Privacy in Georeferenced Context-Aware Services: A Survey

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Riboni, Daniele; Pareschi, Linda; Bettini, Claudio

Location based services (LBS) are a specific instance of a broader class of Internet services that are predicted to become popular in a near future: context-aware services. The privacy concerns that LBS have raised are likely to become even more serious when several context data, other than location and time, are sent to service providers as part of an Internet request. This paper provides a classification and a brief survey of the privacy preservation techniques that have been proposed for this type of services. After identifying the benefits and shortcomings of each class of techniques, the paper proposes a combined approach to achieve a more comprehensive solution for privacy preservation in georeferenced context-aware services.

Modeling Adaptable Business Service for Enterprise Collaboration

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Boukadi, Khouloud; Vincent, Lucien; Burlat, Patrick

Nowadays, a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) seems to be one of the most promising paradigms for leveraging enterprise information systems. SOA creates opportunities for enterprises to provide value added service tailored for on demand enterprise collaboration. With the emergence and rapid development of Web services technologies, SOA is being paid increasing attention and has become widespread. In spite of the popularity of SOA, a standardized framework for modeling and implementing business services are still in progress. For the purpose of supporting these service-oriented solutions, we adopt a model driven development approach. This paper outlines the Contextual Service Oriented Modeling and Analysis (CSOMA) methodology and presents UML profiles for the PIM level service-oriented architectural modeling, as well as its corresponding meta-models. The proposed PIM (Platform Independent Model) describes the business SOA at a high level of abstraction regardless of techniques involved in the application employment. In addition, all essential service-specific concerns required for delivering quality and context-aware service are covered. Some of the advantages of this approach are that it is generic and thus not closely allied with Web service technology as well as specifically treating the service adaptability during the design stage.

Applications of Lexical Link Analysis Web Service for Large-Scale Automation, Validation, Discovery, Visualization, and Real-Time Program-Awareness

DTIC Science & Technology

2012-04-30

individualistic , Western view of human behavior. That is, it assumes that people adhere to the individualistic principles of Western culture . What happens to...people with networks rich in structural holes that live/work in environments that adhere to other principles, such as those of a collectivistic ... culture ? •http://orgtheory.wordpress.com/2007/06/19/structural-holes-in-context/ Preferential Attachment (PA) [Barabási & Albert, 1999] • The most

A wearable context aware system for ubiquitous healthcare.

PubMed

Kang, Dong-Oh; Lee, Hyung-Jik; Ko, Eun-Jung; Kang, Kyuchang; Lee, Jeunwoo

2006-01-01

Recent developments of information technologies are leading the advent of the era of ubiquitous healthcare, which means healthcare services at any time and at any places. The ubiquitous healthcare service needs a wearable system for more continual measurement of biological signals of a user, which gives information of the user from wearable sensors. In this paper, we propose a wearable context aware system for ubiquitous healthcare, and its systematic design process of a ubiquitous healthcare service. Some wearable sensor systems are introduced with Zigbee communication. We develop a context aware framework to send information from wearable sensors to healthcare service entities as a middleware to solve the interoperability problem between sensor makers and healthcare service providers. And, we propose a systematic process of design of ubiquitous healthcare services with the context aware framework. In order to show the feasibility of the proposed system, some application examples are given, which are applied to remote monitoring, and a self check service.

Grid Computing: Topology-Aware, Peer-to-Peer, Power-Aware, and Embedded Web Services

DTIC Science & Technology

2003-09-22

Dist Simulation • Time Management enables temporal causality to be enforced in Distributed Simulations • Typically enforced via a Lower Bound Time...algorithm • Distinguished Root Node Algorithm developed as a topology-aware time management service – Relies on a tree from end-hosts to a

A System to Provide Real-Time Collaborative Situational Awareness by Web Enabling a Distributed Sensor Network

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Panangadan, Anand; Monacos, Steve; Burleigh, Scott; Joswig, Joseph; James, Mark; Chow, Edward

2012-01-01

In this paper, we describe the architecture of both the PATS and SAP systems and how these two systems interoperate with each other forming a unified capability for deploying intelligence in hostile environments with the objective of providing actionable situational awareness of individuals. The SAP system works in concert with the UICDS information sharing middleware to provide data fusion from multiple sources. UICDS can then publish the sensor data using the OGC's Web Mapping Service, Web Feature Service, and Sensor Observation Service standards. The system described in the paper is able to integrate a spatially distributed sensor system, operating without the benefit of the Web infrastructure, with a remote monitoring and control system that is equipped to take advantage of SWE.

Development and Evaluation of a Web 2.0-Based Ubiquitous Learning Platform for Schoolyard Plant Identification

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hwang, Gwo-Haur; Chu, Hui-Chun; Chen, Beyin; Cheng, Zheng Shan

2014-01-01

The rapid progress of wireless communication, sensing, and mobile technologies has enabled students to learn in an environment that combines learning resources from both the real world and the digital world. It can be viewed as a new learning style which has been called context-aware ubiquitous learning. Most context-aware ubiquitous learning…

A Service-oriented Approach towards Context-aware Mobile Learning Management Systems

DTIC Science & Technology

2010-07-01

towards a pervasive university. Keywords-context-aware computing, service-oriented archi- tecture, mobile computing, elearning , learn management sys- tem I...usage of device- specific features provide support for various ubiquitous and pervasive eLearning scenarios [2][3]. By knowing where the user currently...data from the mobile device towards a context-aware mobile LMS. II. BASIC CONCEPTS For a better understanding of the presented eLearning sce- narios

Compression-based aggregation model for medical web services.

PubMed

Al-Shammary, Dhiah; Khalil, Ibrahim

2010-01-01

Many organizations such as hospitals have adopted Cloud Web services in applying their network services to avoid investing heavily computing infrastructure. SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) is the basic communication protocol of Cloud Web services that is XML based protocol. Generally,Web services often suffer congestions and bottlenecks as a result of the high network traffic that is caused by the large XML overhead size. At the same time, the massive load on Cloud Web services in terms of the large demand of client requests has resulted in the same problem. In this paper, two XML-aware aggregation techniques that are based on exploiting the compression concepts are proposed in order to aggregate the medical Web messages and achieve higher message size reduction.

Intelligent Context-Aware and Adaptive Interface for Mobile LBS

PubMed Central

Liu, Yanhong

2015-01-01

Context-aware user interface plays an important role in many human-computer Interaction tasks of location based services. Although spatial models for context-aware systems have been studied extensively, how to locate specific spatial information for users is still not well resolved, which is important in the mobile environment where location based services users are impeded by device limitations. Better context-aware human-computer interaction models of mobile location based services are needed not just to predict performance outcomes, such as whether people will be able to find the information needed to complete a human-computer interaction task, but to understand human processes that interact in spatial query, which will in turn inform the detailed design of better user interfaces in mobile location based services. In this study, a context-aware adaptive model for mobile location based services interface is proposed, which contains three major sections: purpose, adjustment, and adaptation. Based on this model we try to describe the process of user operation and interface adaptation clearly through the dynamic interaction between users and the interface. Then we show how the model applies users' demands in a complicated environment and suggested the feasibility by the experimental results. PMID:26457077

A Multi-Temporal Context-Aware System for Competences Management

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rosa, João H.; Barbosa, Jorge L.; Kich, Marcos; Brito, Lucas

2015-01-01

The evolution of computing technology and wireless networks has contributed to the miniaturization of mobile devices and their increase in power, providing services anywhere and anytime. In this scenario, applications have considered the user's contexts to make decisions (Context Awareness). Context-aware applications have enabled new…

Awareness Through Agility: Teenagers as a Model for Terrorist Development of Situational Awareness

DTIC Science & Technology

2006-05-01

relationship. Two of the most popular social networking sites are Myspace.com and Facebook.com. MySpace is currently the world’s...blogs allows teenagers to express themselves and, in some cases, gain limited notoriety. Blogs differ from web-based social networking sites as the...posted to web-based social networking sites , blogs, or instant messaging profiles; pictures that are taken out of context can be sent via cell

An Automatic Web Service Composition Framework Using QoS-Based Web Service Ranking Algorithm.

PubMed

Mallayya, Deivamani; Ramachandran, Baskaran; Viswanathan, Suganya

2015-01-01

Web service has become the technology of choice for service oriented computing to meet the interoperability demands in web applications. In the Internet era, the exponential addition of web services nominates the "quality of service" as essential parameter in discriminating the web services. In this paper, a user preference based web service ranking (UPWSR) algorithm is proposed to rank web services based on user preferences and QoS aspect of the web service. When the user's request cannot be fulfilled by a single atomic service, several existing services should be composed and delivered as a composition. The proposed framework allows the user to specify the local and global constraints for composite web services which improves flexibility. UPWSR algorithm identifies best fit services for each task in the user request and, by choosing the number of candidate services for each task, reduces the time to generate the composition plans. To tackle the problem of web service composition, QoS aware automatic web service composition (QAWSC) algorithm proposed in this paper is based on the QoS aspects of the web services and user preferences. The proposed framework allows user to provide feedback about the composite service which improves the reputation of the services.

An Automatic Web Service Composition Framework Using QoS-Based Web Service Ranking Algorithm

PubMed Central

Mallayya, Deivamani; Ramachandran, Baskaran; Viswanathan, Suganya

2015-01-01

Web service has become the technology of choice for service oriented computing to meet the interoperability demands in web applications. In the Internet era, the exponential addition of web services nominates the “quality of service” as essential parameter in discriminating the web services. In this paper, a user preference based web service ranking (UPWSR) algorithm is proposed to rank web services based on user preferences and QoS aspect of the web service. When the user's request cannot be fulfilled by a single atomic service, several existing services should be composed and delivered as a composition. The proposed framework allows the user to specify the local and global constraints for composite web services which improves flexibility. UPWSR algorithm identifies best fit services for each task in the user request and, by choosing the number of candidate services for each task, reduces the time to generate the composition plans. To tackle the problem of web service composition, QoS aware automatic web service composition (QAWSC) algorithm proposed in this paper is based on the QoS aspects of the web services and user preferences. The proposed framework allows user to provide feedback about the composite service which improves the reputation of the services. PMID:26504894

Network-Based Learning and Assessment Applications on the Semantic Web

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gibson, David

2005-01-01

Today's Web applications are already "aware" of the network of computers and data on the Internet, in the sense that they perceive, remember, and represent knowledge external to themselves. However, Web applications are generally not able to respond to the meaning and context of the information in their memories. As a result, most applications are…

FleXConf: A Flexible Conference Assistant Using Context-Aware Notification Services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Armenatzoglou, Nikos; Marketakis, Yannis; Kriara, Lito; Apostolopoulos, Elias; Papavasiliou, Vicky; Kampas, Dimitris; Kapravelos, Alexandros; Kartsonakis, Eythimis; Linardakis, Giorgos; Nikitaki, Sofia; Bikakis, Antonis; Antoniou, Grigoris

Integrating context-aware notification services to ubiquitous computing systems aims at the provision of the right information to the right users, at the right time, in the right place, and on the right device, and constitutes a significant step towards the realization of the Ambient Intelligence vision. In this paper, we present FlexConf, a semantics-based system that supports location-based, personalized notification services for the assistance of conference attendees. Its special features include an ontology-based representation model, rule-based context-aware reasoning, and a novel positioning system for indoor environments.

School Counselors’ Perspectives of a Web-Based Stepped Care Mental Health Service for Schools: Cross-Sectional Online Survey

PubMed Central

King, Catherine; Subotic-Kerry, Mirjana; O'Moore, Kathleen; Christensen, Helen

2017-01-01

Background Mental health problems are common among youth in high school, and school counselors play a key role in the provision of school-based mental health care. However, school counselors occupy a multispecialist position that makes it difficult for them to provide care to all of those who are in need in a timely manner. A Web-based mental health service that offers screening, psychological therapy, and monitoring may help counselors manage time and provide additional oversight to students. However, for such a model to be implemented successfully, school counselors’ attitudes toward Web-based resources and services need to be measured. Objective This study aimed to examine the acceptability of a proposed Web-based mental health service, the feasibility of providing this type of service in the school context, and the barriers and facilitators to implementation as perceived by school counselors in New South Wales (NSW), Australia. Methods This study utilized an online cross-sectional survey to measure school counselors’ perspectives. Results A total of 145 school counselors completed the survey. Overall, 82.1% (119/145) thought that the proposed service would be helpful to students. One-third reported that they would recommend the proposed model, with the remaining reporting potential concerns. Years of experience was the only background factor associated with a higher level of comfort with the proposed service (P=.048). Personal beliefs, knowledge and awareness, Internet accessibility, privacy, and confidentiality were found to influence, both positively and negatively, the likelihood of school counselors implementing a Web-based school mental health service. Conclusions The findings of this study confirmed that greater support and resources are needed to facilitate what is already a challenging and emotionally demanding role for school counselors. Although the school counselors in this study were open to the proposed service model, successful implementation will require that the issues outlined are carefully addressed. PMID:29158207

ERMHAN: A Context-Aware Service Platform to Support Continuous Care Networks for Home-Based Assistance

PubMed Central

Paganelli, Federica; Spinicci, Emilio; Giuli, Dino

2008-01-01

Continuous care models for chronic diseases pose several technology-oriented challenges for home-based continuous care, where assistance services rely on a close collaboration among different stakeholders such as health operators, patient relatives, and social community members. Here we describe Emilia Romagna Mobile Health Assistance Network (ERMHAN) a multichannel context-aware service platform designed to support care networks in cooperating and sharing information with the goal of improving patient quality of life. In order to meet extensibility and flexibility requirements, this platform has been developed through ontology-based context-aware computing and a service oriented approach. We also provide some preliminary results of performance analysis and user survey activity. PMID:18695739

Electronic Current Awareness in the Corporate Environment.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sale, Elizabeth

Technological developments such as groupware and World Wide Web technology have opened up new opportunities for the delivery of information directly to the end-user's desktop. These advances have meant that suppliers are now producing a new breed of current awareness services (CAS), termed alerting services, which automatically filter newswires…

Context-aware workflow management of mobile health applications.

PubMed

Salden, Alfons; Poortinga, Remco

2006-01-01

We propose a medical application management architecture that allows medical (IT) experts readily designing, developing and deploying context-aware mobile health (m-health) applications or services. In particular, we elaborate on how our application workflow management architecture enables chaining, coordinating, composing, and adapting context-sensitive medical application components such that critical Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Context (QoC) requirements typical for m-health applications or services can be met. This functional architectural support requires learning modules for distilling application-critical selection of attention and anticipation models. These models will help medical experts constructing and adjusting on-the-fly m-health application workflows and workflow strategies. We illustrate our context-aware workflow management paradigm for a m-health data delivery problem, in which optimal communication network configurations have to be determined.

Context Aware Middleware Architectures: Survey and Challenges

PubMed Central

Li, Xin; Eckert, Martina; Martinez, José-Fernán; Rubio, Gregorio

2015-01-01

Context aware applications, which can adapt their behaviors to changing environments, are attracting more and more attention. To simplify the complexity of developing applications, context aware middleware, which introduces context awareness into the traditional middleware, is highlighted to provide a homogeneous interface involving generic context management solutions. This paper provides a survey of state-of-the-art context aware middleware architectures proposed during the period from 2009 through 2015. First, a preliminary background, such as the principles of context, context awareness, context modelling, and context reasoning, is provided for a comprehensive understanding of context aware middleware. On this basis, an overview of eleven carefully selected middleware architectures is presented and their main features explained. Then, thorough comparisons and analysis of the presented middleware architectures are performed based on technical parameters including architectural style, context abstraction, context reasoning, scalability, fault tolerance, interoperability, service discovery, storage, security & privacy, context awareness level, and cloud-based big data analytics. The analysis shows that there is actually no context aware middleware architecture that complies with all requirements. Finally, challenges are pointed out as open issues for future work. PMID:26307988

An Intelligent Semantic E-Learning Framework Using Context-Aware Semantic Web Technologies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Huang, Weihong; Webster, David; Wood, Dawn; Ishaya, Tanko

2006-01-01

Recent developments of e-learning specifications such as Learning Object Metadata (LOM), Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM), Learning Design and other pedagogy research in semantic e-learning have shown a trend of applying innovative computational techniques, especially Semantic Web technologies, to promote existing content-focused…

A Context-Aware Mobile User Behavior-Based Neighbor Finding Approach for Preference Profile Construction †

PubMed Central

Gao, Qian; Fu, Deqian; Dong, Xiangjun

2016-01-01

In this paper, a new approach is adopted to update the user preference profile by seeking users with similar interests based on the context obtainable for a mobile network instead of from desktop networks. The trust degree between mobile users is calculated by analyzing their behavior based on the context, and then the approximate neighbors are chosen by combining the similarity of the mobile user preference and the trust degree. The approach first considers the communication behaviors between mobile users, the mobile network services they use as well as the corresponding context information. Then a similarity degree of the preference between users is calculated with the evaluation score of a certain mobile web service provided by a mobile user. Finally, based on the time attenuation function, the users with similar preference are found, through which we can dynamically update the target user’s preference profile. Experiments are then conducted to test the effect of the context on the credibility among mobile users, the effect of time decay factors and trust degree thresholds. Simulation shows that the proposed approach outperforms two other methods in terms of Recall Ratio, Precision Ratio and Mean Absolute Error, because neither of them consider the context mobile information. PMID:26805852

Context Aware Systems, Methods and Trends in Smart Home Technology

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Robles, Rosslin John; Kim, Tai-Hoon

Context aware applications respond and adapt to changes in the computing environment. It is the concept of leveraging information about the end user to improve the quality of the interaction. New technologies in context-enriched services will use location, presence, social attributes, and other environmental information to anticipate an end user's immediate needs, offering more-sophisticated, situation-aware and usable functions. Smart homes connect all the devices and appliances in your home so they can communicate with each other and with you. Context-awareness can be applied to Smart Home technology. In this paper, we discuss the context-aware tools for development of Smart Home Systems.

Privacy Preservation in Context-Aware Systems

DTIC Science & Technology

2011-01-01

Policies and the Semantic Web The Semantic Web refers to both a vision and a set of technologies. The vision was first articulated by Tim Berners - Lee ... Berners - lee 2005) is a distributed framework for describing and reasoning over policies in the Semantic Web. It supports N3 rules ( Berners - Lee ...Connolly 2008), ( Berners - Lee et al. 2005) for representing intercon- nections between policies and resources and uses the CWM forward-chaining reasoning

Pragmatic Computing - A Semiotic Perspective to Web Services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liu, Kecheng

The web seems to have evolved from a syntactic web, a semantic web to a pragmatic web. This evolution conforms to the study of information and technology from the theory of semiotics. The pragmatics, concerning with the use of information in relation to the context and intended purposes, is extremely important in web service and applications. Much research in pragmatics has been carried out; but in the same time, attempts and solutions have led to some more questions. After reviewing the current work in pragmatic web, the paper presents a semiotic approach to website services, particularly on request decomposition and service aggregation.

An Electronic Tree Inventory for Arboriculture Management

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tait, Roger J.; Allen, Tony J.; Sherkat, Nasser; Bellett-Travers, Marcus D.

The integration of Global Positioning System (GPS) technology into mobile devices provides them with an awareness of their physical location. This geospatial context can be employed in a wide range of applications including locating nearby places of interest as well as guiding emergency services to incidents. In this research, a GPS-enabled Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) is used to create a computerised tree inventory for the management of arboriculture. Using the General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), GPS information and arboreal image data are sent to a web-server. An office-based PC running customised Geographical Information Software (GIS) then automatically retrieves the GPS tagged image data for display and analysis purposes. The resulting application allows an expert user to view the condition of individual trees in greater detail than is possible using remotely sensed imagery.

An ontological knowledge framework for adaptive medical workflow.

PubMed

Dang, Jiangbo; Hedayati, Amir; Hampel, Ken; Toklu, Candemir

2008-10-01

As emerging technologies, semantic Web and SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) allow BPMS (Business Process Management System) to automate business processes that can be described as services, which in turn can be used to wrap existing enterprise applications. BPMS provides tools and methodologies to compose Web services that can be executed as business processes and monitored by BPM (Business Process Management) consoles. Ontologies are a formal declarative knowledge representation model. It provides a foundation upon which machine understandable knowledge can be obtained, and as a result, it makes machine intelligence possible. Healthcare systems can adopt these technologies to make them ubiquitous, adaptive, and intelligent, and then serve patients better. This paper presents an ontological knowledge framework that covers healthcare domains that a hospital encompasses-from the medical or administrative tasks, to hospital assets, medical insurances, patient records, drugs, and regulations. Therefore, our ontology makes our vision of personalized healthcare possible by capturing all necessary knowledge for a complex personalized healthcare scenario involving patient care, insurance policies, and drug prescriptions, and compliances. For example, our ontology facilitates a workflow management system to allow users, from physicians to administrative assistants, to manage, even create context-aware new medical workflows and execute them on-the-fly.

School Counselors' Perspectives of a Web-Based Stepped Care Mental Health Service for Schools: Cross-Sectional Online Survey.

PubMed

O'Dea, Bridianne; King, Catherine; Subotic-Kerry, Mirjana; O'Moore, Kathleen; Christensen, Helen

2017-11-20

Mental health problems are common among youth in high school, and school counselors play a key role in the provision of school-based mental health care. However, school counselors occupy a multispecialist position that makes it difficult for them to provide care to all of those who are in need in a timely manner. A Web-based mental health service that offers screening, psychological therapy, and monitoring may help counselors manage time and provide additional oversight to students. However, for such a model to be implemented successfully, school counselors' attitudes toward Web-based resources and services need to be measured. This study aimed to examine the acceptability of a proposed Web-based mental health service, the feasibility of providing this type of service in the school context, and the barriers and facilitators to implementation as perceived by school counselors in New South Wales (NSW), Australia. This study utilized an online cross-sectional survey to measure school counselors' perspectives. A total of 145 school counselors completed the survey. Overall, 82.1% (119/145) thought that the proposed service would be helpful to students. One-third reported that they would recommend the proposed model, with the remaining reporting potential concerns. Years of experience was the only background factor associated with a higher level of comfort with the proposed service (P=.048). Personal beliefs, knowledge and awareness, Internet accessibility, privacy, and confidentiality were found to influence, both positively and negatively, the likelihood of school counselors implementing a Web-based school mental health service. The findings of this study confirmed that greater support and resources are needed to facilitate what is already a challenging and emotionally demanding role for school counselors. Although the school counselors in this study were open to the proposed service model, successful implementation will require that the issues outlined are carefully addressed. ©Bridianne O'Dea, Catherine King, Mirjana Subotic-Kerry, Kathleen O'Moore, Helen Christensen. Originally published in JMIR Mental Health (http://mental.jmir.org), 20.11.2017.

Maritime Situational Awareness: The MARISS Experience

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Margarit, G.; Tabasco, A.; Gomez, C.

2010-04-01

This paper presents the operational solution developed by GMV to provide support to maritime situational awareness via Earth Observation (EO) technologies. The concept falls on integrating the information retrieved from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images and transponder-based polls (AIS and similar) in an advanced GeoPortal web. The service has been designed in the framework of the MARISS project, a project conceived to help improving ship monitoring with the support of a large user segment. In this context, the interaction with official agencies has provided good feedback about system performance and its usefulness in supporting monitoring and surveillance tasks. Some representative samples are analyzed along the paper in order to validate key kernel utilities, such as ship and coastline detection, and ship classification. They justify the promotion of extended R&D activities to increase monitoring performance and to include advanced added- value tools, such as decision making and route tracking.

Context aware adaptive security service model

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tunia, Marcin A.

2015-09-01

Present systems and devices are usually protected against different threats concerning digital data processing. The protection mechanisms consume resources, which are either highly limited or intensively utilized by many entities. The optimization of these resources usage is advantageous. The resources that are saved performing optimization may be utilized by other mechanisms or may be sufficient for longer time. It is usually assumed that protection has to provide specific quality and attack resistance. By interpreting context situation of business services - users and services themselves, it is possible to adapt security services parameters to countermeasure threats associated with current situation. This approach leads to optimization of used resources and maintains sufficient security level. This paper presents architecture of adaptive security service, which is context-aware and exploits quality of context data issue.

Context-aware distributed cloud computing using CloudScheduler

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Seuster, R.; Leavett-Brown, CR; Casteels, K.; Driemel, C.; Paterson, M.; Ring, D.; Sobie, RJ; Taylor, RP; Weldon, J.

2017-10-01

The distributed cloud using the CloudScheduler VM provisioning service is one of the longest running systems for HEP workloads. It has run millions of jobs for ATLAS and Belle II over the past few years using private and commercial clouds around the world. Our goal is to scale the distributed cloud to the 10,000-core level, with the ability to run any type of application (low I/O, high I/O and high memory) on any cloud. To achieve this goal, we have been implementing changes that utilize context-aware computing designs that are currently employed in the mobile communication industry. Context-awareness makes use of real-time and archived data to respond to user or system requirements. In our distributed cloud, we have many opportunistic clouds with no local HEP services, software or storage repositories. A context-aware design significantly improves the reliability and performance of our system by locating the nearest location of the required services. We describe how we are collecting and managing contextual information from our workload management systems, the clouds, the virtual machines and our services. This information is used not only to monitor the system but also to carry out automated corrective actions. We are incrementally adding new alerting and response services to our distributed cloud. This will enable us to scale the number of clouds and virtual machines. Further, a context-aware design will enable us to run analysis or high I/O application on opportunistic clouds. We envisage an open-source HTTP data federation (for example, the DynaFed system at CERN) as a service that would provide us access to existing storage elements used by the HEP experiments.

Configuring a Context-Aware Middleware for Wireless Sensor Networks

PubMed Central

Gámez, Nadia; Cubo, Javier; Fuentes, Lidia; Pimentel, Ernesto

2012-01-01

In the Future Internet, applications based on Wireless Sensor Networks will have to support reconfiguration with minimum human intervention, depending on dynamic context changes in their environment. These situations create a need for building these applications as adaptive software and including techniques that allow the context acquisition and decisions about adaptation. However, contexts use to be made up of complex information acquired from heterogeneous devices and user characteristics, making them difficult to manage. So, instead of building context-aware applications from scratch, we propose to use FamiWare, a family of middleware for Ambient Intelligence specifically designed to be aware of contexts in sensor and smartphone devices. It provides both, several monitoring services to acquire contexts from devices and users, and a context-awareness service to analyze and detect context changes. However, the current version of FamiWare does not allow the automatic incorporation related to the management of new contexts into the FamiWare family. To overcome this shortcoming, in this work, we first present how to model the context using a metamodel to define the contexts that must to be taken into account in an instantiation of FamiWare for a certain Ambient Intelligence system. Then, to configure a new context-aware version of FamiWare and to generate code ready-to-install within heterogeneous devices, we define a mapping that automatically transforms metamodel elements defining contexts into elements of the FamiWare family, and we also use the FamiWare configuration process to customize the new context-aware variant. Finally, we evaluate the benefits of our process, and we analyze both that the new version of the middleware works as expected and that it manages the contexts in an efficient way. PMID:23012505

Trust-based information system architecture for personal wellness.

PubMed

Ruotsalainen, Pekka; Nykänen, Pirkko; Seppälä, Antto; Blobel, Bernd

2014-01-01

Modern eHealth, ubiquitous health and personal wellness systems take place in an unsecure and ubiquitous information space where no predefined trust occurs. This paper presents novel information model and an architecture for trust based privacy management of personal health and wellness information in ubiquitous environment. The architecture enables a person to calculate a dynamic and context-aware trust value for each service provider, and using it to design personal privacy policies for trustworthy use of health and wellness services. For trust calculation a novel set of measurable context-aware and health information-sensitive attributes is developed. The architecture enables a person to manage his or her privacy in ubiquitous environment by formulating context-aware and service provider specific policies. Focus groups and information modelling was used for developing a wellness information model. System analysis method based on sequential steps that enable to combine results of analysis of privacy and trust concerns and the selection of trust and privacy services was used for development of the information system architecture. Its services (e.g. trust calculation, decision support, policy management and policy binding services) and developed attributes enable a person to define situation-aware policies that regulate the way his or her wellness and health information is processed.

Patron perception and utilization of an embedded librarian program.

PubMed

Blake, Lindsay; Ballance, Darra; Davies, Kathy; Gaines, Julie K; Mears, Kim; Shipman, Peter; Connolly-Brown, Maryska; Burchfield, Vicki

2016-07-01

The study measured the perceived value of an academic library's embedded librarian service model. The study took place at the health sciences campuses of a research institution. A web-based survey was distributed that asked respondents a series of questions about their utilization of and satisfaction with embedded librarians and services. Over 58% of respondents reported being aware of their embedded librarians, and 95% of these were satisfied with provided services. The overall satisfaction with services was encouraging, but awareness of the embedded program was low, suggesting an overall need for marketing of services.

Bluetooth-Assisted Context-Awareness in Educational Data Networks

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gonzalez-Castano, F. J.; Garcia-Reinoso, J.; Gil-Castineira, F.; Costa-Montenegro, E.; Pousada-Carballo, J. M.

2005-01-01

In this paper, we propose an auxiliary "location network", to support user-independent context-awareness in educational data networks; for example, to help visitors in a museum. We assume that, in such scenarios, there exist "service servers" that need to be aware of user location in real-time. Specifically, we propose the implementation of a…

Website Analysis in an EFL Context: Content Comprehension, Perceptions on Web Usability and Awareness of Reading Strategies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Roy, Debopriyo; Crabbe, Stephen

2015-01-01

Website analysis is an interdisciplinary field of inquiry that focuses on both digital literacy and language competence (Brugger, 2009). Website analysis in an EFL learning context has the potential to facilitate logical thinking and in the process develop functional language proficiency. This study reported on an English language website…

A Method for Transforming Existing Web Service Descriptions into an Enhanced Semantic Web Service Framework

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Du, Xiaofeng; Song, William; Munro, Malcolm

Web Services as a new distributed system technology has been widely adopted by industries in the areas, such as enterprise application integration (EAI), business process management (BPM), and virtual organisation (VO). However, lack of semantics in the current Web Service standards has been a major barrier in service discovery and composition. In this chapter, we propose an enhanced context-based semantic service description framework (CbSSDF+) that tackles the problem and improves the flexibility of service discovery and the correctness of generated composite services. We also provide an agile transformation method to demonstrate how the various formats of Web Service descriptions on the Web can be managed and renovated step by step into CbSSDF+ based service description without large amount of engineering work. At the end of the chapter, we evaluate the applicability of the transformation method and the effectiveness of CbSSDF+ through a series of experiments.

Advanced Weather Awareness and Reporting Enhancements

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Busquets, Anthony M. (Technical Monitor); Ruokangas, Corinne Clinton; Kelly, Wallace E., III

2005-01-01

AWARE (Aviation Weather Awareness and Reporting Enhancements) was a NASA Cooperative Research and Development program conducted jointly by Rockwell Scientific, Rockwell Collins, and NASA. The effort culminated in an enhanced weather briefing and reporting tool prototype designed to integrate graphical and text-based aviation weather data to provide clear situational awareness in the context of a specific pilot, flight and equipment profile. The initial implementation of AWARE was as a web-based preflight planning tool, specifically for general aviation pilots, who do not have access to support such as the dispatchers available for commercial airlines. Initial usability tests showed that for VFR (Visual Flight Rules) pilots, AWARE provided faster and more effective weather evaluation. In a subsequent formal usability test for IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) pilots, all users finished the AWARE tests faster than the parallel DUAT tests, and all subjects graded AWARE higher for effectiveness, efficiency, and usability. The decision analysis basis of AWARE differentiates it from other aviation safety programs, providing analysis of context-sensitive data in a personalized graphical format to aid pilots/dispatchers in their complex flight requirements.

BioPortal: enhanced functionality via new Web services from the National Center for Biomedical Ontology to access and use ontologies in software applications.

PubMed

Whetzel, Patricia L; Noy, Natalya F; Shah, Nigam H; Alexander, Paul R; Nyulas, Csongor; Tudorache, Tania; Musen, Mark A

2011-07-01

The National Center for Biomedical Ontology (NCBO) is one of the National Centers for Biomedical Computing funded under the NIH Roadmap Initiative. Contributing to the national computing infrastructure, NCBO has developed BioPortal, a web portal that provides access to a library of biomedical ontologies and terminologies (http://bioportal.bioontology.org) via the NCBO Web services. BioPortal enables community participation in the evaluation and evolution of ontology content by providing features to add mappings between terms, to add comments linked to specific ontology terms and to provide ontology reviews. The NCBO Web services (http://www.bioontology.org/wiki/index.php/NCBO_REST_services) enable this functionality and provide a uniform mechanism to access ontologies from a variety of knowledge representation formats, such as Web Ontology Language (OWL) and Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) format. The Web services provide multi-layered access to the ontology content, from getting all terms in an ontology to retrieving metadata about a term. Users can easily incorporate the NCBO Web services into software applications to generate semantically aware applications and to facilitate structured data collection.

A Contextual Information Acquisition Approach Based on Semantics and Mashup Technology

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

He, Yangfan; Li, Lu; He, Keqing; Chen, Xiuhong

Pay per use is an essential feature of cloud computing. Users can make use of some parts of a large scale service to satisfy their requirements, merely at the cost of a little payment. A good understanding of the users' requirement is a prerequisite for choosing the service in need precisely. Context implies users' potential requirements, which can be a complement to the requirements delivered explicitly. However, traditional context-aware computing research always demands some specific kinds of sensors to acquire contextual information, which renders a threshold too high for an application to become context-aware. This paper comes up with an approach which combines contextual information obtained directly and indirectly from the cloud services. Semantic relationship between different kinds of contexts lays foundation for the searching of the cloud services. And mashup technology is adopted to compose the heterogonous services. Abundant contextual information may lend strong support to a comprehensive understanding of users' context and a bettered abstraction of contextual requirements.

75 FR 2836 - Schools and Libraries Universal Service Support Mechanism

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2010-01-19

... networking websites and in chat rooms and cyberbullying awareness and response, as required by the Protecting... interacting with other individuals on social networking Web sites and in chat rooms and cyberbullying... networking websites and in chat rooms and cyberbullying awareness and response. We seek comment on this...

Interoperability And Value Added To Earth Observation Data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gasperi, J.

2012-04-01

Geospatial web services technology has provided a new means for geospatial data interoperability. Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) services such as Web Map Service (WMS) to request maps on the Internet, Web Feature Service (WFS) to exchange vectors or Catalog Service for the Web (CSW) to search for geospatialized data have been widely adopted in the Geosciences community in general and in the remote sensing community in particular. These services make Earth Observation data available to a wider range of public users than ever before. The mapshup web client offers an innovative and efficient user interface that takes advantage of the power of interoperability. This presentation will demonstrate how mapshup can be effectively used in the context of natural disasters management.

Dynamic "inline" images: context-sensitive retrieval and integration of images into Web documents.

PubMed

Kahn, Charles E

2008-09-01

Integrating relevant images into web-based information resources adds value for research and education. This work sought to evaluate the feasibility of using "Web 2.0" technologies to dynamically retrieve and integrate pertinent images into a radiology web site. An online radiology reference of 1,178 textual web documents was selected as the set of target documents. The ARRS GoldMiner image search engine, which incorporated 176,386 images from 228 peer-reviewed journals, retrieved images on demand and integrated them into the documents. At least one image was retrieved in real-time for display as an "inline" image gallery for 87% of the web documents. Each thumbnail image was linked to the full-size image at its original web site. Review of 20 randomly selected Collaborative Hypertext of Radiology documents found that 69 of 72 displayed images (96%) were relevant to the target document. Users could click on the "More" link to search the image collection more comprehensively and, from there, link to the full text of the article. A gallery of relevant radiology images can be inserted easily into web pages on any web server. Indexing by concepts and keywords allows context-aware image retrieval, and searching by document title and subject metadata yields excellent results. These techniques allow web developers to incorporate easily a context-sensitive image gallery into their documents.

UltiMatch-NL: A Web Service Matchmaker Based on Multiple Semantic Filters

PubMed Central

Mohebbi, Keyvan; Ibrahim, Suhaimi; Zamani, Mazdak; Khezrian, Mojtaba

2014-01-01

In this paper, a Semantic Web service matchmaker called UltiMatch-NL is presented. UltiMatch-NL applies two filters namely Signature-based and Description-based on different abstraction levels of a service profile to achieve more accurate results. More specifically, the proposed filters rely on semantic knowledge to extract the similarity between a given pair of service descriptions. Thus it is a further step towards fully automated Web service discovery via making this process more semantic-aware. In addition, a new technique is proposed to weight and combine the results of different filters of UltiMatch-NL, automatically. Moreover, an innovative approach is introduced to predict the relevance of requests and Web services and eliminate the need for setting a threshold value of similarity. In order to evaluate UltiMatch-NL, the repository of OWLS-TC is used. The performance evaluation based on standard measures from the information retrieval field shows that semantic matching of OWL-S services can be significantly improved by incorporating designed matching filters. PMID:25157872

UltiMatch-NL: a Web service matchmaker based on multiple semantic filters.

PubMed

Mohebbi, Keyvan; Ibrahim, Suhaimi; Zamani, Mazdak; Khezrian, Mojtaba

2014-01-01

In this paper, a Semantic Web service matchmaker called UltiMatch-NL is presented. UltiMatch-NL applies two filters namely Signature-based and Description-based on different abstraction levels of a service profile to achieve more accurate results. More specifically, the proposed filters rely on semantic knowledge to extract the similarity between a given pair of service descriptions. Thus it is a further step towards fully automated Web service discovery via making this process more semantic-aware. In addition, a new technique is proposed to weight and combine the results of different filters of UltiMatch-NL, automatically. Moreover, an innovative approach is introduced to predict the relevance of requests and Web services and eliminate the need for setting a threshold value of similarity. In order to evaluate UltiMatch-NL, the repository of OWLS-TC is used. The performance evaluation based on standard measures from the information retrieval field shows that semantic matching of OWL-S services can be significantly improved by incorporating designed matching filters.

Immunization, urbanization and slums - a systematic review of factors and interventions.

PubMed

Crocker-Buque, Tim; Mindra, Godwin; Duncan, Richard; Mounier-Jack, Sandra

2017-06-08

In 2014, over half (54%) of the world's population lived in urban areas and this proportion will increase to 66% by 2050. This urbanizing trend has been accompanied by an increasing number of people living in urban poor communities and slums. Lower immunization coverage is found in poorer urban dwellers in many contexts. This study aims to identify factors associated with immunization coverage in poor urban areas and slums, and to identify interventions to improve coverage. We conducted a systematic review, searching Medline, Embase, Global Health, CINAHL, Web of Science and The Cochrane Database with broad search terms for studies published between 2000 and 2016. Of 4872 unique articles, 327 abstracts were screened, leading to 63 included studies: 44 considering factors and 20 evaluating interventions (one in both categories) in 16 low or middle-income countries. A wide range of socio-economic characteristics were associated with coverage in different contexts. Recent rural-urban migration had a universally negative effect. Parents commonly reported lack of awareness of immunization importance and difficulty accessing services as reasons for under-immunization of their children. Physical distance to clinics and aspects of service quality also impacted uptake. We found evidence of effectiveness for interventions involving multiple components, especially if they have been designed with community involvement. Outreach programmes were effective where physical distance was identified as a barrier. Some evidence was found for the effective use of SMS (text) messaging services, community-based education programmes and financial incentives, which warrant further evaluation. No interventions were identified that provided services to migrants from rural areas. Different factors affect immunization coverage in different urban poor and slum contexts. Immunization services should be designed in collaboration with slum-dwelling communities, considering the local context. Interventions should be designed and tested to increase immunization in migrants from rural areas.

Attitudes and awareness of web-based self-care resources in the military: a preliminary survey study.

PubMed

Luxton, David D; Armstrong, Christina M; Fantelli, Emily E; Thomas, Elissa K

2011-09-01

Web-based self-care resources have a number of potential benefits for military service members (SMs) and their families such as convenience, anonymity, and immediate 24/7 access to useful information. There is limited data available, however, regarding SM and military healthcare provider use of online self-care resources. Our goal with this study was to conduct a preliminary survey assessment of self-care Web site awareness, general attitudes about use, and usage behaviors of Web-based self-care resources among SMs and military healthcare providers. Results show that the majority of SMs and providers use the Internet often, use Internet self-care resources, and are willing to use additional Web-based resources and capabilities. SMs and providers also indicated a preference for Web-based self-care resources as adjunct tools to face-to-face/in-person care. Data from this preliminary study are useful for informing additional research and best practices for integrating Web-based self-care for the military community.

Development of spatial density maps based on geoprocessing web services: application to tuberculosis incidence in Barcelona, Spain.

PubMed

Dominkovics, Pau; Granell, Carlos; Pérez-Navarro, Antoni; Casals, Martí; Orcau, Angels; Caylà, Joan A

2011-11-29

Health professionals and authorities strive to cope with heterogeneous data, services, and statistical models to support decision making on public health. Sophisticated analysis and distributed processing capabilities over geocoded epidemiological data are seen as driving factors to speed up control and decision making in these health risk situations. In this context, recent Web technologies and standards-based web services deployed on geospatial information infrastructures have rapidly become an efficient way to access, share, process, and visualize geocoded health-related information. Data used on this study is based on Tuberculosis (TB) cases registered in Barcelona city during 2009. Residential addresses are geocoded and loaded into a spatial database that acts as a backend database. The web-based application architecture and geoprocessing web services are designed according to the Representational State Transfer (REST) principles. These web processing services produce spatial density maps against the backend database. The results are focused on the use of the proposed web-based application to the analysis of TB cases in Barcelona. The application produces spatial density maps to ease the monitoring and decision making process by health professionals. We also include a discussion of how spatial density maps may be useful for health practitioners in such contexts. In this paper, we developed web-based client application and a set of geoprocessing web services to support specific health-spatial requirements. Spatial density maps of TB incidence were generated to help health professionals in analysis and decision-making tasks. The combined use of geographic information tools, map viewers, and geoprocessing services leads to interesting possibilities in handling health data in a spatial manner. In particular, the use of spatial density maps has been effective to identify the most affected areas and its spatial impact. This study is an attempt to demonstrate how web processing services together with web-based mapping capabilities suit the needs of health practitioners in epidemiological analysis scenarios.

Development of spatial density maps based on geoprocessing web services: application to tuberculosis incidence in Barcelona, Spain

PubMed Central

2011-01-01

Background Health professionals and authorities strive to cope with heterogeneous data, services, and statistical models to support decision making on public health. Sophisticated analysis and distributed processing capabilities over geocoded epidemiological data are seen as driving factors to speed up control and decision making in these health risk situations. In this context, recent Web technologies and standards-based web services deployed on geospatial information infrastructures have rapidly become an efficient way to access, share, process, and visualize geocoded health-related information. Methods Data used on this study is based on Tuberculosis (TB) cases registered in Barcelona city during 2009. Residential addresses are geocoded and loaded into a spatial database that acts as a backend database. The web-based application architecture and geoprocessing web services are designed according to the Representational State Transfer (REST) principles. These web processing services produce spatial density maps against the backend database. Results The results are focused on the use of the proposed web-based application to the analysis of TB cases in Barcelona. The application produces spatial density maps to ease the monitoring and decision making process by health professionals. We also include a discussion of how spatial density maps may be useful for health practitioners in such contexts. Conclusions In this paper, we developed web-based client application and a set of geoprocessing web services to support specific health-spatial requirements. Spatial density maps of TB incidence were generated to help health professionals in analysis and decision-making tasks. The combined use of geographic information tools, map viewers, and geoprocessing services leads to interesting possibilities in handling health data in a spatial manner. In particular, the use of spatial density maps has been effective to identify the most affected areas and its spatial impact. This study is an attempt to demonstrate how web processing services together with web-based mapping capabilities suit the needs of health practitioners in epidemiological analysis scenarios. PMID:22126392

Monologue or Dialogue in the Web Environment? The Role of Networked Library and Information Services in the Future.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tuominen, Kimmo

This paper contrasts monologic and dialogic World Wide Web services in a library context. The first section contrasts monologic and dialogic ways of understanding human nature and the way knowledge is constructed. The second section describes the dialogic nature and potential of the Web, including intranets as dialogic spaces and the dialog…

Leveraging CRT Awareness in Creating Web-Based Projects through Use of Online Collaborative Learning for Pre-Service Teachers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chuang, Hsueh-Hua

2016-01-01

This paper explores the roles played by cloud computing technologies and social media in facilitating a learning community for online group collaborative learning, and particularly explores opportunities and challenges in leveraging culturally responsive teaching (CRT) awareness in educational technology. It describes implementation of a…

Uncertainty Reasoning for Service-Based Situational Awareness Information on the Semantic Web

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dinkel, Stephen C.

2012-01-01

Accurate situational assessment is key to any decision maker and especially crucial in military command and control, air traffic control, and complex system decision making. Endsley described three dependent levels of situational awareness, (1) perception, (2) understanding, and (3) projection. This research was focused on Endsley's…

Sharing Human-Generated Observations by Integrating HMI and the Semantic Sensor Web

PubMed Central

Sigüenza, Álvaro; Díaz-Pardo, David; Bernat, Jesús; Vancea, Vasile; Blanco, José Luis; Conejero, David; Gómez, Luis Hernández

2012-01-01

Current “Internet of Things” concepts point to a future where connected objects gather meaningful information about their environment and share it with other objects and people. In particular, objects embedding Human Machine Interaction (HMI), such as mobile devices and, increasingly, connected vehicles, home appliances, urban interactive infrastructures, etc., may not only be conceived as sources of sensor information, but, through interaction with their users, they can also produce highly valuable context-aware human-generated observations. We believe that the great promise offered by combining and sharing all of the different sources of information available can be realized through the integration of HMI and Semantic Sensor Web technologies. This paper presents a technological framework that harmonizes two of the most influential HMI and Sensor Web initiatives: the W3C's Multimodal Architecture and Interfaces (MMI) and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) with its semantic extension, respectively. Although the proposed framework is general enough to be applied in a variety of connected objects integrating HMI, a particular development is presented for a connected car scenario where drivers' observations about the traffic or their environment are shared across the Semantic Sensor Web. For implementation and evaluation purposes an on-board OSGi (Open Services Gateway Initiative) architecture was built, integrating several available HMI, Sensor Web and Semantic Web technologies. A technical performance test and a conceptual validation of the scenario with potential users are reported, with results suggesting the approach is sound. PMID:22778643

Sharing human-generated observations by integrating HMI and the Semantic Sensor Web.

