibrosis, portal hypertension). Individuals were followed up for incident cardiovascular events. RESULTS: At baseline there were 370/1,033 patients with prevalent CVD, including 317/1,033 with coronary artery disease (CAD). After a mean follow-up of 4.4 years there were 44/663 incident CVD events, including 27/663 CAD events. There were 30/82 CVD-related deaths. Risk of dying from or developing CVD was no higher in participants with steatosis than in those without (HR 0.90; 95% CI 0.40, 2.00; p > 0.05). The only notable relationship was with γ-glutamyltransferase (GGT) (incident CVD: adjusted HR for doubling GGT 1.24 [95% CI 0.97, 1.59] p = 0.086; incident CAD: adjusted HR 1.33 [95% CI 1.00, 1.78] p = 0.053), suggesting that in our study population, chronic liver disease may have little effect on the development of, or mortality from, CVD. CONCLUSIONS/INTERPRETATION: An independent association between GGT and CVD warrants further exploration as a potentially useful addition to current cardiovascular risk prediction models in diabetes. However, overall findings failed to suggest that there is a clinical or pathophysiological association between chronic liver disease and CVD in elderly people with type 2 diabetes. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00125-015-3575-y) contains peer-reviewed but unedited supplementary material, which is available to authorised users