PubMed

Sigüenza, Alvaro; Díaz-Pardo, David; Bernat, Jesús; Vancea, Vasile; Blanco, José Luis; Conejero, David; Gómez, Luis Hernández

2012-01-01

Current "Internet of Things" concepts point to a future where connected objects gather meaningful information about their environment and share it with other objects and people. In particular, objects embedding Human Machine Interaction (HMI), such as mobile devices and, increasingly, connected vehicles, home appliances, urban interactive infrastructures, etc., may not only be conceived as sources of sensor information, but, through interaction with their users, they can also produce highly valuable context-aware human-generated observations. We believe that the great promise offered by combining and sharing all of the different sources of information available can be realized through the integration of HMI and Semantic Sensor Web technologies. This paper presents a technological framework that harmonizes two of the most influential HMI and Sensor Web initiatives: the W3C's Multimodal Architecture and Interfaces (MMI) and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) with its semantic extension, respectively. Although the proposed framework is general enough to be applied in a variety of connected objects integrating HMI, a particular development is presented for a connected car scenario where drivers' observations about the traffic or their environment are shared across the Semantic Sensor Web. For implementation and evaluation purposes an on-board OSGi (Open Services Gateway Initiative) architecture was built, integrating several available HMI, Sensor Web and Semantic Web technologies. A technical performance test and a conceptual validation of the scenario with potential users are reported, with results suggesting the approach is sound.

Quality and Business Offer Driven Selection of Web Services for Compositions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

D'Mello, Demian Antony; Ananthanarayana, V. S.

The service composition makes use of the existing services to produce a new value added service to execute the complex business process. The service discovery finds the suitable services (candidates) for the various tasks of the composition based on the functionality. The service selection in composition assigns the best candidate for each tasks of the pre-structured composition plan based on the non-functional properties. In this paper, we propose the broker based architecture for the QoS and business offer aware Web service compositions. The broker architecture facilitates the registration of a new composite service into three different registries. The broker publishes service information into the service registry and QoS into the QoS registry. The business offers of the composite Web service are published into a separate repository called business offer (BO) registry. The broker employs the mechanism for the optimal assignment of the Web services to the individual tasks of the composition. The assignment is based on the composite service providers’s (CSP) variety of requirements defined on the QoS and business offers. The broker also computes the QoS of resulting composition and provides the useful information for the CSP to publish thier business offers.

Context Aware Programmable Trackers for the Next Generation Internet

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sousa, Pedro

This work introduces and proposes the concept of context aware programmable trackers for the next generation Internet. The proposed solution gives ground for the development of advanced applications based on the P2P paradigm and will foster collaborative efforts among several network entities (e.g. P2P applications and ISPs). The proposed concept of context aware programmable trackers allows that several peer selection strategies might be supported by a P2P tracker entity able to improve the peer selection decisions according with pre-defined objectives and external inputs provided by specific services. The flexible, adaptive and enhanced peer selection semantics that might be achieved by the proposed solution will contribute for devising novel P2P based services and business models for the future Internet.

The aware toolbox for the detection of law infringements on web pages

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Shahab, Asif; Kieninger, Thomas; Dengel, Andreas

2010-01-01

In the project Aware we aim to develop an automatic assistant for the detection of law infringements on web pages. The motivation for this project is that many authors of web pages are at some points infringing copyrightor other laws, mostly without being aware of that fact, and are more and more often confronted with costly legal warnings. As the legal environment is constantly changing, an important requirement of Aware is that the domain knowledge can be maintained (and initially defined) by numerous legal experts remotely working without further assistance of the computer scientists. Consequently, the software platform was chosen to be a web-based generic toolbox that can be configured to suit individual analysis experts, definitions of analysis flow, information gathering and report generation. The report generated by the system summarizes all critical elements of a given web page and provides case specific hints to the page author and thus forms a new type of service. Regarding the analysis subsystems, Aware mainly builds on existing state-of-the-art technologies. Their usability has been evaluated for each intended task. In order to control the heterogeneous analysis components and to gather the information, a lightweight scripting shell has been developed. This paper describes the analysis technologies, ranging from text based information extraction, over optical character recognition and phonetic fuzzy string matching to a set of image analysis and retrieval tools; as well as the scripting language to define the analysis flow.

Thomson Scientific's expanding Web of Knowledge: beyond citation databases and current awareness services.

PubMed

London, Sue; Brahmi, Frances A

2005-01-01

As end-user demand for easy access to electronic full text continues to climb, an increasing number of information providers are combining that access with their other products and services, making navigating their Web sites by librarians seeking information on a given product or service more daunting than ever. One such provider of a complex array of products and services is Thomson Scientific. This paper looks at some of the many products and tools available from two of Thomson Scientific's businesses, Thomson ISI and Thomson ResearchSoft. Among the items of most interest to health sciences and veterinary librarians and their users are the variety of databases available via the ISI Web of Knowledge platform and the information management products available from ResearchSoft.

An Architecture for Autonomic Web Service Process Planning

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Moore, Colm; Xue Wang, Ming; Pahl, Claus

Web service composition is a technology that has received considerable attention in the last number of years. Languages and tools to aid in the process of creating composite Web services have been received specific attention. Web service composition is the process of linking single Web services together in order to accomplish more complex tasks. One area of Web service composition that has not received as much attention is the area of dynamic error handling and re-planning, enabling autonomic composition. Given a repository of service descriptions and a task to complete, it is possible for AI planners to automatically create a plan that will achieve this goal. If however a service in the plan is unavailable or erroneous the plan will fail. Motivated by this problem, this paper suggests autonomous re-planning as a means to overcome dynamic problems. Our solution involves automatically recovering from faults and creating a context-dependent alternate plan. We present an architecture that serves as a basis for the central activities autonomous composition, monitoring and fault handling.

Evaluating ADS, ISI Web of Knowledge and Scopus in the Context of Two Astronomy Libraries in Spain

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gomez, M.; Merida Martín, F.

2007-10-01

We present the results of a comparative analysis of ADS, ISI Web of Knowledge and Scopus in the context of two astronomical libraries as well as the results of a patron survey conducted to determine how patrons use these services to get the information they need.

Design and technical evaluation of an enhanced location-awareness service enabler for spatial disorientation management of elderly with mild cognitive impairment.

PubMed

Moreno, Pedro A; Hernando, M Elena; Gómez, Enrique J

2015-01-01

The progressive ageing of population has turned the mild cognitive impairment (MCI) into a prevalent disease suffered by elderly. Consequently, the spatial disorientation has become a significant problem for older people and their caregivers. The ambient-assisted living applications are offering location-based services for empowering elderly to go outside and encouraging a greater independence. Therefore, this paper describes the design and technical evaluation of a location-awareness service enabler aimed at supporting and managing probable wandering situations of a person with MCI. Through the presence capabilities of the IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) architecture, the service will alert patient's contacts if a hazardous situation is detected depending on his location. Furthermore, information about the older person's security areas has been included in the user profile managed by IMS. In doing so, the service enabler introduced contribute to "context-awareness" paradigm allowing the adaptation and personalization of services depending on user's context and specific conditions or preferences.

Taking advantage of Google's Web-based applications and services.

PubMed

Brigham, Tara J

2014-01-01

Google is a company that is constantly expanding and growing its services and products. While most librarians possess a "love/hate" relationship with Google, there are a number of reasons you should consider exploring some of the tools Google has created and made freely available. Applications and services such as Google Docs, Slides, and Google+ are functional and dynamic without the cost of comparable products. This column will address some of the issues users should be aware of before signing up to use Google's tools, and a description of some of Google's Web applications and services, plus how they can be useful to librarians in health care.

Fostering Global Citizenship Dispositions: The Long-Term Impact of Participating in a High School Global Service Club

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Moffa, Eric D.

2016-01-01

To assist teachers in fostering students' global citizenship dispositions through service experiences, this article reports findings from a case study that investigated one high school's global service club and its impact on former club members' global awareness and global citizenship dispositions. Data were collected from Web-based documents and…

Crowdsourcing engagement and applications for communities within crisis events

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Frigerio, Simone; Schenato, Luca; Bossi, Giulia; Mantovani, Matteo; Crema, Stefano; Cavalli, Marco; Marcato, Gianluca; Pasuto, Alessandro

2017-04-01

Civil protection attitude is a changing pattern within natural hazards, deploying responsibilities from central government to local authorities. The competence of volunteers and the awareness and involvement of local inhabitants are key points for prevention and preparedness. Citizens and volunteers become first actors of civil protection, toward context-specific strategies of surveillance and territorial surveys. The crowd-mapping technology includes a mobile solution tested insight trained communities, as participation within disaster response. The platform includes also a user-friendly dashboard for data gathering and analysis in multi-hazard realities, tested with pilot case studies. Usability and gradual innovation of platform are continuous granted by cloud dataset and bugfixing controls. The first module focuses on flood processes gathering data from local and trained population, for awareness and long-term preparedness. The second module integrates field survey of several volunteers within rescue squads, combining geolocations and comparing dataset collected in pre-emergency steps in urban case studies. The results include an easy-to-use data interface for crisis management, a tested support within crisis combined with personal awareness, continuously updated and customized. The development provides a version for Android 4.0 onward, the web application combines a cloud architecture with a relational database and web services, integrated with SDK cloud notification. The wireframes planned two accesses for a Citizens Kit and a Volunteers Kit, synchronized with a common dashboard. The follow up includes the integration between mobile solutions with sensors for dynamic update and data export for GIS analysis. The location-based services uses location data to monitor parameters and control features within natural hazard. A human sensor network is the aim, integrating sensor measurements with external observation as baseline of future modelling. Point data like humidity, temperature and pressure are geolocated and real-time. Human sensors reveal a massive approach of crowdsourcing, and user-friendly dashboards appears as solid control of data management to support resilience and quality of risk assessment.

Semantic-Aware Components and Services of ActiveMath

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Melis, Erica; Goguadze, Giorgi; Homik, Martin; Libbrecht, Paul; Ullrich, Carsten; Winterstein, Stefan

2006-01-01

ActiveMath is a complex web-based adaptive learning environment with a number of components and interactive learning tools. The basis for handling semantics of learning content is provided by its semantic (mathematics) content markup, which is additionally annotated with educational metadata. Several components, tools and external services can…

Global polar geospatial information service retrieval based on search engine and ontology reasoning

USGS Publications Warehouse

Chen, Nengcheng; E, Dongcheng; Di, Liping; Gong, Jianya; Chen, Zeqiang

2007-01-01

In order to improve the access precision of polar geospatial information service on web, a new methodology for retrieving global spatial information services based on geospatial service search and ontology reasoning is proposed, the geospatial service search is implemented to find the coarse service from web, the ontology reasoning is designed to find the refined service from the coarse service. The proposed framework includes standardized distributed geospatial web services, a geospatial service search engine, an extended UDDI registry, and a multi-protocol geospatial information service client. Some key technologies addressed include service discovery based on search engine and service ontology modeling and reasoning in the Antarctic geospatial context. Finally, an Antarctica multi protocol OWS portal prototype based on the proposed methodology is introduced.

Feasibility of a web-based suicide awareness programme for Asian American college students.

PubMed

Choi, Heeseung; Park, Hanjong; Suarez, Marie L; Park, Chang; Zhao, Zhongsheng; Wilkie, Diana J

2016-12-21

The Truth about Suicide video has been widely used but has never been empirically tested regarding its cultural appropriateness for Asian Americans. The purpose of the study was to determine the feasibility of using the video in a web-based suicide awareness programme for Asian American and non-Hispanic white college students. A cross-sectional, comparative, web-based study was conducted with 227 Asian Americans and 204 non-Hispanic whites at a university in the Midwest region of the USA. Study participants completed a questionnaire measuring their cultural orientation and attitudes towards suicide, watched the 27 min video, completed a debriefing session and evaluated the video's overall suitability. Asian Americans rated the suicide awareness video significantly lower for cultural relevance than did non-Hispanic whites (F=5.479, p=0.02). Collectivist cultural orientation was a significant predictor for cultural relevance, credibility and appeal; however, evaluation of the video's cultural relevance was negatively affected by Asian ethnicity. Cultural orientation and race/ethnicity should be strongly considered when web-based suicide awareness programmes are developed for college students. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://www.bmj.com/company/products-services/rights-and-licensing/.

A Nomad Faculty: English Professors Negotiate Self-Representation in University Web Space.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hess, Micky

2002-01-01

Calls for increased awareness of the self-representation, gender, labor, and intellectual property issues that surround faculty members' homepages, arguing that faculty members construct identity online in context of the university as workplace. Examines the homepages of 18 faculty members within English programs. Draws on research from…

Pragmatic service development and customisation with the CEDA OGC Web Services framework

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Pascoe, Stephen; Stephens, Ag; Lowe, Dominic

2010-05-01

The CEDA OGC Web Services framework (COWS) emphasises rapid service development by providing a lightweight layer of OGC web service logic on top of Pylons, a mature web application framework for the Python language. This approach gives developers a flexible web service development environment without compromising access to the full range of web application tools and patterns: Model-View-Controller paradigm, XML templating, Object-Relational-Mapper integration and authentication/authorization. We have found this approach useful for exploring evolving standards and implementing protocol extensions to meet the requirements of operational deployments. This paper outlines how COWS is being used to implement customised WMS, WCS, WFS and WPS services in a variety of web applications from experimental prototypes to load-balanced cluster deployments serving 10-100 simultaneous users. In particular we will cover 1) The use of Climate Science Modeling Language (CSML) in complex-feature aware WMS, WCS and WFS services, 2) Extending WMS to support applications with features specific to earth system science and 3) A cluster-enabled Web Processing Service (WPS) supporting asynchronous data processing. The COWS WPS underpins all backend services in the UK Climate Projections User Interface where users can extract, plot and further process outputs from a multi-dimensional probabilistic climate model dataset. The COWS WPS supports cluster job execution, result caching, execution time estimation and user management. The COWS WMS and WCS components drive the project-specific NCEO and QESDI portals developed by the British Atmospheric Data Centre. These portals use CSML as a backend description format and implement features such as multiple WMS layer dimensions and climatology axes that are beyond the scope of general purpose GIS tools and yet vital for atmospheric science applications.

A Context-Aware S-Health Service System for Drivers.

PubMed

Chang, Jingkun; Yao, Wenbin; Li, Xiaoyong

2017-03-17

As a stressful and sensitive task, driving can be disturbed by various factors from the health condition of the driver to the environmental variables of the vehicle. Continuous monitoring of driving hazards and providing the most appropriate business services to meet actual needs can guarantee safe driving and make great use of the existing information resources and business services. However, there is no in-depth research on the perception of a driver's health status or the provision of customized business services in case of various hazardous situations. In order to constantly monitor the health status of the drivers and react to abnormal situations, this paper proposes a context-aware service system providing a configurable architecture for the design and implementation of the smart health service system for safe driving, which can perceive a driver's health status and provide helpful services to the driver. With the context-aware technology to construct a smart health services system for safe driving, this is the first time that such a service system has been implemented in practice. Additionally, an assessment model is proposed to mitigate the impact of the acceptable abnormal status and, thus, reduce the unnecessary invocation of the services. With regard to different assessed situations, the business services can be invoked for the driver to adapt to hazardous situations according to the services configuration model, which can take full advantage of the existing information resources and business services. The evaluation results indicate that the alteration of the observed status in a valid time range T can be tolerated and the frequency of the service invocation can be reduced.

A Context-Aware S-Health Service System for Drivers

PubMed Central

Chang, Jingkun; Yao, Wenbin; Li, Xiaoyong

2017-01-01

As a stressful and sensitive task, driving can be disturbed by various factors from the health condition of the driver to the environmental variables of the vehicle. Continuous monitoring of driving hazards and providing the most appropriate business services to meet actual needs can guarantee safe driving and make great use of the existing information resources and business services. However, there is no in-depth research on the perception of a driver’s health status or the provision of customized business services in case of various hazardous situations. In order to constantly monitor the health status of the drivers and react to abnormal situations, this paper proposes a context-aware service system providing a configurable architecture for the design and implementation of the smart health service system for safe driving, which can perceive a driver’s health status and provide helpful services to the driver. With the context-aware technology to construct a smart health services system for safe driving, this is the first time that such a service system has been implemented in practice. Additionally, an assessment model is proposed to mitigate the impact of the acceptable abnormal status and, thus, reduce the unnecessary invocation of the services. With regard to different assessed situations, the business services can be invoked for the driver to adapt to hazardous situations according to the services configuration model, which can take full advantage of the existing information resources and business services. The evaluation results indicate that the alteration of the observed status in a valid time range T can be tolerated and the frequency of the service invocation can be reduced. PMID:28304330

A Web Portal-Based Time-Aware KML Animation Tool for Exploring Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Hydrological Events

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bao, X.; Cai, X.; Liu, Y.

2009-12-01

Understanding spatiotemporal dynamics of hydrological events such as storms and droughts is highly valuable for decision making on disaster mitigation and recovery. Virtual Globe-based technologies such as Google Earth and Open Geospatial Consortium KML standards show great promises for collaborative exploration of such events using visual analytical approaches. However, currently there are two barriers for wider usage of such approaches. First, there lacks an easy way to use open source tools to convert legacy or existing data formats such as shapefiles, geotiff, or web services-based data sources to KML and to produce time-aware KML files. Second, an integrated web portal-based time-aware animation tool is currently not available. Thus users usually share their files in the portal but have no means to visually explore them without leaving the portal environment which the users are familiar with. We develop a web portal-based time-aware KML animation tool for viewing extreme hydrologic events. The tool is based on Google Earth JavaScript API and Java Portlet standard 2.0 JSR-286, and it is currently deployable in one of the most popular open source portal frameworks, namely Liferay. We have also developed an open source toolkit kml-soc-ncsa (http://code.google.com/p/kml-soc-ncsa/) to facilitate the conversion of multiple formats into KML and the creation of time-aware KML files. We illustrate our tool using some example cases, in which drought and storm events with both time and space dimension can be explored in this web-based KML animation portlet. The tool provides an easy-to-use web browser-based portal environment for multiple users to collaboratively share and explore their time-aware KML files as well as improving the understanding of the spatiotemporal dynamics of the hydrological events.

Design and Implementation of Context-Aware Musuem Guide Agents

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Satoh, Ichiro

This paper presents an agent-based system for building and operating context-aware services in public spaces, including museums. The system provides users with agents and detects the locations of users and deploys location-aware user-assistant agents at computers near the their current locations by using active RFID-tags. When a visitor moves between exhibits in a museum, this dynamically deploys his/her agent at the computers close to the exhibits by using mobile agent technology. It annotates the exhibits in his/her personalized form and navigate him/her user to the next exhibits along his/her routes. It also introduces user movement as a natural approach to interacting between users and agents. To demonstrate the utility and effectiveness of the system, we constructed location/user-aware visitor-guide services and experimented them for two weeks in a public museum.

IAServ: an intelligent home care web services platform in a cloud for aging-in-place.

PubMed

Su, Chuan-Jun; Chiang, Chang-Yu

2013-11-12

As the elderly population has been rapidly expanding and the core tax-paying population has been shrinking, the need for adequate elderly health and housing services continues to grow while the resources to provide such services are becoming increasingly scarce. Thus, increasing the efficiency of the delivery of healthcare services through the use of modern technology is a pressing issue. The seamless integration of such enabling technologies as ontology, intelligent agents, web services, and cloud computing is transforming healthcare from hospital-based treatments to home-based self-care and preventive care. A ubiquitous healthcare platform based on this technological integration, which synergizes service providers with patients' needs to be developed to provide personalized healthcare services at the right time, in the right place, and the right manner. This paper presents the development and overall architecture of IAServ (the Intelligent Aging-in-place Home care Web Services Platform) to provide personalized healthcare service ubiquitously in a cloud computing setting to support the most desirable and cost-efficient method of care for the aged-aging in place. The IAServ is expected to offer intelligent, pervasive, accurate and contextually-aware personal care services. Architecturally the implemented IAServ leverages web services and cloud computing to provide economic, scalable, and robust healthcare services over the Internet.

IAServ: An Intelligent Home Care Web Services Platform in a Cloud for Aging-in-Place

PubMed Central

Su, Chuan-Jun; Chiang, Chang-Yu

2013-01-01

As the elderly population has been rapidly expanding and the core tax-paying population has been shrinking, the need for adequate elderly health and housing services continues to grow while the resources to provide such services are becoming increasingly scarce. Thus, increasing the efficiency of the delivery of healthcare services through the use of modern technology is a pressing issue. The seamless integration of such enabling technologies as ontology, intelligent agents, web services, and cloud computing is transforming healthcare from hospital-based treatments to home-based self-care and preventive care. A ubiquitous healthcare platform based on this technological integration, which synergizes service providers with patients’ needs to be developed to provide personalized healthcare services at the right time, in the right place, and the right manner. This paper presents the development and overall architecture of IAServ (the Intelligent Aging-in-place Home care Web Services Platform) to provide personalized healthcare service ubiquitously in a cloud computing setting to support the most desirable and cost-efficient method of care for the aged-aging in place. The IAServ is expected to offer intelligent, pervasive, accurate and contextually-aware personal care services. Architecturally the implemented IAServ leverages web services and cloud computing to provide economic, scalable, and robust healthcare services over the Internet. PMID:24225647

Internet of Things: A Review of Surveys Based on Context Aware Intelligent Services.

PubMed

Gil, David; Ferrández, Antonio; Mora-Mora, Higinio; Peral, Jesús

2016-07-11

The Internet of Things (IoT) has made it possible for devices around the world to acquire information and store it, in order to be able to use it at a later stage. However, this potential opportunity is often not exploited because of the excessively big interval between the data collection and the capability to process and analyse it. In this paper, we review the current IoT technologies, approaches and models in order to discover what challenges need to be met to make more sense of data. The main goal of this paper is to review the surveys related to IoT in order to provide well integrated and context aware intelligent services for IoT. Moreover, we present a state-of-the-art of IoT from the context aware perspective that allows the integration of IoT and social networks in the emerging Social Internet of Things (SIoT) term.

Modeling and formal representation of geospatial knowledge for the Geospatial Semantic Web

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Huang, Hong; Gong, Jianya

2008-12-01

GML can only achieve geospatial interoperation at syntactic level. However, it is necessary to resolve difference of spatial cognition in the first place in most occasions, so ontology was introduced to describe geospatial information and services. But it is obviously difficult and improper to let users to find, match and compose services, especially in some occasions there are complicated business logics. Currently, with the gradual introduction of Semantic Web technology (e.g., OWL, SWRL), the focus of the interoperation of geospatial information has shifted from syntactic level to Semantic and even automatic, intelligent level. In this way, Geospatial Semantic Web (GSM) can be put forward as an augmentation to the Semantic Web that additionally includes geospatial abstractions as well as related reasoning, representation and query mechanisms. To advance the implementation of GSM, we first attempt to construct the mechanism of modeling and formal representation of geospatial knowledge, which are also two mostly foundational phases in knowledge engineering (KE). Our attitude in this paper is quite pragmatical: we argue that geospatial context is a formal model of the discriminate environment characters of geospatial knowledge, and the derivation, understanding and using of geospatial knowledge are located in geospatial context. Therefore, first, we put forward a primitive hierarchy of geospatial knowledge referencing first order logic, formal ontologies, rules and GML. Second, a metamodel of geospatial context is proposed and we use the modeling methods and representation languages of formal ontologies to process geospatial context. Thirdly, we extend Web Process Service (WPS) to be compatible with local DLL for geoprocessing and possess inference capability based on OWL.

A Policy Based Approach for the Management of Web Browser Resources to Prevent Anonymity Attacks in Tor

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Navarro-Arribas, Guillermo; Garcia-Alfaro, Joaquin

Web browsers are becoming the universal interface to reach applications and services related with these systems. Different browsing contexts may be required in order to reach them, e.g., use of VPN tunnels, corporate proxies, anonymisers, etc. By browsing context we mean how the user browsers the Web, including mainly the concrete configuration of its browser. When the context of the browser changes, its security requirements also change. In this work, we present the use of authorisation policies to automatise the process of controlling the resources of a Web browser when its context changes. The objective of our proposal is oriented towards easing the adaptation to the security requirements of the new context and enforce them in the browser without the need for user intervention. We present a concrete application of our work as a plug-in for the adaption of security requirements in Mozilla/Firefox browser when a context of anonymous navigation through the Tor network is enabled.

Web Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence in Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Devedzic, Vladan

2004-01-01

This paper surveys important aspects of Web Intelligence (WI) in the context of Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED) research. WI explores the fundamental roles as well as practical impacts of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and advanced Information Technology (IT) on the next generation of Web-related products, systems, services, and…

Exploring the Role of Usability in the Software Process: A Study of Irish Software SMEs

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

O'Connor, Rory V.

This paper explores the software processes and usability techniques used by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) that develop web applications. The significance of this research is that it looks at development processes used by SMEs in order to assess to what degree usability is integrated into the process. This study seeks to gain an understanding into the level of awareness of usability within SMEs today and their commitment to usability in practice. The motivation for this research is to explore the current development processes used by SMEs in developing web applications and to understand how usability is represented in those processes. The background for this research is provided by the growth of the web application industry beyond informational web sites to more sophisticated applications delivering a broad range of functionality. This paper presents an analysis of the practices of several Irish SMEs that develop web applications through a series of case studies. With the focus on SMEs that develop web applications as Management Information Systems and not E-Commerce sites, informational sites, online communities or web portals. This study gathered data about the usability techniques practiced by these companies and their awareness of usability in the context of the software process in those SMEs. The contribution of this study is to further the understanding of the current role of usability within the software development processes of SMEs that develop web applications.

Failure Analysis for Composition of Web Services Represented as Labeled Transition Systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nadkarni, Dinanath; Basu, Samik; Honavar, Vasant; Lutz, Robyn

The Web service composition problem involves the creation of a choreographer that provides the interaction between a set of component services to realize a goal service. Several methods have been proposed and developed to address this problem. In this paper, we consider those scenarios where the composition process may fail due to incomplete specification of goal service requirements or due to the fact that the user is unaware of the functionality provided by the existing component services. In such cases, it is desirable to have a composition algorithm that can provide feedback to the user regarding the cause of failure in the composition process. Such feedback will help guide the user to re-formulate the goal service and iterate the composition process. We propose a failure analysis technique for composition algorithms that views Web service behavior as multiple sequences of input/output events. Our technique identifies the possible cause of composition failure and suggests possible recovery options to the user. We discuss our technique using a simple e-Library Web service in the context of the MoSCoE Web service composition framework.

Available, intuitive and free! Building e-learning modules using web 2.0 services.

PubMed

Tam, Chun Wah Michael; Eastwood, Anne

2012-01-01

E-learning is part of the mainstream in medical education and often provides the most efficient and effective means of engaging learners in a particular topic. However, translating design and content ideas into a useable product can be technically challenging, especially in the absence of information technology (IT) support. There is little published literature on the use of web 2.0 services to build e-learning activities. To describe the web 2.0 tools and solutions employed to build the GP Synergy evidence-based medicine and critical appraisal online course. We used and integrated a number of free web 2.0 services including: Prezi, a web-based presentation platform; YouTube, a video sharing service; Google Docs, a online document platform; Tiny.cc, a URL shortening service; and Wordpress, a blogging platform. The course consisting of five multimedia-rich, tutorial-like modules was built without IT specialist assistance or specialised software. The web 2.0 services used were free. The course can be accessed with a modern web browser. Modern web 2.0 services remove many of the technical barriers for creating and sharing content on the internet. When used synergistically, these services can be a flexible and low-cost platform for building e-learning activities. They were a pragmatic solution in our context.

Context-Aware Online Commercial Intention Detection

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hu, Derek Hao; Shen, Dou; Sun, Jian-Tao; Yang, Qiang; Chen, Zheng

With more and more commercial activities moving onto the Internet, people tend to purchase what they need through Internet or conduct some online research before the actual transactions happen. For many Web users, their online commercial activities start from submitting a search query to search engines. Just like the common Web search queries, the queries with commercial intention are usually very short. Recognizing the queries with commercial intention against the common queries will help search engines provide proper search results and advertisements, help Web users obtain the right information they desire and help the advertisers benefit from the potential transactions. However, the intentions behind a query vary a lot for users with different background and interest. The intentions can even be different for the same user, when the query is issued in different contexts. In this paper, we present a new algorithm framework based on skip-chain conditional random field (SCCRF) for automatically classifying Web queries according to context-based online commercial intention. We analyze our algorithm performance both theoretically and empirically. Extensive experiments on several real search engine log datasets show that our algorithm can improve more than 10% on F1 score than previous algorithms on commercial intention detection.

Interleaving Semantic Web Reasoning and Service Discovery to Enforce Context-Sensitive Security and Privacy Policies

DTIC Science & Technology

2005-07-01

policies in pervasive computing environments. In this context, the owner of information sources (e.g. user, sensor, application, or organization...work in decentralized trust management and semantic web technologies . Section 3 introduces an Information Disclosure Agent architecture for...Norman Sadeh July 2005 CMU-ISRI-05-113 School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA, 15213

Security and Dependability Solutions for Web Services and Workflows

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kokolakis, Spyros; Rizomiliotis, Panagiotis; Benameur, Azzedine; Sinha, Smriti Kumar

In this chapter we present an innovative approach towards the design and application of Security and Dependability (S&D) solutions for Web services and service-based workflows. Recently, several standards have been published that prescribe S&D solutions for Web services, e.g. OASIS WS-Security. However,the application of these solutions in specific contexts has been proven problematic. We propose a new framework for the application of such solutions based on the SERENITY S&D Pattern concept. An S&D Pattern comprises all the necessary information for the implementation, verification, deployment, and active monitoring of an S&D Solution. Thus, system developers may rely on proven solutions that are dynamically deployed and monitored by the Serenity Runtime Framework. Finally, we further extend this approach to cover the case of executable workflows which are realised through the orchestration of Web services.

Investigating Pre-Service Mathematics Teachers' Innovation Awareness and Views Regarding Intelligent Tutoring Systems

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Erdemir, Mustafa; Ingeç, Sebnem Kandil

2016-01-01

The purpose of this study is to identify pre-service primary mathematics teachers' views regarding on Web-based Intelligent Tutoring Systems (WBITS) in relation to its usability and influence on teaching. A survey method was used. The study was conducted with 43 students attending the mathematics teaching program under the department of elementary…

Exploring Patients' Views Toward Giving Web-Based Feedback and Ratings to General Practitioners in England: A Qualitative Descriptive Study.

PubMed

Patel, Salma; Cain, Rebecca; Neailey, Kevin; Hooberman, Lucy

2016-08-05

Patient feedback websites or doctor rating websites are increasingly being used by patients to give feedback about their health care experiences. There is little known about why patients in England may give Web-based feedback and what may motivate or dissuade them from giving Web-based feedback. The aim of this study was to explore patients' views toward giving Web-based feedback and ratings to general practitioners (GPs), within the context of other feedback methods available in primary care in England, and in particular, paper-based feedback cards. A descriptive exploratory qualitative approach using face-to-face semistructured interviews was used in this study. Purposive sampling was used to recruit 18 participants from different age groups in London and Coventry. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using applied thematic analysis. Half of the participants in this study were not aware of the opportunity to leave feedback for GPs, and there was limited awareness about the methods available to leave feedback for a GP. The majority of participants were not convinced that formal patient feedback was needed by GPs or would be used by GPs for improvement, regardless of whether they gave it via a website or on paper. Some participants said or suggested that they may leave feedback on a website rather than on a paper-based feedback card for several reasons: because of the ability and ease of giving it remotely; because it would be shared with the public; and because it would be taken more seriously by GPs. Others, however, suggested that they would not use a website to leave feedback for the opposite reasons: because of accessibility issues; privacy and security concerns; and because they felt feedback left on a website may be ignored. Patient feedback and rating websites as they currently are will not replace other mechanisms for patients in England to leave feedback for a GP. Rather, they may motivate a small number of patients who have more altruistic motives or wish to place collective pressure on a GP to give Web-based feedback. If the National Health Service or GP practices want more patients to leave Web-based feedback, we suggest they first make patients aware that they can leave anonymous feedback securely on a website for a GP. They can then convince them that their feedback is needed and wanted by GPs for improvement, and that the reviews they leave on the website will be of benefit to other patients to decide which GP to see or which GP practice to join.

An architecture for diversity-aware search for medical web content.

PubMed

Denecke, K

2012-01-01

The Web provides a huge source of information, also on medical and health-related issues. In particular the content of medical social media data can be diverse due to the background of an author, the source or the topic. Diversity in this context means that a document covers different aspects of a topic or a topic is described in different ways. In this paper, we introduce an approach that allows to consider the diverse aspects of a search query when providing retrieval results to a user. We introduce a system architecture for a diversity-aware search engine that allows retrieving medical information from the web. The diversity of retrieval results is assessed by calculating diversity measures that rely upon semantic information derived from a mapping to concepts of a medical terminology. Considering these measures, the result set is diversified by ranking more diverse texts higher. The methods and system architecture are implemented in a retrieval engine for medical web content. The diversity measures reflect the diversity of aspects considered in a text and its type of information content. They are used for result presentation, filtering and ranking. In a user evaluation we assess the user satisfaction with an ordering of retrieval results that considers the diversity measures. It is shown through the evaluation that diversity-aware retrieval considering diversity measures in ranking could increase the user satisfaction with retrieval results.

IoT Contextual Factors on Healthcare.

PubMed

Michalakis, Konstantinos; Caridakis, George

2017-01-01

With the emergence of the Internet of Things, new services in healthcare will be available and existing systems will be integrated in the IoT framework, providing automated medical supervision and efficient medical treatment. Context awareness plays a critical role in realizing the vision of the IoT, providing rich contextual information that can help the system act more efficiently. Since context in healthcare has its unique characteristics, it is necessary to define an appropriate context aware framework for healthcare IoT applications. We identify this context as perceived in healthcare applications and describe the context aware procedures. We also present an architecture that connects the sensors that measure biometric data with the sensory networks of the environment and the various IoT middleware that reside in the geographical area. Finally, we discuss the challenges for the realization of this vision.

UnCover on the Web: search hints and applications in library environments.

PubMed

Galpern, N F; Albert, K M

1997-01-01

Among the huge maze of resources available on the Internet, UnCoverWeb stands out as a valuable tool for medical libraries. This up-to-date, free-access, multidisciplinary database of periodical references is searched through an easy-to-learn graphical user interface that is a welcome improvement over the telnet version. This article reviews the basic and advanced search techniques for UnCoverWeb, as well as providing information on the document delivery functions and table of contents alerting service called Reveal. UnCover's currency is evaluated and compared with other current awareness resources. System deficiencies are discussed, with the conclusion that although UnCoverWeb lacks the sophisticated features of many commercial database search services, it is nonetheless a useful addition to the repertoire of information sources available in a library.

Efficient QoS-aware Service Composition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Alrifai, Mohammad; Risse, Thomas

Web service composition requests are usually combined with endto-end QoS requirements, which are specified in terms of non-functional properties (e.g. response time, throughput and price). The goal of QoS-aware service composition is to find the best combination of services such that their aggregated QoS values meet these end-to-end requirements. Local selection techniques are very efficient but fail short in handling global QoS constraints. Global optimization techniques, on the other hand, can handle global constraints, but their poor performance render them inappropriate for applications with dynamic and real-time requirements. In this paper we address this problem and propose a solution that combines global optimization with local selection techniques for achieving a better performance. The proposed solution consists of two steps: first we use mixed integer linear programming (MILP) to find the optimal decomposition of global QoS constraints into local constraints. Second, we use local search to find the best web services that satisfy these local constraints. Unlike existing MILP-based global planning solutions, the size of the MILP model in our case is much smaller and independent on the number of available services, yields faster computation and more scalability. Preliminary experiments have been conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed solution.

Exchanging the Context between OGC Geospatial Web clients and GIS applications using Atom

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Maso, Joan; Díaz, Paula; Riverola, Anna; Pons, Xavier

2013-04-01

Currently, the discovery and sharing of geospatial information over the web still presents difficulties. News distribution through website content was simplified by the use of Really Simple Syndication (RSS) and Atom syndication formats. This communication exposes an extension of Atom to redistribute references to geospatial information in a Spatial Data Infrastructure distributed environment. A geospatial client can save the status of an application that involves several OGC services of different kind and direct data and share this status with other users that need the same information and use different client vendor products in an interoperable way. The extensibility of the Atom format was essential to define a format that could be used in RSS enabled web browser, Mass Market map viewers and emerging geospatial enable integrated clients that support Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) services. Since OWS Context has been designed as an Atom extension, it is possible to see the document in common places where Atom documents are valid. Internet web browsers are able to present the document as a list of items with title, abstract, time, description and downloading features. OWS Context uses GeoRSS so that, the document can be to be interpreted by both Google maps and Bing Maps as items that have the extent represented in a dynamic map. Another way to explode a OWS Context is to develop an XSLT to transform the Atom feed into an HTML5 document that shows the exact status of the client view window that saved the context document. To accomplish so, we use the width and height of the client window, and the extent of the view in world (geographic) coordinates in order to calculate the scale of the map. Then, we can mix elements in world coordinates (such as CF-NetCDF files or GML) with elements in pixel coordinates (such as WMS maps, WMTS tiles and direct SVG content). A smarter map browser application called MiraMon Map Browser is able to write a context document and read it again to recover the context of the previous view or load a context generated by another application. The possibility to store direct links to direct files in OWS Context is particularly interesting for GIS desktop solutions. This communication also presents the development made in the MiraMon desktop GIS solution to include OWS Context. MiraMon software is able to deal either with local files, web services and database connections. As in any other GIS solution, MiraMon team designed its own file (MiraMon Map MMM) for storing and sharing the status of a GIS session. The new OWS Context format is now adopted as an interoperable substitution of the MMM. The extensibility of the format makes it possible to map concepts in the MMM to current OWS Context elements (such as titles, data links, extent, etc) and to generate new elements that are able to include all extra metadata not currently covered by OWS Context. These developments were done in the nine edition of the OpenGIS Web Services Interoperability Experiment (OWS-9) and are demonstrated in this communication.

Processing biological literature with customizable Web services supporting interoperable formats.

PubMed

Rak, Rafal; Batista-Navarro, Riza Theresa; Carter, Jacob; Rowley, Andrew; Ananiadou, Sophia

2014-01-01

Web services have become a popular means of interconnecting solutions for processing a body of scientific literature. This has fuelled research on high-level data exchange formats suitable for a given domain and ensuring the interoperability of Web services. In this article, we focus on the biological domain and consider four interoperability formats, BioC, BioNLP, XMI and RDF, that represent domain-specific and generic representations and include well-established as well as emerging specifications. We use the formats in the context of customizable Web services created in our Web-based, text-mining workbench Argo that features an ever-growing library of elementary analytics and capabilities to build and deploy Web services straight from a convenient graphical user interface. We demonstrate a 2-fold customization of Web services: by building task-specific processing pipelines from a repository of available analytics, and by configuring services to accept and produce a combination of input and output data interchange formats. We provide qualitative evaluation of the formats as well as quantitative evaluation of automatic analytics. The latter was carried out as part of our participation in the fourth edition of the BioCreative challenge. Our analytics built into Web services for recognizing biochemical concepts in BioC collections achieved the highest combined scores out of 10 participating teams. Database URL: http://argo.nactem.ac.uk. © The Author(s) 2014. Published by Oxford University Press.

Processing biological literature with customizable Web services supporting interoperable formats

PubMed Central

Rak, Rafal; Batista-Navarro, Riza Theresa; Carter, Jacob; Rowley, Andrew; Ananiadou, Sophia

2014-01-01

Web services have become a popular means of interconnecting solutions for processing a body of scientific literature. This has fuelled research on high-level data exchange formats suitable for a given domain and ensuring the interoperability of Web services. In this article, we focus on the biological domain and consider four interoperability formats, BioC, BioNLP, XMI and RDF, that represent domain-specific and generic representations and include well-established as well as emerging specifications. We use the formats in the context of customizable Web services created in our Web-based, text-mining workbench Argo that features an ever-growing library of elementary analytics and capabilities to build and deploy Web services straight from a convenient graphical user interface. We demonstrate a 2-fold customization of Web services: by building task-specific processing pipelines from a repository of available analytics, and by configuring services to accept and produce a combination of input and output data interchange formats. We provide qualitative evaluation of the formats as well as quantitative evaluation of automatic analytics. The latter was carried out as part of our participation in the fourth edition of the BioCreative challenge. Our analytics built into Web services for recognizing biochemical concepts in BioC collections achieved the highest combined scores out of 10 participating teams. Database URL: http://argo.nactem.ac.uk. PMID:25006225

Medical Informatics Idle YouTube Potential.

PubMed

Hucíková, Anežka; Babic, Ankica

2017-01-01

YouTube as an online video-sharing service in the context of Web 2.0 goes beyond the bounds of pure fun, for which the platform was primarily established. Nowadays, commonly to other social media, it serves also educational, informational and last but not least, marketing purposes. The importance of video sharing is supported by several predictions about video reaching over 90% of global internet traffic by 2020. Using qualitative content analysis over selected YouTube videos, paper examines the current situation of the platform's marketing potential usage by medical informatics organizations, researches and other healthcare professionals. Results of the analysis demonstrate several ways in which YouTube is already used to inform, educate or promote above-mentioned medical institutions. However, their engagement in self-promo or spreading awareness of their research projects via YouTube is considered to be low.

Internet of Things: A Review of Surveys Based on Context Aware Intelligent Services

PubMed Central

Gil, David; Ferrández, Antonio; Mora-Mora, Higinio; Peral, Jesús

2016-01-01

The Internet of Things (IoT) has made it possible for devices around the world to acquire information and store it, in order to be able to use it at a later stage. However, this potential opportunity is often not exploited because of the excessively big interval between the data collection and the capability to process and analyse it. In this paper, we review the current IoT technologies, approaches and models in order to discover what challenges need to be met to make more sense of data. The main goal of this paper is to review the surveys related to IoT in order to provide well integrated and context aware intelligent services for IoT. Moreover, we present a state-of-the-art of IoT from the context aware perspective that allows the integration of IoT and social networks in the emerging Social Internet of Things (SIoT) term. PMID:27409623

Understanding Total Quality Management in Context: Qualitative Research on Managers' Awareness of TQM Aspects in the Greek Service Industry

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Psychogios, Alexandros G.; Priporas, Constantinos-Vasilios

2007-01-01

This study addresses managers' awareness and familiarity with Total Quality Management (TQM). Eighteen (18) semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with managers working in a variety of service organizations in Greece. The major argument of the study is that although the acronym TQM and some of its concepts and practices are known by a…

Pedagogical Potential of a Web-Based GIS Application for Migration Data: A Preliminary Investigation in the Context of South Korea

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kim, Minsung; Kim, Kamyoung; Lee, Sang-Il

2013-01-01

This article examines the pedagogical potential of a Web-based GIS application, Population Migration Web Service (PMWS), in which students can examine population geography in an interactive and exploratory manner. This article introduces PMWS, a tailored, unique Internet GIS application that provides functions for visualizing spatial interaction…

From Sensor to Observation Web with environmental enablers in the Future Internet.

PubMed

Havlik, Denis; Schade, Sven; Sabeur, Zoheir A; Mazzetti, Paolo; Watson, Kym; Berre, Arne J; Mon, Jose Lorenzo

2011-01-01

This paper outlines the grand challenges in global sustainability research and the objectives of the FP7 Future Internet PPP program within the Digital Agenda for Europe. Large user communities are generating significant amounts of valuable environmental observations at local and regional scales using the devices and services of the Future Internet. These communities' environmental observations represent a wealth of information which is currently hardly used or used only in isolation and therefore in need of integration with other information sources. Indeed, this very integration will lead to a paradigm shift from a mere Sensor Web to an Observation Web with semantically enriched content emanating from sensors, environmental simulations and citizens. The paper also describes the research challenges to realize the Observation Web and the associated environmental enablers for the Future Internet. Such an environmental enabler could for instance be an electronic sensing device, a web-service application, or even a social networking group affording or facilitating the capability of the Future Internet applications to consume, produce, and use environmental observations in cross-domain applications. The term "envirofied" Future Internet is coined to describe this overall target that forms a cornerstone of work in the Environmental Usage Area within the Future Internet PPP program. Relevant trends described in the paper are the usage of ubiquitous sensors (anywhere), the provision and generation of information by citizens, and the convergence of real and virtual realities to convey understanding of environmental observations. The paper addresses the technical challenges in the Environmental Usage Area and the need for designing multi-style service oriented architecture. Key topics are the mapping of requirements to capabilities, providing scalability and robustness with implementing context aware information retrieval. Another essential research topic is handling data fusion and model based computation, and the related propagation of information uncertainty. Approaches to security, standardization and harmonization, all essential for sustainable solutions, are summarized from the perspective of the Environmental Usage Area. The paper concludes with an overview of emerging, high impact applications in the environmental areas concerning land ecosystems (biodiversity), air quality (atmospheric conditions) and water ecosystems (marine asset management).

From Sensor to Observation Web with Environmental Enablers in the Future Internet

PubMed Central

Havlik, Denis; Schade, Sven; Sabeur, Zoheir A.; Mazzetti, Paolo; Watson, Kym; Berre, Arne J.; Mon, Jose Lorenzo

2011-01-01

This paper outlines the grand challenges in global sustainability research and the objectives of the FP7 Future Internet PPP program within the Digital Agenda for Europe. Large user communities are generating significant amounts of valuable environmental observations at local and regional scales using the devices and services of the Future Internet. These communities’ environmental observations represent a wealth of information which is currently hardly used or used only in isolation and therefore in need of integration with other information sources. Indeed, this very integration will lead to a paradigm shift from a mere Sensor Web to an Observation Web with semantically enriched content emanating from sensors, environmental simulations and citizens. The paper also describes the research challenges to realize the Observation Web and the associated environmental enablers for the Future Internet. Such an environmental enabler could for instance be an electronic sensing device, a web-service application, or even a social networking group affording or facilitating the capability of the Future Internet applications to consume, produce, and use environmental observations in cross-domain applications. The term “envirofied” Future Internet is coined to describe this overall target that forms a cornerstone of work in the Environmental Usage Area within the Future Internet PPP program. Relevant trends described in the paper are the usage of ubiquitous sensors (anywhere), the provision and generation of information by citizens, and the convergence of real and virtual realities to convey understanding of environmental observations. The paper addresses the technical challenges in the Environmental Usage Area and the need for designing multi-style service oriented architecture. Key topics are the mapping of requirements to capabilities, providing scalability and robustness with implementing context aware information retrieval. Another essential research topic is handling data fusion and model based computation, and the related propagation of information uncertainty. Approaches to security, standardization and harmonization, all essential for sustainable solutions, are summarized from the perspective of the Environmental Usage Area. The paper concludes with an overview of emerging, high impact applications in the environmental areas concerning land ecosystems (biodiversity), air quality (atmospheric conditions) and water ecosystems (marine asset management). PMID:22163827

Datacube as a Service to Exploit the Full Potential of Data Cloudy Distributed

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mantovani, S.; Natali, S.; Barboni, D.; Hogan, P.; Baumann, P.; Clements, O.

2017-12-01

For almost half a century satellite platforms devoted to Earth Observation have allowed creating a complete description of the global environment, generating hundreds of Petabytes of data. The continuous increase of data availability (and respective data volume), together with the raised awareness of climate change issues, have made people of any kind (from citizens to decision makers to scientists) sensitive to environmental threats, improving their inclination to invest on monitoring and mitigation activities. Recently, the term "datacube" has received increasing attention for its potential to simplify the provision of "Big Earth Data" services, allowing massive spatio-temporal data in an analysis-ready way. A number of datacube-ready platforms have emerged to enable a new collaborative approach to analyse the vast amount of satellite imagery and other Earth Observation data, making quicker and easier to explore a time series of images stored in global or regional datacubes. In this context, the European Space Agency and European Commission H2020-funded projects ([1], [2]) are bringing together multiple organisations in Europe, Australia and United States to allow federated data holdings to be analysed using web-based access to petabytes of multidimensional geospatial datasets. In this study, we provide an overview of the existing datacubes (EarthServer-2 datacubes, Sentinel Datacube, European and Australian Landsat Datacubes, …), how the regional datacube structures differ each other, how datacubes interoperability is achieved through OpenSearch and Web Coverage Service (WCS) standards, and finally how the datacube contents can be visualized on a virtual globe (ESA-NASA WebWorldWind) based on a WC(P)S query, and how data can be manipulated on the fly through web-based interfaces, such as Jupyter notebook. The current study is co-financed by the European Space Agency under the MaaS project (ESRIN Contract No. 4000114186/15/I-LG) and the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the EarthServer-2 project (Grant Agreement No. 654367). [1] MEA as a Service (http://eodatacube.eu) [2] EarthServer-2 (http://www.earthserver.eu)

An evaluation on the effectiveness of Web 2.0 Startpages (Netvibes & Pageflakes) within NHS libraries.

PubMed

McCormick, Carol; Pickard, Alison Jane

2013-06-01

Carol McCormick was Learning Resources Advisor in the library at James Cook University Hospital, South Teesside when she completed her BSc (Hons) Librarianship (Work Based Learning) degree at Northumbria University. She gained a 1st Class Honours and is now Learning Resources Librarian. Carol's dissertation formed part of a wider action research project into the provision of current awareness services at James Cook University Hospital. This article reports on the evaluation which was conducted after a Web 2.0 Startpage, or portal, had been introduced to improve access to current awareness information for all staff within the Trust. It is the second article in the Dissertations into practice series to examine the use of web-based tools to improve access to information for NHS staff. AM. © 2013 The authors. Health Information and Libraries Journal © 2013 Health Libraries Group.

Emerging Technologies: Web 2.0.

PubMed

Holt, Claire

2011-03-01

Web 2.0 has brought a change to how we communicate and disseminate information with the use of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, instant messaging and blogging. This technology is beginning to be used in the health field for public awareness campaigns, emergency health alerts, medical education and remote healthcare services. Australian Health Information Managers will be called upon to reconcile their organisations' policies and procedures regarding the use of Web 2.0 technologies within the existing legal framework of privacy, confidentiality and consent. This article explores various applications of Web 2.0, their benefits and some of their potential legal and ethical implications when implemented in Australia.

Mobile Context Provider for Social Networking

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Santos, André C.; Cardoso, João M. P.; Ferreira, Diogo R.; Diniz, Pedro C.

The ability to infer user context based on a mobile device together with a set of external sensors opens up the way to new context-aware services and applications. In this paper, we describe a mobile context provider that makes use of sensors available in a smartphone as well as sensors externally connected via bluetooth. We describe the system architecture from sensor data acquisition to feature extraction, context inference and the publication of context information to well-known social networking services such as Twitter and Hi5. In the current prototype, context inference is based on decision trees, but the middleware allows the integration of other inference engines. Experimental results suggest that the proposed solution is a promising approach to provide user context to both local and network-level services.

Investigating the Stress Levels of Early Childhood, Primary and Secondary Pre-Service Teachers during Teaching Practicum

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Geng, Gretchen; Midford, Richard; Buckworth, Jenny

2015-01-01

This study investigated stress levels of pre-service teachers (PSTs) across three categories of teaching context: early childhood, primary and secondary. This paper focused on exploring the stressors in the completion of tasks in teaching practicum in the three categories of teaching context and an awareness of and access to support systems. The…

Raising awareness of Medicare member rights among seniors and caregivers in California.

PubMed

Olson, Rebecca; Grossman, Ruth M; Fu, Patricia L; Sabogal, Fabio

2010-01-01

Many Medicare recipients do not understand their health care rights. Lumetra, formerly California's Medicare quality improvement organization, developed a multifaceted outreach program to increase beneficiary awareness of its services and of the right to file quality-of-care complaints and discharge appeals. Layered outreach activities to Medicare members and their caregivers in 2 targeted counties consisted of paid media, direct mailings, community outreach, and online marketing. Calls to Lumetra's helpline and visits to its Web site--measures of beneficiary awareness of case review services--increased by 106% and 1214%, respectively, in the targeted counties during the 4-month outreach period. Only small increases occurred in nontargeted counties. Increases in quality-of-care complaints and discharge appeal rates were detected during a longer follow-up period.

Experiences of African American Empowerment: A Jamesian Perspective on Agency

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Curtis-Tweed, Phyllis

2003-01-01

This essay draws from the work of William James and three African American pragmatists, W.E.B. Du Bois, Ralph Ellison and Cornel West, to explore the moral relevance of the self as an empowered agent among African American youth. The focus is on Jamesian agency as a function of the individual's awareness of options in context, the self-empowerment…

Awareness campaign.

PubMed

2007-01-01

LifeBridge Health developed and implemented an awareness campaign to generate buzz about the breast cancer services at the Alvin & Lois Lapidus Cancer Institute of LifeBridge Health and the Herman & Walter Samuelson Breast Cancer Care Center at Northwest Hospital Center. With the help of talented local breast cancer survivors, celebrities, fashion designers, and artists, LifeBridge Health created a campaign, including an interactive Web site, public relations outreach, and a unique event in October 2006 that featured a collection of hand-made decorated bras.

An u-Service Model Based on a Smart Phone for Urban Computing Environments

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cho, Yongyun; Yoe, Hyun

In urban computing environments, all of services should be based on the interaction between humans and environments around them, which frequently and ordinarily in home and office. This paper propose an u-service model based on a smart phone for urban computing environments. The suggested service model includes a context-aware and personalized service scenario development environment that can instantly describe user's u-service demand or situation information with smart devices. To do this, the architecture of the suggested service model consists of a graphical service editing environment for smart devices, an u-service platform, and an infrastructure with sensors and WSN/USN. The graphic editor expresses contexts as execution conditions of a new service through a context model based on ontology. The service platform deals with the service scenario according to contexts. With the suggested service model, an user in urban computing environments can quickly and easily make u-service or new service using smart devices.

Context-aware system design

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chan, Christine S.; Ostertag, Michael H.; Akyürek, Alper Sinan; Šimunić Rosing, Tajana

2017-05-01

The Internet of Things envisions a web-connected infrastructure of billions of sensors and actuation devices. However, the current state-of-the-art presents another reality: monolithic end-to-end applications tightly coupled to a limited set of sensors and actuators. Growing such applications with new devices or behaviors, or extending the existing infrastructure with new applications, involves redesign and redeployment. We instead propose a modular approach to these applications, breaking them into an equivalent set of functional units (context engines) whose input/output transformations are driven by general-purpose machine learning, demonstrating an improvement in compute redundancy and computational complexity with minimal impact on accuracy. In conjunction with formal data specifications, or ontologies, we can replace application-specific implementations with a composition of context engines that use common statistical learning to generate output, thus improving context reuse. We implement interconnected context-aware applications using our approach, extracting user context from sensors in both healthcare and grid applications. We compare our infrastructure to single-stage monolithic implementations with single-point communications between sensor nodes and the cloud servers, demonstrating a reduction in combined system energy by 22-45%, and multiplying the battery lifetime of power-constrained devices by at least 22x, with easy deployment across different architectures and devices.

The GridEcon Platform: A Business Scenario Testbed for Commercial Cloud Services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Risch, Marcel; Altmann, Jörn; Guo, Li; Fleming, Alan; Courcoubetis, Costas

Within this paper, we present the GridEcon Platform, a testbed for designing and evaluating economics-aware services in a commercial Cloud computing setting. The Platform is based on the idea that the exact working of such services is difficult to predict in the context of a market and, therefore, an environment for evaluating its behavior in an emulated market is needed. To identify the components of the GridEcon Platform, a number of economics-aware services and their interactions have been envisioned. The two most important components of the platform are the Marketplace and the Workflow Engine. The Workflow Engine allows the simple composition of a market environment by describing the service interactions between economics-aware services. The Marketplace allows trading goods using different market mechanisms. The capabilities of these components of the GridEcon Platform in conjunction with the economics-aware services are described in this paper in detail. The validation of an implemented market mechanism and a capacity planning service using the GridEcon Platform also demonstrated the usefulness of the GridEcon Platform.

Semantic enrichment of medical forms - semi-automated coding of ODM-elements via web services.

PubMed

Breil, Bernhard; Watermann, Andreas; Haas, Peter; Dziuballe, Philipp; Dugas, Martin

2012-01-01

Semantic interoperability is an unsolved problem which occurs while working with medical forms from different information systems or institutions. Standards like ODM or CDA assure structural homogenization but in order to compare elements from different data models it is necessary to use semantic concepts and codes on an item level of those structures. We developed and implemented a web-based tool which enables a domain expert to perform semi-automated coding of ODM-files. For each item it is possible to inquire web services which result in unique concept codes without leaving the context of the document. Although it was not feasible to perform a totally automated coding we have implemented a dialog based method to perform an efficient coding of all data elements in the context of the whole document. The proportion of codable items was comparable to results from previous studies.

The iMars web-GIS - spatio-temporal data queries and single image web map services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Walter, S. H. G.; Steikert, R.; Schreiner, B.; Sidiropoulos, P.; Tao, Y.; Muller, J.-P.; Putry, A. R. D.; van Gasselt, S.

2017-09-01

We introduce a new approach for a system dedicated to planetary surface change detection by simultaneous visualisation of single-image time series in a multi-temporal context. In the context of the EU FP-7 iMars project we process and ingest vast amounts of automatically co-registered (ACRO) images. The base of the co-registration are the high precision HRSC multi-orbit quadrangle image mosaics, which are based on bundle-block-adjusted multi-orbit HRSC DTMs.

Session management for web-based healthcare applications.

PubMed Central

Wei, L.; Sengupta, S.

1999-01-01

In health care systems, users may access multiple applications during one session of interaction with the system. However, users must sign on to each application individually, and it is difficult to maintain a common context among these applications. We are developing a session management system for web-based applications using LDAP directory service, which will allow single sign-on to multiple web-based applications, and maintain a common context among those applications for the user. This paper discusses the motivations for building this system, the system architecture, and the challenges of our approach, such as the session objects management for the user, and session security. PMID:10566511

Exploring Patients’ Views Toward Giving Web-Based Feedback and Ratings to General Practitioners in England: A Qualitative Descriptive Study

PubMed Central

Cain, Rebecca; Neailey, Kevin; Hooberman, Lucy

2016-01-01

Background Patient feedback websites or doctor rating websites are increasingly being used by patients to give feedback about their health care experiences. There is little known about why patients in England may give Web-based feedback and what may motivate or dissuade them from giving Web-based feedback. Objective The aim of this study was to explore patients’ views toward giving Web-based feedback and ratings to general practitioners (GPs), within the context of other feedback methods available in primary care in England, and in particular, paper-based feedback cards. Methods A descriptive exploratory qualitative approach using face-to-face semistructured interviews was used in this study. Purposive sampling was used to recruit 18 participants from different age groups in London and Coventry. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using applied thematic analysis. Results Half of the participants in this study were not aware of the opportunity to leave feedback for GPs, and there was limited awareness about the methods available to leave feedback for a GP. The majority of participants were not convinced that formal patient feedback was needed by GPs or would be used by GPs for improvement, regardless of whether they gave it via a website or on paper. Some participants said or suggested that they may leave feedback on a website rather than on a paper-based feedback card for several reasons: because of the ability and ease of giving it remotely; because it would be shared with the public; and because it would be taken more seriously by GPs. Others, however, suggested that they would not use a website to leave feedback for the opposite reasons: because of accessibility issues; privacy and security concerns; and because they felt feedback left on a website may be ignored. Conclusions Patient feedback and rating websites as they currently are will not replace other mechanisms for patients in England to leave feedback for a GP. Rather, they may motivate a small number of patients who have more altruistic motives or wish to place collective pressure on a GP to give Web-based feedback. If the National Health Service or GP practices want more patients to leave Web-based feedback, we suggest they first make patients aware that they can leave anonymous feedback securely on a website for a GP. They can then convince them that their feedback is needed and wanted by GPs for improvement, and that the reviews they leave on the website will be of benefit to other patients to decide which GP to see or which GP practice to join. PMID:27496366

Advances in mobile mental health: opportunities and implications for the spectrum of e-mental health services

PubMed Central

Chan, Steven; Hwang, Tiffany; Wong, Alice; Bauer, Amy M.

2017-01-01

Mobile health (mHealth), telemedicine and other technology-based services facilitate mental health service delivery and may be considered part of an e-mental health (eMH) spectrum of care. Web- and Internet-based resources provide a great opportunity for the public, patients, healthcare providers and others to improve wellness, practice prevention and reduce suffering from illnesses. Mobile apps offer portability for access anytime/anywhere, are inexpensive versus traditional desktop computers, and have additional features (e.g., context-aware interventions and sensors with real-time feedback. This paper discusses mobile mental health (mMH) options, as part of a broader framework of eMH options. The evidence-based literature shows that many people have an openness to technology as a way to help themselves, change behaviors and engage additional clinical services. Studies show that traditional video-based synchronous telepsychiatry (TP) is as good as in-person service, but mHealth outcomes have been rarely, directly compared to in-person and other eMH care options. Similarly, technology options added to in-person care or combined with others have not been evaluated nor linked with specific goals and desired outcomes. Skills and competencies for clinicians are needed for mHealth, social media and other new technologies in the eMH spectrum, in addition to research by randomized trials and study of health service delivery models with an emphasis on effectiveness. PMID:28894744

Understanding Resistance: Reflections on Race and Privilege through Service-Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Espino, Michelle M.; Lee, Jenny J.

2011-01-01

Service-learning has been hailed as an effective means to bridge classroom learning with practical application in the local context. Numerous studies have demonstrated the educational value of service-learning, particularly the potential to build awareness and appreciation for diversity. Students' resistance to even acknowledging issues of…

Semantic knowledge for histopathological image analysis: from ontologies to processing portals and deep learning

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kergosien, Yannick L.; Racoceanu, Daniel

2017-11-01

This article presents our vision about the next generation of challenges in computational/digital pathology. The key role of the domain ontology, developed in a sustainable manner (i.e. using reference checklists and protocols, as the living semantic repositories), opens the way to effective/sustainable traceability and relevance feedback concerning the use of existing machine learning algorithms, proven to be very performant in the latest digital pathology challenges (i.e. convolutional neural networks). Being able to work in an accessible web-service environment, with strictly controlled issues regarding intellectual property (image and data processing/analysis algorithms) and medical data/image confidentiality is essential for the future. Among the web-services involved in the proposed approach, the living yellow pages in the area of computational pathology seems to be very important in order to reach an operational awareness, validation, and feasibility. This represents a very promising way to go to the next generation of tools, able to bring more guidance to the computer scientists and confidence to the pathologists, towards an effective/efficient daily use. Besides, a consistent feedback and insights will be more likely to emerge in the near future - from these sophisticated machine learning tools - back to the pathologists-, strengthening, therefore, the interaction between the different actors of a sustainable biomedical ecosystem (patients, clinicians, biologists, engineers, scientists etc.). Beside going digital/computational - with virtual slide technology demanding new workflows-, Pathology must prepare for another coming revolution: semantic web technologies now enable the knowledge of experts to be stored in databases, shared through the Internet, and accessible by machines. Traceability, disambiguation of reports, quality monitoring, interoperability between health centers are some of the associated benefits that pathologists were seeking. However, major changes are also to be expected for the relation of human diagnosis to machine based procedures. Improving on a former imaging platform which used a local knowledge base and a reasoning engine to combine image processing modules into higher level tasks, we propose a framework where different actors of the histopathology imaging world can cooperate using web services - exchanging knowledge as well as imaging services - and where the results of such collaborations on diagnostic related tasks can be evaluated in international challenges such as those recently organized for mitosis detection, nuclear atypia, or tissue architecture in the context of cancer grading. This framework is likely to offer an effective context-guidance and traceability to Deep Learning approaches, with an interesting promising perspective given by the multi-task learning (MTL) paradigm, distinguished by its applicability to several different learning algorithms, its non- reliance on specialized architectures and the promising results demonstrated, in particular towards the problem of weak supervision-, an issue found when direct links from pathology terms in reports to corresponding regions within images are missing.

Benchmark Intelligent Agent Systems for Distributed Battle Tracking

DTIC Science & Technology

2008-06-20

services in the military and other domains, each entity in the benchmark system exposes a standard set of Web services. Jess ( Java Expert Shell...System) is a rule engine for the Java platform and is an interpreter for the Jess rule language. It is used here to implement policies that maintain...battle tracking system (DBTS), maintaining distributed situation awareness. The Java Agent DEvelopment (JADE) framework is a software framework

Data Strategies to Support Automated Multi-Sensor Data Fusion in a Service Oriented Architecture

DTIC Science & Technology

2008-06-01

and employ vast quantities of content. This dissertation provides two software architectural patterns and an auto-fusion process that guide the...UDDI), Simple Order Access Protocol (SOAP), Java, Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA), Business Process Execution Language for Web Service (BPEL4WS) 16...content. This dissertation provides two software architectural patterns and an auto-fusion process that guide the development of a distributed

Raising Student Awareness of the Use of English for Specific Business Purposes in the European Context: A Staff-Student Project

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nickerson, C.; Gerritsen, M.; Meurs, F.v.

2005-01-01

This Research Note reports on a large-scale staff-student project focussing on the use of English for Specific Business Purposes in a number of promotional genres (TV commercials, annual reports, corporate web-sites, print advertising) within several of the EU member states: Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Germany and Spain. The project as a…

Towards Using Reo for Compliance-Aware Business Process Modeling

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Arbab, Farhad; Kokash, Natallia; Meng, Sun

Business process modeling and implementation of process supporting infrastructures are two challenging tasks that are not fully aligned. On the one hand, languages such as Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) exist to capture business processes at the level of domain analysis. On the other hand, programming paradigms and technologies such as Service-Oriented Computing (SOC) and web services have emerged to simplify the development of distributed web systems that underly business processes. BPMN is the most recognized language for specifying process workflows at the early design steps. However, it is rather declarative and may lead to the executable models which are incomplete or semantically erroneous. Therefore, an approach for expressing and analyzing BPMN models in a formal setting is required. In this paper we describe how BPMN diagrams can be represented by means of a semantically precise channel-based coordination language called Reo which admits formal analysis using model checking and bisimulation techniques. Moreover, since additional requirements may come from various regulatory/legislative documents, we discuss the opportunities offered by Reo and its mathematical abstractions for expressing process-related constraints such as Quality of Service (QoS) or time-aware conditions on process states.

Flexible Macroblock Ordering for Context-Aware Ultrasound Video Transmission over Mobile WiMAX

PubMed Central

Martini, Maria G.; Hewage, Chaminda T. E. R.

2010-01-01

The most recent network technologies are enabling a variety of new applications, thanks to the provision of increased bandwidth and better management of Quality of Service. Nevertheless, telemedical services involving multimedia data are still lagging behind, due to the concern of the end users, that is, clinicians and also patients, about the low quality provided. Indeed, emerging network technologies should be appropriately exploited by designing the transmission strategy focusing on quality provision for end users. Stemming from this principle, we propose here a context-aware transmission strategy for medical video transmission over WiMAX systems. Context, in terms of regions of interest (ROI) in a specific session, is taken into account for the identification of multiple regions of interest, and compression/transmission strategies are tailored to such context information. We present a methodology based on H.264 medical video compression and Flexible Macroblock Ordering (FMO) for ROI identification. Two different unequal error protection methodologies, providing higher protection to the most diagnostically relevant data, are presented. PMID:20827292

Comparison of Government and Non-Government Alcohol and Other Drug (AOD) Treatment Service Delivery for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Community.

PubMed

Mullens, Amy B; Fischer, Jane; Stewart, Mary; Kenny, Kathryn; Garvey, Shane; Debattista, Joseph

2017-07-03

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) populations are more likely to misuse alcohol and other drugs (AOD), compared to the general population. However, LGBT engagement with AOD treatment is often precluded by insensitivity and misunderstanding of LGBT issues. These treatment barriers may be a consequence of either worker attitudes, organizational factors or a combination of both. Few studies have compared service context as an impediment to AOD treatment. This pilot study sought to examine and compare staff attitudes, knowledge and awareness of LGBT issues in two state-wide AOD services within Australia. One organization was a government service, whilst the other was faith based. A cross-sectional study of a convenience sample (N = 130) of workers employed in a state-wide government AOD service (n = 65), and a state-wide non-government service (n = 65) was conducted. Participants self-completed a questionnaire comprising tools previously used to assess staff attitudes, knowledge and awareness of LGBT issues. Few significant differences in attitudes and awareness of LGBT issues between government and non-government respondents were found. Nearly all respondents were supportive of LGBT persons irrespective of organizational context, with a small number of negative views. Although most respondents demonstrated awareness of organizational policies and practices relating to LGBT clients, many were "unsure" or "neutral" of what these might be. It is confirming that the majority of staff report supportive attitudes towards LGBT clients. Findings suggest that organizations need to continue to take leadership to strengthen organizational training and capacity to deliver LGBT friendly AOD treatment practices.

The clients' readiness to use mental health care services: Experiences and perceptions from Iranian context.

PubMed

Alavi, Mousa; Irajpour, Alireza

2013-11-01

Underutilization of mental health care services has been a challenge for the health care providers for many years. This challenge could be met in part by improving the clients' readiness to use such services. This study aimed to introduce the important aspects of the clients' readiness to use mental health services in the Iranian context. A thematic analysis of in-depth interviews was undertaken using a constant comparative approach. Participants (11 health professionals consisting of 3 physicians, 7 nurses, 1 psychologist, and 5 patients/their family members) were recruited from educational hospitals affiliated with Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Iran. The credibility and trustworthiness was grounded on four aspects: factual value, applicability, consistency, and neutrality. The study findings uncovered two important aspects of the clients' readiness for utilizing mental health care services. These are described through two themes and related sub-themes: "The clients' awareness" implies the cognitive aspect of readiness and "the clients' attitudes" implies the psychological aspect of readiness, both of which have perceived to cultivate a fertile context through which the clients could access and use the mental health services more easily. For the health care system in Isfahan, Iran to be successful in delivering mental health services, training programs directed to prepare service users should be considered. Improving the clients' favorable attitudes and awareness should be considered.

Exploring the Influence of Web-Based Portfolio Development on Learning to Teach Elementary Science

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Avraamidou, Lucy; Zembal-Saul, Carla

2006-01-01

This qualitative case study examined web-based portfolio development in the service of supporting reflective thinking and learning within the innovative context of Professional Development Schools. Specifically, this study investigated the nature of the evidence-based philosophies developed by prospective teachers as the central part of the…

Evaluation of flood hazard maps in print and web mapping services as information tools in flood risk communication

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hagemeier-Klose, M.; Wagner, K.

2009-04-01

Flood risk communication with the general public and the population at risk is getting increasingly important for flood risk management, especially as a precautionary measure. This is also underlined by the EU Flood Directive. The flood related authorities therefore have to develop adjusted information tools which meet the demands of different user groups. This article presents the formative evaluation of flood hazard maps and web mapping services according to the specific requirements and needs of the general public using the dynamic-transactional approach as a theoretical framework. The evaluation was done by a mixture of different methods; an analysis of existing tools, a creative workshop with experts and laymen and an online survey. The currently existing flood hazard maps or web mapping services or web GIS still lack a good balance between simplicity and complexity with adequate readability and usability for the public. Well designed and associative maps (e.g. using blue colours for water depths) which can be compared with past local flood events and which can create empathy in viewers, can help to raise awareness, to heighten the activity and knowledge level or can lead to further information seeking. Concerning web mapping services, a linkage between general flood information like flood extents of different scenarios and corresponding water depths and real time information like gauge levels is an important demand by users. Gauge levels of these scenarios are easier to understand than the scientifically correct return periods or annualities. The recently developed Bavarian web mapping service tries to integrate these requirements.

Local File Disclosure Vulnerability: A Case Study of Public-Sector Web Applications

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ahmed, M. Imran; Maruf Hassan, Md; Bhuyian, Touhid

2018-01-01

Almost all public-sector organisations in Bangladesh now offer online services through web applications, along with the existing channels, in their endeavour to realise the dream of a ‘Digital Bangladesh’. Nations across the world have joined the online environment thanks to training and awareness initiatives by their government. File sharing and downloading activities using web applications have now become very common, not only ensuring the easy distribution of different types of files and documents but also enormously reducing the time and effort of users. Although the online services that are being used frequently have made users’ life easier, it has increased the risk of exploitation of local file disclosure (LFD) vulnerability in the web applications of different public-sector organisations due to unsecure design and careless coding. This paper analyses the root cause of LFD vulnerability, its exploitation techniques, and its impact on 129 public-sector websites in Bangladesh by examining the use of manual black box testing approach.

Review of self-awareness and its clinical application in stroke rehabilitation.

PubMed

Leung, Daniel P K; Liu, Karen P Y

2011-09-01

The objectives of this study were (i) to explore, following a literature review, the concepts of self-awareness, its assessment, and intervention for self-awareness deficits, as well as its clinical significance in stroke rehabilitation; and (ii) to apply the concepts of self-awareness in the context of a rehabilitation program. The search was conducted by the electronic databases Web of Science, Science Direct, MEDLINE, and PsychcInfo. A systematic literature search of publications written in English between 1980 and 2010 was conducted using the keywords, self-awareness or self-regulation. The search was limited to the following keywords: stroke, deficits, assessment, intervention, and rehabilitation. Two important conceptual models, namely, the Pyramid Model of Self-Awareness and the Dynamic Comprehensive Model of Awareness, were reviewed. Suggestions were made to the constraint-induced movement therapy for enhancement of both assessment and treatment of self-awareness deficits. In conclusion, self-awareness is essential for the success of rehabilitation. It is hoped that more studies can be conducted on the effectiveness of awareness enhancement programs incorporated in on-going therapies can be conducted, so that the evidence base can be further built up in this evolving area of practice.

Social Email: A Framework and Application for More Socially-Aware Communications

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tran, Thomas; Rowe, Jeff; Wu, S. Felix

As online social networks (OSN) attempt to mimic real life social networks, we have made progress towards using OSNs to provide us with data to allow for richer and more robust online communications. In this paper, we present a novel approach towards socially-aware email. Currently, email provides too little control to the recipient. Our approach, dubbed SoEmail, provides social context to messages using an OSN's underlying social graph. This not only gives the recipient control over who can message her, but it also provides her with an understanding of where the message originated from, socially. Furthermore, users who do not wish to use the built-in social aspect of SoEmail, can send and receive emails without any changes to their behavior. The modifications we made to the email application to provide this social context are not invasive and can be easily ignored by any existing email client. We built SoEmail on top of an existing framework, known as Davis Social Links, which allows SoEmail to be completely agnostic about the underlying OSN. We created a web-based, standards-based web client for SoEmail using Facebook and Gmail as the underlying systems which has been released for public use and has had a good adoption rate.

Study on the context-aware middleware for ubiquitous greenhouses using wireless sensor networks.

PubMed

Hwang, Jeonghwang; Yoe, Hyun

2011-01-01

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) technology is one of the important technologies to implement the ubiquitous society, and it could increase productivity of agricultural and livestock products, and secure transparency of distribution channels if such a WSN technology were successfully applied to the agricultural sector. Middleware, which can connect WSN hardware, applications, and enterprise systems, is required to construct ubiquitous agriculture environment combining WSN technology with agricultural sector applications, but there have been insufficient studies in the field of WSN middleware in the agricultural environment, compared to other industries. This paper proposes a context-aware middleware to efficiently process data collected from ubiquitous greenhouses by applying WSN technology and used to implement combined services through organic connectivity of data. The proposed middleware abstracts heterogeneous sensor nodes to integrate different forms of data, and provides intelligent context-aware, event service, and filtering functions to maximize operability and scalability of the middleware. To evaluate the performance of the middleware, an integrated management system for ubiquitous greenhouses was implemented by applying the proposed middleware to an existing greenhouse, and it was tested by measuring the level of load through CPU usage and the response time for users' requests when the system is working.

ASON: An OWL-S based ontology for astrophysical services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Louge, T.; Karray, M. H.; Archimède, B.; Knödlseder, J.

2018-07-01

Modern astrophysics heavily relies on Web services to expose most of the data coming from many different instruments and researches worldwide. The virtual observatory (VO) has been designed to allow scientists to locate, retrieve and analyze useful information among those heterogeneous data. The use of ontologies has been studied in the VO context for astrophysical concerns like object types or astrophysical services subjects. On the operative point of view, ontological description of astrophysical services for interoperability and querying still has to be considered. In this paper, we design a global ontology (Astrophysical Services ONtology, ASON) based on web Ontology Language for Services (OWL-S) to enhance existing astrophysical services description. By expressing together VO specific and non-VO specific services design, it will improve the automation of services queries and allow automatic composition of heterogeneous astrophysical services.

Sealife: a semantic grid browser for the life sciences applied to the study of infectious diseases.

PubMed

Schroeder, Michael; Burger, Albert; Kostkova, Patty; Stevens, Robert; Habermann, Bianca; Dieng-Kuntz, Rose

2006-01-01

The objective of Sealife is the conception and realisation of a semantic Grid browser for the life sciences, which will link the existing Web to the currently emerging eScience infrastructure. The SeaLife Browser will allow users to automatically link a host of Web servers and Web/Grid services to the Web content he/she is visiting. This will be accomplished using eScience's growing number of Web/Grid Services and its XML-based standards and ontologies. The browser will identify terms in the pages being browsed through the background knowledge held in ontologies. Through the use of Semantic Hyperlinks, which link identified ontology terms to servers and services, the SeaLife Browser will offer a new dimension of context-based information integration. In this paper, we give an overview over the different components of the browser and their interplay. This SeaLife Browser will be demonstrated within three application scenarios in evidence-based medicine, literature & patent mining, and molecular biology, all relating to the study of infectious diseases. The three applications vertically integrate the molecule/cell, the tissue/organ and the patient/population level by covering the analysis of high-throughput screening data for endocytosis (the molecular entry pathway into the cell), the expression of proteins in the spatial context of tissue and organs, and a high-level library on infectious diseases designed for clinicians and their patients. For more information see http://www.biote.ctu-dresden.de/sealife.

A Global Overview of Male Escort Websites.

PubMed

Kumar, Navin; Minichiello, Victor; Scott, John; Harrington, Taylor

2017-01-01

This article details a preliminary dataset of global male escort sites to give insight into the scale of the online market. We conducted a content analysis of 499 Web sites and also measured traffic to these sites. Our analysis examined the structural characteristics of escort services, geographical and regulatory contexts, and resilience of such services. Results suggest that most sites are independent and not affiliated to escort agencies, and the majority cater to male escorts soliciting male clients, with a number of sites for female clientele and couples. These Web sites are dispersed globally, with Asian, European, and South American countries the major hubs in the market and a small number of large multinational sites based in the United States and Europe figuring as a major presence in markets. Although still subject to high levels of regulation in many parts of the world, the data suggest that male escorting is becoming more visible in diverse cultural contexts as measured by the number of Web sites appearing in public spaces.

Web 2.0 systems supporting childhood chronic disease management: a pattern language representation of a general architecture.

PubMed

Timpka, Toomas; Eriksson, Henrik; Ludvigsson, Johnny; Ekberg, Joakim; Nordfeldt, Sam; Hanberger, Lena

2008-11-28

Chronic disease management is a global health concern. By the time they reach adolescence, 10-15% of all children live with a chronic disease. The role of educational interventions in facilitating adaptation to chronic disease is receiving growing recognition, and current care policies advocate greater involvement of patients in self-care. Web 2.0 is an umbrella term for new collaborative Internet services characterized by user participation in developing and managing content. Key elements include Really Simple Syndication (RSS) to rapidly disseminate awareness of new information; weblogs (blogs) to describe new trends, wikis to share knowledge, and podcasts to make information available on personal media players. This study addresses the potential to develop Web 2.0 services for young persons with a chronic disease. It is acknowledged that the management of childhood chronic disease is based on interplay between initiatives and resources on the part of patients, relatives, and health care professionals, and where the balance shifts over time to the patients and their families. Participatory action research was used to stepwise define a design specification in the form of a pattern language. Support for children diagnosed with diabetes Type 1 was used as the example area. Each individual design pattern was determined graphically using card sorting methods, and textually in the form Title, Context, Problem, Solution, Examples and References. Application references were included at the lowest level in the graphical overview in the pattern language but not specified in detail in the textual descriptions. The design patterns are divided into functional and non-functional design elements, and formulated at the levels of organizational, system, and application design. The design elements specify access to materials for development of the competences needed for chronic disease management in specific community settings, endorsement of self-learning through online peer-to-peer communication, and systematic accreditation and evaluation of materials and processes. The use of design patterns allows representing the core design elements of a Web 2.0 system upon which an 'ecological' development of content respecting these constraints can be built. Future research should include evaluations of Web 2.0 systems implemented according to the architecture in practice settings.

Web-Based Self-Service Systems for Managed IT Support: Service Provider Perspectives of Stakeholder-Based Issues

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cooper, Vanessa A.; Lichtenstein, Sharman; Smith, Ross

This chapter explores the provision of after-sales information technology (IT) support services using Web-based self-service systems (WSSs) in a business-to-business (B2B) context. A recent study conducted at six large multi-national IT support organisations revealed a number of critical success factors (CSFs) and stakeholder-based issues. To better identify and understand these important enablers and barriers, we explain how WSSs should be considered within a complex network of service providers, business partners and customer firms. The CSFs and stakeholder-based issues are discussed. The chapter highlights that for more successful service provision using WSSs, IT service providers should collaborate more effectively with enterprise customers and business partners and should better integrate their WSSs.

Open Marketplace for Simulation Software on the Basis of a Web Platform

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kryukov, A. P.; Demichev, A. P.

2016-02-01

The focus in development of a new generation of middleware shifts from the global grid systems to building convenient and efficient web platforms for remote access to individual computing resources. Further line of their development, suggested in this work, is related not only with the quantitative increase in their number and with the expansion of scientific, engineering, and manufacturing areas in which they are used, but also with improved technology for remote deployment of application software on the resources interacting with the web platforms. Currently, the services for providers of application software in the context of scientific-oriented web platforms is not developed enough. The proposed in this work new web platforms of application software market should have all the features of the existing web platforms for submissions of jobs to remote resources plus the provision of specific web services for interaction on market principles between the providers and consumers of application packages. The suggested approach will be approved on the example of simulation applications in the field of nonlinear optics.

Identifying Program Characteristics for Preparing Pre-Service Teachers for Diversity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Akiba, Motoko

2011-01-01

Background/Context: Educating pre-service teachers to develop multicultural awareness, knowledge, and skills for teaching diverse students is a major responsibility of teacher education program coordinators and teacher educators. Numerous studies have discussed and explored the characteristics of teacher preparation that improve pre-service…

Enabling Large-Scale IoT-Based Services through Elastic Publish/Subscribe.

PubMed

Vavassori, Sergio; Soriano, Javier; Fernández, Rafael

2017-09-19

In this paper, we report an algorithm that is designed to leverage the cloud as infrastructure to support Internet of Things (IoT) by elastically scaling in/out so that IoT-based service users never stop receiving sensors' data. This algorithm is able to provide an uninterrupted service to end users even during the scaling operation since its internal state repartitioning is transparent for publishers or subscribers; its scaling operation is time-bounded and depends only on the dimension of the state partitions to be transmitted to the different nodes. We describe its implementation in E-SilboPS, an elastic content-based publish/subscribe (CBPS) system specifically designed to support context-aware sensing and communication in IoT-based services. E-SilboPS is a key internal asset of the FIWARE IoT services enablement platform, which offers an architecture of components specifically designed to capture data from, or act upon, IoT devices as easily as reading/changing the value of attributes linked to context entities. In addition, we discuss the quantitative measurements used to evaluate the scale-out process, as well as the results of this evaluation. This new feature rounds out the context-aware content-based features of E-SilboPS by providing, for example, the necessary middleware for constructing dashboards and monitoring panels that are capable of dynamically changing queries and continuously handling data in IoT-based services.

Enabling Large-Scale IoT-Based Services through Elastic Publish/Subscribe

PubMed Central

2017-01-01

In this paper, we report an algorithm that is designed to leverage the cloud as infrastructure to support Internet of Things (IoT) by elastically scaling in/out so that IoT-based service users never stop receiving sensors’ data. This algorithm is able to provide an uninterrupted service to end users even during the scaling operation since its internal state repartitioning is transparent for publishers or subscribers; its scaling operation is time-bounded and depends only on the dimension of the state partitions to be transmitted to the different nodes. We describe its implementation in E-SilboPS, an elastic content-based publish/subscribe (CBPS) system specifically designed to support context-aware sensing and communication in IoT-based services. E-SilboPS is a key internal asset of the FIWARE IoT services enablement platform, which offers an architecture of components specifically designed to capture data from, or act upon, IoT devices as easily as reading/changing the value of attributes linked to context entities. In addition, we discuss the quantitative measurements used to evaluate the scale-out process, as well as the results of this evaluation. This new feature rounds out the context-aware content-based features of E-SilboPS by providing, for example, the necessary middleware for constructing dashboards and monitoring panels that are capable of dynamically changing queries and continuously handling data in IoT-based services. PMID:28925967

Hybrid-Aware Model for Senior Wellness Service in Smart Home.

PubMed

Jung, Yuchae

2017-05-22

Smart home technology with situation-awareness is important for seniors to improve safety and security. With the development of context-aware computing, wearable sensor technology, and ubiquitous computing, it is easier for seniors to manage their health problem in smart home environment. For monitoring senior activity in smart home, wearable, and motion sensors-such as respiration rate (RR), electrocardiography (ECG), body temperature, and blood pressure (BP)-were used for monitoring movements of seniors. For context-awareness, environmental sensors-such as gas, fire, smoke, dust, temperature, and light sensors-were used for senior location data collection. Based on senior activity, senior health status can be classified into positive and negative. Based on senior location and time, senior safety is classified into safe and emergency. In this paper, we propose a hybrid inspection service middleware for monitoring elderly health risk based on senior activity and location. This hybrid-aware model for the detection of abnormal status of seniors has four steps as follows: (1) data collection from biosensors and environmental sensors; (2) monitoring senior location and time of stay in each location using environmental sensors; (3) monitoring senior activity using biometric data; finally, (4) expectation-maximization based decision-making step recommending proper treatment based on a senior health risk ratio.

Hybrid-Aware Model for Senior Wellness Service in Smart Home

PubMed Central

Jung, Yuchae

2017-01-01

Smart home technology with situation-awareness is important for seniors to improve safety and security. With the development of context-aware computing, wearable sensor technology, and ubiquitous computing, it is easier for seniors to manage their health problem in smart home environment. For monitoring senior activity in smart home, wearable, and motion sensors—such as respiration rate (RR), electrocardiography (ECG), body temperature, and blood pressure (BP)—were used for monitoring movements of seniors. For context-awareness, environmental sensors—such as gas, fire, smoke, dust, temperature, and light sensors—were used for senior location data collection. Based on senior activity, senior health status can be classified into positive and negative. Based on senior location and time, senior safety is classified into safe and emergency. In this paper, we propose a hybrid inspection service middleware for monitoring elderly health risk based on senior activity and location. This hybrid-aware model for the detection of abnormal status of seniors has four steps as follows: (1) data collection from biosensors and environmental sensors; (2) monitoring senior location and time of stay in each location using environmental sensors; (3) monitoring senior activity using biometric data; finally, (4) expectation-maximization based decision-making step recommending proper treatment based on a senior health risk ratio. PMID:28531157

Web-Based Academic Support Services: Guidelines for Extensibility

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McCracken, Holly

2005-01-01

Using the experience of the University of Illinois at Springfield's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the as a foundation for discussion, this paper addresses the provision of student support services to distant students within the context of development and expansion. Specific issues for consideration include: integrating student support…

Context-aware access control for pervasive access to process-based healthcare systems.

PubMed

Koufi, Vassiliki; Vassilacopoulos, George

2008-01-01

Healthcare is an increasingly collaborative enterprise involving a broad range of healthcare services provided by many individuals and organizations. Grid technology has been widely recognized as a means for integrating disparate computing resources in the healthcare field. Moreover, Grid portal applications can be developed on a wireless and mobile infrastructure to execute healthcare processes which, in turn, can provide remote access to Grid database services. Such an environment provides ubiquitous and pervasive access to integrated healthcare services at the point of care, thus improving healthcare quality. In such environments, the ability to provide an effective access control mechanism that meets the requirement of the least privilege principle is essential. Adherence to the least privilege principle requires continuous adjustments of user permissions in order to adapt to the current situation. This paper presents a context-aware access control mechanism for HDGPortal, a Grid portal application which provides access to workflow-based healthcare processes using wireless Personal Digital Assistants. The proposed mechanism builds upon and enhances security mechanisms provided by the Grid Security Infrastructure. It provides tight, just-in-time permissions so that authorized users get access to specific objects according to the current context. These permissions are subject to continuous adjustments triggered by the changing context. Thus, the risk of compromising information integrity during task executions is reduced.

eodataservice.org: how to enable cross-continental interoperability of the European Space Agency and Australian Geoscience Landsat datacubes

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mantovani, Simone; Barboni, Damiano; Natali, Stefano; Evans, Ben; Steer, Adam; Hogan, Patrik; Baumann, Peter

2017-04-01

Globally, billions of dollars are invested annually in Earth observations that support public services, commercial activity, and scientific inquiry. The Common Data Framework [1] for Earth Observation data summarises the current standards for the international community to adopt a common approach so that this significant data can be readily accessible. Concurrently, the "Copernicus Cooperation Arrangement" between the European Commission and the Australian Government is just one in a number of recent agreements signed to facilitate Satellite Earth Observation data sharing among the users' communities. The typical approach implemented in these initiatives is the establishment of a regional data access hub managed by the regional entity to collect data at full scale or over the local region, improve access services and provide high-performance environment in which all the data can be analysed. Furthermore, a number of datacube-aware platforms and services have emerged that enable a new collaborative approach for analysing the vast quantities of satellite imagery and other Earth Observations, making it quicker and easier to explore a time series of image data. In this context, the H2020-funded EarthServer2 project brings together multiple organisations in Europe, Australia and United States to allow federated data holdings to be analysed using web-based access to petabytes of multidimensional geospatial datasets. The aim is to create and ensure that these large spatial data sources can be accessed based on OGC standards, namely Web Coverage Service (WCS) and Web Coverage Processing Service (WCPS) that provide efficient&timely retrieval of large volumes of geospatial data as well as on-the-fly processing. In this study, we provide an overview of the existing European Space Agency and Australian Geoscience Landsat datacubes, how the regional datacube structures differ, how interoperability is enabled through standards, and finally how the datacubes can be visualized on a virtual globe (NASA - ESA WebWorldWind) based on a WC(P)S query via any standard internet browser. The current study is co-financed by the European Space Agency under the MaaS project (ESRIN Contract No. 4000114186/15/I-LG) and the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the EarthServer-2 project (Grant Agreement No. 654367) [1] Common framework for Earth-Observation data, March 23, 2016 (https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/common_framework_for_earth_observation_data.pdf)

Vocabularies in the VO

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gray, A. J. G.; Gray, N.; Ounis, I.

2009-09-01

There are multiple vocabularies and thesauri within astronomy, of which the best known are the 1993 IAU Thesaurus and the keyword list maintained by A&A, ApJ and MNRAS. The IVOA has agreed on a standard for publishing vocabularies, based on the W3C skos standard, to allow greater automated interaction with them, in particular on the Web. This allows links with the Semantic Web and looks forward to richer applications using the technologies of that domain. Vocabulary-aware applications can benefit from improvements in both precision and recall when searching for bibliographic or science data, and lightweight intelligent filtering for services such as VOEvent streams. In this paper we present two applications, the Vocabulary Explorer and its companion the Mapping Editor, which have been developed to support the use of vocabularies in the Virtual Observatory. These combine Semantic Web and Information Retrieval technologies to illustrate the way in which formal vocabularies might be used in a practical application, provide an online service which will allow astronomers to explore and relate existing vocabularies, and provide a service which translates free text user queries into vocabulary terms.

MilitaryKidsConnect: Web-based prevention services for military children.

PubMed

Blasko, Kelly A

2015-08-01

Military children often present with psychological health concerns related to their experience of deployments, reintegration, and frequent moves common in military life. MilitaryKidsConnect is a Department of Defense (DoD) Web site designed to enhance the coping of military children in the context of their military life experience. The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of the Web site as a resource that provides psychoeducation, coping strategies, and peer support to military children. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

An ontology-based system for context-aware and configurable services to support home-based continuous care.

PubMed

Paganelli, Federica; Giuli, Dino

2011-03-01

Continuous care models for chronic diseases pose several technology-oriented challenges for home-based care, where assistance services rely on a close collaboration among different stakeholders, such as health operators, patient relatives, and social community members. This paper describes an ontology-based context model and a related context management system providing a configurable and extensible service-oriented framework to ease the development of applications for monitoring and handling patient chronic conditions. The system has been developed in a prototypal version, and integrated with a service platform for supporting operators of home-based care networks in cooperating and sharing patient-related information and coordinating mutual interventions for handling critical and alarm situations. Finally, we discuss experimentation results and possible further research directions.

Dynamic Scaffolding in a Cloud-Based Problem Representation System: Empowering Pre-Service Teachers' Problem Solving

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee, Chwee Beng; Ling, Keck Voon; Reimann, Peter; Diponegoro, Yudho Ahmad; Koh, Chia Heng; Chew, Derwin

2014-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to argue for the need to develop pre-service teachers' problem solving ability, in particular, in the context of real-world complex problems. Design/methodology/approach: To argue for the need to develop pre-service teachers' problem solving skills, the authors describe a web-based problem representation…

Merging public relations with health communication in the context of university alcohol prevention.

PubMed

Brummette, John

2015-01-01

The scope of this study is to determine whether social norms marketing should be further evaluated according to its ability to serve as a public relations tactic for universities. Based on a framework of social norms theory and strategic issues management, this study uses a web-based survey with university parents (N = 173) to identify relationships among exaggerated parental misperceptions of student binge drinking, parental awareness of alcohol prevention programs, and parental perceptions of organizational legitimacy. Findings from this study are used to make the argument that health communication and public relations should be viewed as interrelated concepts in the context of university alcohol prevention.

Proceedings of the Fourth International Workshop on a Research Agenda for Maintenance and Evolution of Service-Oriented Systems (MESOA 2010)

DTIC Science & Technology

2011-09-01

service -oriented systems • Software -as-a- Service ( SaaS ) • social network infrastructures • Internet marketing • mobile computing • context awareness...Maintenance and Evolution of Service -Oriented Systems (MESOA 2010), organized by members of the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute’s...CMU/SEI-2011-SR-008 | 1 1 Workshop Introduction The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) started developing a service -oriented architecture

A Web Service Implementation for Large-Scale Automation, Visualization and Real-Time Program Awareness via Lexical Link Analysis

DTIC Science & Technology

2011-04-30

internal constructs f l f t th h l i l li k l i (LLA)? 3 use u or managemen , roug ex ca n ana ys s LLA Methodology Can Help! Warfighters RDTE...information, including suggestions for reducing this burden, to Washington Headquarters Services, Directorate for Information Operations and Reports...categories of interest in various spreadsheets). This year, we started to develop LLA from a demonstration to an operational capability and facilitate a

Leveraging the BPEL Event Model to Support QoS-aware Process Execution

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zaid, Farid; Berbner, Rainer; Steinmetz, Ralf

Business processes executed using compositions of distributed Web Services are susceptible to different fault types. The Web Services Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) is widely used to execute such processes. While BPEL provides fault handling mechanisms to handle functional faults like invalid message types, it still lacks a flexible native mechanism to handle non-functional exceptions associated with violations of QoS levels that are typically specified in a governing Service Level Agreement (SLA), In this paper, we present an approach to complement BPEL's fault handling, where expected QoS levels and necessary recovery actions are specified declaratively in form of Event-Condition-Action (ECA) rules. Our main contribution is leveraging BPEL's standard event model which we use as an event space for the created ECA rules. We validate our approach by an extension to an open source BPEL engine.

Principles and processes behind promoting awareness of rights for quality maternal care services: a synthesis of stakeholder experiences and implementation factors.

PubMed

George, Asha S; Branchini, Casey

2017-08-31

Promoting awareness of rights is a value-based process that entails a different way of thinking and acting, which is at times misunderstood or deemed as aspirational. Guided by the SURE framework, we undertook a secondary analysis of 26 documents identified by an earlier systematic review on promoting awareness of rights to increase use of maternity care services. We thematically analysed stakeholder experiences and implementation factors across the diverse initiatives to derive common elements to guide future efforts. Interventions that promote awareness of rights for maternal health varied in nature, methodological orientation, depth and quality. Materials included booklets, posters, pamphlets/ briefs and service standards/charters. Target populations included women, family members, communities, community structures, community-based and non governmental organizations, health providers and administrators, as well as elected representatives. While one initiative only focused on raising awareness, most were embedded within larger efforts to improve the accountability and responsiveness of service delivery through community monitoring and advocacy, with a few aiming to change policies and contest elections. Underlying these action oriented forms of promoting awareness of rights, was a critical consciousness and attitudinal change gained through iterative capacity-building for all stakeholders; materials and processes that supported group discussion and interaction; the formation or strengthening of community groups; situational analysis to ensure adaptation to local context; facilitation to ensure common ground and language across stakeholders; and strategic networking and alliance building across health system levels. While many positive experiences are discussed, few challenges or barriers to implementation are documented. The limited documentation and poor quality of information found indicate that while various examples of promoting awareness of rights for maternal health exists, research partnerships to systematically evaluate their processes, learning and effects are lacking. Rather than being aspirational, several examples of promoting awareness of women's rights for quality maternity care services exist. More than mainly disseminate information, they aim to change stakeholder mindsets and relationships across health system levels. Due to their transformatory intent they require sustained investment, with strategic planning, concrete operationalization and political adeptness to manage dynamic stakeholder expectations and reactions overtime. More investment is also required in research partnerships that support such initiatives and better elucidate their context specific variations.

How the Awareness of u-Healthcare Service and Health Conditions Affect Healthy Lifestyle: An Empirical Analysis Based on a u-Healthcare Service Experience

PubMed Central

Youm, Sekyoung

2015-01-01

Abstract Objective: The objectives of this study are (1) to establish a ubiquitous healthcare (u-healthcare) center for those who wish to use u-healthcare, allowing them to experience the service, and (2) to evaluate the users' awareness and expectations of the service based on their overall assessment. Materials and Methods: To establish the u-healthcare center, a kiosk, devices for health checkup, a body-type examination system, and a physical fitness assessment system were installed. Also, a u-healthcare Web site was developed. A survey was conducted on 280 individuals who visited the u-healthcare center and used the service, to determine (1) individual awareness of u-healthcare before using the service and their change of perception after use, (2) factors that affect the use of u-healthcare, and (3) the effects of disease awareness on exercise habits. Results: Only 25.4% of the participants were aware of u-healthcare, and only 36% who saw the u-healthcare center recognized that it was where the u-healthcare service was provided. The group of individuals who were willing to use the u-healthcare showed statistically significant differences in their satisfaction with the overall environment of the center, as well as the specificity of the descriptions, examination results, kindness of the staff, and their responses. Additionally, the group of individuals who were diagnosed with chronic diseases and the group who were not showed statistically significant differences in the number of days on which they exercised lightly or took a walk. Conclusions: To promote the usage of u-healthcare service, the understanding of the service and the credibility of examination results need to be increased by sharing successful cases. Furthermore, to expand the use of the system that allows a person to regularly check his or her state of health, a lifelong periodical management system linked with another medical welfare program will be needed. PMID:25635473

How the awareness of u-healthcare service and health conditions affect healthy lifestyle: an empirical analysis based on a u-healthcare service experience.

PubMed

Youm, Sekyoung; Park, Seung-Hun

2015-04-01

The objectives of this study are (1) to establish a ubiquitous healthcare (u-healthcare) center for those who wish to use u-healthcare, allowing them to experience the service, and (2) to evaluate the users' awareness and expectations of the service based on their overall assessment. To establish the u-healthcare center, a kiosk, devices for health checkup, a body-type examination system, and a physical fitness assessment system were installed. Also, a u-healthcare Web site was developed. A survey was conducted on 280 individuals who visited the u-healthcare center and used the service, to determine (1) individual awareness of u-healthcare before using the service and their change of perception after use, (2) factors that affect the use of u-healthcare, and (3) the effects of disease awareness on exercise habits. Only 25.4% of the participants were aware of u-healthcare, and only 36% who saw the u-healthcare center recognized that it was where the u-healthcare service was provided. The group of individuals who were willing to use the u-healthcare showed statistically significant differences in their satisfaction with the overall environment of the center, as well as the specificity of the descriptions, examination results, kindness of the staff, and their responses. Additionally, the group of individuals who were diagnosed with chronic diseases and the group who were not showed statistically significant differences in the number of days on which they exercised lightly or took a walk. To promote the usage of u-healthcare service, the understanding of the service and the credibility of examination results need to be increased by sharing successful cases. Furthermore, to expand the use of the system that allows a person to regularly check his or her state of health, a lifelong periodical management system linked with another medical welfare program will be needed.

Enhanced functionalities for annotating and indexing clinical text with the NCBO Annotator.

PubMed

Tchechmedjiev, Andon; Abdaoui, Amine; Emonet, Vincent; Melzi, Soumia; Jonnagaddala, Jitendra; Jonquet, Clement

2018-06-01

Second use of clinical data commonly involves annotating biomedical text with terminologies and ontologies. The National Center for Biomedical Ontology Annotator is a frequently used annotation service, originally designed for biomedical data, but not very suitable for clinical text annotation. In order to add new functionalities to the NCBO Annotator without hosting or modifying the original Web service, we have designed a proxy architecture that enables seamless extensions by pre-processing of the input text and parameters, and post processing of the annotations. We have then implemented enhanced functionalities for annotating and indexing free text such as: scoring, detection of context (negation, experiencer, temporality), new output formats and coarse-grained concept recognition (with UMLS Semantic Groups). In this paper, we present the NCBO Annotator+, a Web service which incorporates these new functionalities as well as a small set of evaluation results for concept recognition and clinical context detection on two standard evaluation tasks (Clef eHealth 2017, SemEval 2014). The Annotator+ has been successfully integrated into the SIFR BioPortal platform-an implementation of NCBO BioPortal for French biomedical terminologies and ontologies-to annotate English text. A Web user interface is available for testing and ontology selection (http://bioportal.lirmm.fr/ncbo_annotatorplus); however the Annotator+ is meant to be used through the Web service application programming interface (http://services.bioportal.lirmm.fr/ncbo_annotatorplus). The code is openly available, and we also provide a Docker packaging to enable easy local deployment to process sensitive (e.g. clinical) data in-house (https://github.com/sifrproject). andon.tchechmedjiev@lirmm.fr. Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

Evolution of ESA's SSA Conjunction Prediction Service

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Escobar, D.; Sancho, A. Tirado, J.; Agueda, A.; Martin, L.; Luque, F.; Fletcher, E.; Navarro, V.

2013-08-01

This paper presents the recent evolution of ESA's SSA Conjunction Prediction Service (CPS) as a result of an on-going activity in the Space Surveillance and Tracking (SST) Segment of ESA's Space Situational Awareness (SSA) Programme. The CPS is one of a number of precursor services being developed as part of the SST segment. It has been implemented as a service to provide external users with web-based access to conjunction information and designed with a service-oriented architecture. The paper encompasses the following topics: service functionality enhancements, integration with a live objects catalogue, all vs. all analyses supporting an operational concept based on low and high fidelity screenings, and finally conjunction detection and probability algorithms.

A web service and android application for the distribution of rainfall estimates and Earth observation data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mantas, V. M.; Liu, Z.; Pereira, A. J. S. C.

2015-04-01

The full potential of Satellite Rainfall Estimates (SRE) can only be realized if timely access to the datasets is possible. Existing data distribution web portals are often focused on global products and offer limited customization options, especially for the purpose of routine regional monitoring. Furthermore, most online systems are designed to meet the needs of desktop users, limiting the compatibility with mobile devices. In response to the growing demand for SRE and to address the current limitations of available web portals a project was devised to create a set of freely available applications and services, available at a common portal that can: (1) simplify cross-platform access to Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission Online Visualization and Analysis System (TOVAS) data (including from Android mobile devices), (2) provide customized and continuous monitoring of SRE in response to user demands and (3) combine data from different online data distribution services, including rainfall estimates, river gauge measurements or imagery from Earth Observation missions at a single portal, known as the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Explorer. The TRMM Explorer project suite includes a Python-based web service and Android applications capable of providing SRE and ancillary data in different intuitive formats with the focus on regional and continuous analysis. The outputs include dynamic plots, tables and data files that can also be used to feed downstream applications and services. A case study in Southern Angola is used to describe the potential of the TRMM Explorer for SRE distribution and analysis in the context of ungauged watersheds. The development of a collection of data distribution instances helped to validate the concept and identify the limitations of the program, in a real context and based on user feedback. The TRMM Explorer can successfully supplement existing web portals distributing SRE and provide a cost-efficient resource to small and medium-sized organizations with specific SRE monitoring needs, namely in developing and transition countries.

Enable Web-Based Tracking and Guiding by Integrating Location-Awareness with the World Wide Web

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zhou, Rui

2008-01-01

Purpose: The aim of this research is to enable web-based tracking and guiding by integrating location-awareness with the Worldwide Web so that the users can use various location-based applications without installing extra software. Design/methodology/approach: The concept of web-based tracking and guiding is introduced and the relevant issues are…

#Beyond140: Helping Pre-Service Teachers Construct a Community of Inquiry on Twitter

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Solmaz, Osman

2016-01-01

The development of socio-interactive web technologies such as social media necessitates the exploration of how they can be effectively appropriated and implemented in educational contexts. In an effort to respond the need, the present study examines the use of a synchronous multimodal tool in higher education context. By applying the Community of…

The hospital library online--a point of service for consumers and hospital staff: a case study.

PubMed Central

Cain, N J; Fuller, H J

1999-01-01

The Health Library at Stanford University is described in the context of electronic information services provided to Stanford University Medical Center, the local community, and Internet users in general. The evolution from CD-ROM-based services to Web-based services and in-library services to networked resources are described. Electronic services have expanded the mission of The Health Library to include national and international users and the provision of unique services and collections. PMID:10427424

The Virtual Learning Commons (VLC): Enabling Co-Innovation Across Disciplines

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Pennington, D. D.; Gandara, A.; Del Rio, N.

2014-12-01

A key challenge for scientists addressing grand-challenge problems is identifying, understanding, and integrating potentially relevant methods, models and tools that that are rapidly evolving in the informatics community. Such tools are essential for effectively integrating data and models in complex research projects, yet it is often difficult to know what tools are available and it is not easy to understand or evaluate how they might be used in a given research context. The goal of the National Science Foundation-funded Virtual Learning Commons (VLC) is to improve awareness and understanding of emerging methodologies and technologies, facilitate individual and group evaluation of these, and trace the impact of innovations within and across teams, disciplines, and communities. The VLC is a Web-based social bookmarking site designed specifically to support knowledge exchange in research communities. It is founded on well-developed models of technology adoption, diffusion of innovation, and experiential learning. The VLC makes use of Web 2.0 (Social Web) and Web 3.0 (Semantic Web) approaches. Semantic Web approaches enable discovery of potentially relevant methods, models, and tools, while Social Web approaches enable collaborative learning about their function. The VLC is under development and the first release is expected Fall 2014.

Context-Adaptive Learning Designs by Using Semantic Web Services

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dietze, Stefan; Gugliotta, Alessio; Domingue, John

2007-01-01

IMS Learning Design (IMS-LD) is a promising technology aimed at supporting learning processes. IMS-LD packages contain the learning process metadata as well as the learning resources. However, the allocation of resources--whether data or services--within the learning design is done manually at design-time on the basis of the subjective appraisals…

Visual Analytics for Law Enforcement: Deploying a Service-Oriented Analytic Framework for Web-based Visualization

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Dowson, Scott T.; Bruce, Joseph R.; Best, Daniel M.

2009-04-14

This paper presents key components of the Law Enforcement Information Framework (LEIF) that provides communications, situational awareness, and visual analytics tools in a service-oriented architecture supporting web-based desktop and handheld device users. LEIF simplifies interfaces and visualizations of well-established visual analytical techniques to improve usability. Advanced analytics capability is maintained by enhancing the underlying processing to support the new interface. LEIF development is driven by real-world user feedback gathered through deployments at three operational law enforcement organizations in the US. LEIF incorporates a robust information ingest pipeline supporting a wide variety of information formats. LEIF also insulates interface and analyticalmore » components from information sources making it easier to adapt the framework for many different data repositories.« less

Cleanups in My Community

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Cleanups in My Community (CIMC) is a public web application that enables integrated access through maps, lists and search filtering to site-specific information EPA has across all cleanup programs. CIMC taps into data publicly available from EPA's EnviroFacts (RCRA Corrective Action facilities, Brownfields properties and grant areas, Superfund NPL sites, other facility data) and web services (water monitoring stations, impaired waters, emergency responses, tribal boundaries, congressional districts, etc.) and connects to other applications (e.g., Superfund's CPAD) to provide easy seamless access to site-specific cleanup information with explanatory text and within the context of related data. Data can be filtered by cleanup program, geography, environmental indicators, controls, and cleanup stage. CIMC also provides some web services that integrate these data for others to use in their applications.

The Website Library and Its Parliamentary Information & Dissemination Services: A Case Study of the Parliamentary Library of Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ku, Karl Min

The Web site library is a new type of digital library incorporating both digital collections and digital service. In the parliamentary context, this new application of information and communications technology has a dual function: to provide a virtual collection to satisfy users' information demands and to provide all the current services needed…

Assessing Ecosystem Value: Restoration Scenarios on Tribal ...

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Presentation demonstrating the functions of EPA H2O tool in the context of tribal decisions Demonstration of EPA ecosystem service assessment tool at STAR Tribal meeting to make attendees aware of publically available tool

A Semantic Approach with Decision Support for Safety Service in Smart Home Management

PubMed Central

Huang, Xiaoci; Yi, Jianjun; Zhu, Xiaomin; Chen, Shaoli

2016-01-01

Research on smart homes (SHs) has increased significantly in recent years because of the convenience provided by having an assisted living environment. The functions of SHs as mentioned in previous studies, particularly safety services, are seldom discussed or mentioned. Thus, this study proposes a semantic approach with decision support for safety service in SH management. The focus of this contribution is to explore a context awareness and reasoning approach for risk recognition in SH that enables the proper decision support for flexible safety service provision. The framework of SH based on a wireless sensor network is described from the perspective of neighbourhood management. This approach is based on the integration of semantic knowledge in which a reasoner can make decisions about risk recognition and safety service. We present a management ontology for a SH and relevant monitoring contextual information, which considers its suitability in a pervasive computing environment and is service-oriented. We also propose a rule-based reasoning method to provide decision support through reasoning techniques and context-awareness. A system prototype is developed to evaluate the feasibility, time response and extendibility of the approach. The evaluation of our approach shows that it is more effective in daily risk event recognition. The decisions for service provision are shown to be accurate. PMID:27527170

A Semantic Approach with Decision Support for Safety Service in Smart Home Management.

PubMed

Huang, Xiaoci; Yi, Jianjun; Zhu, Xiaomin; Chen, Shaoli

2016-08-03

Research on smart homes (SHs) has increased significantly in recent years because of the convenience provided by having an assisted living environment. The functions of SHs as mentioned in previous studies, particularly safety services, are seldom discussed or mentioned. Thus, this study proposes a semantic approach with decision support for safety service in SH management. The focus of this contribution is to explore a context awareness and reasoning approach for risk recognition in SH that enables the proper decision support for flexible safety service provision. The framework of SH based on a wireless sensor network is described from the perspective of neighbourhood management. This approach is based on the integration of semantic knowledge in which a reasoner can make decisions about risk recognition and safety service. We present a management ontology for a SH and relevant monitoring contextual information, which considers its suitability in a pervasive computing environment and is service-oriented. We also propose a rule-based reasoning method to provide decision support through reasoning techniques and context-awareness. A system prototype is developed to evaluate the feasibility, time response and extendibility of the approach. The evaluation of our approach shows that it is more effective in daily risk event recognition. The decisions for service provision are shown to be accurate.

From Web accessibility to Web adaptability.

PubMed

Kelly, Brian; Nevile, Liddy; Sloan, David; Fanou, Sotiris; Ellison, Ruth; Herrod, Lisa

2009-07-01

This article asserts that current approaches to enhance the accessibility of Web resources fail to provide a solid foundation for the development of a robust and future-proofed framework. In particular, they fail to take advantage of new technologies and technological practices. The article introduces a framework for Web adaptability, which encourages the development of Web-based services that can be resilient to the diversity of uses of such services, the target audience, available resources, technical innovations, organisational policies and relevant definitions of 'accessibility'. The article refers to a series of author-focussed approaches to accessibility through which the authors and others have struggled to find ways to promote accessibility for people with disabilities. These approaches depend upon the resource author's determination of the anticipated users' needs and their provision. Through approaches labelled as 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0, the authors have widened their focus to account for contexts and individual differences in target audiences. Now, the authors want to recognise the role of users in determining their engagement with resources (including services). To distinguish this new approach, the term 'adaptability' has been used to replace 'accessibility'; new definitions of accessibility have been adopted, and the authors have reviewed their previous work to clarify how it is relevant to the new approach. Accessibility 1.0 is here characterised as a technical approach in which authors are told how to construct resources for a broadly defined audience. This is known as universal design. Accessibility 2.0 was introduced to point to the need to account for the context in which resources would be used, to help overcome inadequacies identified in the purely technical approach. Accessibility 3.0 moved the focus on users from a homogenised universal definition to recognition of the idiosyncratic needs and preferences of individuals and to cater for them. All of these approaches placed responsibility within the authoring/publishing domain without recognising the role the user might want to play, or the roles that other users in social networks, or even Web services might play. Adaptability shifts the emphasis and calls for greater freedom for the users to facilitate individual accessibility in the open Web environment.

Architecture of a framework for providing information services for public transport.

PubMed

García, Carmelo R; Pérez, Ricardo; Lorenzo, Alvaro; Quesada-Arencibia, Alexis; Alayón, Francisco; Padrón, Gabino

2012-01-01

This paper presents OnRoute, a framework for developing and running ubiquitous software that provides information services to passengers of public transportation, including payment systems and on-route guidance services. To achieve a high level of interoperability, accessibility and context awareness, OnRoute uses the ubiquitous computing paradigm. To guarantee the quality of the software produced, the reliable software principles used in critical contexts, such as automotive systems, are also considered by the framework. The main components of its architecture (run-time, system services, software components and development discipline) and how they are deployed in the transportation network (stations and vehicles) are described in this paper. Finally, to illustrate the use of OnRoute, the development of a guidance service for travellers is explained.

The 2nd DBCLS BioHackathon: interoperable bioinformatics Web services for integrated applications

PubMed Central

2011-01-01

Background The interaction between biological researchers and the bioinformatics tools they use is still hampered by incomplete interoperability between such tools. To ensure interoperability initiatives are effectively deployed, end-user applications need to be aware of, and support, best practices and standards. Here, we report on an initiative in which software developers and genome biologists came together to explore and raise awareness of these issues: BioHackathon 2009. Results Developers in attendance came from diverse backgrounds, with experts in Web services, workflow tools, text mining and visualization. Genome biologists provided expertise and exemplar data from the domains of sequence and pathway analysis and glyco-informatics. One goal of the meeting was to evaluate the ability to address real world use cases in these domains using the tools that the developers represented. This resulted in i) a workflow to annotate 100,000 sequences from an invertebrate species; ii) an integrated system for analysis of the transcription factor binding sites (TFBSs) enriched based on differential gene expression data obtained from a microarray experiment; iii) a workflow to enumerate putative physical protein interactions among enzymes in a metabolic pathway using protein structure data; iv) a workflow to analyze glyco-gene-related diseases by searching for human homologs of glyco-genes in other species, such as fruit flies, and retrieving their phenotype-annotated SNPs. Conclusions Beyond deriving prototype solutions for each use-case, a second major purpose of the BioHackathon was to highlight areas of insufficiency. We discuss the issues raised by our exploration of the problem/solution space, concluding that there are still problems with the way Web services are modeled and annotated, including: i) the absence of several useful data or analysis functions in the Web service "space"; ii) the lack of documentation of methods; iii) lack of compliance with the SOAP/WSDL specification among and between various programming-language libraries; and iv) incompatibility between various bioinformatics data formats. Although it was still difficult to solve real world problems posed to the developers by the biological researchers in attendance because of these problems, we note the promise of addressing these issues within a semantic framework. PMID:21806842

The 2nd DBCLS BioHackathon: interoperable bioinformatics Web services for integrated applications.

PubMed

Katayama, Toshiaki; Wilkinson, Mark D; Vos, Rutger; Kawashima, Takeshi; Kawashima, Shuichi; Nakao, Mitsuteru; Yamamoto, Yasunori; Chun, Hong-Woo; Yamaguchi, Atsuko; Kawano, Shin; Aerts, Jan; Aoki-Kinoshita, Kiyoko F; Arakawa, Kazuharu; Aranda, Bruno; Bonnal, Raoul Jp; Fernández, José M; Fujisawa, Takatomo; Gordon, Paul Mk; Goto, Naohisa; Haider, Syed; Harris, Todd; Hatakeyama, Takashi; Ho, Isaac; Itoh, Masumi; Kasprzyk, Arek; Kido, Nobuhiro; Kim, Young-Joo; Kinjo, Akira R; Konishi, Fumikazu; Kovarskaya, Yulia; von Kuster, Greg; Labarga, Alberto; Limviphuvadh, Vachiranee; McCarthy, Luke; Nakamura, Yasukazu; Nam, Yunsun; Nishida, Kozo; Nishimura, Kunihiro; Nishizawa, Tatsuya; Ogishima, Soichi; Oinn, Tom; Okamoto, Shinobu; Okuda, Shujiro; Ono, Keiichiro; Oshita, Kazuki; Park, Keun-Joon; Putnam, Nicholas; Senger, Martin; Severin, Jessica; Shigemoto, Yasumasa; Sugawara, Hideaki; Taylor, James; Trelles, Oswaldo; Yamasaki, Chisato; Yamashita, Riu; Satoh, Noriyuki; Takagi, Toshihisa

2011-08-02

The interaction between biological researchers and the bioinformatics tools they use is still hampered by incomplete interoperability between such tools. To ensure interoperability initiatives are effectively deployed, end-user applications need to be aware of, and support, best practices and standards. Here, we report on an initiative in which software developers and genome biologists came together to explore and raise awareness of these issues: BioHackathon 2009. Developers in attendance came from diverse backgrounds, with experts in Web services, workflow tools, text mining and visualization. Genome biologists provided expertise and exemplar data from the domains of sequence and pathway analysis and glyco-informatics. One goal of the meeting was to evaluate the ability to address real world use cases in these domains using the tools that the developers represented. This resulted in i) a workflow to annotate 100,000 sequences from an invertebrate species; ii) an integrated system for analysis of the transcription factor binding sites (TFBSs) enriched based on differential gene expression data obtained from a microarray experiment; iii) a workflow to enumerate putative physical protein interactions among enzymes in a metabolic pathway using protein structure data; iv) a workflow to analyze glyco-gene-related diseases by searching for human homologs of glyco-genes in other species, such as fruit flies, and retrieving their phenotype-annotated SNPs. Beyond deriving prototype solutions for each use-case, a second major purpose of the BioHackathon was to highlight areas of insufficiency. We discuss the issues raised by our exploration of the problem/solution space, concluding that there are still problems with the way Web services are modeled and annotated, including: i) the absence of several useful data or analysis functions in the Web service "space"; ii) the lack of documentation of methods; iii) lack of compliance with the SOAP/WSDL specification among and between various programming-language libraries; and iv) incompatibility between various bioinformatics data formats. Although it was still difficult to solve real world problems posed to the developers by the biological researchers in attendance because of these problems, we note the promise of addressing these issues within a semantic framework.

The "Digital Native" in Context: Tensions Associated with Importing Web 2.0 Practices into the School Setting

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Crook, Charles

2012-01-01

This report draws on 53 focus group interviews conducted with students aged 13 and 15 in both representative and innovating UK secondary schools. The schedule for these discussions covered a wide range of issues relating to the use of Web 2.0 services both in and out of school. These young people were often deeply engaged with this technology and…

Developing Interoperable Air Quality Community Portals

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Falke, S. R.; Husar, R. B.; Yang, C. P.; Robinson, E. M.; Fialkowski, W. E.

2009-04-01

Web portals are intended to provide consolidated discovery, filtering and aggregation of content from multiple, distributed web sources targeted at particular user communities. This paper presents a standards-based information architectural approach to developing portals aimed at air quality community collaboration in data access and analysis. An important characteristic of the approach is to advance beyond the present stand-alone design of most portals to achieve interoperability with other portals and information sources. We show how using metadata standards, web services, RSS feeds and other Web 2.0 technologies, such as Yahoo! Pipes and del.icio.us, helps increase interoperability among portals. The approach is illustrated within the context of the GEOSS Architecture Implementation Pilot where an air quality community portal is being developed to provide a user interface between the portals and clearinghouse of the GEOSS Common Infrastructure and the air quality community catalog of metadata and data services.

Development of a Recommender System based on Personal History

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tanaka, Katsuaki; Hori, Koichi; Yamamoto, Masato

The flood of information on the Internet makes a person who surf it without some strong intention strayed into it. One of the ways to control the balance between a person and the flood is a recommender system by computer, and many web sites use it. These systems work on a web site for the same kind of items. However the field of personal activity is not limited to handle the same kind of thing and a web site, but also offline area in the real world. To handle personal offline activities, LifeLog is proposed as method to record it, but the main purpose of LifeLog is recording a personal history. How to use a history has still been studied stage. The authors have developed a recommender system that captures personal context from history of personal online and offline activities, treats information on web sites as a large set of context, and finds out and extends overlap of them, then recommends information located there. The aim of the system is that a person can enjoy waves of information again. The system worked as a part of My-life Assist Service. It was a service for mobile phones provided by NTT DoCoMo, Inc. as a field experiment from Dec. 2007 to Feb. 2008.

Privacy-Related Context Information for Ubiquitous Health

PubMed Central

Nykänen, Pirkko; Ruotsalainen, Pekka

2014-01-01

Background Ubiquitous health has been defined as a dynamic network of interconnected systems. A system is composed of one or more information systems, their stakeholders, and the environment. These systems offer health services to individuals and thus implement ubiquitous computing. Privacy is the key challenge for ubiquitous health because of autonomous processing, rich contextual metadata, lack of predefined trust among participants, and the business objectives. Additionally, regulations and policies of stakeholders may be unknown to the individual. Context-sensitive privacy policies are needed to regulate information processing. Objective Our goal was to analyze privacy-related context information and to define the corresponding components and their properties that support privacy management in ubiquitous health. These properties should describe the privacy issues of information processing. With components and their properties, individuals can define context-aware privacy policies and set their privacy preferences that can change in different information-processing situations. Methods Scenarios and user stories are used to analyze typical activities in ubiquitous health to identify main actors, goals, tasks, and stakeholders. Context arises from an activity and, therefore, we can determine different situations, services, and systems to identify properties for privacy-related context information in information-processing situations. Results Privacy-related context information components are situation, environment, individual, information technology system, service, and stakeholder. Combining our analyses and previously identified characteristics of ubiquitous health, more detailed properties for the components are defined. Properties define explicitly what context information for different components is needed to create context-aware privacy policies that can control, limit, and constrain information processing. With properties, we can define, for example, how data can be processed or how components are regulated or in what kind of environment data can be processed. Conclusions This study added to the vision of ubiquitous health by analyzing information processing from the viewpoint of an individual’s privacy. We learned that health and wellness-related activities may happen in several environments and situations with multiple stakeholders, services, and systems. We have provided new knowledge regarding privacy-related context information and corresponding components by analyzing typical activities in ubiquitous health. With the identified components and their properties, individuals can define their personal preferences on information processing based on situational information, and privacy services can capture privacy-related context of the information-processing situation. PMID:25100084

Privacy-related context information for ubiquitous health.

PubMed

Seppälä, Antto; Nykänen, Pirkko; Ruotsalainen, Pekka

2014-03-11

Ubiquitous health has been defined as a dynamic network of interconnected systems. A system is composed of one or more information systems, their stakeholders, and the environment. These systems offer health services to individuals and thus implement ubiquitous computing. Privacy is the key challenge for ubiquitous health because of autonomous processing, rich contextual metadata, lack of predefined trust among participants, and the business objectives. Additionally, regulations and policies of stakeholders may be unknown to the individual. Context-sensitive privacy policies are needed to regulate information processing. Our goal was to analyze privacy-related context information and to define the corresponding components and their properties that support privacy management in ubiquitous health. These properties should describe the privacy issues of information processing. With components and their properties, individuals can define context-aware privacy policies and set their privacy preferences that can change in different information-processing situations. Scenarios and user stories are used to analyze typical activities in ubiquitous health to identify main actors, goals, tasks, and stakeholders. Context arises from an activity and, therefore, we can determine different situations, services, and systems to identify properties for privacy-related context information in information-processing situations. Privacy-related context information components are situation, environment, individual, information technology system, service, and stakeholder. Combining our analyses and previously identified characteristics of ubiquitous health, more detailed properties for the components are defined. Properties define explicitly what context information for different components is needed to create context-aware privacy policies that can control, limit, and constrain information processing. With properties, we can define, for example, how data can be processed or how components are regulated or in what kind of environment data can be processed. This study added to the vision of ubiquitous health by analyzing information processing from the viewpoint of an individual's privacy. We learned that health and wellness-related activities may happen in several environments and situations with multiple stakeholders, services, and systems. We have provided new knowledge regarding privacy-related context information and corresponding components by analyzing typical activities in ubiquitous health. With the identified components and their properties, individuals can define their personal preferences on information processing based on situational information, and privacy services can capture privacy-related context of the information-processing situation.

Developing a Web-based system by integrating VGI and SDI for real estate management and marketing

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Salajegheh, J.; Hakimpour, F.; Esmaeily, A.

2014-10-01

Property importance of various aspects, especially the impact on various sectors of the economy and the country's macroeconomic is clear. Because of the real, multi-dimensional and heterogeneous nature of housing as a commodity, the lack of an integrated system includes comprehensive information of property, the lack of awareness of some actors in this field about comprehensive information about property and the lack of clear and comprehensive rules and regulations for the trading and pricing, several problems arise for the people involved in this field. In this research implementation of a crowd-sourced Web-based real estate support system is desired. Creating a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) in this system for collecting, updating and integrating all official data about property is also desired in this study. In this system a Web2.0 broker and technologies such as Web services and service composition has been used. This work aims to provide comprehensive and diverse information about property from different sources. For this purpose five-level real estate support system architecture is used. PostgreSql DBMS is used to implement the desired system. Geoserver software is also used as map server and reference implementation of OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) standards. And Apache server is used to run web pages and user interfaces. Integration introduced methods and technologies provide a proper environment for various users to use the system and share their information. This goal is only achieved by cooperation between all involved organizations in real estate with implementation their required infrastructures in interoperability Web services format.

A Semantic Sensor Web for Environmental Decision Support Applications

PubMed Central

Gray, Alasdair J. G.; Sadler, Jason; Kit, Oles; Kyzirakos, Kostis; Karpathiotakis, Manos; Calbimonte, Jean-Paul; Page, Kevin; García-Castro, Raúl; Frazer, Alex; Galpin, Ixent; Fernandes, Alvaro A. A.; Paton, Norman W.; Corcho, Oscar; Koubarakis, Manolis; De Roure, David; Martinez, Kirk; Gómez-Pérez, Asunción

2011-01-01

Sensing devices are increasingly being deployed to monitor the physical world around us. One class of application for which sensor data is pertinent is environmental decision support systems, e.g., flood emergency response. For these applications, the sensor readings need to be put in context by integrating them with other sources of data about the surrounding environment. Traditional systems for predicting and detecting floods rely on methods that need significant human resources. In this paper we describe a semantic sensor web architecture for integrating multiple heterogeneous datasets, including live and historic sensor data, databases, and map layers. The architecture provides mechanisms for discovering datasets, defining integrated views over them, continuously receiving data in real-time, and visualising on screen and interacting with the data. Our approach makes extensive use of web service standards for querying and accessing data, and semantic technologies to discover and integrate datasets. We demonstrate the use of our semantic sensor web architecture in the context of a flood response planning web application that uses data from sensor networks monitoring the sea-state around the coast of England. PMID:22164110

Web 2.0 systems supporting childhood chronic disease management: A pattern language representation of a general architecture

PubMed Central

Timpka, Toomas; Eriksson, Henrik; Ludvigsson, Johnny; Ekberg, Joakim; Nordfeldt, Sam; Hanberger, Lena

2008-01-01

Background Chronic disease management is a global health concern. By the time they reach adolescence, 10–15% of all children live with a chronic disease. The role of educational interventions in facilitating adaptation to chronic disease is receiving growing recognition, and current care policies advocate greater involvement of patients in self-care. Web 2.0 is an umbrella term for new collaborative Internet services characterized by user participation in developing and managing content. Key elements include Really Simple Syndication (RSS) to rapidly disseminate awareness of new information; weblogs (blogs) to describe new trends, wikis to share knowledge, and podcasts to make information available on personal media players. This study addresses the potential to develop Web 2.0 services for young persons with a chronic disease. It is acknowledged that the management of childhood chronic disease is based on interplay between initiatives and resources on the part of patients, relatives, and health care professionals, and where the balance shifts over time to the patients and their families. Methods Participatory action research was used to stepwise define a design specification in the form of a pattern language. Support for children diagnosed with diabetes Type 1 was used as the example area. Each individual design pattern was determined graphically using card sorting methods, and textually in the form Title, Context, Problem, Solution, Examples and References. Application references were included at the lowest level in the graphical overview in the pattern language but not specified in detail in the textual descriptions. Results The design patterns are divided into functional and non-functional design elements, and formulated at the levels of organizational, system, and application design. The design elements specify access to materials for development of the competences needed for chronic disease management in specific community settings, endorsement of self-learning through online peer-to-peer communication, and systematic accreditation and evaluation of materials and processes. Conclusion The use of design patterns allows representing the core design elements of a Web 2.0 system upon which an 'ecological' development of content respecting these constraints can be built. Future research should include evaluations of Web 2.0 systems implemented according to the architecture in practice settings. PMID:19040738

Raising Awareness of Medicare Member Rights Among Seniors and Caregivers in California

PubMed Central

Grossman, Ruth M.; Fu, Patricia L.; Sabogal, Fabio

2010-01-01

Many Medicare recipients do not understand their health care rights. Lumetra, formerly California's Medicare quality improvement organization, developed a multifaceted outreach program to increase beneficiary awareness of its services and of the right to file quality-of-care complaints and discharge appeals. Layered outreach activities to Medicare members and their caregivers in 2 targeted counties consisted of paid media, direct mailings, community outreach, and online marketing. Calls to Lumetra's helpline and visits to its Web site—measures of beneficiary awareness of case review services—increased by 106% and 1214%, respectively, in the targeted counties during the 4-month outreach period. Only small increases occurred in nontargeted counties. Increases in quality-of-care complaints and discharge appeal rates were detected during a longer follow-up period. PMID:19965568

Architecture of a Framework for Providing Information Services for Public Transport

PubMed Central

García, Carmelo R.; Pérez, Ricardo; Lorenzo, Álvaro; Quesada-Arencibia, Alexis; Alayón, Francisco; Padrón, Gabino

2012-01-01

This paper presents OnRoute, a framework for developing and running ubiquitous software that provides information services to passengers of public transportation, including payment systems and on-route guidance services. To achieve a high level of interoperability, accessibility and context awareness, OnRoute uses the ubiquitous computing paradigm. To guarantee the quality of the software produced, the reliable software principles used in critical contexts, such as automotive systems, are also considered by the framework. The main components of its architecture (run-time, system services, software components and development discipline) and how they are deployed in the transportation network (stations and vehicles) are described in this paper. Finally, to illustrate the use of OnRoute, the development of a guidance service for travellers is explained. PMID:22778585

Awareness, Openness and Eco-Friendly (AOE) Model Teaches Pre-Service Teachers on How to Be Eco-Friendly

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jena, Ananta Kumar

2012-01-01

This paper studied the empirical pattern to observe the overall attitude of pre service teachers' of different training colleges towards environmental education and practice. Environmental education is a continuous lifelong process, starts at the preschool level and continues up to adulthood via all levels of education. In this context, to know…

Leveraging Open Standard Interfaces in Accessing and Processing NASA Data Model Outputs

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Falke, S. R.; Alameh, N. S.; Hoijarvi, K.; de La Beaujardiere, J.; Bambacus, M. J.

2006-12-01

An objective of NASA's Earth Science Division is to develop advanced information technologies for processing, archiving, accessing, visualizing, and communicating Earth Science data. To this end, NASA and other federal agencies have collaborated with the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) to research, develop, and test interoperability specifications within projects and testbeds benefiting the government, industry, and the public. This paper summarizes the results of a recent effort under the auspices of the OGC Web Services testbed phase 4 (OWS-4) to explore standardization approaches for accessing and processing the outputs of NASA models of physical phenomena. Within the OWS-4 context, experiments were designed to leverage the emerging OGC Web Processing Service (WPS) and Web Coverage Service (WCS) specifications to access, filter and manipulate the outputs of the NASA Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) and Goddard Chemistry Aerosol Radiation and Transport (GOCART) forecast models. In OWS-4, the intent is to provide the users with more control over the subsets of data that they can extract from the model results as well as over the final portrayal of that data. To meet that goal, experiments have been designed to test the suitability of use of OGC's Web Processing Service (WPS) and Web Coverage Service (WCS) for filtering, processing and portraying the model results (including slices by height or by time), and to identify any enhancements to the specs to meet the desired objectives. This paper summarizes the findings of the experiments highlighting the value of the Web Processing Service in providing standard interfaces for accessing and manipulating model data within spatial and temporal frameworks. The paper also points out the key shortcomings of the WPS especially in terms in comparison with a SOAP/WSDL approach towards solving the same problem.

A service-based framework for pharmacogenomics data integration

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wang, Kun; Bai, Xiaoying; Li, Jing; Ding, Cong

2010-08-01

Data are central to scientific research and practices. The advance of experiment methods and information retrieval technologies leads to explosive growth of scientific data and databases. However, due to the heterogeneous problems in data formats, structures and semantics, it is hard to integrate the diversified data that grow explosively and analyse them comprehensively. As more and more public databases are accessible through standard protocols like programmable interfaces and Web portals, Web-based data integration becomes a major trend to manage and synthesise data that are stored in distributed locations. Mashup, a Web 2.0 technique, presents a new way to compose content and software from multiple resources. The paper proposes a layered framework for integrating pharmacogenomics data in a service-oriented approach using the mashup technology. The framework separates the integration concerns from three perspectives including data, process and Web-based user interface. Each layer encapsulates the heterogeneous issues of one aspect. To facilitate the mapping and convergence of data, the ontology mechanism is introduced to provide consistent conceptual models across different databases and experiment platforms. To support user-interactive and iterative service orchestration, a context model is defined to capture information of users, tasks and services, which can be used for service selection and recommendation during a dynamic service composition process. A prototype system is implemented and cases studies are presented to illustrate the promising capabilities of the proposed approach.

Twitter web-service for soft agent reporting in persistent surveillance systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rababaah, Haroun; Shirkhodaie, Amir

2010-04-01

Persistent surveillance is an intricate process requiring monitoring, gathering, processing, tracking, and characterization of many spatiotemporal events occurring concurrently. Data associated with events can be readily attained by networking of hard (physical) sensors. Sensors may have homogeneous or heterogeneous (hybrid) sensing modalities with different communication bandwidth requirements. Complimentary to hard sensors are human observers or "soft sensors" that can report occurrences of evolving events via different communication devices (e.g., texting, cell phones, emails, instant messaging, etc.) to the command control center. However, networking of human observers in ad-hoc way is rather a difficult task. In this paper, we present a Twitter web-service for soft agent reporting in persistent surveillance systems (called Web-STARS). The objective of this web-service is to aggregate multi-source human observations in hybrid sensor networks rapidly. With availability of Twitter social network, such a human networking concept can not only be realized for large scale persistent surveillance systems (PSS), but also, it can be employed with proper interfaces to expedite rapid events reporting by human observers. The proposed technique is particularly suitable for large-scale persistent surveillance systems with distributed soft and hard sensor networks. The efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed technique is measured experimentally by conducting several simulated persistent surveillance scenarios. It is demonstrated that by fusion of information from hard and soft agents improves understanding of common operating picture and enhances situational awareness.

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

David Lawrence

Calibrations and conditions databases can be accessed from within the JANA Event Processing framework through the API defined in its JCalibration base class. The API is designed to support everything from databases, to web services to flat files for the backend. A Web Service backend using the gSOAP toolkit has been implemented which is particularly interesting since it addresses many modern cybersecurity issues including support for SSL. The API allows constants to be retrieved through a single line of C++ code with most of the context, including the transport mechanism, being implied by the run currently being analyzed and themore » environment relieving developers from implementing such details.« less

Efficient Authorization of Rich Presence Using Secure and Composed Web Services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Li, Li; Chou, Wu

This paper presents an extended Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) model for efficient authorization of rich presence using secure web services composed with an abstract presence data model. Following the information symmetry principle, the standard RBAC model is extended to support context sensitive social relations and cascaded authority. In conjunction with the extended RBAC model, we introduce an extensible presence architecture prototype using WS-Security and WS-Eventing to secure rich presence information exchanges based on PKI certificates. Applications and performance measurements of our presence system are presented to show that the proposed RBAC framework for presence and collaboration is well suited for real-time communication and collaboration.

The JANA calibrations and conditions database API

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lawrence, David

2010-04-01

Calibrations and conditions databases can be accessed from within the JANA Event Processing framework through the API defined in its JCalibration base class. The API is designed to support everything from databases, to web services to flat files for the backend. A Web Service backend using the gSOAP toolkit has been implemented which is particularly interesting since it addresses many modern cybersecurity issues including support for SSL. The API allows constants to be retrieved through a single line of C++ code with most of the context, including the transport mechanism, being implied by the run currently being analyzed and the environment relieving developers from implementing such details.

a Web Api and Web Application Development for Dissemination of Air Quality Information

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Şahin, K.; Işıkdağ, U.

2017-11-01

Various studies have been carried out since 2005 under the leadership of Ministry of Environment and Urbanism of Turkey, in order to observe the quality of air in Turkey, to develop new policies and to develop a sustainable air quality management strategy. For this reason, a national air quality monitoring network has been developed providing air quality indices. By this network, the quality of the air has been continuously monitored and an important information system has been constructed in order to take precautions for preventing a dangerous situation. The biggest handicap in the network is the data access problem for instant and time series data acquisition and processing because of its proprietary structure. Currently, there is no service offered by the current air quality monitoring system for exchanging information with third party applications. Within the context of this work, a web service has been developed to enable location based querying of the current/past air quality data in Turkey. This web service is equipped with up-todate and widely preferred technologies. In other words, an architecture is chosen in which applications can easily integrate. In the second phase of the study, a web-based application was developed to test the developed web service and this testing application can perform location based acquisition of air-quality data. This makes it possible to easily carry out operations such as screening and examination of the area in the given time-frame which cannot be done with the national monitoring network.

WebIntera-Classroom: An Interaction-Aware Virtual Learning Environment for Augmenting Learning Interactions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chen, Jingjing; Xu, Jianliang; Tang, Tao; Chen, Rongchao

2017-01-01

Interaction is critical for successful teaching and learning in a virtual learning environment (VLE). This paper presents a web-based interaction-aware VLE--WebIntera-classroom--which aims to augment learning interactions by increasing the learner-to-content and learner-to-instructor interactions. We design a ubiquitous interactive interface that…

Web usage data as a means of evaluating public health messaging and outreach.

PubMed

Tian, Hao; Brimmer, Dana J; Lin, Jin-Mann S; Tumpey, Abbigail J; Reeves, William C

2009-12-21

The Internet is increasingly utilized by researchers, health care providers, and the public to seek medical information. The Internet also provides a powerful tool for public health messaging. Understanding the needs of the intended audience and how they use websites is critical for website developers to provide better services to the intended users. The aim of the study was to examine the utilization of the chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) website at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). We evaluated (1) CFS website utilization, (2) outcomes of a CDC CFS public awareness campaign, and (3) user behavior related to public awareness campaign materials and CFS continuing medical education courses. To describe and evaluate Web utilization, we collected Web usage data over an 18-month period and extracted page views, visits, referring domains, and geographic locations. We used page views as the primary measure for the CFS awareness outreach effort. We utilized market basket analysis and Markov chain model techniques to describe user behavior related to utilization of campaign materials and continuing medical education courses. The CDC CFS website received 3,647,736 views from more than 50 countries over the 18-month period and was the 33rd most popular CDC website. States with formal CFS programs had higher visiting density, such as Washington, DC; Georgia; and New Jersey. Most visits (71%) were from Web search engines, with 16% from non-search-engine sites and 12% from visitors who had bookmarked the site. The public awareness campaign was associated with a sharp increase and subsequent quick drop in Web traffic. Following the campaign, user interest shifted from information targeting consumer basic knowledge to information for health care professionals. The market basket analysis showed that visitors preferred the 60-second radio clip public service announcement over the 30-second one. Markov chain model results revealed that most visitors took the online continuing education courses in sequential order and were less likely to drop out after they reached the Introduction pages of the courses. The utilization of the CFS website reflects a high level of interest in the illness by visitors to the site. The high utilization shows the website to be an important online resource for people seeking basic information about CFS and for those looking for professional health care and research information. Public health programs should consider analytic methods to further public health by understanding the characteristics of those seeking information and by evaluating the outcomes of public health campaigns. The website was an effective means to provide health information about CFS and serves as an important public health tool for community outreach.

Web Usage Data as a Means of Evaluating Public Health Messaging and Outreach

PubMed Central

Brimmer, Dana J; Lin, Jin-Mann S; Tumpey, Abbigail J; Reeves, William C

2009-01-01

Background The Internet is increasingly utilized by researchers, health care providers, and the public to seek medical information. The Internet also provides a powerful tool for public health messaging. Understanding the needs of the intended audience and how they use websites is critical for website developers to provide better services to the intended users. Objective The aim of the study was to examine the utilization of the chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) website at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). We evaluated (1) CFS website utilization, (2) outcomes of a CDC CFS public awareness campaign, and (3) user behavior related to public awareness campaign materials and CFS continuing medical education courses. Methods To describe and evaluate Web utilization, we collected Web usage data over an 18-month period and extracted page views, visits, referring domains, and geographic locations. We used page views as the primary measure for the CFS awareness outreach effort. We utilized market basket analysis and Markov chain model techniques to describe user behavior related to utilization of campaign materials and continuing medical education courses. Results The CDC CFS website received 3,647,736 views from more than 50 countries over the 18-month period and was the 33rd most popular CDC website. States with formal CFS programs had higher visiting density, such as Washington, DC; Georgia; and New Jersey. Most visits (71%) were from Web search engines, with 16% from non-search-engine sites and 12% from visitors who had bookmarked the site. The public awareness campaign was associated with a sharp increase and subsequent quick drop in Web traffic. Following the campaign, user interest shifted from information targeting consumer basic knowledge to information for health care professionals. The market basket analysis showed that visitors preferred the 60-second radio clip public service announcement over the 30-second one. Markov chain model results revealed that most visitors took the online continuing education courses in sequential order and were less likely to drop out after they reached the Introduction pages of the courses. Conclusions The utilization of the CFS website reflects a high level of interest in the illness by visitors to the site. The high utilization shows the website to be an important online resource for people seeking basic information about CFS and for those looking for professional health care and research information. Public health programs should consider analytic methods to further public health by understanding the characteristics of those seeking information and by evaluating the outcomes of public health campaigns. The website was an effective means to provide health information about CFS and serves as an important public health tool for community outreach. PMID:20026451

Context-Aware Based Efficient Training System Using Augmented Reality and Gravity Sensor for Healthcare Services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kim, Seoksoo; Jung, Sungmo; Song, Jae-Gu; Kang, Byong-Ho

As augmented reality and a gravity sensor is of growing interest, siginificant developement is being made on related technology, which allows application of the technology in a variety of areas with greater expectations. In applying Context-aware to augmented reality, it can make useful programs. A traning system suggested in this study helps a user to understand an effcienct training method using augmented reality and make sure if his exercise is being done propery based on the data collected by a gravity sensor. Therefore, this research aims to suggest an efficient training environment that can enhance previous training methods by applying augmented reality and a gravity sensor.

Anonymity-preserving Reputation Management System for health sector

PubMed Central

Hamid, Zara; Abdul, Wadood; Ghouzali, Sanaa; Khan, Abid; Malik, Saif Ur Rehman; Shaukat Khan, Mansoor; Nawaz, Sarfraz

2018-01-01

In health sector, trust is considered important because it indirectly influences the quality of health care through patient satisfaction, adherence and the continuity of its relationship with health care professionals and the promotion of accurate and timely diagnoses. One of the important requirements of TRSs in the health sector is rating secrecy, which mandates that the identification information about the service consumer should be kept secret to prevent any privacy violation. Anonymity and trust are two imperative objectives, and no significant explicit efforts have been made to achieve both of them at the same time. In this paper, we present a framework for solving the problem of reconciling trust with anonymity in the health sector. Our solution comprises Anonymous Reputation Management (ARM) protocol and Context-aware Trustworthiness Assessment (CTA) protocol. ARM protocol ensures that only those service consumers who received a service from a specific service provider provide a recommendation score anonymously with in the specified time limit. The CTA protocol computes the reputation of a user as a service provider and as a recommender. To determine the correctness of the proposed ARM protocol, formal modelling and verification are performed using High Level Petri Nets (HLPN) and Z3 Solver. Our simulation results verify the accuracy of the proposed context-aware trust assessment scheme. PMID:29649267

Parental views on informed consent for expanded newborn screening.

PubMed

Moody, Louise; Choudhry, Kubra

2013-09-01

An increasing array of rare inherited conditions can be detected as part of the universal newborn screening programme. The introduction and evaluation of these service developments require consideration of the ethical issues involved and appropriate mechanisms for informing parents and gaining consent if required. Exploration of parental views is needed to inform the debate and specifically consider whether more flexible protocols are needed to fit with the public perception of new developments in this context. This study has been undertaken to explore perceptions and attitudes of parents and future parents to an expanded newborn screening programme in the United Kingdom and the necessary information provision and consent processes. A mixed methods study involving focus groups (n = 29) and a web-survey (n = 142) undertaken with parents and future parents. Parents want guaranteed information provision with clear decision-making powers and an awareness of the choices available to them. The difference between existing screening provision and expanded screening was not considered to be significant enough by participants to warrant formal written, informed consent for expanded screening. It is argued that the ethical review processes need to be more flexible towards the provision of information and consent processes for service developments in newborn screening. © 2011 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Use of Evidence-Based Practices and Resources Among Comprehensive Cancer Control Programs

PubMed Central

Steele, C. Brooke; Rose, John M.; Chovnick, Gary; Townsend, Julie S.; Stockmyer, Chrisandra K.; Fonseka, Jamila; Richardson, Lisa C.

2015-01-01

Context While efforts to promote use of evidence-based practices (EBPs) for cancer control have increased, questions remain whether this will result in widespread adoption of EBPs (eg, Guide to Community Preventive Services interventions) by comprehensive cancer control (CCC) programs. Objective To examine use of EBPs among CCC programs to develop cancer control plans and select interventions. Design Conducted Web-based surveys of and telephone interviews with CCC program staff between March and July 2012. Setting CCC programs funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Comprehensive Cancer Control Program (NCCCP). Participants Sixty-one CCC program directors. Main Outcome Measures 1) Use of and knowledge/attitudes about EBPs and related resources and 2) EBP-related technical assistance needs. Results Seventy-five percent of eligible program directors reported use of EBPs to a moderate or great extent to address program objectives. Benefits of using EBPS included their effectiveness has been proven, they are an efficient use of resources, and they lend credibility to an intervention. Challenges to using EBPs included resource limitations, lack of culturally appropriate interventions, and limited skills adapting EBPs for local use. Most respondents had heard of and used Web sites for The Guide to Community Preventive Services (95% and 91%, respectively) and Cancer Control P.L.A.N.E.T. (98% and 75%, respectively). Training needs included how to adapt an EBP and its materials for cultural appropriateness (state 78%, tribe 86%, territory 80%) and how to maintain the fidelity of an EBP (state 75%, tribe 86%, territory 60%). Conclusions While awareness, knowledge, and use of EBPs and related resources are high, respondents identified numerous challenges and training needs. The findings from this study may be used to enhance technical assistance provided to NCCCP grantees related to selecting and implementing EBPs. PMID:24402431

SME2EM: Smart mobile end-to-end monitoring architecture for life-long diseases.

PubMed

Serhani, Mohamed Adel; Menshawy, Mohamed El; Benharref, Abdelghani

2016-01-01

Monitoring life-long diseases requires continuous measurements and recording of physical vital signs. Most of these diseases are manifested through unexpected and non-uniform occurrences and behaviors. It is impractical to keep patients in hospitals, health-care institutions, or even at home for long periods of time. Monitoring solutions based on smartphones combined with mobile sensors and wireless communication technologies are a potential candidate to support complete mobility-freedom, not only for patients, but also for physicians. However, existing monitoring architectures based on smartphones and modern communication technologies are not suitable to address some challenging issues, such as intensive and big data, resource constraints, data integration, and context awareness in an integrated framework. This manuscript provides a novel mobile-based end-to-end architecture for live monitoring and visualization of life-long diseases. The proposed architecture provides smartness features to cope with continuous monitoring, data explosion, dynamic adaptation, unlimited mobility, and constrained devices resources. The integration of the architecture׳s components provides information about diseases׳ recurrences as soon as they occur to expedite taking necessary actions, and thus prevent severe consequences. Our architecture system is formally model-checked to automatically verify its correctness against designers׳ desirable properties at design time. Its components are fully implemented as Web services with respect to the SOA architecture to be easy to deploy and integrate, and supported by Cloud infrastructure and services to allow high scalability, availability of processes and data being stored and exchanged. The architecture׳s applicability is evaluated through concrete experimental scenarios on monitoring and visualizing states of epileptic diseases. The obtained theoretical and experimental results are very promising and efficiently satisfy the proposed architecture׳s objectives, including resource awareness, smart data integration and visualization, cost reduction, and performance guarantee. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Load Index Metrics for an Optimized Management of Web Services: A Systematic Evaluation

PubMed Central

Souza, Paulo S. L.; Santana, Regina H. C.; Santana, Marcos J.; Zaluska, Ed; Faical, Bruno S.; Estrella, Julio C.

2013-01-01

The lack of precision to predict service performance through load indices may lead to wrong decisions regarding the use of web services, compromising service performance and raising platform cost unnecessarily. This paper presents experimental studies to qualify the behaviour of load indices in the web service context. The experiments consider three services that generate controlled and significant server demands, four levels of workload for each service and six distinct execution scenarios. The evaluation considers three relevant perspectives: the capability for representing recent workloads, the capability for predicting near-future performance and finally stability. Eight different load indices were analysed, including the JMX Average Time index (proposed in this paper) specifically designed to address the limitations of the other indices. A systematic approach is applied to evaluate the different load indices, considering a multiple linear regression model based on the stepwise-AIC method. The results show that the load indices studied represent the workload to some extent; however, in contrast to expectations, most of them do not exhibit a coherent correlation with service performance and this can result in stability problems. The JMX Average Time index is an exception, showing a stable behaviour which is tightly-coupled to the service runtime for all executions. Load indices are used to predict the service runtime and therefore their inappropriate use can lead to decisions that will impact negatively on both service performance and execution cost. PMID:23874776

Ethical aspects of using medical social media in healthcare applications.

PubMed

Denecke, Kerstin

2014-01-01

The advances in internet and mobile technologies and their increased use in healthcare led to the development of a new research field: health web science. Many research questions are addressed in that field, starting from analysing social-media data, to recruiting participants for clinical studies and monitoring the public health status. The information provided through this channel is unique in a sense that there is no other written source of experiences from patients and health carers. The increased usage and analysis of health web data poses questions on privacy, and ethics. Through a literature review, the current awareness on ethical issues in the context of public health monitoring and research using medical social media data is determined. Further, considerations on the topic were collected from members of the IMIA Social Media Working group.

An Infrastructure to Enable Lightweight Context-Awareness for Mobile Users

PubMed Central

Curiel, Pablo; Lago, Ana B.

2013-01-01

Mobile phones enable us to carry out a wider range of tasks every day, and as a result they have become more ubiquitous than ever. However, they are still more limited in terms of processing power and interaction capabilities than traditional computers, and the often distracting and time-constricted scenarios in which we use them do not help in alleviating these limitations. Context-awareness is a valuable technique to address these issues, as it enables to adapt application behaviour to each situation. In this paper we present a context management infrastructure for mobile environments, aimed at controlling context information life-cycle in this kind of scenarios, with the main goal of enabling application and services to adapt their behaviour to better meet end-user needs. This infrastructure relies on semantic technologies and open standards to improve interoperability, and is based on a central element, the context manager. This element acts as a central context repository and takes most of the computational burden derived from dealing with this kind of information, thus relieving from these tasks to more resource-scarce devices in the system. PMID:23899932

Shiny-phyloseq: Web application for interactive microbiome analysis with provenance tracking.

PubMed

McMurdie, Paul J; Holmes, Susan

2015-01-15

We have created a Shiny-based Web application, called Shiny-phyloseq, for dynamic interaction with microbiome data that runs on any modern Web browser and requires no programming, increasing the accessibility and decreasing the entrance requirement to using phyloseq and related R tools. Along with a data- and context-aware dynamic interface for exploring the effects of parameter and method choices, Shiny-phyloseq also records the complete user input and subsequent graphical results of a user's session, allowing the user to archive, share and reproduce the sequence of steps that created their result-without writing any new code themselves. Shiny-phyloseq is implemented entirely in the R language. It can be hosted/launched by any system with R installed, including Windows, Mac OS and most Linux distributions. Information technology administrators can also host Shiny--phyloseq from a remote server, in which case users need only have a Web browser installed. Shiny-phyloseq is provided free of charge under a GPL-3 open-source license through GitHub at http://joey711.github.io/shiny-phyloseq/. © The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press.

AmI and deployment considerations in AAL services provision for elderly independent living: the MonAMI project.

PubMed

Falcó, Jorge L; Vaquerizo, Esteban; Lain, Luis; Artigas, Jose Ignacio; Ibarz, Alejandro

2013-07-12

The MonAMI project aims to investigate the feasibility of the deployment of open platforms for Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) services provision based on Ambient Intelligence (AmI) and to test user acceptance and the usability of the services. Services were designed to provide support in the areas of environmental control, security, well-being and leisure. These services were installed and evaluated in a Spanish geriatric residence. The participants included elderly persons with disabilities, nursing home care givers and informal carers. The concept of the open platform proved to be satisfactory for the provision of the services in a context aware framework. Furthermore, the usability of the technology was viewed positively and the overall results indicate that this system has the potential to prolong independent living at home for elderly people with disabilities. Deployment was proven successful and awareness of open-platform AAL service delivery was raised in local communities throughout Europe.

AmI and Deployment Considerations in AAL Services Provision for Elderly Independent Living: The MonAMI Project

PubMed Central

Falcó, Jorge L.; Vaquerizo, Esteban; Lain, Luis; Artigas, Jose Ignacio; Ibarz, Alejandro

2013-01-01

The MonAMI project aims to investigate the feasibility of the deployment of open platforms for Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) services provision based on Ambient Intelligence (AmI) and to test user acceptance and the usability of the services. Services were designed to provide support in the areas of environmental control, security, well-being and leisure. These services were installed and evaluated in a Spanish geriatric residence. The participants included elderly persons with disabilities, nursing home care givers and informal carers. The concept of the open platform proved to be satisfactory for the provision of the services in a context aware framework. Furthermore, the usability of the technology was viewed positively and the overall results indicate that this system has the potential to prolong independent living at home for elderly people with disabilities. Deployment was proven successful and awareness of open-platform AAL service delivery was raised in local communities throughout Europe. PMID:23857262

Progress toward a Semantic eScience Framework; building on advanced cyberinfrastructure

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

McGuinness, D. L.; Fox, P. A.; West, P.; Rozell, E.; Zednik, S.; Chang, C.

2010-12-01

The configurable and extensible semantic eScience framework (SESF) has begun development and implementation of several semantic application components. Extensions and improvements to several ontologies have been made based on distinct interdisciplinary use cases ranging from solar physics, to biologicl and chemical oceanography. Importantly, these semantic representations mediate access to a diverse set of existing and emerging cyberinfrastructure. Among the advances are the population of triple stores with web accessible query services. A triple store is akin to a relational data store where the basic stored unit is a subject-predicate-object tuple. Access via a query is provided by the W3 Recommendation language specification SPARQL. Upon this middle tier of semantic cyberinfrastructure, we have developed several forms of semantic faceted search, including provenance-awareness. We report on the rapid advances in semantic technologies and tools and how we are sustaining the software path for the required technical advances as well as the ontology improvements and increased functionality of the semantic applications including how they are integrated into web-based portals (e.g. Drupal) and web services. Lastly, we indicate future work direction and opportunities for collaboration.

A Context-Aware Indoor Air Quality System for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome Prevention

PubMed Central

De Paz, Juan F.; Barriuso, Alberto L.

2018-01-01

Context-aware monitoring systems designed for e-Health solutions and ambient assisted living (AAL) play an important role in today’s personalized health-care services. The majority of these systems are intended for the monitoring of patients’ vital signs by means of bio-sensors. At present, there are very few systems that monitor environmental conditions and air quality in the homes of users. A home’s environmental conditions can have a significant influence on the state of the health of its residents. Monitoring the environment is the key to preventing possible diseases caused by conditions that do not favor health. This paper presents a context-aware system that monitors air quality to prevent a specific health problem at home. The aim of this system is to reduce the incidence of the Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, which is triggered mainly by environmental factors. In the conducted case study, the system monitored the state of the neonate and the quality of air while it was asleep. The designed proposal is characterized by its low cost and non-intrusive nature. The results are promising. PMID:29498653

A Context-Aware Indoor Air Quality System for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome Prevention.

PubMed

De La Iglesia, Daniel H; De Paz, Juan F; Villarrubia González, Gabriel; Barriuso, Alberto L; Bajo, Javier

2018-03-02

Context-aware monitoring systems designed for e-Health solutions and ambient assisted living (AAL) play an important role in today's personalized health-care services. The majority of these systems are intended for the monitoring of patients' vital signs by means of bio-sensors. At present, there are very few systems that monitor environmental conditions and air quality in the homes of users. A home's environmental conditions can have a significant influence on the state of the health of its residents. Monitoring the environment is the key to preventing possible diseases caused by conditions that do not favor health. This paper presents a context-aware system that monitors air quality to prevent a specific health problem at home. The aim of this system is to reduce the incidence of the Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, which is triggered mainly by environmental factors. In the conducted case study, the system monitored the state of the neonate and the quality of air while it was asleep. The designed proposal is characterized by its low cost and non-intrusive nature. The results are promising.

Drug awareness in adolescents attending a mental health service: analysis of longitudinal data.

PubMed

Arnau, Jaume; Bono, Roser; Díaz, Rosa; Goti, Javier

2011-11-01

One of the procedures used most recently with longitudinal data is linear mixed models. In the context of health research the increasing number of studies that now use these models bears witness to the growing interest in this type of analysis. This paper describes the application of linear mixed models to a longitudinal study of a sample of Spanish adolescents attending a mental health service, the aim being to investigate their knowledge about the consumption of alcohol and other drugs. More specifically, the main objective was to compare the efficacy of a motivational interviewing programme with a standard approach to drug awareness. The models used to analyse the overall indicator of drug awareness were as follows: (a) unconditional linear growth curve model; (b) growth model with subject-associated variables; and (c) individual curve model with predictive variables. The results showed that awareness increased over time and that the variable 'schooling years' explained part of the between-subjects variation. The effect of motivational interviewing was also significant.

Evaluation of a liaison librarian program: client and liaison perspectives.

PubMed

Tennant, Michele R; Cataldo, Tara Tobin; Sherwill-Navarro, Pamela; Jesano, Rae

2006-10-01

This paper describes a survey-based evaluation of the five-year old Liaison Librarian Program at the University of Florida. Liaison librarians, faculty, students, staff, residents, and post-doctoral associates were queried via Web-based surveys. Questions addressed client and liaison perspectives on a variety of issues, including program and service awareness and usage, client-library relations and communication, client support for the program, and liaison workload. Approximately 43% of the 323 client respondents were aware of liaison services; 72% (n = 163) of these clients had had contact with their liaison. Ninety-five percent (n = 101) of faculty and students who reported contact with their liaison supported the continuation of the program. Liaison services were used by a greater percentage of faculty than students, although they had similar patterns of usage and reported the same "traditional" services to be most important. Liaisons indicated that communications with clients had increased, the reputation of the library was enhanced, and their workloads had increased as a result of the Liaison Librarian Program. Survey results suggest that the Liaison Librarian Program has a core set of clients who use and highly value the services provided by liaisons. Recommendations addressing workload, training, marketing, and administrative support are provided.

Women's Awareness and Knowledge of Abortion Laws: A Systematic Review.

PubMed

Assifi, Anisa R; Berger, Blair; Tunçalp, Özge; Khosla, Rajat; Ganatra, Bela

2016-01-01

Incorrect knowledge of laws may affect how women enter the health system or seek services, and it likely contributes to the disconnect between official laws and practical applications of the laws that influence women's access to safe, legal abortion services. To provide a synthesis of evidence of women's awareness and knowledge of the legal status of abortion in their country, and the accuracy of women's knowledge on specific legal grounds and restrictions outlined in a country's abortion law. A systematic search was carried for articles published between 1980-2015. Quantitative, mixed-method data collection, and objectives related to women's awareness or knowledge of the abortion law was included. Full texts were assessed, and data extraction done by a single reviewer. Final inclusion for analysis was assessed by two reviewers. The results were synthesised into tables, using narrative synthesis. Of the original 3,126 articles, and 16 hand searched citations, 24 studies were included for analysis. Women's correct general awareness and knowledge of the legal status was less than 50% in nine studies. In six studies, knowledge of legalization/liberalisation ranged between 32.3%-68.2%. Correct knowledge of abortion on the grounds of rape ranged from 12.8%-98%, while in the case of incest, ranged from 9.8%-64.5%. Abortion on the grounds of fetal impairment and gestational limits, varied widely from 7%-94% and 0%-89.5% respectively. This systematic review synthesizes literature on women's awareness and knowledge of the abortion law in their own context. The findings show that correct general awareness and knowledge of the abortion law and legal grounds and restrictions amongst women was limited, even in countries where the laws were liberal. Thus, interventions to disseminate accurate information on the legal context are necessary.

Context Aware Ubiquitous Learning Environments for Peer-to-Peer Collaborative Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yang, Stephen J. H.

2006-01-01

A ubiquitous learning environment provides an interoperable, pervasive, and seamless learning architecture to connect, integrate, and share three major dimensions of learning resources: learning collaborators, learning contents, and learning services. Ubiquitous learning is characterized by providing intuitive ways for identifying right learning…

The Development of a Web-Based College Awareness Program

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Roberson, Keith W.

2010-01-01

The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate a web-based college awareness program that would aid college-bound students in their search for a college or university that fit their interests. Since there is an increase in computer usage among high school aged students, and there are a very few college awareness programs included in the…

A lightweight Web of Things Open Platform to facilitate context data management and personalized healthcare services creation.

PubMed

Corredor, Iván; Metola, Eduardo; Bernardos, Ana M; Tarrío, Paula; Casar, José R

2014-04-29

In the last few years, many health monitoring systems have been designed to fullfil the needs of a large range of scenarios. Although many of those systems provide good ad hoc solutions, most of them lack of mechanisms that allow them to be easily reused. This paper is focused on describing an open platform, the micro Web of Things Open Platform (µWoTOP), which has been conceived to improve the connectivity and reusability of context data to deliver different kinds of health, wellness and ambient home care services. µWoTOP is based on a resource-oriented architecture which may be embedded in mobile and resource constrained devices enabling access to biometric, ambient or activity sensors and actuator resources through uniform interfaces defined according to a RESTful fashion. Additionally, µWoTOP manages two communication modes which allow delivering user context information according to different methods, depending on the requirements of the consumer application. It also generates alert messages based on standards related to health care and risk management, such as the Common Alerting Protocol, in order to make its outputs compatible with existing systems.

A Lightweight Web of Things Open Platform to Facilitate Context Data Management and Personalized Healthcare Services Creation

PubMed Central

Corredor, Iván; Metola, Eduardo; Bernardos, Ana M.; Tarrío, Paula; Casar, José R.

2014-01-01

In the last few years, many health monitoring systems have been designed to fullfil the needs of a large range of scenarios. Although many of those systems provide good ad hoc solutions, most of them lack of mechanisms that allow them to be easily reused. This paper is focused on describing an open platform, the micro Web of Things Open Platform (µWoTOP), which has been conceived to improve the connectivity and reusability of context data to deliver different kinds of health, wellness and ambient home care services. µWoTOP is based on a resource-oriented architecture which may be embedded in mobile and resource constrained devices enabling access to biometric, ambient or activity sensors and actuator resources through uniform interfaces defined according to a RESTful fashion. Additionally, µWoTOP manages two communication modes which allow delivering user context information according to different methods, depending on the requirements of the consumer application. It also generates alert messages based on standards related to health care and risk management, such as the Common Alerting Protocol, in order to make its outputs compatible with existing systems. PMID:24785542

E-Government Goes Semantic Web: How Administrations Can Transform Their Information Processes

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Klischewski, Ralf; Ukena, Stefan

E-government applications and services are built mainly on access to, retrieval of, integration of, and delivery of relevant information to citizens, businesses, and administrative users. In order to perform such information processing automatically through the Semantic Web,1 machine-readable2 enhancements of web resources are needed, based on the understanding of the content and context of the information in focus. While these enhancements are far from trivial to produce, administrations in their role of information and service providers so far find little guidance on how to migrate their web resources and enable a new quality of information processing; even research is still seeking best practices. Therefore, the underlying research question of this chapter is: what are the appropriate approaches which guide administrations in transforming their information processes toward the Semantic Web? In search for answers, this chapter analyzes the challenges and possible solutions from the perspective of administrations: (a) the reconstruction of the information processing in the e-government in terms of how semantic technologies must be employed to support information provision and consumption through the Semantic Web; (b) the required contribution to the transformation is compared to the capabilities and expectations of administrations; and (c) available experience with the steps of transformation are reviewed and discussed as to what extent they can be expected to successfully drive the e-government to the Semantic Web. This research builds on studying the case of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where semantic technologies have been used within the frame of the Access-eGov3 project in order to semantically enhance electronic service interfaces with the aim of providing a new way of accessing and combining e-government services.

A Concept of Operations for an Unclassified Common Operational Picture in Support of Maritime Domain Awareness

DTIC Science & Technology

2017-03-01

Responsibility AWS Amazon Web Services C2 Command and Control C4ISR Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence, Surveillance...and Reconnaissance C5F Commander Fifth Fleet C6F Commander Sixth Fleet C7F Commander Seventh Fleet CAMTES Computer -Assisted Maritime...capabilities. C. SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS The scope of this study is considerable and encompasses numerous agencies and classification levels. Some

Group Treatment for Women Gamblers Using Web, Teleconference and Workbook: Effectiveness Pilot.

PubMed

Boughton, Roberta R; Jindani, Farah; Turner, Nigel E

2016-01-01

While the past decades have seen a dramatic increase in the number of women who gamble and develop consequent problems, treatment services are being underutilized in Ontario. This pilot study explores the feasibility of using web- and phone-based group interventions to expand services available for women who might not otherwise seek or be able to access treatment. Distinct treatment considerations for working with women, such as the value of a women's group, advantages of phone counselling, and the implementation of modern web-based services, were reviewed. The study involved a clinician-facilitated group that used teleconferencing and webinar technology (Adobe Connect) for support and discussion, and a Tutorial Workbook (TW) developed specifically to address the issues and treatment needs of women who gamble at a problematic level. A mixed method analysis used to evaluate the results suggested that the group-based teleconference/webinar approach provided a much-needed means of treatment support for women. Participants reported that the program helped them to understand their gambling triggers, to improve their awareness, to feel better about themselves, to modify their mood and anxiety levels, to feel less isolated, to address their relationships, and to feel more hopeful for the future. The Tutorial Workbook, which was used to supplement the educational component of the group interaction, was highly rated.

PS-CARA: Context-Aware Resource Allocation Scheme for Mobile Public Safety Networks.

PubMed

Kaleem, Zeeshan; Khaliq, Muhammad Zubair; Khan, Ajmal; Ahmad, Ishtiaq; Duong, Trung Q

2018-05-08

The fifth-generation (5G) communications systems are expecting to support users with diverse quality-of-service (QoS) requirements. Beside these requirements, the task with utmost importance is to support the emergency communication services during natural or man-made disasters. Most of the conventional base stations are not properly functional during a disaster situation, so deployment of emergency base stations such as mobile personal cell (mPC) is crucial. An mPC having moving capability can move in the disaster area to provide emergency communication services. However, mPC deployment causes severe co-channel interference to the users in its vicinity. The problem in the existing resource allocation schemes is its support for static environment, that does not fit well for mPC. So, a resource allocation scheme for mPC users is desired that can dynamically allocate resources based on users’ location and its connection establishment priority. In this paper, we propose a public safety users priority-based context-aware resource allocation (PS-CARA) scheme for users sum-rate maximization in disaster environment. Simulations results demonstrate that the proposed PS-CARA scheme can increase the user average and edge rate around 10.3% and 32.8% , respectively because of context information availability and by prioritizing the public safety users. The simulation results ensure that call blocking probability is also reduced considerably under the PS-CARA scheme.

PS-CARA: Context-Aware Resource Allocation Scheme for Mobile Public Safety Networks

PubMed Central

Khaliq, Muhammad Zubair; Khan, Ajmal; Ahmad, Ishtiaq

2018-01-01

The fifth-generation (5G) communications systems are expecting to support users with diverse quality-of-service (QoS) requirements. Beside these requirements, the task with utmost importance is to support the emergency communication services during natural or man-made disasters. Most of the conventional base stations are not properly functional during a disaster situation, so deployment of emergency base stations such as mobile personal cell (mPC) is crucial. An mPC having moving capability can move in the disaster area to provide emergency communication services. However, mPC deployment causes severe co-channel interference to the users in its vicinity. The problem in the existing resource allocation schemes is its support for static environment, that does not fit well for mPC. So, a resource allocation scheme for mPC users is desired that can dynamically allocate resources based on users’ location and its connection establishment priority. In this paper, we propose a public safety users priority-based context-aware resource allocation (PS-CARA) scheme for users sum-rate maximization in disaster environment. Simulations results demonstrate that the proposed PS-CARA scheme can increase the user average and edge rate around 10.3% and 32.8% , respectively because of context information availability and by prioritizing the public safety users. The simulation results ensure that call blocking probability is also reduced considerably under the PS-CARA scheme. PMID:29738499

Development of a Web-Based Visualization Platform for Climate Research Using Google Earth

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Sun, Xiaojuan; Shen, Suhung; Leptoukh, Gregory G.; Wang, Panxing; Di, Liping; Lu, Mingyue

2011-01-01

Recently, it has become easier to access climate data from satellites, ground measurements, and models from various data centers, However, searching. accessing, and prc(essing heterogeneous data from different sources are very tim -consuming tasks. There is lack of a comprehensive visual platform to acquire distributed and heterogeneous scientific data and to render processed images from a single accessing point for climate studies. This paper. documents the design and implementation of a Web-based visual, interoperable, and scalable platform that is able to access climatological fields from models, satellites, and ground stations from a number of data sources using Google Earth (GE) as a common graphical interface. The development is based on the TCP/IP protocol and various data sharing open sources, such as OPeNDAP, GDS, Web Processing Service (WPS), and Web Mapping Service (WMS). The visualization capability of integrating various measurements into cE extends dramatically the awareness and visibility of scientific results. Using embedded geographic information in the GE, the designed system improves our understanding of the relationships of different elements in a four dimensional domain. The system enables easy and convenient synergistic research on a virtual platform for professionals and the general public, gr$tly advancing global data sharing and scientific research collaboration.

Use of a web site to increase knowledge and awareness of hunger-related issues.

PubMed Central

Jennings, Sharla; Cotugna, Nancy; Vickery, Connie E.

2003-01-01

The purpose of this study was to determine the current level of knowledge and awareness of hunger-related issues among a convenience sample of Delawareans. We also assessed whether raising knowledge and awareness of the hunger problem through the FBD's newly designed web site would encourage participation in antihunger activities. Via e-mail, 1,719 individuals were invited to participate in a three-phase, online survey, and 392 agreed. Phase-I questions were answered prior to viewing the web site, phase II (n=217) immediately afterward, and phase III (n=61) six weeks later. Responses indicated a high level of awareness about general hunger issues but specific knowledge proved to be at a lower level. No statistically significant differences were noted when data were collapsed across gender, age, educational level, or work setting. In a six-week post-survey, 41% of subjects were motivated by the web site to engage in an antihunger activity; 34% had told others about the web site and indicated it may be a useful tool in antihunger outreach efforts for the FBD. PMID:14651376

CAMS 2009 PC Co-chairs' Message

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hinze, Annika; Buchanan, George

In the four years since the first CAMS workshop, context awareness has become an increasingly commonplace tool for mobile developers. The limited screen displays of many mobile devices mean that content must be carefully selected to match the user's needs and expectations, and context provides one powerful means of performing such tailoring. Furthermore, increasing availability of additional hardware sensors has bolstered the use of context. GPS, Near-Field Communication, Bluetooth and WiFi have all been used to sense the general environment and to determine the devices' location. Light and tilt sensors have also been used to tune simple features such as the strength of the display lighting, through to complex uses in game control. Context-aware mobile systems are becoming ubiquitous. With this hardware comes the opportunity for "on-board" applications to use location data to provide new services - until recently such systems could only be created with complex and expensive components. Furthermore, the current "mode" of the phone (e.g., silent, meeting, outdoors), contents of the built-in calendar, etc., can all used to provide a rich context for the user's immediate environment.

Managing Mission-Critical Infrastructure

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Breeding, Marshall

2012-01-01

In the library context, they depend on sophisticated business applications specifically designed to support their work. This infrastructure consists of such components as integrated library systems, their associated online catalogs or discovery services, and self-check equipment, as well as a Web site and the various online tools and services…

Providing web-based mental health services to at-risk women

PubMed Central

2011-01-01

Background We examined the feasibility of providing web-based mental health services, including synchronous internet video conferencing of an evidence-based support/education group, to at-risk women, specifically poor lone mothers. The objectives of this study were to: (i) adapt a face-to-face support/education group intervention to a web-based format for lone mothers, and (ii) evaluate lone mothers' response to web-based services, including an online video conferencing group intervention program. Methods Participating mothers were recruited through advertisements. To adapt the face-to-face intervention to a web-based format, we evaluated participant motivation through focus group/key informant interviews (n = 7), adapted the intervention training manual for a web-based environment and provided a computer training manual. To evaluate response to web-based services, we provided the intervention to two groups of lone mothers (n = 15). Pre-post quantitative evaluation of mood, self-esteem, social support and parenting was done. Post intervention follow up interviews explored responses to the group and to using technology to access a health service. Participants received $20 per occasion of data collection. Interviews were taped, transcribed and content analysis was used to code and interpret the data. Adherence to the intervention protocol was evaluated. Results Mothers participating in this project experienced multiple difficulties, including financial and mood problems. We adapted the intervention training manual for use in a web-based group environment and ensured adherence to the intervention protocol based on viewing videoconferencing group sessions and discussion with the leaders. Participant responses to the group intervention included decreased isolation, and increased knowledge and confidence in themselves and their parenting; the responses closely matched those of mothers who obtained same service in face-to-face groups. Pre-and post-group quantitative evaluations did not show significant improvements on measures, although the study was not powered to detect these. Conclusions We demonstrated that an evidence-based group intervention program for lone mothers developed and evaluated in face-to-face context transferred well to an online video conferencing format both in terms of group process and outcomes. PMID:21854563

Providing web-based mental health services to at-risk women.

PubMed

Lipman, Ellen L; Kenny, Meghan; Marziali, Elsa

2011-08-19

We examined the feasibility of providing web-based mental health services, including synchronous internet video conferencing of an evidence-based support/education group, to at-risk women, specifically poor lone mothers. The objectives of this study were to: (i) adapt a face-to-face support/education group intervention to a web-based format for lone mothers, and (ii) evaluate lone mothers' response to web-based services, including an online video conferencing group intervention program. Participating mothers were recruited through advertisements. To adapt the face-to-face intervention to a web-based format, we evaluated participant motivation through focus group/key informant interviews (n = 7), adapted the intervention training manual for a web-based environment and provided a computer training manual. To evaluate response to web-based services, we provided the intervention to two groups of lone mothers (n = 15). Pre-post quantitative evaluation of mood, self-esteem, social support and parenting was done. Post intervention follow up interviews explored responses to the group and to using technology to access a health service. Participants received $20 per occasion of data collection. Interviews were taped, transcribed and content analysis was used to code and interpret the data. Adherence to the intervention protocol was evaluated. Mothers participating in this project experienced multiple difficulties, including financial and mood problems. We adapted the intervention training manual for use in a web-based group environment and ensured adherence to the intervention protocol based on viewing videoconferencing group sessions and discussion with the leaders. Participant responses to the group intervention included decreased isolation, and increased knowledge and confidence in themselves and their parenting; the responses closely matched those of mothers who obtained same service in face-to-face groups. Pre-and post-group quantitative evaluations did not show significant improvements on measures, although the study was not powered to detect these. We demonstrated that an evidence-based group intervention program for lone mothers developed and evaluated in face-to-face context transferred well to an online video conferencing format both in terms of group process and outcomes.

Mobile Student Information System

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Asif, Muhammad; Krogstie, John

2011-01-01

Purpose: A mobile student information system (MSIS) based on mobile computing and context-aware application concepts can provide more user-centric information services to students. The purpose of this paper is to describe a system for providing relevant information to students on a mobile platform. Design/methodology/approach: The research…

Context Representation and Fusion: Advancements and Opportunities

PubMed Central

Khattak, Asad Masood; Akbar, Noman; Aazam, Mohammad; Ali, Taqdir; Khan, Adil Mehmood; Jeon, Seokhee; Hwang, Myunggwon; Lee, Sungyoung

2014-01-01

The acceptance and usability of context-aware systems have given them the edge of wide use in various domains and has also attracted the attention of researchers in the area of context-aware computing. Making user context information available to such systems is the center of attention. However, there is very little emphasis given to the process of context representation and context fusion which are integral parts of context-aware systems. Context representation and fusion facilitate in recognizing the dependency/relationship of one data source on another to extract a better understanding of user context. The problem is more critical when data is emerging from heterogeneous sources of diverse nature like sensors, user profiles, and social interactions and also at different timestamps. Both the processes of context representation and fusion are followed in one way or another; however, they are not discussed explicitly for the realization of context-aware systems. In other words most of the context-aware systems underestimate the importance context representation and fusion. This research has explicitly focused on the importance of both the processes of context representation and fusion and has streamlined their existence in the overall architecture of context-aware systems’ design and development. Various applications of context representation and fusion in context-aware systems are also highlighted in this research. A detailed review on both the processes is provided in this research with their applications. Future research directions (challenges) are also highlighted which needs proper attention for the purpose of achieving the goal of realizing context-aware systems. PMID:24887042

The Urbis Project: Identification and Characterization of Potential Urban Development Areas as a Web-Based Service

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Manzke, Nina; Kada, Martin; Kastler, Thomas; Xu, Shaojuan; de Lange, Norbert; Ehlers, Manfred

2016-06-01

Urban sprawl and the related landscape fragmentation is a Europe-wide challenge in the context of sustainable urban planning. The URBan land recycling Information services for Sustainable cities (URBIS) project aims for the development, implementation, and validation of web-based information services for urban vacant land in European functional urban areas in order to provide end-users with site specific characteristics and to facilitate the identification and evaluation of potential development areas. The URBIS services are developed based on open geospatial data. In particular, the Copernicus Urban Atlas thematic layers serve as the main data source for an initial inventory of sites. In combination with remotely sensed data like SPOT5 images and ancillary datasets like OpenStreetMap, detailed site specific information is extracted. Services are defined for three main categories: i) baseline services, which comprise an initial inventory and typology of urban land, ii) update services, which provide a regular inventory update as well as an analysis of urban land use dynamics and changes, and iii) thematic services, which deliver specific information tailored to end-users' needs.

A nationwide survey of pharmacists' perception of pharmacogenetics in the context of a clinical decision support system containing pharmacogenetics dosing recommendations.

PubMed

Bank, Paul Cd; Swen, Jesse J; Guchelaar, Henk-Jan

2017-02-01

To benchmark Dutch pharmacists knowledge, experience and attitudes toward pharmacogenetics (PGx) with a specific focus on the effects of awareness of the Dutch Pharmacogenetics Working Group guidelines. A web-based survey containing 41 questions was sent to all certified Dutch pharmacists. A total of 667 pharmacists completed the survey (18.8%). Virtually all responders believed in the concept of PGx (99.7%). However, only 14.7% recently ordered a PGx test (≤6 months), 14.1% felt adequately informed and 88.8% would like to receive additional training on PGx. Being aware of the Dutch Pharmacogenetics Working Group guidelines did not have any significant effect on knowledge or adoption of PGx. Dutch pharmacists are very positive toward PGx. However, test adoption is low and additional training is warranted.

Disabled Children and Child Protection: Learning from Literature through a Non-Tragedy Lens

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Flynn, Susan; McGregor, Caroline

2017-01-01

Disabled children experience unique vulnerabilities in the context of child protection and welfare services. Current research alludes to strong concerns about social inequality, professional responses, judgement, knowledge and awareness limitations, and practical constraints. This article presents a focused commentary on the literature pertaining…

Toward Interactive Mobile Synchronous Learning Environment with Context-Awareness Service

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Huang, Yueh-Min; Kuo, Yen-Hung; Lin, Yen-Ting; Cheng, Shu-Chen

2008-01-01

Mobile synchronous learning is a new challenge in the e-learning domain. While popular mobile communication devices, such as cell phones, cannot directly accommodate traditional synchronous content due to the major limitation of display size, other constraints also restrict convenient interactions while using mobile devices in a synchronous…

A novel framework to alleviate the sparsity problem in context-aware recommender systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yu, Penghua; Lin, Lanfen; Wang, Jing

2017-04-01

Recommender systems have become indispensable for services in the era of big data. To improve accuracy and satisfaction, context-aware recommender systems (CARSs) attempt to incorporate contextual information into recommendations. Typically, valid and influential contexts are determined in advance by domain experts or feature selection approaches. Most studies have focused on utilizing the unitary context due to the differences between various contexts. Meanwhile, multi-dimensional contexts will aggravate the sparsity problem, which means that the user preference matrix would become extremely sparse. Consequently, there are not enough or even no preferences in most multi-dimensional conditions. In this paper, we propose a novel framework to alleviate the sparsity issue for CARSs, especially when multi-dimensional contextual variables are adopted. Motivated by the intuition that the overall preferences tend to show similarities among specific groups of users and conditions, we first explore to construct one contextual profile for each contextual condition. In order to further identify those user and context subgroups automatically and simultaneously, we apply a co-clustering algorithm. Furthermore, we expand user preferences in a given contextual condition with the identified user and context clusters. Finally, we perform recommendations based on expanded preferences. Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework.

Crowded: a crowd-sourced perspective of events as they happen

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Brantingham, Richard; Hossain, Aleem

2013-05-01

`Crowded' is a web-based application developed by the Defence Science & Technology Laboratory (Dstl) that collates imagery of a particular location from a variety of media sources to provide an operator with real-time situational awareness. Emergency services and other relevant agencies have detected or become aware of an event - a riot or an explosion, for instance - and its location or text associated with it. The ubiquity of mobile devices allows people to collect and upload media of the incident to the Internet, in real time. Crowded manages the interactions with online sources of media: Flickr; Instagram; YouTube; Twitter; and Transport for London traffic cameras, to retrieve imagery that is being uploaded at that point in time. In doing so, it aims to provide human operators with near-instantaneous `eyes-on' from a variety of different perspectives. The first instantiation of Crowded was implemented as a series of integrated web-services with the aim of rapidly understanding whether the approach was viable. In doing so, it demonstrated how non-traditional, open sources can be used to provide a richer current intelligence picture than can be obtained alone from classified sources. The development of Crowded also explored how open source technology and cloud-based services can be used in the modern intelligence and security environment to provide a multi-agency Common Operating Picture to help achieve a co-ordinated response. The lessons learned in building the prototype are currently being used to design and develop a second version, and identify options and priorities for future development.

Strengthening professionals: a chapter-level formative evaluation of the Medical Library Association mentoring initiative.

PubMed

Kwasik, Hanna; Fulda, Pauline O

2006-01-01

The main objective was to determine to what extent the Medical Library Association (MLA) mentoring initiative was implemented in the South Central Chapter of the Medical Library Association (SCC/ MLA) and to identify the needs, improvements, and adjustments in mentoring services for the future to improve the practice of librarianship. The data were collected by administering an anonymous structured survey designed by the authors. The survey was mailed to all 335 chapter members. The authors elicited responses to determine the chapter members' mentoring needs, awareness of available resources, satisfaction with existing services and resources, needs for the future, and suggestions to meet those needs. Of the 335 delivered surveys, 184 were returned, yielding a return rate of 55%. Eighty percent had a mentor or mentors in their careers, and 74% were either very satisfied or satisfied with the relationship. The majority considered having a mentor a critical part of the professional experience. The mentoring activity chosen by respondents as the most important was improvement of job performance through skills development. Over 50% were aware of SCC/MLA's mentoring activities, and less than 50% were aware of MLA's mentoring Website. The rate of response and the wealth of comments provided by respondents document the high level of interest in mentoring by medical librarians in the region. The following mentoring services were equally important to SCC/MLA members and were recommended for improvement or development at the regional level: a formalized mentoring program in the region, Web-based mentoring resources on the SCC/MLA Website, and a continuing education course for mentors. Members are aware of mentoring activities in the region; however, participation levels need to be increased in activities that SCC/MLA and MLA provide. Mentoring continues to evolve as a service in the profession.

Prototype of an auto-calibrating, context-aware, hybrid brain-computer interface.

PubMed

Faller, J; Torrellas, S; Miralles, F; Holzner, C; Kapeller, C; Guger, C; Bund, J; Müller-Putz, G R; Scherer, R

2012-01-01

We present the prototype of a context-aware framework that allows users to control smart home devices and to access internet services via a Hybrid BCI system of an auto-calibrating sensorimotor rhythm (SMR) based BCI and another assistive device (Integra Mouse mouth joystick). While there is extensive literature that describes the merit of Hybrid BCIs, auto-calibrating and co-adaptive ERD BCI training paradigms, specialized BCI user interfaces, context-awareness and smart home control, there is up to now, no system that includes all these concepts in one integrated easy-to-use framework that can truly benefit individuals with severe functional disabilities by increasing independence and social inclusion. Here we integrate all these technologies in a prototype framework that does not require expert knowledge or excess time for calibration. In a first pilot-study, 3 healthy volunteers successfully operated the system using input signals from an ERD BCI and an Integra Mouse and reached average positive predictive values (PPV) of 72 and 98% respectively. Based on what we learned here we are planning to improve the system for a test with a larger number of healthy volunteers so we can soon bring the system to benefit individuals with severe functional disability.

Mental health care for the elderly in low-income countries: a health systems approach

PubMed Central

PRINCE, MARTIN; LIVINGSTON, GILL; KATONA, CORNELIUS

2007-01-01

Future development of services for older people needs to be tailored to suit the health systems context. Low-income countries lack the economic and human capital to contemplate widespread introduction of specialist services. The most cost-effective way to manage people with dementia will be through supporting, educating and advising family caregivers. The next level of care to be prioritized would be respite care, both in day centres and in residential or nursing homes. An important prerequisite to improving care for older persons is to create a climate that fosters such advances. Better awareness is a necessary precondition for appropriate help-seeking, and lack of awareness is a public health problem for which population level interventions are needed. PMID:17342213

A Distributed Ambient Intelligence Based Multi-Agent System for Alzheimer Health Care

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tapia, Dante I.; RodríGuez, Sara; Corchado, Juan M.

This chapter presents ALZ-MAS (Alzheimer multi-agent system), an ambient intelligence (AmI)-based multi-agent system aimed at enhancing the assistance and health care for Alzheimer patients. The system makes use of several context-aware technologies that allow it to automatically obtain information from users and the environment in an evenly distributed way, focusing on the characteristics of ubiquity, awareness, intelligence, mobility, etc., all of which are concepts defined by AmI. ALZ-MAS makes use of a services oriented multi-agent architecture, called flexible user and services oriented multi-agent architecture, to distribute resources and enhance its performance. It is demonstrated that a SOA approach is adequate to build distributed and highly dynamic AmI-based multi-agent systems.

Protocol for a randomised controlled trial of a web-based healthy relationship tool and safety decision aid for women experiencing domestic violence (I-DECIDE).

PubMed

Hegarty, Kelsey; Tarzia, Laura; Murray, Elizabeth; Valpied, Jodie; Humphreys, Cathy; Taft, Angela; Gold, Lisa; Glass, Nancy

2015-08-01

Domestic violence is a serious problem affecting the health and wellbeing of women globally. Interventions in health care settings have primarily focused on screening and referral, however, women often may not disclose abuse to health practitioners. The internet offers a confidential space in which women can assess the health of their relationships and make a plan for safety and wellbeing for themselves and their children. This randomised controlled trial is testing the effectiveness of a web-based healthy relationship tool and safety decision aid (I-DECIDE). Based broadly on the IRIS trial in the United States, it has been adapted for the Australian context where it is conducted entirely online and uses the Psychosocial Readiness Model as the basis for the intervention. In this two arm, pragmatic randomised controlled trial, women who have experienced abuse or fear of a partner in the previous 6 months will be computer randomised to receive either the I-DECIDE website or a comparator website (basic relationship and safety advice). The intervention includes self-directed reflection exercises on their relationship, danger level, priority setting, and results in an individualised, tailored action plan. Primary self-reported outcomes are: self-efficacy (General Self-Efficacy Scale) immediately after completion, 6 and 12 months post-baseline; and depressive symptoms (Centre for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale, Revised, 6 and 12 months post-baseline). Secondary outcomes include mean number of helpful actions for safety and wellbeing, mean level of fear of partner and cost-effectiveness. This fully-automated trial will evaluate a web-based self-information, self-reflection and self-management tool for domestic violence. We hypothesise that the improvement in self-efficacy and mental health will be mediated by increased perceived support and awareness encouraging positive change. If shown to be effective, I-DECIDE could be easily incorporated into the community sector and health care settings, providing an alternative to formal services for women not ready or able to acknowledge abuse and access specialised services. Trial registered on 15(th) December 2014 with the Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry ACTRN12614001306606.

Securing the anonymity of content providers in the World Wide Web

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Demuth, Thomas; Rieke, Andreas

1999-04-01

Nowadays the World Wide Web (WWW) is an established service used by people all over the world. Most of them do not recognize the fact that they reveal plenty of information about themselves or their affiliation and computer equipment to the providers of web pages they connect to. As a result, a lot of services offer users to access web pages unrecognized or without risk of being backtracked, respectively. This kind of anonymity is called user or client anonymity. But on the other hand, an equivalent protection for content providers does not exist, although this feature is desirable for many situations in which the identity of a publisher or content provider shall be hidden. We call this property server anonymity. We will introduce the first system with the primary target to offer anonymity for providers of information in the WWW. Beside this property, it provides also client anonymity. Based on David Chaum's idea of mixes and in relation to the context of the WWW, we explain the term 'server anonymity' motivating the system JANUS which offers both client and server anonymity.

Mobile medical visual information retrieval.

PubMed

Depeursinge, Adrien; Duc, Samuel; Eggel, Ivan; Müller, Henning

2012-01-01

In this paper, we propose mobile access to peer-reviewed medical information based on textual search and content-based visual image retrieval. Web-based interfaces designed for limited screen space were developed to query via web services a medical information retrieval engine optimizing the amount of data to be transferred in wireless form. Visual and textual retrieval engines with state-of-the-art performance were integrated. Results obtained show a good usability of the software. Future use in clinical environments has the potential of increasing quality of patient care through bedside access to the medical literature in context.

Public awareness of audiology, hearing and hearing health in the Limpopo Province, South Africa

PubMed Central

Sebothoma, Ben; Kgare, Khomotjo S.

2017-01-01

Background The burden of hearing loss is on the increase, especially in low-income countries such as South Africa. The need for urgent action to prevent ear and hearing problems is a priority, especially as in many cases permanent hearing loss is preventable. In South Africa, as in other developing countries, there is a limited number of hearing health professionals and audiological resources. The lack of hearing health services may impact the general public’s awareness of hearing and hearing health. Limited information is available on the South African public’s knowledge of audiologists and the services they provide, especially in underserved rural communities. Aim The aim of this study was to describe individuals’ awareness of the audiology profession, hearing and hearing loss, and hearing health in a rural area of the Limpopo Province. Method A cross-sectional survey design was employed for the purpose of this study. Using a random sampling strategy, 297 households in four rural villages were selected and a self-developed questionnaire was administered to one individual (18 years and older) per household. The questionnaire consisted of 23 questions targeting awareness of the audiology profession, as well as knowledge of hearing, hearing loss and hearing health. Results Only 14% of participants were aware of the audiology profession, indicating that individuals living in rural communities are not aware of the role of audiologists and the services they provide. Doctors and nurses were identified by participants as the individuals who assist them with hearing-related problems. Although most participants (87%) acknowledged that it is very important to undergo a hearing test, only 5% have previously visited an audiologist. Most participants were aware that ear infections and excessive noise exposure can cause hearing loss. The majority also believed that ears must be kept clean at all times and used cotton buds to maintain ear hygiene. Conclusion There is a general lack of public awareness of audiologists and the services they offer. This study highlighted the need for the National Department of Health in collaboration with professional associations and hearing health professionals to develop and implement effective strategies to increase the South African public’s awareness of the profession and the services they provide. South African universities can also play a significant role in teaching students to develop context-relevant strategies to increase awareness of the profession. PMID:29041791

Prototype Development: Context-Driven Dynamic XML Ophthalmologic Data Capture Application

PubMed Central

Schwei, Kelsey M; Kadolph, Christopher; Finamore, Joseph; Cancel, Efrain; McCarty, Catherine A; Okorie, Asha; Thomas, Kate L; Allen Pacheco, Jennifer; Pathak, Jyotishman; Ellis, Stephen B; Denny, Joshua C; Rasmussen, Luke V; Tromp, Gerard; Williams, Marc S; Vrabec, Tamara R; Brilliant, Murray H

2017-01-01

Background The capture and integration of structured ophthalmologic data into electronic health records (EHRs) has historically been a challenge. However, the importance of this activity for patient care and research is critical. Objective The purpose of this study was to develop a prototype of a context-driven dynamic extensible markup language (XML) ophthalmologic data capture application for research and clinical care that could be easily integrated into an EHR system. Methods Stakeholders in the medical, research, and informatics fields were interviewed and surveyed to determine data and system requirements for ophthalmologic data capture. On the basis of these requirements, an ophthalmology data capture application was developed to collect and store discrete data elements with important graphical information. Results The context-driven data entry application supports several features, including ink-over drawing capability for documenting eye abnormalities, context-based Web controls that guide data entry based on preestablished dependencies, and an adaptable database or XML schema that stores Web form specifications and allows for immediate changes in form layout or content. The application utilizes Web services to enable data integration with a variety of EHRs for retrieval and storage of patient data. Conclusions This paper describes the development process used to create a context-driven dynamic XML data capture application for optometry and ophthalmology. The list of ophthalmologic data elements identified as important for care and research can be used as a baseline list for future ophthalmologic data collection activities. PMID:28903894

Common Capabilities for Trust and Security in Service Oriented Infrastructures

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Brossard, David; Colombo, Maurizio

In order to achieve agility of the enterprise and shorter concept-to-market timescales for new services, IT and communication providers and their customers increasingly use technologies and concepts which come together under the banner of the Service Oriented Infrastructure (SOI) approach. In this paper we focus on the challenges relating to SOI security. The solutions presented cover the following areas: i) identity federation, ii) distributed usage & access management, and iii) context-aware secure messaging, routing & transformation. We use a scenario from the collaborative engineering space to illustrate the challenges and the solutions.

New SPDF Directions and Evolving Services Supporting Heliophysics Research

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

McGuire, Robert E.; Candey, Robert M.; Bilitza, D.; Chimiak, Reine A.; Cooper, John F.; Fung, Shing F.; Han, David B.; Harris, Bernie; Johnson R.; Klipsch, C.;

Network Location-Aware Service Recommendation with Random Walk in Cyber-Physical Systems.

PubMed

Yin, Yuyu; Yu, Fangzheng; Xu, Yueshen; Yu, Lifeng; Mu, Jinglong

2017-09-08

Cyber-physical systems (CPS) have received much attention from both academia and industry. An increasing number of functions in CPS are provided in the way of services, which gives rise to an urgent task, that is, how to recommend the suitable services in a huge number of available services in CPS. In traditional service recommendation, collaborative filtering (CF) has been studied in academia, and used in industry. However, there exist several defects that limit the application of CF-based methods in CPS. One is that under the case of high data sparsity, CF-based methods are likely to generate inaccurate prediction results. In this paper, we discover that mining the potential similarity relations among users or services in CPS is really helpful to improve the prediction accuracy. Besides, most of traditional CF-based methods are only capable of using the service invocation records, but ignore the context information, such as network location, which is a typical context in CPS. In this paper, we propose a novel service recommendation method for CPS, which utilizes network location as context information and contains three prediction models using random walking. We conduct sufficient experiments on two real-world datasets, and the results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed methods and verify that the network location is indeed useful in QoS prediction.

Understanding User Preferences and Awareness: Privacy Mechanisms in Location-Based Services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Burghardt, Thorben; Buchmann, Erik; Müller, Jens; Böhm, Klemens

Location based services (LBS) let people retrieve and share information related to their current position. Examples are Google Latitude or Panoramio. Since LBS share user-related content, location information etc., they put user privacy at risk. Literature has proposed various privacy mechanisms for LBS. However, it is unclear which mechanisms humans really find useful, and how they make use of them. We present a user study that addresses these issues. To obtain realistic results, we have implemented a geotagging application on the web and on GPS cellphones, and our study participants use this application in their daily lives. We test five privacy mechanisms that differ in the awareness, mental effort and degree of informedness required from the users. Among other findings, we have observed that in situations where a single simple mechanism does not meet all privacy needs, people want to use simple and sophisticated mechanisms in combination. Further, individuals are concerned about the privacy of others, even when they do not value privacy for themselves.

ScotlandsPlaces XML: Bespoke XML or XML Mapping?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Beamer, Ashley; Gillick, Mark

2010-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate web services (in the form of parameterised URLs), specifically in the context of the ScotlandsPlaces project. This involves cross-domain querying, data retrieval and display via the development of a bespoke XML standard rather than existing XML formats and mapping between them.…

Talking about AIDS in Hong Kong: Cultural Models in Public Health Discourse.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jones, Rodney H.

A study explored the issues of cultural identity and interaction in public health discourse concerning Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) in Hong Kong's multilingual, multicultural social context. Twenty public service announcements (PSAs) concerning AIDS awareness televised in both English and Cantonese in Hong Kong from 1987 to 1994 were…

Symposium on Applications and the Internet (SAINT 2003) Proceedings (Orlando, Florida, January 27-31, 2003).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Helal, Sumi, Ed.; Oie, Yuji, Ed.; Chang, Carl, Ed.; Murai, Jun, Ed.

This proceedings from the 2003 Symposium on Applications and the Internet (SAINT) contains papers from sessions on: (1) mobile Internet, including a target-driven cache replacement policy, context-awareness for service discovery, and XML transformation; (2) collaboration technology I, including human-network-based filtering, virtual collaboration…

Towards responsible system development in health services: a discourse analysis study of design conflict resolution tactics.

PubMed

Irestig, Magnus; Timpka, Toomas

2010-02-01

We set out to examine design conflict resolution tactics used in development of large information systems for health services and to outline the design consequences for these tactics. Discourse analysis methods were applied to data collected from meetings conducted during the development of a web-based system in a public health context. We found that low risk tactics were characterized by design issues being managed within the formal mandate and competences of the design group. In comparison, high risk tactics were associated with irresponsible compromises, i.e. decisions being passed on to others or to later phases of the design process. The consequence of this collective disregard of issues such as responsibility and legitimacy is that the system design will be impossible to implement in factual health service contexts. The results imply that downstream responsibility issues have to be continuously dealt with in system development in health services.

A Web-Based Psychosocial Intervention for Family Caregivers of Older People: Results from a Mixed-Methods Study in Three European Countries.

PubMed

Barbabella, Francesco; Poli, Arianna; Andréasson, Frida; Salzmann, Benjamin; Papa, Roberta; Hanson, Elizabeth; Efthymiou, Areti; Döhner, Hanneli; Lancioni, Cristina; Civerchia, Patrizia; Lamura, Giovanni

2016-10-06

Informal caregiving is the main source of care for older people in Europe. An enormous amount of responsibility and care activity is on the shoulders of family caregivers, who might experience problems in their psychological well-being and in reconciling caregiving and their personal sphere. In order to alleviate such burden, there is increasing interest and growing research in Europe on Web-based support addressing family caregivers and their needs. However, the level of development and penetration of innovative Web-based services for caregivers is still quite low and the access to traditional face-to-face services can be problematic for logistic, availability, and quality reasons. As part of the European project INNOVAGE, a pilot study was conducted for developing and testing a Web-based psychosocial intervention aimed at empowering family caregivers of older people in Italy, Sweden, and Germany. The program offered information resources and interactive services to enable both professional and peer support. A mixed-methods, sequential explanatory design was adopted. Caregivers' psychological well-being, perceived negative and positive aspects of caregiving, and social support received were assessed before and after the 3-month intervention. Poststudy, a subsample of users participated in focus groups to assist in the interpretation of the quantitative results. A total of 94 out of 118 family caregivers (79.7%) from the three countries used the Web platform at least once. The information resources were used to different extents in each country, with Italian users having the lowest median number of visits (5, interquartile range [IQR] 2-8), whereas German users had the highest number (17, IQR 7-66) (P<.001). The interactive services most frequently accessed (more than 12 times) in all countries were the social network (29/73, 40%) and private messages (27/73, 37%). The pretest-posttest analysis revealed some changes, particularly the slight worsening of perceived positive values of caregiving (Carers of Older People in Europe [COPE] positive value subscale: P=.02) and social support received (COPE quality-of-support subscale: P=.02; Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support subscale: P=.04), in all cases with small effect size (r range -.15 to -.18). Focus groups were conducted with 20 family caregivers and the content analysis of discussions identified five main themes: online social support, role awareness, caregiving activities, psychological well-being, and technical concerns. The analysis suggested the intervention was useful and appropriate, also stimulating a better self-efficacy and reappraisal of the caregivers' role. The intervention seemed to contribute to the improvement of family caregivers' awareness, efficacy, and empowerment, which in turn may lead to a better self-recognition of their own needs and improved efforts for developing and accessing coping resources. A major implication of the study was the finalization and implementation of the InformCare Web platform in 27 European countries, now publicly accessible (www.eurocarers.org/informcare).

Has the Web really empowered health care consumers? The truth is customers may not have changed as much as we think.

PubMed

Wilkins, S T; Navarro, F H

2001-01-01

The experts tell us that fueled by unprecedented access to health information online, today's new health care consumer will revolutionize the way health care services are organized and delivered. An examination of consumers from a health value-graphic perspective, however, casts some doubt on these predictions. Patterns emerging online are simply making us more aware of existing consumer segments that have always been actively involved in their own health.

A model-driven privacy compliance decision support for medical data sharing in Europe.

PubMed

Boussi Rahmouni, H; Solomonides, T; Casassa Mont, M; Shiu, S; Rahmouni, M

2011-01-01

Clinical practitioners and medical researchers often have to share health data with other colleagues across Europe. Privacy compliance in this context is very important but challenging. Automated privacy guidelines are a practical way of increasing users' awareness of privacy obligations and help eliminating unintentional breaches of privacy. In this paper we present an ontology-plus-rules based approach to privacy decision support for the sharing of patient data across European platforms. We use ontologies to model the required domain and context information about data sharing and privacy requirements. In addition, we use a set of Semantic Web Rule Language rules to reason about legal privacy requirements that are applicable to a specific context of data disclosure. We make the complete set invocable through the use of a semantic web application acting as an interactive privacy guideline system can then invoke the full model in order to provide decision support. When asked, the system will generate privacy reports applicable to a specific case of data disclosure described by the user. Also reports showing guidelines per Member State may be obtained. The advantage of this approach lies in the expressiveness and extensibility of the modelling and inference languages adopted and the ability they confer to reason with complex requirements interpreted from high level regulations. However, the system cannot at this stage fully simulate the role of an ethics committee or review board.

International note: awareness and context of cyber-harassment among secondary school students in Oyo state, Nigeria.

PubMed

Olumide, Adesola O; Adams, Patricia; Amodu, Olukemi K

2015-02-01

We determined the awareness and context of cyber-harassment among secondary school students (653 survey respondents and 18 in-depth interviewees) in Oyo state, Nigeria. Respondents' mean age was 14.2 ± 2.2 years and 53.9% were aware of cyber-harassment occurring in their school or among their friends. Cyber-harassment was often perpetrated via phone calls (62.5%), text messaging (36.9%), chat rooms (28.7%), through pictures or video clips sent via mobile phones (11.9%), emails (6.8%) or websites (5.9%). Cyber-harassment behaviours mentioned were the use of abusive words (25.4%), saying mean things or making fun of the victim (13.9%), solicitations for relationships (7.9%) or sex (6.8%) and spreading rumours about the victim (6.8%). In-depth interviewees recounted experiences of cyber-harassment suffered by their friends. Many were relationship-related, sexual solicitations and threats and corroborated quantitative findings. Respondents are aware of cyber-harassment occurring among students in the study area. Comprehensive interventions to address the problem need to be instituted. Copyright © 2014 The Foundation for Professionals in Services for Adolescents. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Effects of Visceral Fat Accumulation Awareness on a Web-Based Weight-Loss Program: Japanese Study of Visceral Adiposity and Lifestyle Information-Utilization and Evaluation (J-VALUE).

PubMed

Sakane, Naoki; Dohi, Seitaro; Sakata, Koichi; Hagiwara, Shin-Ichi; Morimoto, Toshihisa; Uchida, Takanobu; Katashima, Mitsuhiro; Yanagisawa, Yoshiko; Yasumasu, Takeshi; Study Group, J-Value

2013-01-01

A reduction of visceral fat is important for improvement of metabolic risk. This study was designed to compare the effects of a web-based program alone or together with measurement and self-awareness of accumulated visceral fat in Japanese workers. A new noninvasive device to measure visceral fat accumulation was introduced, and efficacy on weight-loss and improvement of healthy behaviors were examined. This study was conducted according to Helsinki declaration and approved by the ethical committee of Japan Hospital Organization, National Kyoto Hospital. Two-hundred and sixteen overweight and obese males with BMI of more than 23 participated from 8 healthcare offices of 3 Japanese private companies. Subjects were randomly allocated into control group, Web-based weight-loss program (Web), or Web + Visceral fat measurement group (Web + VFA). Eighty-one percent of participants completed the study. Reductions of body weight, waist circumference, and BMI were the largest in Web + VFA group, and the differences between groups were significant by ANOVA. Improvements of healthy behaviors were the largest in Web + VFA group, and the differences of healthy eating improvement scores between Web + VFA and control groups were significant. Our findings suggest that measurement and awareness of visceral fat are effective in weight reduction in overweight and obese males in the workplace.

Feasibility of a web-based suicide awareness programme for Asian American college students

PubMed Central

Choi, Heeseung; Park, Hanjong; Suarez, Marie L; Park, Chang; Zhao, Zhongsheng; Wilkie, Diana J

2016-01-01

Objective The Truth about Suicide video has been widely used but has never been empirically tested regarding its cultural appropriateness for Asian Americans. The purpose of the study was to determine the feasibility of using the video in a web-based suicide awareness programme for Asian American and non-Hispanic white college students. Methods A cross-sectional, comparative, web-based study was conducted with 227 Asian Americans and 204 non-Hispanic whites at a university in the Midwest region of the USA. Study participants completed a questionnaire measuring their cultural orientation and attitudes towards suicide, watched the 27 min video, completed a debriefing session and evaluated the video's overall suitability. Results Asian Americans rated the suicide awareness video significantly lower for cultural relevance than did non-Hispanic whites (F=5.479, p=0.02). Collectivist cultural orientation was a significant predictor for cultural relevance, credibility and appeal; however, evaluation of the video's cultural relevance was negatively affected by Asian ethnicity. Conclusions Cultural orientation and race/ethnicity should be strongly considered when web-based suicide awareness programmes are developed for college students. PMID:28003296

COEUS: “semantic web in a box” for biomedical applications

PubMed Central

2012-01-01

Background As the “omics” revolution unfolds, the growth in data quantity and diversity is bringing about the need for pioneering bioinformatics software, capable of significantly improving the research workflow. To cope with these computer science demands, biomedical software engineers are adopting emerging semantic web technologies that better suit the life sciences domain. The latter’s complex relationships are easily mapped into semantic web graphs, enabling a superior understanding of collected knowledge. Despite increased awareness of semantic web technologies in bioinformatics, their use is still limited. Results COEUS is a new semantic web framework, aiming at a streamlined application development cycle and following a “semantic web in a box” approach. The framework provides a single package including advanced data integration and triplification tools, base ontologies, a web-oriented engine and a flexible exploration API. Resources can be integrated from heterogeneous sources, including CSV and XML files or SQL and SPARQL query results, and mapped directly to one or more ontologies. Advanced interoperability features include REST services, a SPARQL endpoint and LinkedData publication. These enable the creation of multiple applications for web, desktop or mobile environments, and empower a new knowledge federation layer. Conclusions The platform, targeted at biomedical application developers, provides a complete skeleton ready for rapid application deployment, enhancing the creation of new semantic information systems. COEUS is available as open source at http://bioinformatics.ua.pt/coeus/. PMID:23244467

COEUS: "semantic web in a box" for biomedical applications.

PubMed

Lopes, Pedro; Oliveira, José Luís

2012-12-17

As the "omics" revolution unfolds, the growth in data quantity and diversity is bringing about the need for pioneering bioinformatics software, capable of significantly improving the research workflow. To cope with these computer science demands, biomedical software engineers are adopting emerging semantic web technologies that better suit the life sciences domain. The latter's complex relationships are easily mapped into semantic web graphs, enabling a superior understanding of collected knowledge. Despite increased awareness of semantic web technologies in bioinformatics, their use is still limited. COEUS is a new semantic web framework, aiming at a streamlined application development cycle and following a "semantic web in a box" approach. The framework provides a single package including advanced data integration and triplification tools, base ontologies, a web-oriented engine and a flexible exploration API. Resources can be integrated from heterogeneous sources, including CSV and XML files or SQL and SPARQL query results, and mapped directly to one or more ontologies. Advanced interoperability features include REST services, a SPARQL endpoint and LinkedData publication. These enable the creation of multiple applications for web, desktop or mobile environments, and empower a new knowledge federation layer. The platform, targeted at biomedical application developers, provides a complete skeleton ready for rapid application deployment, enhancing the creation of new semantic information systems. COEUS is available as open source at http://bioinformatics.ua.pt/coeus/.

Women’s Awareness and Knowledge of Abortion Laws: A Systematic Review

PubMed Central

Assifi, Anisa R.; Berger, Blair; Tunçalp, Özge; Khosla, Rajat; Ganatra, Bela

2016-01-01

Background Incorrect knowledge of laws may affect how women enter the health system or seek services, and it likely contributes to the disconnect between official laws and practical applications of the laws that influence women’s access to safe, legal abortion services. Objective To provide a synthesis of evidence of women’s awareness and knowledge of the legal status of abortion in their country, and the accuracy of women’s knowledge on specific legal grounds and restrictions outlined in a country’s abortion law. Methods A systematic search was carried for articles published between 1980–2015. Quantitative, mixed-method data collection, and objectives related to women’s awareness or knowledge of the abortion law was included. Full texts were assessed, and data extraction done by a single reviewer. Final inclusion for analysis was assessed by two reviewers. The results were synthesised into tables, using narrative synthesis. Results Of the original 3,126 articles, and 16 hand searched citations, 24 studies were included for analysis. Women’s correct general awareness and knowledge of the legal status was less than 50% in nine studies. In six studies, knowledge of legalization/liberalisation ranged between 32.3% - 68.2%. Correct knowledge of abortion on the grounds of rape ranged from 12.8% – 98%, while in the case of incest, ranged from 9.8% - 64.5%. Abortion on the grounds of fetal impairment and gestational limits, varied widely from 7% - 94% and 0% - 89.5% respectively. Conclusion This systematic review synthesizes literature on women’s awareness and knowledge of the abortion law in their own context. The findings show that correct general awareness and knowledge of the abortion law and legal grounds and restrictions amongst women was limited, even in countries where the laws were liberal. Thus, interventions to disseminate accurate information on the legal context are necessary. PMID:27010629

Reliable and Persistent Identification of Linked Data Elements

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wood, David

Linked Data techniques rely upon common terminology in a manner similar to a relational database'vs reliance on a schema. Linked Data terminology anchors metadata descriptions and facilitates navigation of information. Common vocabularies ease the human, social tasks of understanding datasets sufficiently to construct queries and help to relate otherwise disparate datasets. Vocabulary terms must, when using the Resource Description Framework, be grounded in URIs. A current bestpractice on the World Wide Web is to serve vocabulary terms as Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) and present both human-readable and machine-readable representations to the public. Linked Data terminology published to theWorldWideWeb may be used by others without reference or notification to the publishing party. That presents a problem: Vocabulary publishers take on an implicit responsibility to maintain and publish their terms via the URLs originally assigned, regardless of the inconvenience such a responsibility may cause. Over the course of years, people change jobs, publishing organizations change Internet domain names, computers change IP addresses,systems administrators publish old material in new ways. Clearly, a mechanism is required to manageWeb-based vocabularies over a long term. This chapter places Linked Data vocabularies in context with the wider concepts of metadata in general and specifically metadata on the Web. Persistent identifier mechanisms are reviewed, with a particular emphasis on Persistent URLs, or PURLs. PURLs and PURL services are discussed in the context of Linked Data. Finally, historic weaknesses of PURLs are resolved by the introduction of a federation of PURL services to address needs specific to Linked Data.

SeaConditions: a web and mobile service for safer professional and recreational activities in the Mediterranean Sea

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Coppini, Giovanni; Marra, Palmalisa; Lecci, Rita; Pinardi, Nadia; Cretì, Sergio; Scalas, Mario; Tedesco, Luca; D'Anca, Alessandro; Fazioli, Leopoldo; Olita, Antonio; Turrisi, Giuseppe; Palazzo, Cosimo; Aloisio, Giovanni; Fiore, Sandro; Bonaduce, Antonio; Vittal Kumkar, Yogesh; Ciliberti, Stefania Angela; Federico, Ivan; Mannarini, Gianandrea; Agostini, Paola; Bonarelli, Roberto; Martinelli, Sara; Verri, Giorgia; Lusito, Letizia; Rollo, Davide; Cavallo, Arturo; Tumolo, Antonio; Monacizzo, Tony; Spagnulo, Marco; Sorgente, Rorberto; Cucco, Andrea; Quattrocchi, Giovanni; Tonani, Marina; Drudi, Massimiliano; Nassisi, Paola; Conte, Laura; Panzera, Laura; Navarra, Antonio; Negro, Giancarlo

2017-04-01

Reliable and timely information on the environmental conditions at sea is key to the safety of professional and recreational users as well as to the optimal execution of their activities. The possibility of users obtaining environmental information in due time and with adequate accuracy in the marine and coastal environment is defined as sea situational awareness (SSA). Without adequate information on the environmental meteorological and oceanographic conditions, users have a limited capacity to respond, which has led to loss of lives and to large environmental disasters with enormous consequent damage to the economy, society and ecosystems. Within the framework of the TESSA project, new SSA services for the Mediterranean Sea have been developed. In this paper we present SeaConditions, which is a web and mobile application for the provision of meteorological and oceanographic observation and forecasting products. Model forecasts and satellite products from operational services, such as ECMWF and CMEMS, can be visualized in SeaConditions. In addition, layers of information related to bathymetry, sea level and ocean-colour data (chl a and water transparency) are displayed. Ocean forecasts at high spatial resolutions are included in the version of SeaConditions presented here. SeaConditions provides a user-friendly experience with a fluid zoom capability, facilitating the appropriate display of data with different levels of detail. SeaConditions is a single point of access to interactive maps from different geophysical fields, providing high-quality information based on advanced oceanographic models. The SeaConditions services are available through both web and mobile applications. The web application is available at www.sea-conditions.com and is accessible and compatible with present-day browsers. Interoperability with GIS software is implemented. User feedback has been collected and taken into account in order to improve the service. The SeaConditions iOS and Android apps have been downloaded by more than 105 000 users to date (May 2016), and more than 100 000 users have visited the web version.

Online Maps and Cloud-Supported Location-Based Services across a Manifold of Devices

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kröpfl, M.; Buchmüller, D.; Leberl, F.

2012-07-01

Online mapping, miniaturization of computing devices, the "cloud", Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and cell tower triangulation all coalesce into an entirely novel infrastructure for numerous innovative map applications. This impacts the planning of human activities, navigating and tracking these activities as they occur, and finally documenting their outcome for either a single user or a network of connected users in a larger context. In this paper, we provide an example of a simple geospatial application making use of this model, which we will use to explain the basic steps necessary to deploy an application involving a web service hosting geospatial information and a client software consuming the web service through an API. The application allows an insurance claim specialist to add claims to a cloud-based database including a claim location. A field agent then uses a smartphone application to query the database by proximity, and heads out to capture photographs as supporting documentation for the claim. Once the photos have been uploaded to the web service, a second web service for image matching is called in order to try and match the current photograph to previously submitted assets. Image matching is used as a pre-verification step to determine whether the coverage of the respective object is sufficient for the claim specialist to process the claim. The development of the application was based on Microsoft's® Bing Maps™, Windows Phone™, Silverlight™, Windows Azure™ and Visual Studio™, and was completed in approximately 30 labour hours split among two developers.

Context Inference for Mobile Applications in the UPCASE Project

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Santos, André C.; Tarrataca, Luís; Cardoso, João M. P.; Ferreira, Diogo R.; Diniz, Pedro C.; Chainho, Paulo

The growing processing capabilities of mobile devices coupled with portable and wearable sensors have enabled the development of context-aware services tailored to the user environment and its daily activities. The problem of determining the user context at each particular point in time is one of the main challenges in this area. In this paper, we describe the approach pursued in the UPCASE project, which makes use of sensors available in the mobile device as well as sensors externally connected via Bluetooth. We describe the system architecture from raw data acquisition to feature extraction and context inference. As a proof of concept, the inference of contexts is based on a decision tree to learn and identify contexts automatically and dynamically at runtime. Preliminary results suggest that this is a promising approach for context inference in several application scenarios.

Introduction to This Special Issue on Context-Aware Computing.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Moran, Thomas P.; Dourish, Paul

2001-01-01

Discusses pervasive, or ubiquitous, computing; explains the notion of context; and defines context-aware computing as the key to disperse and enmesh computation into our lives. Considers context awareness in human-computer interaction and describes the broad topic areas of the essays included in this special issue. (LRW)

Experiences of ocean literacy with different users of operational oceanography services and with high school students

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Agostini, Paola; Coppini, Giovanni; Martinelli, Sara; Bonarelli, Roberto; Lecci, Rita; Pinardi, Nadia; Cretì, Sergio; Turrisi, Giuseppe; Ciliberti, Stefania Angela; Federico, Ivan; Mannarini, Gianandrea; Verri, Giorgia; Jansen, Eric; Lusito, Letizia; Macchia, Francesca; Montagna, Fabio; Buonocore, Mauro; Marra, Palmalisa; Tedesco, Luca; Cavallo, Arturo

2017-04-01

According to a common definition, ocean literacy is an understanding of the ocean's influence on people and people influence on the ocean. An ocean-literate person is able to make informed and responsible decisions regarding the ocean and its resources. To this aim, this paper presents operational oceanographic tools developed to meet the needs of different users, and activities performed in collaboration with high school students to support new developments of the same tools. Operational oceanography allows to deal with societal challenges such as maritime safety, coastal and marine environment management, climate change assessment and marine resources management. Oceanographic products from the European Copernicus Marine Monitoring Service - CMEMS are transformed and communicated to public and stakeholders through adding-value chains (downstreaming), which consider advanced visualization, usage of multi-channels technological platforms and specific models and algorithms. Sea Situational Awareness is strategically important for management and safety purposes of any marine domain and, in particular, the Mediterranean Sea and its coastal areas. Examples of applications for sea situational awareness and maritime safety are here presented, through user-friendly products available both by web and mobile channels (that already reach more than 100.000 users in the Mediterranean area). Further examples of ocean literacy are web bulletins used to communicate the technical contents and information related to oceanographic forecasts to a wide public. They are the result of a collaboration with high school students, with whom also other activities on improving products visualization and online communication have been performed.

78 FR 30964 - Pipeline Safety: Workshop on Public Awareness Programs

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2013-05-23

...-day public awareness workshop on June 19 and June 20, 2013, at the Hyatt Regency North Dallas hotel in.... until approximately 5:00 p.m. central time, both days. Refer to the meeting Web site for agenda and... workshop presentations will be available on the meeting Web site within 15 days following the workshop...

Can You Skype Me Now? Developing Teachers' Classroom Management Practices through Virtual Coaching

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rock, Marcia L.; Schoenfeld, Naomi; Zigmond, Naomi; Gable, Robert A.; Gregg, Madeleine; Ploessl, Donna M.; Salter, Ashley

2013-01-01

In this article, situated within the context of a larger ongoing study on the efficacy of Web-based virtual coaching, these authors describe a virtual coaching model for maximizing pre- and in-service teachers' effective use of evidence-based classroom management practices. They also provide a brief summary of previous results obtained…

The Role of Institutional Leaderships in the SAPO Campus' Adoption Process

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pais, Fátima; Pedro, Luís; Santos, Carlos

2016-01-01

SAPO Campus (SC) is a web 2.0 service platform, whose aim is to promote collaboration, communication and sharing practices in institutional settings, specifically in educational contexts. Since 2012, a group of schools has promoted the institutional adoption of SC. Taking into account the fact that this is an intentional process as institutions…

Organizational Influences in Technology Adoption Decisions: A Case Study of Digital Libraries

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Oguz, Fatih

2016-01-01

The purpose of this study was to understand the organizational level decision factors in technology adoption in the context of digital libraries. A qualitative case study approach was used to investigate the adoption of a specific technology, XML-based Web services, in digital libraries. Rogers' diffusion of innovations and Wenger's communities of…

The Social Semantic Web in Intelligent Learning Environments: State of the Art and Future Challenges

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jovanovic, Jelena; Gasevic, Dragan; Torniai, Carlo; Bateman, Scott; Hatala, Marek

2009-01-01

Today's technology-enhanced learning practices cater to students and teachers who use many different learning tools and environments and are used to a paradigm of interaction derived from open, ubiquitous, and socially oriented services. In this context, a crucial issue for education systems in general, and for Intelligent Learning Environments…

Using the Arts to Raise Awareness and Communicate Environmental Information in the Extension Context

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Curtis, David J.

2011-01-01

Extension services face an increasing challenge as the state of Australia's environment declines. It is, therefore, opportune to explore some innovations in the way extension is traditionally delivered. This paper introduces the concept of the visual and performing arts being useful in extension of natural resources management issues such as land…

Marine Information Centre Development: An Introductory Manual. Manuals and Guides 23.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Varley, Allan

The purpose of this introductory manual is briefly to explain and put into context the elements involved in marine information center development and operation. Its goal is to provide an overview and create an awareness of the range of the inter-connected procedures, activities, and products that make up an information service. The introductory…

CAreDroid: Adaptation Framework for Android Context-Aware Applications

PubMed Central

Elmalaki, Salma; Wanner, Lucas; Srivastava, Mani

2015-01-01

Context-awareness is the ability of software systems to sense and adapt to their physical environment. Many contemporary mobile applications adapt to changing locations, connectivity states, available computational and energy resources, and proximity to other users and devices. Nevertheless, there is little systematic support for context-awareness in contemporary mobile operating systems. Because of this, application developers must build their own context-awareness adaptation engines, dealing directly with sensors and polluting application code with complex adaptation decisions. In this paper, we introduce CAreDroid, which is a framework that is designed to decouple the application logic from the complex adaptation decisions in Android context-aware applications. In this framework, developers are required— only—to focus on the application logic by providing a list of methods that are sensitive to certain contexts along with the permissible operating ranges under those contexts. At run time, CAreDroid monitors the context of the physical environment and intercepts calls to sensitive methods, activating only the blocks of code that best fit the current physical context. CAreDroid is implemented as part of the Android runtime system. By pushing context monitoring and adaptation into the runtime system, CAreDroid eases the development of context-aware applications and increases their efficiency. In particular, case study applications implemented using CAre-Droid are shown to have: (1) at least half lines of code fewer and (2) at least 10× more efficient in execution time compared to equivalent context-aware applications that use only standard Android APIs. PMID:26834512

CAreDroid: Adaptation Framework for Android Context-Aware Applications.

PubMed

Elmalaki, Salma; Wanner, Lucas; Srivastava, Mani

2015-09-01

Context-awareness is the ability of software systems to sense and adapt to their physical environment. Many contemporary mobile applications adapt to changing locations, connectivity states, available computational and energy resources, and proximity to other users and devices. Nevertheless, there is little systematic support for context-awareness in contemporary mobile operating systems. Because of this, application developers must build their own context-awareness adaptation engines, dealing directly with sensors and polluting application code with complex adaptation decisions. In this paper, we introduce CAreDroid, which is a framework that is designed to decouple the application logic from the complex adaptation decisions in Android context-aware applications. In this framework, developers are required- only-to focus on the application logic by providing a list of methods that are sensitive to certain contexts along with the permissible operating ranges under those contexts. At run time, CAreDroid monitors the context of the physical environment and intercepts calls to sensitive methods, activating only the blocks of code that best fit the current physical context. CAreDroid is implemented as part of the Android runtime system. By pushing context monitoring and adaptation into the runtime system, CAreDroid eases the development of context-aware applications and increases their efficiency. In particular, case study applications implemented using CAre-Droid are shown to have: (1) at least half lines of code fewer and (2) at least 10× more efficient in execution time compared to equivalent context-aware applications that use only standard Android APIs.

[Implementation of a web based software for documentation and control of quality of an acute pain service].

PubMed

Pawlik, Michael T; Abel, Reinhard; Abt, Gregor; Kieninger, Martin; Graf, Bernhard Martin; Taeger, Kai; Ittner, Karl Peter

2009-07-01

Providing an acute pain service means accumulation of a large amount of data. The alleviation of data collection, improvement of data quality and data analysis plays a pivotal role. The electronic medical record (EMR) is gaining more and more importance in this context and is continuously spreading in clinical practice. Up to now only a few commercial softwares are available that specifically fit to the needs of an acute pain service. Here we report the development and implementation of such a program (Schmerzvisite, Medlinq, Hamburg, Germany) in the acute pain service of a University Hospital.

Evaluation of Chlamydia Partner Notification Practices and Use of the "Let Them Know" Website by Family Planning Clinicians in Australia: Cross-Sectional Study.

PubMed

Guy, Rebecca J; Micallef, Joanne M; Mooney-Somers, Julie; Jamil, Muhammad S; Harvey, Caroline; Bateson, Deborah; van Gemert, Caroline; Wand, Handan; Kaldor, John

2016-06-24

Chlamydia, caused by Chlamydia trachomatis, is the most common reportable infection in many developed countries. Testing, treatment, and partner notification (PN) are key strategies for chlamydia control. In 2008 the Let Them Know (LTK) PN website was established, which provided means for people to send anonymous PN messages by text messaging (short message service, SMS), email, or letter. We evaluated PN practices among Australian family planning clinicians following chlamydia diagnosis and assessed how often clinicians refer their patients to the LTK website. A mixed methods approach included a Web-based cross-sectional survey of Australian family planning clinicians to examine PN attitudes and practices and focus groups to explore the context of LTK website use. Between May 2012 and June 2012, all clinicians from 29 different family planning services (n=212) were invited to complete the survey, and 164 participated (response rate=77.4%); of the clinicians, 96.3% (158/164) were females, 56.1% (92/164) nurses, and 43.9% (72/164) doctors. More than half (62.2%, 92/148) agreed that PN was primarily the client's responsibility; however, 93.2% (138/148) agreed it was the clinician's responsibility to support the client in informing their partners by providing information or access to resources. Almost half (49.4%, 76/154) of the clinicians said that they always or usually referred clients to the LTK website, with variation across clinics in Australian states and territories (0%-77%). Eleven focus groups among 70 clinicians at 11 family planning services found that the LTK website had been integrated into routine practice; that it was particularly useful for clients who found it difficult to contact partners; and that the LTK letters and fact sheets were useful. However, many clinicians were not aware of the website and noted a lack of internal clinic training about LTK. The LTK website has become an important PN tool for family planning clinicians. The variation in referral of patients to the LTK website and lack of awareness among some clinicians suggest further promotion of the website, PN training, and clinic protocols are warranted.

A Middleware with Comprehensive Quality of Context Support for the Internet of Things Applications

PubMed Central

Gomes, Berto de Tácio Pereira; Muniz, Luiz Carlos Melo; dos Santos, Davi Viana; Lopes, Rafael Fernandes; Coutinho, Luciano Reis; Carvalho, Felipe Oliveira; Endler, Markus

2017-01-01

Context aware systems are able to adapt their behavior according to the environment in which the user is. They can be integrated into an Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure, allowing a better perception of the user’s physical environment by collecting context data from sensors embedded in devices known as smart objects. An IoT extension called the Internet of Mobile Things (IoMT) suggests new scenarios in which smart objects and IoT gateways can move autonomously or be moved easily. In a comprehensive view, Quality of Context (QoC) is a term that can express quality requirements of context aware applications. These requirements can be those related to the quality of information provided by the sensors (e.g., accuracy, resolution, age, validity time) or those referring to the quality of the data distribution service (e.g, reliability, delay, delivery time). Some functionalities of context aware applications and/or decision-making processes of these applications and their users depend on the level of quality of context available, which tend to vary over time for various reasons. Reviewing the literature, it is possible to verify that the quality of context support provided by IoT-oriented middleware systems still has limitations in relation to at least four relevant aspects: (i) quality of context provisioning; (ii) quality of context monitoring; (iii) support for heterogeneous device and technology management; (iv) support for reliable data delivery in mobility scenarios. This paper presents two main contributions: (i) a state-of-the-art survey specifically aimed at analyzing the middleware with quality of context support and; (ii) a new middleware with comprehensive quality of context support for Internet of Things Applications. The proposed middleware was evaluated and the results are presented and discussed in this article, which also shows a case study involving the development of a mobile remote patient monitoring application that was developed using the proposed middleware. This case study highlights how middleware components were used to meet the quality of context requirements of the application. In addition, the proposed middleware was compared to other solutions in the literature. PMID:29292791

A Middleware with Comprehensive Quality of Context Support for the Internet of Things Applications.

PubMed

Gomes, Berto de Tácio Pereira; Muniz, Luiz Carlos Melo; da Silva E Silva, Francisco José; Dos Santos, Davi Viana; Lopes, Rafael Fernandes; Coutinho, Luciano Reis; Carvalho, Felipe Oliveira; Endler, Markus

2017-12-08

Context aware systems are able to adapt their behavior according to the environment in which the user is. They can be integrated into an Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure, allowing a better perception of the user's physical environment by collecting context data from sensors embedded in devices known as smart objects. An IoT extension called the Internet of Mobile Things (IoMT) suggests new scenarios in which smart objects and IoT gateways can move autonomously or be moved easily. In a comprehensive view, Quality of Context (QoC) is a term that can express quality requirements of context aware applications. These requirements can be those related to the quality of information provided by the sensors (e.g., accuracy, resolution, age, validity time) or those referring to the quality of the data distribution service (e.g, reliability, delay, delivery time). Some functionalities of context aware applications and/or decision-making processes of these applications and their users depend on the level of quality of context available, which tend to vary over time for various reasons. Reviewing the literature, it is possible to verify that the quality of context support provided by IoT-oriented middleware systems still has limitations in relation to at least four relevant aspects: (i) quality of context provisioning; (ii) quality of context monitoring; (iii) support for heterogeneous device and technology management; (iv) support for reliable data delivery in mobility scenarios. This paper presents two main contributions: (i) a state-of-the-art survey specifically aimed at analyzing the middleware with quality of context support and; (ii) a new middleware with comprehensive quality of context support for Internet of Things Applications. The proposed middleware was evaluated and the results are presented and discussed in this article, which also shows a case study involving the development of a mobile remote patient monitoring application that was developed using the proposed middleware. This case study highlights how middleware components were used to meet the quality of context requirements of the application. In addition, the proposed middleware was compared to other solutions in the literature.

RECRUITMENT OF U.S. CITIZENS FOR VACANCIES IN IAEA SAFEGUARDS

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

PEPPER,S.E.; DECARO,D.; WILLIAMS,G.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) relies on its member states to assist with recruiting qualified individuals for positions within the IAEA's secretariat. It is important that persons within and outside the US nuclear and safeguards industries become aware of career opportunities available at the IAEA, and informed about important vacancies. The IAEA has established an impressive web page to advertise opportunities for employment. However, additional effort is necessary to ensure that there is sufficient awareness in the US of these opportunities, and assistance for persons interested in taking positions at the IAEA. In 1998, the Subgroup on Safeguards Technicalmore » Support (SSTS) approved a special task under the US Support Program to IAEA Safeguards (USSP) for improving US efforts to identify qualified candidates for vacancies in IAEA's Department of Safeguards. The International Safeguards Project Office (ISPO) developed a plan that includes increased advertising, development of a web page to support US recruitment efforts, feedback from the US Mission in Vienna, and interaction with other recruitment services provided by US professional organizations. The main purpose of this effort is to educate US citizens about opportunities at the IAEA so that qualified candidates can be identified for the IAEA's consideration.« less

"They accept me, because I was one of them": formative qualitative research supporting the feasibility of peer-led outreach for people who use drugs in Dakar, Senegal.

PubMed

Stengel, Camille May; Mane, Famara; Guise, Andrew; Pouye, Magath; Sigrist, Monika; Rhodes, Tim

2018-02-27

Peer outreach harm reduction initiatives are being developed with and for people who use drugs in Dakar, Senegal. This is in response to growing injecting drug use across the West Africa region and linked emerging epidemics of HIV and hepatitis C. We undertook formative qualitative research to explore the feasibility and potential of peer outreach in this context and in particular how outreach could be linked to fostering community-level processes of change. We undertook a total of 44 semi-structured qualitative interviews. Thirty-four interviews were with people who used drugs (comprised of 25 participants who had injected at least once in their life) and included 11 peer educators who delivered "awareness-raising" harm reduction activities. We also interviewed 10 service providers involved in the planning and monitoring of peer outreach initiatives. We used thematic analysis to identify key characteristics of how peer-led outreach is being delivered, beneficiary need, and the nature of the social networks in which the awareness-raising activities operate. Through interviews with peer educators, people who use drugs, and service providers, four main overlapping themes are identified as follows: peer educators as a bridge to responsibilization through awareness-raising activities, awareness-raising activities as an enactment of recovery, awareness raising through social network diffusion, and the contexts and constraints of peer outreach engagement through awareness-raising activities. The study results suggest that peer education is on a trajectory to develop into a central role for harm reduction interventions in Dakar, Senegal. This research shows how peer education is bound in processes of responsibilization and self-change, which link to varying possibilities for risk reduction or recovery. For peer education to achieve a range of significant goals, broader structural and system changes should be implemented in the region. We caution that without such changes, awareness-raising activities and the role of peer educators may instead become part of state- and agency-sponsored processes of seeking to responsibilize individuals for health and harm reduction.

Flexible Web services integration: a novel personalised social approach

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Metrouh, Abdelmalek; Mokhati, Farid

2018-05-01

Dynamic composition or integration remains one of the key objectives of Web services technology. This paper aims to propose an innovative approach of dynamic Web services composition based on functional and non-functional attributes and individual preferences. In this approach, social networks of Web services are used to maintain interactions between Web services in order to select and compose Web services that are more tightly related to user's preferences. We use the concept of Web services community in a social network of Web services to reduce considerably their search space. These communities are created by the direct involvement of Web services providers.

Network Location-Aware Service Recommendation with Random Walk in Cyber-Physical Systems

PubMed Central

Yin, Yuyu; Yu, Fangzheng; Xu, Yueshen; Yu, Lifeng; Mu, Jinglong

2017-01-01

Cyber-physical systems (CPS) have received much attention from both academia and industry. An increasing number of functions in CPS are provided in the way of services, which gives rise to an urgent task, that is, how to recommend the suitable services in a huge number of available services in CPS. In traditional service recommendation, collaborative filtering (CF) has been studied in academia, and used in industry. However, there exist several defects that limit the application of CF-based methods in CPS. One is that under the case of high data sparsity, CF-based methods are likely to generate inaccurate prediction results. In this paper, we discover that mining the potential similarity relations among users or services in CPS is really helpful to improve the prediction accuracy. Besides, most of traditional CF-based methods are only capable of using the service invocation records, but ignore the context information, such as network location, which is a typical context in CPS. In this paper, we propose a novel service recommendation method for CPS, which utilizes network location as context information and contains three prediction models using random walking. We conduct sufficient experiments on two real-world datasets, and the results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed methods and verify that the network location is indeed useful in QoS prediction. PMID:28885602

The clients’ readiness to use mental health care services: Experiences and perceptions from Iranian context

PubMed Central

Alavi, Mousa; Irajpour, Alireza

2013-01-01

Background: Underutilization of mental health care services has been a challenge for the health care providers for many years. This challenge could be met in part by improving the clients’ readiness to use such services. This study aimed to introduce the important aspects of the clients’ readiness to use mental health services in the Iranian context. Materials and Methods: A thematic analysis of in-depth interviews was undertaken using a constant comparative approach. Participants (11 health professionals consisting of 3 physicians, 7 nurses, 1 psychologist, and 5 patients/their family members) were recruited from educational hospitals affiliated with Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Iran. The credibility and trustworthiness was grounded on four aspects: factual value, applicability, consistency, and neutrality. Results: The study findings uncovered two important aspects of the clients’ readiness for utilizing mental health care services. These are described through two themes and related sub-themes: “The clients’ awareness” implies the cognitive aspect of readiness and “the clients’ attitudes” implies the psychological aspect of readiness, both of which have perceived to cultivate a fertile context through which the clients could access and use the mental health services more easily. Conclusions: For the health care system in Isfahan, Iran to be successful in delivering mental health services, training programs directed to prepare service users should be considered. Improving the clients’ favorable attitudes and awareness should be considered. PMID:24554948

Software for Allocating Resources in the Deep Space Network

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Wang, Yeou-Fang; Borden, Chester; Zendejas, Silvino; Baldwin, John

2003-01-01

TIGRAS 2.0 is a computer program designed to satisfy a need for improved means for analyzing the tracking demands of interplanetary space-flight missions upon the set of ground antenna resources of the Deep Space Network (DSN) and for allocating those resources. Written in Microsoft Visual C++, TIGRAS 2.0 provides a single rich graphical analysis environment for use by diverse DSN personnel, by connecting to various data sources (relational databases or files) based on the stages of the analyses being performed. Notable among the algorithms implemented by TIGRAS 2.0 are a DSN antenna-load-forecasting algorithm and a conflict-aware DSN schedule-generating algorithm. Computers running TIGRAS 2.0 can also be connected using SOAP/XML to a Web services server that provides analysis services via the World Wide Web. TIGRAS 2.0 supports multiple windows and multiple panes in each window for users to view and use information, all in the same environment, to eliminate repeated switching among various application programs and Web pages. TIGRAS 2.0 enables the use of multiple windows for various requirements, trajectory-based time intervals during which spacecraft are viewable, ground resources, forecasts, and schedules. Each window includes a time navigation pane, a selection pane, a graphical display pane, a list pane, and a statistics pane.

Chemozart: a web-based 3D molecular structure editor and visualizer platform.

PubMed

Mohebifar, Mohamad; Sajadi, Fatemehsadat

2015-01-01

Chemozart is a 3D Molecule editor and visualizer built on top of native web components. It offers an easy to access service, user-friendly graphical interface and modular design. It is a client centric web application which communicates with the server via a representational state transfer style web service. Both client-side and server-side application are written in JavaScript. A combination of JavaScript and HTML is used to draw three-dimensional structures of molecules. With the help of WebGL, three-dimensional visualization tool is provided. Using CSS3 and HTML5, a user-friendly interface is composed. More than 30 packages are used to compose this application which adds enough flexibility to it to be extended. Molecule structures can be drawn on all types of platforms and is compatible with mobile devices. No installation is required in order to use this application and it can be accessed through the internet. This application can be extended on both server-side and client-side by implementing modules in JavaScript. Molecular compounds are drawn on the HTML5 Canvas element using WebGL context. Chemozart is a chemical platform which is powerful, flexible, and easy to access. It provides an online web-based tool used for chemical visualization along with result oriented optimization for cloud based API (application programming interface). JavaScript libraries which allow creation of web pages containing interactive three-dimensional molecular structures has also been made available. The application has been released under Apache 2 License and is available from the project website https://chemozart.com.

Proposal for a Web Encoding Service (wes) for Spatial Data Transactio

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Siew, C. B.; Peters, S.; Rahman, A. A.

2015-10-01

Web services utilizations in Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) have been well established and standardized by Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). Similar web services for 3D SDI are also being established in recent years, with extended capabilities to handle 3D spatial data. The increasing popularity of using City Geographic Markup Language (CityGML) for 3D city modelling applications leads to the needs for large spatial data handling for data delivery. This paper revisits the available web services in OGC Web Services (OWS), and propose the background concepts and requirements for encoding spatial data via Web Encoding Service (WES). Furthermore, the paper discusses the data flow of the encoder within web service, e.g. possible integration with Web Processing Service (WPS) or Web 3D Services (W3DS). The integration with available web service could be extended to other available web services for efficient handling of spatial data, especially 3D spatial data.

Cancer cachexia: global awareness and guideline implementation on the web.

PubMed

Mauri, Davide; Tsiara, Anna; Valachis, Antonis; Kalopita, Konstantina; Tsali, Lampriani; Tolis, Panagiotis; Polyzos, Nikolaos P

2013-06-01

Cancer cachexia is a common associate of cancer and has a negative impact on patients' survival. Nonetheless, cancer cachexia assessment and management are frequently less than satisfactory in daily practice. To scrutinise global cancer cachexia awareness and relative web guideline implementation among oncology societies. Systematical identification of scientific and policymaker oncology societies and their guideline implementation on cancer cachexia. Assessment of the general level of awareness on cancer cachexia and evaluation of intercontinental and national variations on guideline implementation. 144,000 web pages were scrutinised, and 275 oncology societies identified covering a large array of oncology setting (educational/clinical/research/policymaker); 71 were international (African, American, Asian, European, Oceania and Intercontinental), 110 belonged to the top 10 countries with the highest development index and 94 pertained to 10 countries with a long lasting tradition in medical oncology (not included in the top 10 high developed countries). Overall, only 10/275 web sites provided guidelines; six of them (2.2%) provided guidelines for physicians and four (0.7%) for patients. Half of the guidelines (4/10) were outdated. All guidelines for physicians reported references, while only one of the recommendations for patients reported references to support its sentences. Cancer cachexia global awareness appears extremely low; guideline implementation on the web was inconsistent for any category analysed (nation vs continent vs international vs society type vs physician vs patient oriented) and for updating.

Piracy in cyber space: consumer complicity, pirates and enterprise enforcement

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chaudhry, Peggy E.; Chaudhry, Sohail S.; Stumpf, Stephen A.; Sudler, Hasshi

2011-05-01

This article presents an overview of the growth of internet piracy in the global marketplace. The ethical perceptions (or lack of) of the younger generation is addressed, in terms of their willingness to consume counterfeit goods on the web. Firms face the task of educating the consumer that downloading music, software, movies and the like, without compensation, is unethical. This awareness is critical for decreasing the demand for counterfeit goods in the virtual marketplace, where a consumer can exhibit a rogue behaviour with a limited fear of prosecution. We address the pyramid of internet piracy, which encompasses sophisticated suppliers/facilitators, such as the Warez group. Recent sting operations, such as Operation Buccaneer, are also depicted to highlight successful tactical manoeuvres of enforcement agencies. An overview of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the No Electronic Theft Act is included to debate the controversy surrounding this legislation. A discussion of enterprise enforcement mechanisms and novel anti-piracy technology for cyberspace is provided to reveal some of the tools used to fight the pirates, such as innovations in digital watermarking and NEC's recently announced video content identification technology. Enterprise information systems and its interdependence on the internet are also demanding new technologies that enable internet investigators to rapidly search, verify and potentially remove pirated content using web services. The quality of service of web services designed to efficiently detect pirated content is a growing consideration for new anti-piracy technology.

Real-time dissemination of air quality information using data streams and Web technologies: linking air quality to health risks in urban areas.

PubMed

Davila, Silvije; Ilić, Jadranka Pečar; Bešlić, Ivan

2015-06-01

This article presents a new, original application of modern information and communication technology to provide effective real-time dissemination of air quality information and related health risks to the general public. Our on-line subsystem for urban real-time air quality monitoring is a crucial component of a more comprehensive integrated information system, which has been developed by the Institute for Medical Research and Occupational Health. It relies on a StreamInsight data stream management system and service-oriented architecture to process data streamed from seven monitoring stations across Zagreb. Parameters that are monitored include gases (NO, NO2, CO, O3, H2S, SO2, benzene, NH3), particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5), and meteorological data (wind speed and direction, temperature and pressure). Streamed data are processed in real-time using complex continuous queries. They first go through automated validation, then hourly air quality index is calculated for every station, and a report sent to the Croatian Environment Agency. If the parameter values exceed the corresponding regulation limits for three consecutive hours, the web service generates an alert for population groups at risk. Coupled with the Common Air Quality Index model, our web application brings air pollution information closer to the general population and raises awareness about environmental and health issues. Soon we intend to expand the service to a mobile application that is being developed.

QaaS (quality as a service) model for web services using big data technologies

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ahmad, Faisal; Sarkar, Anirban

2017-10-01

Quality of service (QoS) determines the service usability and utility and both of which influence the service selection process. The QoS varies from one service provider to other. Each web service has its own methodology for evaluating QoS. The lack of transparent QoS evaluation model makes the service selection challenging. Moreover, most QoS evaluation processes do not consider their historical data which not only helps in getting more accurate QoS but also helps for future prediction, recommendation and knowledge discovery. QoS driven service selection demands a model where QoS can be provided as a service to end users. This paper proposes a layered QaaS (quality as a service) model in the same line as PaaS and software as a service, where users can provide QoS attributes as inputs and the model returns services satisfying the user's QoS expectation. This paper covers all the key aspects in this context, like selection of data sources, its transformation, evaluation, classification and storage of QoS. The paper uses server log as the source for evaluating QoS values, common methodology for its evaluation and big data technologies for its transformation and analysis. This paper also establishes the fact that Spark outperforms the Pig with respect to evaluation of QoS from logs.

Web services for ecosystem services management and poverty alleviation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Buytaert, W.; Baez, S.; Veliz Rosas, C.

2011-12-01

Over the last decades, near real-time environmental observation, technical advances in computer power and cyber-infrastructure, and the development of environmental software algorithms have increased dramatically. The integration of these evolutions is one of the major challenges of the next decade for environmental sciences. Worldwide, many coordinated activities are ongoing to make this integration a reality. However, far less attention is paid to the question of how these developments can benefit environmental services management in a poverty alleviation context. Such projects are typically faced with issues of large predictive uncertainties, limited resources, limited local scientific capacity. At the same time, the complexity of the socio-economic contexts requires a very strong bottom-up oriented and interdisciplinary approach to environmental data collection and processing. Here, we present the results of two projects on integrated environmental monitoring and scenario analysis aimed at poverty alleviation in the Peruvian Andes and Amazon. In the upper Andean highlands, farmers are monitoring the water cycle of headwater catchments to analyse the impact of land-use changes on stream flow and potential consequences for downstream irrigation. In the Amazon, local communities are monitoring the dynamics of turtle populations and their relations with river levels. In both cases, the use of online databases and web processing services enable real-time analysis of the data and scenario analysis. The system provides both physical and social indicators to assess the impact of land-use management options on local socio-economic development.

ISTIMES Integrated System for Transport Infrastructures Surveillance and Monitoring by Electromagnetic Sensing

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Argenti, M.; Giannini, V.; Averty, R.; Bigagli, L.; Dumoulin, J.

2012-04-01

The EC FP7 ISTIMES project has the goal of realizing an ICT-based system exploiting distributed and local sensors for non destructive electromagnetic monitoring in order to make critical transport infrastructures more reliable and safe. Higher situation awareness thanks to real time and detailed information and images of the controlled infrastructure status allows improving decision capabilities for emergency management stakeholders. Web-enabled sensors and a service-oriented approach are used as core of the architecture providing a sys-tem that adopts open standards (e.g. OGC SWE, OGC CSW etc.) and makes efforts to achieve full interoperability with other GMES and European Spatial Data Infrastructure initiatives as well as compliance with INSPIRE. The system exploits an open easily scalable network architecture to accommodate a wide range of sensors integrated with a set of tools for handling, analyzing and processing large data volumes from different organizations with different data models. Situation Awareness tools are also integrated in the system. Definition of sensor observations and services follows a metadata model based on the ISO 19115 Core set of metadata elements and the O&M model of OGC SWE. The ISTIMES infrastructure is based on an e-Infrastructure for geospatial data sharing, with a Data Cata-log that implements the discovery services for sensor data retrieval, acting as a broker through static connections based on standard SOS and WNS interfaces; a Decision Support component which helps decision makers providing support for data fusion and inference and generation of situation indexes; a Presentation component which implements system-users interaction services for information publication and rendering, by means of a WEB Portal using SOA design principles; A security framework using Shibboleth open source middleware based on the Security Assertion Markup Language supporting Single Sign On (SSO). ACKNOWLEDGEMENT - The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under Grant Agreement n° 225663

Applications of Lexical Link Analysis Web Service for Large-Scale Automation, Validation, Discovery, Visualization, and Real-Time Program Awareness

DTIC Science & Technology

2012-10-23

Quantum Intelligence, Inc. She was principal investigator (PI) for six contracts awarded by the DoD Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program. She...with at OSD? I hope you don’t mind if I indulge in a little ‘stream of consciousness ’ musing about where LLA could really add value. One of the...implemented by Quantum Intelligence, Inc. (QI, 2001–2012). The unique contribution of this architecture is to leverage a peer-to-peer agent network

Exploring Gendered Notions: Gender, Job Hunting and Web Searches

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Martey, R. M.

Based on analysis of a series of interviews, this chapter suggests that in looking for jobs online, women confront gendered notions of the Internet as well as gendered notions of the jobs themselves. It argues that the social and cultural contexts of both the search tools and the search tasks should be considered in exploring how Web-based technologies serve women in a job search. For these women, the opportunities and limitations of online job-search tools were intimately related to their personal and social needs, especially needs for part-time work, maternity benefits, and career advancement. Although job-seeking services such as Monster.com were used frequently by most of these women, search services did not completely fulfill all their informational needs, and became an — often frustrating — initial starting point for a job search rather than an end-point.

A Novel Approach for Creating Activity-Aware Applications in a Hospital Environment

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bardram, Jakob E.

Context-aware and activity-aware computing has been proposed as a way to adapt the computer to the user’s ongoing activity. However, deductively moving from physical context - like location - to establishing human activity has proved difficult. This paper proposes a novel approach to activity-aware computing. Instead of inferring activities, this approach enables the user to explicitly model their activity, and then use sensor-based events to create, manage, and use these computational activities adjusted to a specific context. This approach was crafted through a user-centered design process in collaboration with a hospital department. We propose three strategies for activity-awareness: context-based activity matching, context-based activity creation, and context-based activity adaptation. We present the implementation of these strategies and present an experimental evaluation of them. The experiments demonstrate that rather than considering context as information, context can be a relational property that links ’real-world activities’ with their ’computational activities’.

Developing a Motivational Teaching Practice in EFL Teachers in Slovakia: Challenges of Promoting Teacher Change in EFL Contexts

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kubanyiova, Magdalena

2006-01-01

Raising awareness of the teacher's role in creating conducive learning environments has not traditionally been part of the aims of EFL teacher preparation programmes. This longitudinal mixed methods study explores the impact of a 20-hour experiential in-service teacher development course with the knowledge base drawn from L2 motivation theory,…

BioPortal: An Open-Source Community-Based Ontology Repository

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Noy, N.; NCBO Team

2011-12-01

Advances in computing power and new computational techniques have changed the way researchers approach science. In many fields, one of the most fruitful approaches has been to use semantically aware software to break down the barriers among disparate domains, systems, data sources, and technologies. Such software facilitates data aggregation, improves search, and ultimately allows the detection of new associations that were previously not detectable. Achieving these analyses requires software systems that take advantage of the semantics and that can intelligently negotiate domains and knowledge sources, identifying commonality across systems that use different and conflicting vocabularies, while understanding apparent differences that may be concealed by the use of superficially similar terms. An ontology, a semantically rich vocabulary for a domain of interest, is the cornerstone of software for bridging systems, domains, and resources. However, as ontologies become the foundation of all semantic technologies in e-science, we must develop an infrastructure for sharing ontologies, finding and evaluating them, integrating and mapping among them, and using ontologies in applications that help scientists process their data. BioPortal [1] is an open-source on-line community-based ontology repository that has been used as a critical component of semantic infrastructure in several domains, including biomedicine and bio-geochemical data. BioPortal, uses the social approaches in the Web 2.0 style to bring structure and order to the collection of biomedical ontologies. It enables users to provide and discuss a wide array of knowledge components, from submitting the ontologies themselves, to commenting on and discussing classes in the ontologies, to reviewing ontologies in the context of their own ontology-based projects, to creating mappings between overlapping ontologies and discussing and critiquing the mappings. Critically, it provides web-service access to all its content, enabling its integration in semantically enriched applications. [1] Noy, N.F., Shah, N.H., et al., BioPortal: ontologies and integrated data resources at the click of a mouse. Nucleic Acids Res, 2009. 37(Web Server issue): p. W170-3.

Levels of substance use and willingness to use the Employee Assistance Program.

PubMed

Reynolds, G Shawn; Lehman, Wayne E K

2003-01-01

Individuals with drinking and drug problems may become particularly reluctant to seek help. To remove barriers to services, more needs to be understood about factors that influence help-seeking decisions. It was hypothesized that certain social psychological influences (attitudes, group cohesion, trust in management) might buffer a reluctance to use services provided by an external Employee Assistance Program (EAP). A random sampling of municipal employees (n = 793) completed anonymous questionnaires that assessed willingness to use the EAP, individual drinking and drug use, attitudes toward policy, work group cohesion, and trust in management. Data from the questionnaires were analyzed with multivariate regression analyses to examine the interacting effects of substance abuse and proposed moderators (gender, race, awareness of the EAP, perceptions of policy, cohesion) on willingness to use the EAP. The results demonstrated that although substance abusers were less willing to use the EAP than were nonusers, substance abusers who were aware of the EAP, who had favorable attitudes toward policy, and who did not tolerate coworker substance abuse were as willing to use the EAP as were nonusers. The results also showed that employees with greater awareness of the EAP, support for policy, and perceptions of work group cohesion reported significantly greater willingness to use the EAP than did employees with relatively less awareness of the EAP, policy support, and cohesion. Workplace prevention efforts that are designed to increase the use of EAP services should intentionally target the workplace environment and social context. Creating the awareness and favorability of the EAP, policy, and work group cohesion might buffer substance abusers' reluctance to seek help.

User Situational Context: An Essential Challenge to Context Awareness

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mowafi, Yaser Abdallah

2009-01-01

Existing research on context and context awareness has broadly focused on the technical aspects of context acquisition and interpretation of users' surroundings, also called physical or sensor-based context. Such an approach has lacked from reconciling the perception of real-world context exhibited by humans, also known as user context, and…

Modeling Learner Situation Awareness in Collaborative Mobile Web 2.0 Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Norman, Helmi; Nordin, Norazah; Din, Rosseni; Ally, Mohamed

2016-01-01

The concept of situation awareness is essential in enhancing collaborative learning. Learners require information from different awareness aspects to deduce a learning situation for decision-making. Designing learning environments that assist learners to understand situation awareness via monitoring actions and reaction of other learners has been…

Enabling User to User Interactions in Web Lectures with History-Aware User Awareness

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ketterl, Markus; Mertens, Robert; Wiesen, Christoph; Vornberger, Oliver

2011-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present a user interface for web lectures for engaging with other users while working with video based learning content. The application allows its users to ask questions about the content and to get answers from those users that currently online are more familiar with it. The filtering is based on the…

What does the alcohol industry mean by 'Responsible drinking'? A comparative analysis.

PubMed

Maani Hessari, N; Petticrew, M

2018-03-01

The alcohol industry uses responsible drinking messaging as a central element of its corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. It has been argued that such messaging is vague, and potentially part of broader CSR activities to protect industry interests at the expense of public health. This study aimed to identify how industry defines responsible drinking, and in what contexts it is used. This was a qualitative documentary analysis of publicly available documents and web pages, including company web pages, press releases, reports and blogs from a representative selection of alcohol producers, and industry social aspect/public relations organizations; these were compared to health NGOs and Public Health England. All materials were coded iteratively using NVivo, and results were analysed using the hermeneutic approach. The term 'responsible drinking' was used almost exclusively by industry or industry-funded organizations. 'Responsible drinking' was not clearly defined with relation to any particular level of alcohol consumption, and government alcohol guidelines were rarely referenced. Responsible drinking is a strategically ambiguous, industry-affiliated term that allows for multiple interpretations. Industry sources rarely reference government drinking guidelines in the context of responsible drinking, stressing individual responsibility and risk management. Public health practitioners should be aware of these distinctions, and use clear language regarding lower risk drinking.

Preferences for technology versus human assistance and control over technology in the performance of kitchen and personal care tasks in baby boomers and older adults.

PubMed

Beach, Scott R; Schulz, Richard; Matthews, Judith T; Courtney, Karen; Dabbs, Annette DeVito

2014-11-01

Quality of Life technology (QoLT) stresses humans and technology as mutually dependent and aware, working together to improve task performance and quality of life. This study examines preferences for technology versus human assistance and control in the context of QoLT. Data are from a nationally representative, cross-sectional web-based sample of 416 US baby boomers (45-64) and 114 older adults (65+) on preferences for technology versus human assistance and control in the performance of kitchen and personal care tasks. Multinomial logistic regression and ordinary least squares regression were used to determine predictors of these preferences. Respondents were generally accepting of technology assistance but wanted to maintain control over its' operation. Baby boomers were more likely to prefer technology than older adults, and those with fewer QoLT privacy concerns and who thought they were more likely to need future help were more likely to prefer technology over human assistance and more willing to relinquish control to technology. Results suggest the need for design of person- and context-aware QoLT systems that are responsive to user desires for level of control over operation of the technology. The predictors of these preferences suggest potentially receptive markets for the targeting of QoLT systems.

Qualitative evaluation of a mobile phone and web-based collaborative care intervention for patients with type 2 diabetes.

PubMed

Lyles, Courtney Rees; Harris, Lynne T; Le, Tung; Flowers, Jan; Tufano, James; Britt, Diane; Hoath, James; Hirsch, Irl B; Goldberg, Harold I; Ralston, James D

2011-05-01

Drawing on previous web-based diabetes management programs based on the Chronic Care Model, we expanded an intervention to include care management through mobile phones and a game console web browser. The pilot intervention enrolled eight diabetes patients from the University of Washington in Seattle into a collaborative care program: connecting them to a care provider specializing in diabetes, providing access to their full electronic medical record, allowing wireless glucose uploads and e-mail with providers, and connecting them to the program's web services through a game system. To evaluate the study, we conducted qualitative thematic analysis of semistructured interviews. Participants expressed frustrations with using the cell phones and the game system in their everyday lives, but liked the wireless system for collaborating with a provider on uploaded glucoses and receiving automatic feedback on their blood sugar trends. A majority of participants also expressed that their participation in the trial increased their health awareness. Mobile communication technologies showed promise within a web-based collaborative care program for type 2 diabetes. Future intervention design should focus on integrating easy-to-use applications within mobile technologies already familiar to patients and ensure the system allows for sufficient collaboration with a care provider.

SolarSoft Web Services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Freeland, S.; Hurlburt, N.

2005-12-01

The SolarSoft system (SSW) is a set of integrated software libraries, databases, and system utilities which provide a common programming and data analysis environment for solar physics. The system includes contributions from a large community base, representing the efforts of many NASA PI team MO&DA teams,spanning many years and multiple NASA and international orbital and ground based missions. The SSW general use libraries include Many hundreds of utilities which are instrument and mission independent. A large subset are also SOLAR independent, such as time conversions, digital detector cleanup, time series analysis, mathematics, image display, WWW server communications and the like. PI teams may draw on these general purpose libraries for analysis and application development while concentrating efforts on instrument specific calibration issues rather than reinvention of general use software. By the same token, PI teams are encouraged to contribute new applications or enhancements to existing utilities which may have more general interest. Recent areas of intense evolution include space weather applications, automated distributed data access and analysis, interfaces with the ongoing Virtual Solar Observatory efforts, and externalization of SolarSoft power through Web Services. We will discuss the current status of SSW web services and demonstrate how this facilitates accessing the underlying power of SolarSoft in more abstract terms. In this context, we will describe the use of SSW services within the Collaborative Sun Earth Connector environment.

Evaluating Common Privacy Vulnerabilities in Internet Service Providers

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kotzanikolaou, Panayiotis; Maniatis, Sotirios; Nikolouzou, Eugenia; Stathopoulos, Vassilios

Privacy in electronic communications receives increased attention in both research and industry forums, stemming from both the users' needs and from legal and regulatory requirements in national or international context. Privacy in internet-based communications heavily relies on the level of security of the Internet Service Providers (ISPs), as well as on the security awareness of the end users. This paper discusses the role of the ISP in the privacy of the communications. Based on real security audits performed in national-wide ISPs, we illustrate privacy-specific threats and vulnerabilities that many providers fail to address when implementing their security policies. We subsequently provide and discuss specific security measures that the ISPs can implement, in order to fine-tune their security policies in the context of privacy protection.

Cloud computing for context-aware enhanced m-Health services.

PubMed

Fernandez-Llatas, Carlos; Pileggi, Salvatore F; Ibañez, Gema; Valero, Zoe; Sala, Pilar

2015-01-01

m-Health services are increasing its presence in our lives due to the high penetration of new smartphone devices. This new scenario proposes new challenges in terms of information accessibility that require new paradigms which enable the new applications to access the data in a continuous and ubiquitous way, ensuring the privacy required depending on the kind of data accessed. This paper proposes an architecture based on cloud computing paradigms in order to empower new m-Health applications to enrich their results by providing secure access to user data.

Correlates of HIV-status awareness among adults in Nairobi slum areas.

PubMed

Ettarh, Remare Renner; Kimani, James; Kyobutungi, Catherine; Wekesah, Frederick

2012-12-01

The prevalence of HIV in the adult population in slum areas in Nairobi, Kenya, is higher than for residents in the city as a whole. This disparity suggests that the characteristics of slum areas may adversely influence the HIV-prevention strategies directed at reducing the national prevalence of HIV. The objective of the study was to identify some of the sociodemographic and behavioural correlates of HIV-status awareness among the adult population of two slums in Nairobi. In a household-based survey conducted by the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC), 4 767 men and women aged between 15 and 54 years were randomly sampled from two slums (Korogocho and Viwandani) in Nairobi and data were collected on the social and health context of HIV and AIDS in these settlements. Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were conducted to identify factors associated with HIV-status awareness. The proportion of respondents that had ever been tested and knew their HIV status was 53%, with the women having greater awareness of their HIV status (62%) than the men (38%). Awareness of HIV status was significantly associated with age, sex, level of education, marital status and slum of residence. The lower level of HIV-status awareness among the men compared with the women in the slums suggests a poor uptake of HIV-testing services by males. Innovative strategies are needed to ensure greater access and uptake of HIV-testing services by the younger and less-educated residents of these slums if the barriers to HIV-status awareness are to be overcome.

An Authoring Tool for User Generated Mobile Services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Danado, José; Davies, Marcin; Ricca, Paulo; Fensel, Anna

Imagine what kind of applications become possible when our mobile devices not only present data but provide valuable information to other users. Users become able to instantaneously create services and to publish content and knowledge on their own mobile device, which can be discovered and accessed remotely by other mobile users in a simple way. To achieve the vision of customizable and context aware user-generated mobile services, we present a mobile authoring tool for end-users to create, customize and deploy mobile services while on-the-go. This tool is designed to allow users with different levels of technical expertise to create mobile services. The paper also gives insight on the performed usability evaluations, namely user interviews and an online survey.

Emergency Response Virtual Environment for Safe Schools

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Wasfy, Ayman; Walker, Teresa

2008-01-01

An intelligent emergency response virtual environment (ERVE) that provides emergency first responders, response planners, and managers with situational awareness as well as training and support for safe schools is presented. ERVE incorporates an intelligent agent facility for guiding and assisting the user in the context of the emergency response operations. Response information folders capture key information about the school. The system enables interactive 3D visualization of schools and academic campuses, including the terrain and the buildings' exteriors and interiors in an easy to use Web..based interface. ERVE incorporates live camera and sensors feeds and can be integrated with other simulations such as chemical plume simulation. The system is integrated with a Geographical Information System (GIS) to enable situational awareness of emergency events and assessment of their effect on schools in a geographic area. ERVE can also be integrated with emergency text messaging notification systems. Using ERVE, it is now possible to address safe schools' emergency management needs with a scaleable, seamlessly integrated and fully interactive intelligent and visually compelling solution.

Prototype Development: Context-Driven Dynamic XML Ophthalmologic Data Capture Application.

PubMed

Peissig, Peggy; Schwei, Kelsey M; Kadolph, Christopher; Finamore, Joseph; Cancel, Efrain; McCarty, Catherine A; Okorie, Asha; Thomas, Kate L; Allen Pacheco, Jennifer; Pathak, Jyotishman; Ellis, Stephen B; Denny, Joshua C; Rasmussen, Luke V; Tromp, Gerard; Williams, Marc S; Vrabec, Tamara R; Brilliant, Murray H

2017-09-13

The capture and integration of structured ophthalmologic data into electronic health records (EHRs) has historically been a challenge. However, the importance of this activity for patient care and research is critical. The purpose of this study was to develop a prototype of a context-driven dynamic extensible markup language (XML) ophthalmologic data capture application for research and clinical care that could be easily integrated into an EHR system. Stakeholders in the medical, research, and informatics fields were interviewed and surveyed to determine data and system requirements for ophthalmologic data capture. On the basis of these requirements, an ophthalmology data capture application was developed to collect and store discrete data elements with important graphical information. The context-driven data entry application supports several features, including ink-over drawing capability for documenting eye abnormalities, context-based Web controls that guide data entry based on preestablished dependencies, and an adaptable database or XML schema that stores Web form specifications and allows for immediate changes in form layout or content. The application utilizes Web services to enable data integration with a variety of EHRs for retrieval and storage of patient data. This paper describes the development process used to create a context-driven dynamic XML data capture application for optometry and ophthalmology. The list of ophthalmologic data elements identified as important for care and research can be used as a baseline list for future ophthalmologic data collection activities. ©Peggy Peissig, Kelsey M Schwei, Christopher Kadolph, Joseph Finamore, Efrain Cancel, Catherine A McCarty, Asha Okorie, Kate L Thomas, Jennifer Allen Pacheco, Jyotishman Pathak, Stephen B Ellis, Joshua C Denny, Luke V Rasmussen, Gerard Tromp, Marc S Williams, Tamara R Vrabec, Murray H Brilliant. Originally published in JMIR Medical Informatics (http://medinform.jmir.org), 13.09.2017.

Consumer Health Informatics Aspects of Direct-to-Consumer Personal Genomic Testing.

PubMed

Gray, Kathleen; Stephen, Remya; Terrill, Bronwyn; Wilson, Brenda; Middleton, Anna; Tytherleigh, Rigan; Turbitt, Erin; Gaff, Clara; Savard, Jacqueline; Hickerton, Chriselle; Newson, Ainsley; Metcalfe, Sylvia

2017-01-01

This paper uses consumer health informatics as a framework to explore whether and how direct-to-consumer personal genomic testing can be regarded as a form of information which assists consumers to manage their health. It presents findings from qualitative content analysis of web sites that offer testing services, and of transcripts from focus groups conducted as part a study of the Australian public's expectations of personal genomics. Content analysis showed that service offerings have some features of consumer health information but lack consistency. Focus group participants were mostly unfamiliar with the specifics of test reports and related information services. Some of their ideas about aids to knowledge were in line with the benefits described on provider web sites, but some expectations were inflated. People were ambivalent about whether these services would address consumers' health needs, interests and contexts and whether they would support consumers' health self-management decisions and outcomes. There is scope for consumer health informatics approaches to refine the usage and the utility of direct-to-consumer personal genomic testing. Further research may focus on how uptake is affected by consumers' health literacy or by services' engagement with consumers about what they really want.

Approaches to communication in response to geo-hydrological risk: POLARIS an Italian web initiative.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Salvati, Paola; Pernice, Umberto; Bianchi, Cinzia; Fiorucci, Federica; Marchesini, Ivan; Guzzetti, Fausto

2015-04-01

In the contemporary information and knowledge-based society, communication can foster effective responses to geo-hydrological risks, by increasing awareness on the causes and consequences of specific hazards, e.g., landslides, debris flows, and floods, and by fostering the capacity of individuals, groups, and organizations to prepare, manage and recover from geo-hydrological events. In this context, communication plays a vital role in all phases of the disaster cycle. Although in the last few years the scientific community has begun to disseminate information on geo-hydrological hazards and the associated risks through thematic websites, these remain mainly addressed to experts for specific technical purposes with contents and web interfaces hardly appreciated by a wider audience and rarely synchronised with social networks. To address the problem posed by the lack of communication on geo-hydrological hazards with potential human consequence in Italy, we designed the POLARIS Web site. The initiative we are conducting has the main object of contributing, in different ways and at different geographical scales, to raise awareness about landslides and floods, and their impact on the Italian society. The website is structured into six main sections (i.e. Reports, Are you ready, Events, Alert Zones, Focus and Blog) that provide different and complementary information including, respectively: periodical reports on landslide and flood risk to the population of Italy, suitable behaviors to adopt during damaging events, data and analyses on specific events, visual and detailed info on damaging events of the Italian Alert Zones defined by the Civil Protection Authority and blog-posts on landslide and flood events encouraging citizens' participation to crowd-sourcing information. Consultants experienced in project management, web-communication strategies on natural hazards, info-graphics, and user experience design were involved in the initiative to arrange and publish the information, considering usability and accessibility of the website, and key graphic aspects of web 2.0 information, making the web site communication more effective to users pertaining to diversified audiences. Specific icons are designed to describe the geo-hydrological events and maps to visualize their impact on the territory. The scientific and technical contents are edited using appropriate communication strategies which adopt a less technical and more widely comprehensible language, using intuitive and engaging web interfaces and linking messages to social media that encourage citizens' interactions. Monitoring the access of users to the website during more than a year after its publication, we noticed how the majority of the access corresponds to the occurrence of the worst geo-hydrological events and, in particular, when journalists or scientists promoted the website through television. Such a positive effect on the growth of users access suggested us to enhance our collaboration with scientific journalists by linking traditional (i.e. TV) and social media to further enlarge the awareness of website and to better explain users how to use the website information for increasing their resilience to geo-hydrological hazards.

Evaluation of inSPOTLA.org: an Internet partner notification service.

PubMed

Plant, Aaron; Rotblatt, Harlan; Montoya, Jorge A; Rudy, Ellen T; Kerndt, Peter R

2012-05-01

This article presents an evaluation of inSPOTLA.org, a sexually transmitted disease partner notification Web site in Los Angeles County primarily targeting men who have sex with men (MSM). Since its launch in 2005, this Web site has received more than 400,000 visitors and resulted in nearly 50,000 e-mail postcards sent. However, there have been limited quantitative data concerning use of the service for actual partner notification. This study investigated awareness and use of inSPOTLA among MSM, as well as the effect of an advertising campaign. Data from 2 cross-sectional surveys using time-location samples were used for the evaluation, with a baseline survey conducted in 2007 and a follow-up conducted in 2009. The advertising campaign was implemented between the surveys in 2008. Awareness of inSPOTLA was 15.8% in the baseline survey and 14.4% in the follow-up survey, with no statistically significant difference. Reported use of inSPOTLA for partner notification was less than 2% in both surveys, again with no significant difference. In addition to the surveys, a high-volume sexual health clinic that serves the MSM population in Los Angeles collected data on reason for visit, including referrals from inSPOTLA, from all patients from 2007 through 2009. In 3 years, 2 individuals stated having received an inSPOTLA e-card as the reason for their visit. While website user statistics seemed to indicate an impressive level of use, our evaluation of inSPOTLA found very limited evidence of program effectiveness for the purpose of actual partner notification among MSM in Los Angeles County.

Borderless Geospatial Web (bolegweb)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cetl, V.; Kliment, T.; Kliment, M.

2016-06-01

The effective access and use of geospatial information (GI) resources acquires a critical value of importance in modern knowledge based society. Standard web services defined by Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) are frequently used within the implementations of spatial data infrastructures (SDIs) to facilitate discovery and use of geospatial data. This data is stored in databases located in a layer, called the invisible web, thus are ignored by search engines. SDI uses a catalogue (discovery) service for the web as a gateway to the GI world through the metadata defined by ISO standards, which are structurally diverse to OGC metadata. Therefore, a crosswalk needs to be implemented to bridge the OGC resources discovered on mainstream web with those documented by metadata in an SDI to enrich its information extent. A public global wide and user friendly portal of OGC resources available on the web ensures and enhances the use of GI within a multidisciplinary context and bridges the geospatial web from the end-user perspective, thus opens its borders to everybody. Project "Crosswalking the layers of geospatial information resources to enable a borderless geospatial web" with the acronym BOLEGWEB is ongoing as a postdoctoral research project at the Faculty of Geodesy, University of Zagreb in Croatia (http://bolegweb.geof.unizg.hr/). The research leading to the results of the project has received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7 2007-2013) under Marie Curie FP7-PEOPLE-2011-COFUND. The project started in the November 2014 and is planned to be finished by the end of 2016. This paper provides an overview of the project, research questions and methodology, so far achieved results and future steps.

An Expert System-based Context-Aware Ubiquitous Learning Approach for Conducting Science Learning Activities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wu, Po-Han; Hwang, Gwo-Jen; Tsai, Wen-Hung

2013-01-01

Context-aware ubiquitous learning has been recognized as being a promising approach that enables students to interact with real-world learning targets with supports from the digital world. Several researchers have indicated the importance of providing learning guidance or hints to individual students during the context-aware ubiquitous learning…

Learning in a u-Museum: Developing a Context-Aware Ubiquitous Learning Environment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chen, Chia-Chen; Huang, Tien-Chi

2012-01-01

Context-awareness techniques can support learners in learning without time or location constraints by using mobile devices and associated learning activities in a real learning environment. Enrichment of context-aware technologies has enabled students to learn in an environment that integrates learning resources from both the real world and the…

Personalization of Rule-based Web Services.

PubMed

Choi, Okkyung; Han, Sang Yong

2008-04-04

Nowadays Web users have clearly expressed their wishes to receive personalized services directly. Personalization is the way to tailor services directly to the immediate requirements of the user. However, the current Web Services System does not provide any features supporting this such as consideration of personalization of services and intelligent matchmaking. In this research a flexible, personalized Rule-based Web Services System to address these problems and to enable efficient search, discovery and construction across general Web documents and Semantic Web documents in a Web Services System is proposed. This system utilizes matchmaking among service requesters', service providers' and users' preferences using a Rule-based Search Method, and subsequently ranks search results. A prototype of efficient Web Services search and construction for the suggested system is developed based on the current work.

Web site blues.

PubMed

Maruca, R F

1999-01-01

So far, Rachel Soltanoff's instincts had been right. As CEO in this fictional case study, she had successfully navigated TradeRite Software's transition from a news service for stockbrokers to a $70 million provider of shrink-wrapped software geared toward both brokers and the growing day-trader market. Now a well-financed start-up, Stock-net.com, was testing a very competitive product that traders could download directly over the Web. And TradeRite's Web site was nothing more than a collection of elaborate marketing brochures. Rachel knew she needed to start selling over the Web. But the e-commerce consultants she had hired to set up her Web store were behind schedule, and their 21-year-old CEO had just resigned. Her product manager, Lisa Bandini, was working overtime to transform TradeRite's entire product line into Web-aware applications to match Stocknet's, and Rachel had $2.5 million to launch them. But the consultants said it would take $5 million just to rent e-commerce capabilities. Ace sales VP Brian Rockart thought the company had already wasted too much time and money--money from his budget--on its Web site. Marketing VP Rob Collins thought TradeRite should focus on its core stockbroker customers. Chief Technical Officer Joe Martinez doesn't want to go ahead without a pilot project. Should Rachel try to convince Brian, Rob, and the rest of the senior management team that e-commerce is the way to go? Four commentators offer advice.

Meeting the Needs of Students, In-Service Workers and Enterprises in a Multilingual and Multicultural Europe: A Challenge for Language Centres

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Argondizzo, Carmen; Jimenez, Jean

2013-01-01

As the number of university students taking part in exchange programs abroad increases, students are becoming more aware of the importance not only of improving their general language skills, but also of developing academic language skills that will prepare them for their stay and study in transnational higher education contexts. Concurrently, the…

Development, awareness and inductive selectivity.

PubMed

Hayes, Brett K; Lim, Melissa

2013-05-01

Two studies examined whether adults and children could learn to make context-dependent inferences about novel stimuli and the role of awareness of context cues in such learning. Participants were trained to match probes to targets on the basis of shape or color with the relevant dimension shifting according to item context. A selective induction test then examined context-dependent responding in a more complex matching task. Awareness of the role of context was assessed using a behavioral task and explicit questions. Experiment 1 showed that after training with the procedure described by Sloutsky and Fisher (2008), only a minority of adults showed evidence of context-dependent responding in the selective induction test. Experiment 2 used a modified training protocol that promoted attention to context cues. This led to reliable selective induction in a majority of adults and a sizeable proportion of 4- to 6-year-olds. Crucially, in both age groups, selective induction was dependent on awareness of context. Hence, children as young as 4 can learn to make selective inferences about novel stimuli, but only when they are aware of the relevant context cues. These results challenge previous claims that selective induction in children is the product of implicit learning.

Distributed spatial information integration based on web service

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tong, Hengjian; Zhang, Yun; Shao, Zhenfeng

2008-10-01

Spatial information systems and spatial information in different geographic locations usually belong to different organizations. They are distributed and often heterogeneous and independent from each other. This leads to the fact that many isolated spatial information islands are formed, reducing the efficiency of information utilization. In order to address this issue, we present a method for effective spatial information integration based on web service. The method applies asynchronous invocation of web service and dynamic invocation of web service to implement distributed, parallel execution of web map services. All isolated information islands are connected by the dispatcher of web service and its registration database to form a uniform collaborative system. According to the web service registration database, the dispatcher of web services can dynamically invoke each web map service through an asynchronous delegating mechanism. All of the web map services can be executed at the same time. When each web map service is done, an image will be returned to the dispatcher. After all of the web services are done, all images are transparently overlaid together in the dispatcher. Thus, users can browse and analyze the integrated spatial information. Experiments demonstrate that the utilization rate of spatial information resources is significantly raised thought the proposed method of distributed spatial information integration.

Distributed spatial information integration based on web service

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tong, Hengjian; Zhang, Yun; Shao, Zhenfeng

2009-10-01

Spatial information systems and spatial information in different geographic locations usually belong to different organizations. They are distributed and often heterogeneous and independent from each other. This leads to the fact that many isolated spatial information islands are formed, reducing the efficiency of information utilization. In order to address this issue, we present a method for effective spatial information integration based on web service. The method applies asynchronous invocation of web service and dynamic invocation of web service to implement distributed, parallel execution of web map services. All isolated information islands are connected by the dispatcher of web service and its registration database to form a uniform collaborative system. According to the web service registration database, the dispatcher of web services can dynamically invoke each web map service through an asynchronous delegating mechanism. All of the web map services can be executed at the same time. When each web map service is done, an image will be returned to the dispatcher. After all of the web services are done, all images are transparently overlaid together in the dispatcher. Thus, users can browse and analyze the integrated spatial information. Experiments demonstrate that the utilization rate of spatial information resources is significantly raised thought the proposed method of distributed spatial information integration.

PDBe: towards reusable data delivery infrastructure at protein data bank in Europe

PubMed Central

Alhroub, Younes; Anyango, Stephen; Armstrong, David R; Berrisford, John M; Clark, Alice R; Conroy, Matthew J; Dana, Jose M; Gupta, Deepti; Gutmanas, Aleksandras; Haslam, Pauline; Mak, Lora; Mukhopadhyay, Abhik; Nadzirin, Nurul; Paysan-Lafosse, Typhaine; Sehnal, David; Sen, Sanchayita; Smart, Oliver S; Varadi, Mihaly; Kleywegt, Gerard J

2018-01-01

Abstract The Protein Data Bank in Europe (PDBe, pdbe.org) is actively engaged in the deposition, annotation, remediation, enrichment and dissemination of macromolecular structure data. This paper describes new developments and improvements at PDBe addressing three challenging areas: data enrichment, data dissemination and functional reusability. New features of the PDBe Web site are discussed, including a context dependent menu providing links to raw experimental data and improved presentation of structures solved by hybrid methods. The paper also summarizes the features of the LiteMol suite, which is a set of services enabling fast and interactive 3D visualization of structures, with associated experimental maps, annotations and quality assessment information. We introduce a library of Web components which can be easily reused to port data and functionality available at PDBe to other services. We also introduce updates to the SIFTS resource which maps PDB data to other bioinformatics resources, and the PDBe REST API. PMID:29126160

Impact of a web-based intervention on the awareness of medication adherence.

PubMed

Gupta, Vasudha; Hincapie, Ana L; Frausto, Sonya; Bhutada, Nilesh S

Medication nonadherence is a widely recognized problem that leads to adverse outcomes and increased health care costs. Reasons for medication nonadherence are multifactorial, and patient awareness of the salience of medication adherence is critical. The purpose of this research was to assess the impact of a pharmacist-led, web-based video presentation in increasing patients' awareness of the importance of medication adherence. Patients aged 35 years and above, taking at least 1 chronic prescription medication were included in the study (n = 166). Patients completed a pre-survey, watched a pharmacist-led web-based video presentation educating them on the importance of medication adherence, then completed a 1-month follow-up survey. The primary outcome was measurement of change in patients' awareness of the importance of medication adherence. Results indicated a statistically significant increase in the primary outcome of increasing awareness of the importance of medication adherence. More patients in the follow-up survey indicated that it was important for their health to take their medications around the same time daily (P = 0.002), and more patients identified that their family will be impacted as a result of their medication nonadherence (P = 0.001) as compared to the pre-survey. More patients in the follow-up survey reported that they expected to experience fewer emergency room visits (P = 0.0001) and anticipated that they would get more time to spend with friends and family (P = 0.0039) as benefits of taking medications as prescribed. A pharmacist-led web-based video presentation may be a low-cost intervention to increase patients' awareness of the importance of medication adherence. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Providing Multi-Page Data Extraction Services with XWRAPComposer

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Liu, Ling; Zhang, Jianjun; Han, Wei

2008-04-30

Dynamic Web data sources – sometimes known collectively as the Deep Web – increase the utility of the Web by providing intuitive access to data repositories anywhere that Web access is available. Deep Web services provide access to real-time information, like entertainment event listings, or present a Web interface to large databases or other data repositories. Recent studies suggest that the size and growth rate of the dynamic Web greatly exceed that of the static Web, yet dynamic content is often ignored by existing search engine indexers owing to the technical challenges that arise when attempting to search the Deepmore » Web. To address these challenges, we present DYNABOT, a service-centric crawler for discovering and clustering Deep Web sources offering dynamic content. DYNABOT has three unique characteristics. First, DYNABOT utilizes a service class model of the Web implemented through the construction of service class descriptions (SCDs). Second, DYNABOT employs a modular, self-tuning system architecture for focused crawling of the Deep Web using service class descriptions. Third, DYNABOT incorporates methods and algorithms for efficient probing of the Deep Web and for discovering and clustering Deep Web sources and services through SCD-based service matching analysis. Our experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the service class discovery, probing, and matching algorithms and suggest techniques for efficiently managing service discovery in the face of the immense scale of the Deep Web.« less

An Automated End-To Multi-Agent Qos Based Architecture for Selection of Geospatial Web Services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Shah, M.; Verma, Y.; Nandakumar, R.

2012-07-01

Over the past decade, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Web services have gained wide popularity and acceptance from researchers and industries all over the world. SOA makes it easy to build business applications with common services, and it provides like: reduced integration expense, better asset reuse, higher business agility, and reduction of business risk. Building of framework for acquiring useful geospatial information for potential users is a crucial problem faced by the GIS domain. Geospatial Web services solve this problem. With the help of web service technology, geospatial web services can provide useful geospatial information to potential users in a better way than traditional geographic information system (GIS). A geospatial Web service is a modular application designed to enable the discovery, access, and chaining of geospatial information and services across the web that are often both computation and data-intensive that involve diverse sources of data and complex processing functions. With the proliferation of web services published over the internet, multiple web services may provide similar functionality, but with different non-functional properties. Thus, Quality of Service (QoS) offers a metric to differentiate the services and their service providers. In a quality-driven selection of web services, it is important to consider non-functional properties of the web service so as to satisfy the constraints or requirements of the end users. The main intent of this paper is to build an automated end-to-end multi-agent based solution to provide the best-fit web service to service requester based on QoS.

Avoiding the conflict: Metacognitive awareness drives the selection of low-demand contexts.

PubMed

Desender, Kobe; Buc Calderon, Cristian; Van Opstal, Filip; Van den Bussche, Eva

2017-07-01

Previous research attempted to explain how humans strategically adapt behavior in order to achieve successful task performance. Recently, it has been suggested that 1 potential strategy is to avoid tasks that are too demanding. Here, we report 3 experiments that investigate the empirically neglected role of metacognitive awareness in this process. In these experiments, participants could freely choose between performing a task in either a high-demand or a low-demand context. Using subliminal priming, we ensured that participants were not aware of the visual stimuli creating these different demand contexts. Our results showed that participants who noticed a difference in task difficulty (i.e., metacognitive aware participants) developed a clear preference for the low-demand context. In contrast, participants who experienced no difference in task difficulty (i.e., metacognitive unaware participants) based their choices on variables unrelated to cognitive demand (e.g., the color or location associated with a context), and did not develop a preference for the low-demand context. Crucially, this pattern was found despite identical task performance in both metacognitive awareness groups. A multiple regression approach confirmed that metacognitive awareness was the main factor driving the preference for low-demand contexts. These results argue for an important role of metacognitive awareness in the strategic avoidance of demanding tasks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

A Workflow-based Intelligent Network Data Movement Advisor with End-to-end Performance Optimization

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Zhu, Michelle M.; Wu, Chase Q.

2013-11-07

Next-generation eScience applications often generate large amounts of simulation, experimental, or observational data that must be shared and managed by collaborative organizations. Advanced networking technologies and services have been rapidly developed and deployed to facilitate such massive data transfer. However, these technologies and services have not been fully utilized mainly because their use typically requires significant domain knowledge and in many cases application users are even not aware of their existence. By leveraging the functionalities of an existing Network-Aware Data Movement Advisor (NADMA) utility, we propose a new Workflow-based Intelligent Network Data Movement Advisor (WINDMA) with end-to-end performance optimization formore » this DOE funded project. This WINDMA system integrates three major components: resource discovery, data movement, and status monitoring, and supports the sharing of common data movement workflows through account and database management. This system provides a web interface and interacts with existing data/space management and discovery services such as Storage Resource Management, transport methods such as GridFTP and GlobusOnline, and network resource provisioning brokers such as ION and OSCARS. We demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed transport-support workflow system in several use cases based on its implementation and deployment in DOE wide-area networks.« less

MedlinePlus Connect: Web Service

MedlinePlus

... https://medlineplus.gov/connect/service.html MedlinePlus Connect: Web Service To use the sharing features on this ... if you implement MedlinePlus Connect by contacting us . Web Service Overview The parameters for the Web service ...

A web-based rapid assessment tool for production publishing solutions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sun, Tong

2010-02-01

Solution assessment is a critical first-step in understanding and measuring the business process efficiency enabled by an integrated solution package. However, assessing the effectiveness of any solution is usually a very expensive and timeconsuming task which involves lots of domain knowledge, collecting and understanding the specific customer operational context, defining validation scenarios and estimating the expected performance and operational cost. This paper presents an intelligent web-based tool that can rapidly assess any given solution package for production publishing workflows via a simulation engine and create a report for various estimated performance metrics (e.g. throughput, turnaround time, resource utilization) and operational cost. By integrating the digital publishing workflow ontology and an activity based costing model with a Petri-net based workflow simulation engine, this web-based tool allows users to quickly evaluate any potential digital publishing solutions side-by-side within their desired operational contexts, and provides a low-cost and rapid assessment for organizations before committing any purchase. This tool also benefits the solution providers to shorten the sales cycles, establishing a trustworthy customer relationship and supplement the professional assessment services with a proven quantitative simulation and estimation technology.

Focused Crawling of the Deep Web Using Service Class Descriptions

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Rocco, D; Liu, L; Critchlow, T

2004-06-21

Dynamic Web data sources--sometimes known collectively as the Deep Web--increase the utility of the Web by providing intuitive access to data repositories anywhere that Web access is available. Deep Web services provide access to real-time information, like entertainment event listings, or present a Web interface to large databases or other data repositories. Recent studies suggest that the size and growth rate of the dynamic Web greatly exceed that of the static Web, yet dynamic content is often ignored by existing search engine indexers owing to the technical challenges that arise when attempting to search the Deep Web. To address thesemore » challenges, we present DynaBot, a service-centric crawler for discovering and clustering Deep Web sources offering dynamic content. DynaBot has three unique characteristics. First, DynaBot utilizes a service class model of the Web implemented through the construction of service class descriptions (SCDs). Second, DynaBot employs a modular, self-tuning system architecture for focused crawling of the DeepWeb using service class descriptions. Third, DynaBot incorporates methods and algorithms for efficient probing of the Deep Web and for discovering and clustering Deep Web sources and services through SCD-based service matching analysis. Our experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the service class discovery, probing, and matching algorithms and suggest techniques for efficiently managing service discovery in the face of the immense scale of the Deep Web.« less

Using Context-Aware Ubiquitous Learning to Support Students' Understanding of Geometry

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Crompton, Helen

2015-01-01

In this study, context-aware ubiquitous learning was used to support 4th grade students as they learn angle concepts. Context-aware ubiquitous learning was provided to students primarily through the use of iPads to access real-world connections and a Dynamic Geometry Environment. Gravemeijer and van Eerde's (2009), design-based research (DBR)…

Technical Feasibility of a Mobile Context-Aware (Social) Learning Schedule Framework

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yau, Jane Y. K.; Joy, Mike

2013-01-01

The purpose of this paper is to show the technical feasibility of implementing their mobile context-aware learning schedule (mCALS) framework as a software application on a mobile device using current technologies, prior to its actual implementation. This process draws a set of compatible mobile and context-aware technologies at present and can be…

A Heuristic Algorithm for Planning Personalized Learning Paths for Context-Aware Ubiquitous Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hwang, Gwo-Jen; Kuo, Fan-Ray; Yin, Peng-Yeng; Chuang, Kuo-Hsien

2010-01-01

In a context-aware ubiquitous learning environment, learning systems can detect students' learning behaviors in the real-world with the help of context-aware (sensor) technology; that is, students can be guided to observe or operate real-world objects with personalized support from the digital world. In this study, an optimization problem that…

Peer Interaction and Social Network Analysis of Online Communities with the Support of Awareness of Different Contexts

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lin, Jian-Wei; Mai, Li-Jung; Lai, Yung-Cheng

2015-01-01

Although several studies related to social-context awareness (SA) and knowledge-context awareness (KA) argued that each (SA or KA) can individually enhance peer interaction in an online learning community, other studies reached opposite conclusions. These conflicting findings likely stem from different experimental settings. Most importantly, few…

Informatics in radiology: Efficiency metrics for imaging device productivity.

PubMed

Hu, Mengqi; Pavlicek, William; Liu, Patrick T; Zhang, Muhong; Langer, Steve G; Wang, Shanshan; Place, Vicki; Miranda, Rafael; Wu, Teresa Tong

2011-01-01

Acute awareness of the costs associated with medical imaging equipment is an ever-present aspect of the current healthcare debate. However, the monitoring of productivity associated with expensive imaging devices is likely to be labor intensive, relies on summary statistics, and lacks accepted and standardized benchmarks of efficiency. In the context of the general Six Sigma DMAIC (design, measure, analyze, improve, and control) process, a World Wide Web-based productivity tool called the Imaging Exam Time Monitor was developed to accurately and remotely monitor imaging efficiency with use of Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) combined with a picture archiving and communication system. Five device efficiency metrics-examination duration, table utilization, interpatient time, appointment interval time, and interseries time-were derived from DICOM values. These metrics allow the standardized measurement of productivity, to facilitate the comparative evaluation of imaging equipment use and ongoing efforts to improve efficiency. A relational database was constructed to store patient imaging data, along with device- and examination-related data. The database provides full access to ad hoc queries and can automatically generate detailed reports for administrative and business use, thereby allowing staff to monitor data for trends and to better identify possible changes that could lead to improved productivity and reduced costs in association with imaging services. © RSNA, 2011.

Quality of service management framework for dynamic chaining of geographic information services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Onchaga, Richard

2006-06-01

Dynamic chaining of geographic information services (geo-services) is gaining popularity as a new paradigm for evolving flexible geo-information systems and for providing on-demand access to geo-information. In dynamic chaining, disparate geo-services are discovered and composed at run time to yield more elaborate functionality and create value-added geo-information. Common approaches to service chaining discover and compose disparate geo-services based on the functional capability of individual geo-services. The primary concern of common approaches is thus the emergent behavior of the resulting composite geo-service. However, as geo-services become mundane and take on a greater and more strategic role in mission critical processes, deliverable quality of service (QoS) becomes an important concern. QoS concerns operational characteristics of a service that determine its utility in an application context. To address pertinent QoS requirements, a new approach to service chaining becomes necessary. In this paper we propose a QoS-aware chaining approach in which geo-services are discovered, composed and executed considering both functional and QoS requirements. We prescribe a QoS management framework that defines fundamental principles, concepts and mechanisms which can be applied to evolve an effective distributed computing platform for QoS-aware chaining of geo-services - the so-called geo-service infrastructure. The paper also defines an extensible QoS model for services delivered by dynamic compositions of geo-services. The process of orthophoto generation is used to demonstrate the applicability of the prescribed framework to service-oriented geographic information processing.

Provenance-Based Approaches to Semantic Web Service Discovery and Usage

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Narock, Thomas William

2012-01-01

The World Wide Web Consortium defines a Web Service as "a software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network." Web Services have become increasingly important both within and across organizational boundaries. With the recent advent of the Semantic Web, web services have evolved into semantic…

Cyberinfrastructure for Airborne Sensor Webs

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Freudinger, Lawrence C.

2009-01-01

Since 2004 the NASA Airborne Science Program has been prototyping and using infrastructure that enables researchers to interact with each other and with their instruments via network communications. This infrastructure uses satellite links and an evolving suite of applications and services that leverage open-source software. The use of these tools has increased near-real-time situational awareness during field operations, resulting in productivity improvements and the collection of better data. This paper describes the high-level system architecture and major components, with example highlights from the use of the infrastructure. The paper concludes with a discussion of ongoing efforts to transition to operational status.

A web-based system for home monitoring of patients with Parkinson's disease using wearable sensors.

PubMed

Chen, Bor-Rong; Patel, Shyamal; Buckley, Thomas; Rednic, Ramona; McClure, Douglas J; Shih, Ludy; Tarsy, Daniel; Welsh, Matt; Bonato, Paolo

2011-03-01

This letter introduces MercuryLive, a platform to enable home monitoring of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) using wearable sensors. MercuryLive contains three tiers: a resource-aware data collection engine that relies upon wearable sensors, web services for live streaming and storage of sensor data, and a web-based graphical user interface client with video conferencing capability. Besides, the platform has the capability of analyzing sensor (i.e., accelerometer) data to reliably estimate clinical scores capturing the severity of tremor, bradykinesia, and dyskinesia. Testing results showed an average data latency of less than 400 ms and video latency of about 200 ms with video frame rate of about 13 frames/s when 800 kb/s of bandwidth were available and we used a 40% video compression, and data feature upload requiring 1 min of extra time following a 10 min interactive session. These results indicate that the proposed platform is suitable to monitor patients with PD to facilitate the titration of medications in the late stages of the disease.

Engineering web maps with gradual content zoom based on streaming vector data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Huang, Lina; Meijers, Martijn; Šuba, Radan; van Oosterom, Peter

2016-04-01

Vario-scale data structures have been designed to support gradual content zoom and the progressive transfer of vector data, for use with arbitrary map scales. The focus to date has been on the server side, especially on how to convert geographic data into the proposed vario-scale structures by means of automated generalisation. This paper contributes to the ongoing vario-scale research by focusing on the client side and communication, particularly on how this works in a web-services setting. It is claimed that these functionalities are urgently needed, as many web-based applications, both desktop and mobile, require gradual content zoom, progressive transfer and a high performance level. The web-client prototypes developed in this paper make it possible to assess the behaviour of vario-scale data and to determine how users will actually see the interactions. Several different options of web-services communication architectures are possible in a vario-scale setting. These options are analysed and tested with various web-client prototypes, with respect to functionality, ease of implementation and performance (amount of transmitted data and response times). We show that the vario-scale data structure can fit in with current web-based architectures and efforts to standardise map distribution on the internet. However, to maximise the benefits of vario-scale data, a client needs to be aware of this structure. When a client needs a map to be refined (by means of a gradual content zoom operation), only the 'missing' data will be requested. This data will be sent incrementally to the client from a server. In this way, the amount of data transferred at one time is reduced, shortening the transmission time. In addition to these conceptual architecture aspects, there are many implementation and tooling design decisions at play. These will also be elaborated on in this paper. Based on the experiments conducted, we conclude that the vario-scale approach indeed supports gradual content zoom and the progressive web transfer of vector data. This is a big step forward in making vector data at arbitrary map scales available to larger user groups.

Service-learning from the views of university teachers: a qualitative study based on focus groups.

PubMed

Shek, Daniel T L; Chan, Stephen C F

2013-01-01

Under the New Undergraduate Curriculum at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), students are required to take a 3-credit subject to fulfill service-learning requirements. To understand the views of teachers regarding service-learning, five focus group interviews (n=33) are conducted to examine the perceived characteristics and myths of service-learning as well as colleagues' views on the policy at PolyU. Results showed that most informants are aware of service-learning and have seen its benefits to both students and teachers. Most informants also possess positive views about service-learning. Nevertheless, in terms of service-learning at PolyU, three different groups of views on service-learning are observed, namely, positive, negative, and mixed views. This paper also discusses teachers' views on the anticipated difficulties of service-learning implementation and the ways, by which to promote the subject in the PolyU context.

Process model-based atomic service discovery and composition of composite semantic web services using web ontology language for services (OWL-S)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Paulraj, D.; Swamynathan, S.; Madhaiyan, M.

2012-11-01

Web Service composition has become indispensable as a single web service cannot satisfy complex functional requirements. Composition of services has received much interest to support business-to-business (B2B) or enterprise application integration. An important component of the service composition is the discovery of relevant services. In Semantic Web Services (SWS), service discovery is generally achieved by using service profile of Ontology Web Languages for Services (OWL-S). The profile of the service is a derived and concise description but not a functional part of the service. The information contained in the service profile is sufficient for atomic service discovery, but it is not sufficient for the discovery of composite semantic web services (CSWS). The purpose of this article is two-fold: first to prove that the process model is a better choice than the service profile for service discovery. Second, to facilitate the composition of inter-organisational CSWS by proposing a new composition method which uses process ontology. The proposed service composition approach uses an algorithm which performs a fine grained match at the level of atomic process rather than at the level of the entire service in a composite semantic web service. Many works carried out in this area have proposed solutions only for the composition of atomic services and this article proposes a solution for the composition of composite semantic web services.

Automatic geospatial information Web service composition based on ontology interface matching

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xu, Xianbin; Wu, Qunyong; Wang, Qinmin

2008-10-01

With Web services technology the functions of WebGIS can be presented as a kind of geospatial information service, and helped to overcome the limitation of the information-isolated situation in geospatial information sharing field. Thus Geospatial Information Web service composition, which conglomerates outsourced services working in tandem to offer value-added service, plays the key role in fully taking advantage of geospatial information services. This paper proposes an automatic geospatial information web service composition algorithm that employed the ontology dictionary WordNet to analyze semantic distances among the interfaces. Through making matching between input/output parameters and the semantic meaning of pairs of service interfaces, a geospatial information web service chain can be created from a number of candidate services. A practice of the algorithm is also proposed and the result of it shows the feasibility of this algorithm and the great promise in the emerging demand for geospatial information web service composition.

Model-Driven Engineering: Automatic Code Generation and Beyond

DTIC Science & Technology

2015-03-01

and Weblogic as well as cloud environments such as Mi- crosoft Azure and Amazon Web Services®. Finally, while the generated code has dependencies on...code generation in the context of the full system lifecycle from development to sustainment. Acquisition programs in govern- ment or large commercial...Acquirers are concerned with the full system lifecycle, and they need confidence that the development methods will enable the system to meet the functional

Graph-Based Semantic Web Service Composition for Healthcare Data Integration.

PubMed

Arch-Int, Ngamnij; Arch-Int, Somjit; Sonsilphong, Suphachoke; Wanchai, Paweena

2017-01-01

Within the numerous and heterogeneous web services offered through different sources, automatic web services composition is the most convenient method for building complex business processes that permit invocation of multiple existing atomic services. The current solutions in functional web services composition lack autonomous queries of semantic matches within the parameters of web services, which are necessary in the composition of large-scale related services. In this paper, we propose a graph-based Semantic Web Services composition system consisting of two subsystems: management time and run time. The management-time subsystem is responsible for dependency graph preparation in which a dependency graph of related services is generated automatically according to the proposed semantic matchmaking rules. The run-time subsystem is responsible for discovering the potential web services and nonredundant web services composition of a user's query using a graph-based searching algorithm. The proposed approach was applied to healthcare data integration in different health organizations and was evaluated according to two aspects: execution time measurement and correctness measurement.

Graph-Based Semantic Web Service Composition for Healthcare Data Integration

PubMed Central

2017-01-01

Within the numerous and heterogeneous web services offered through different sources, automatic web services composition is the most convenient method for building complex business processes that permit invocation of multiple existing atomic services. The current solutions in functional web services composition lack autonomous queries of semantic matches within the parameters of web services, which are necessary in the composition of large-scale related services. In this paper, we propose a graph-based Semantic Web Services composition system consisting of two subsystems: management time and run time. The management-time subsystem is responsible for dependency graph preparation in which a dependency graph of related services is generated automatically according to the proposed semantic matchmaking rules. The run-time subsystem is responsible for discovering the potential web services and nonredundant web services composition of a user's query using a graph-based searching algorithm. The proposed approach was applied to healthcare data integration in different health organizations and was evaluated according to two aspects: execution time measurement and correctness measurement. PMID:29065602

Global trends in the awareness of sepsis: insights from search engine data between 2012 and 2017.

PubMed

Jabaley, Craig S; Blum, James M; Groff, Robert F; O'Reilly-Shah, Vikas N

2018-01-17

Sepsis is an established global health priority with high mortality that can be curtailed through early recognition and intervention; as such, efforts to raise awareness are potentially impactful and increasingly common. We sought to characterize trends in the awareness of sepsis by examining temporal, geographic, and other changes in search engine utilization for sepsis information-seeking online. Using time series analyses and mixed descriptive methods, we retrospectively analyzed publicly available global usage data reported by Google Trends (Google, Palo Alto, CA, USA) concerning web searches for the topic of sepsis between 24 June 2012 and 24 June 2017. Google Trends reports aggregated and de-identified usage data for its search products, including interest over time, interest by region, and details concerning the popularity of related queries where applicable. Outlying epochs of search activity were identified using autoregressive integrated moving average modeling with transfer functions. We then identified awareness campaigns and news media coverage that correlated with epochs of significantly heightened search activity. A second-order autoregressive model with transfer functions was specified following preliminary outlier analysis. Nineteen significant outlying epochs above the modeled baseline were identified in the final analysis that correlated with 14 awareness and news media events. Our model demonstrated that the baseline level of search activity increased in a nonlinear fashion. A recurrent cyclic increase in search volume beginning in 2012 was observed that correlates with World Sepsis Day. Numerous other awareness and media events were correlated with outlying epochs. The average worldwide search volume for sepsis was less than that of influenza, myocardial infarction, and stroke. Analyzing aggregate search engine utilization data has promise as a mechanism to measure the impact of awareness efforts. Heightened information-seeking about sepsis occurs in close proximity to awareness events and relevant news media coverage. Future work should focus on validating this approach in other contexts and comparing its results to traditional methods of awareness campaign evaluation.

Helpful advice and hidden expertize: pharmacy users' experiences of community pharmacy accessibility.

PubMed

Lindsey, Laura; Husband, Andy; Steed, Liz; Walton, Robert; Todd, Adam

2017-09-01

In recent years community pharmacies have emerged as strategically important settings to deliver services aimed at promoting public health. In order to develop evidence-based approaches to public health interventions that exploit the unique accessibility of community pharmacies, it is important to determine how people experience care in this context. This study, therefore, aimed to describe how care is perceived and experienced in community pharmacies with particular focus on community pharmacy access. In-depth semi-structured interviews were used to explore the perceptions and experiences' of people using community pharmacies. A total of 30 participants were interviewed. Themes specifically emerged in relation to community pharmacy access; these fell into four main categories: relationships; time; lack of awareness; and empowerment. The experience of developing a trusting relationship with the pharmacist is an important consideration in the context of community pharmacy accessibility. This could be an important consideration when a person uses a community pharmacy to access a public health service. There is also a perceived lack of awareness among the general public about the extended role of community pharmacy; this is a potential barrier toward people using them. © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Faculty of Public Health. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com

BioSWR – Semantic Web Services Registry for Bioinformatics

PubMed Central

Repchevsky, Dmitry; Gelpi, Josep Ll.

2014-01-01

Despite of the variety of available Web services registries specially aimed at Life Sciences, their scope is usually restricted to a limited set of well-defined types of services. While dedicated registries are generally tied to a particular format, general-purpose ones are more adherent to standards and usually rely on Web Service Definition Language (WSDL). Although WSDL is quite flexible to support common Web services types, its lack of semantic expressiveness led to various initiatives to describe Web services via ontology languages. Nevertheless, WSDL 2.0 descriptions gained a standard representation based on Web Ontology Language (OWL). BioSWR is a novel Web services registry that provides standard Resource Description Framework (RDF) based Web services descriptions along with the traditional WSDL based ones. The registry provides Web-based interface for Web services registration, querying and annotation, and is also accessible programmatically via Representational State Transfer (REST) API or using a SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language. BioSWR server is located at http://inb.bsc.es/BioSWR/and its code is available at https://sourceforge.net/projects/bioswr/under the LGPL license. PMID:25233118

BioSWR--semantic web services registry for bioinformatics.

PubMed

Repchevsky, Dmitry; Gelpi, Josep Ll

2014-01-01

Despite of the variety of available Web services registries specially aimed at Life Sciences, their scope is usually restricted to a limited set of well-defined types of services. While dedicated registries are generally tied to a particular format, general-purpose ones are more adherent to standards and usually rely on Web Service Definition Language (WSDL). Although WSDL is quite flexible to support common Web services types, its lack of semantic expressiveness led to various initiatives to describe Web services via ontology languages. Nevertheless, WSDL 2.0 descriptions gained a standard representation based on Web Ontology Language (OWL). BioSWR is a novel Web services registry that provides standard Resource Description Framework (RDF) based Web services descriptions along with the traditional WSDL based ones. The registry provides Web-based interface for Web services registration, querying and annotation, and is also accessible programmatically via Representational State Transfer (REST) API or using a SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language. BioSWR server is located at http://inb.bsc.es/BioSWR/and its code is available at https://sourceforge.net/projects/bioswr/under the LGPL license.

Reliable Execution Based on CPN and Skyline Optimization for Web Service Composition

PubMed Central

Ha, Weitao; Zhang, Guojun

2013-01-01

With development of SOA, the complex problem can be solved by combining available individual services and ordering them to best suit user's requirements. Web services composition is widely used in business environment. With the features of inherent autonomy and heterogeneity for component web services, it is difficult to predict the behavior of the overall composite service. Therefore, transactional properties and nonfunctional quality of service (QoS) properties are crucial for selecting the web services to take part in the composition. Transactional properties ensure reliability of composite Web service, and QoS properties can identify the best candidate web services from a set of functionally equivalent services. In this paper we define a Colored Petri Net (CPN) model which involves transactional properties of web services in the composition process. To ensure reliable and correct execution, unfolding processes of the CPN are followed. The execution of transactional composition Web service (TCWS) is formalized by CPN properties. To identify the best services of QoS properties from candidate service sets formed in the TCSW-CPN, we use skyline computation to retrieve dominant Web service. It can overcome that the reduction of individual scores to an overall similarity leads to significant information loss. We evaluate our approach experimentally using both real and synthetically generated datasets. PMID:23935431

Reliable execution based on CPN and skyline optimization for Web service composition.

PubMed

Chen, Liping; Ha, Weitao; Zhang, Guojun

2013-01-01

With development of SOA, the complex problem can be solved by combining available individual services and ordering them to best suit user's requirements. Web services composition is widely used in business environment. With the features of inherent autonomy and heterogeneity for component web services, it is difficult to predict the behavior of the overall composite service. Therefore, transactional properties and nonfunctional quality of service (QoS) properties are crucial for selecting the web services to take part in the composition. Transactional properties ensure reliability of composite Web service, and QoS properties can identify the best candidate web services from a set of functionally equivalent services. In this paper we define a Colored Petri Net (CPN) model which involves transactional properties of web services in the composition process. To ensure reliable and correct execution, unfolding processes of the CPN are followed. The execution of transactional composition Web service (TCWS) is formalized by CPN properties. To identify the best services of QoS properties from candidate service sets formed in the TCSW-CPN, we use skyline computation to retrieve dominant Web service. It can overcome that the reduction of individual scores to an overall similarity leads to significant information loss. We evaluate our approach experimentally using both real and synthetically generated datasets.

The Use of RESTful Web Services in Medical Informatics and Clinical Research and Its Implementation in Europe.

PubMed

Aerts, Jozef

2017-01-01

RESTful web services nowadays are state-of-the-art in business transactions over the internet. They are however not very much used in medical informatics and in clinical research, especially not in Europe. To make an inventory of RESTful web services that can be used in medical informatics and clinical research, including those that can help in patient empowerment in the DACH region and in Europe, and to develop some new RESTful web services for use in clinical research and regulatory review. A literature search on available RESTful web services has been performed and new RESTful web services have been developed on an application server using the Java language. Most of the web services found originate from institutes and organizations in the USA, whereas no similar web services could be found that are made available by European organizations. New RESTful web services have been developed for LOINC codes lookup, for UCUM conversions and for use with CDISC Standards. A comparison is made between "top down" and "bottom up" web services, the latter meant to answer concrete questions immediately. The lack of RESTful web services made available by European organizations in healthcare and medical informatics is striking. RESTful web services may in short future play a major role in medical informatics, and when localized for the German language and other European languages, can help to considerably facilitate patient empowerment. This however requires an EU equivalent of the US National Library of Medicine.

Brief report: trends in US National autism awareness from 2004 to 2014: the impact of national autism awareness month.

PubMed

DeVilbiss, Elizabeth A; Lee, Brian K

2014-12-01

We sought to evaluate the potential for using historical web search data on autism spectrum disorders (ASD)-related topics as an indicator of ASD awareness. Analysis of Google Trend data suggested that National Autism Awareness Month and televised reports concerning autism are an effective method of promoting online search interest in autism.

The PhEDEx next-gen website

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Egeland, R.; Huang, C.-H.; Rossman, P.; Sundarrajan, P.; Wildish, T.

2012-12-01

PhEDEx is the data-transfer management solution written by CMS. It consists of agents running at each site, a website for presentation of information, and a web-based data-service for scripted access to information. The website allows users to monitor the progress of data-transfers, the status of site agents and links between sites, and the overall status and behaviour of everything about PhEDEx. It also allows users to make and approve requests for data-transfers and for deletion of data. It is the main point-of-entry for all users wishing to interact with PhEDEx. For several years, the website has consisted of a single perl program with about 10K SLOC. This program has limited capabilities for exploring the data, with only coarse filtering capabilities and no context-sensitive awareness. Graphical information is presented as static images, generated on the server, with no interactivity. It is also not well connected to the rest of the PhEDEx codebase, since much of it was written before the data-service was developed. All this makes it hard to maintain and extend. We are re-implementing the website to address these issues. The UI is being rewritten in Javascript, replacing most of the server-side code. We are using the YUI toolkit to provide advanced features and context-sensitive interaction, and will adopt a Javascript charting library for generating graphical representations client-side. This relieves the server of much of its load, and automatically improves server-side security. The Javascript components can be re-used in many ways, allowing custom pages to be developed for specific uses. In particular, standalone test-cases using small numbers of components make it easier to debug the Javascript than it is to debug a large server program. Information about PhEDEx is accessed through the PhEDEx data-service, since direct SQL is not available from the clients’ browser. This provides consistent semantics with other, externally written monitoring tools, which already use the data-service. It also reduces redundancy in the code, yielding a simpler, consolidated codebase. In this talk we describe our experience of re-factoring this monolithic server-side program into a lighter client-side framework. We describe some of the techniques that worked well for us, and some of the mistakes we made along the way. We present the current state of the project, and its future direction.

Visual object recognition for mobile tourist information systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Paletta, Lucas; Fritz, Gerald; Seifert, Christin; Luley, Patrick; Almer, Alexander

2005-03-01

We describe a mobile vision system that is capable of automated object identification using images captured from a PDA or a camera phone. We present a solution for the enabling technology of outdoors vision based object recognition that will extend state-of-the-art location and context aware services towards object based awareness in urban environments. In the proposed application scenario, tourist pedestrians are equipped with GPS, W-LAN and a camera attached to a PDA or a camera phone. They are interested whether their field of view contains tourist sights that would point to more detailed information. Multimedia type data about related history, the architecture, or other related cultural context of historic or artistic relevance might be explored by a mobile user who is intending to learn within the urban environment. Learning from ambient cues is in this way achieved by pointing the device towards the urban sight, capturing an image, and consequently getting information about the object on site and within the focus of attention, i.e., the users current field of view.

Analysis of wireless sensor network topology and estimation of optimal network deployment by deterministic radio channel characterization.

PubMed

Aguirre, Erik; Lopez-Iturri, Peio; Azpilicueta, Leire; Astrain, José Javier; Villadangos, Jesús; Falcone, Francisco

2015-02-05

One of the main challenges in the implementation and design of context-aware scenarios is the adequate deployment strategy for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), mainly due to the strong dependence of the radiofrequency physical layer with the surrounding media, which can lead to non-optimal network designs. In this work, radioplanning analysis for WSN deployment is proposed by employing a deterministic 3D ray launching technique in order to provide insight into complex wireless channel behavior in context-aware indoor scenarios. The proposed radioplanning procedure is validated with a testbed implemented with a Mobile Ad Hoc Network WSN following a chain configuration, enabling the analysis and assessment of a rich variety of parameters, such as received signal level, signal quality and estimation of power consumption. The adoption of deterministic radio channel techniques allows the design and further deployment of WSNs in heterogeneous wireless scenarios with optimized behavior in terms of coverage, capacity, quality of service and energy consumption.

Impact of Network Activity Levels on the Performance of Passive Network Service Dependency Discovery

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Carroll, Thomas E.; Chikkagoudar, Satish; Arthur-Durett, Kristine M.

Network services often do not operate alone, but instead, depend on other services distributed throughout a network to correctly function. If a service fails, is disrupted, or degraded, it is likely to impair other services. The web of dependencies can be surprisingly complex---especially within a large enterprise network---and evolve with time. Acquiring, maintaining, and understanding dependency knowledge is critical for many network management and cyber defense activities. While automation can improve situation awareness for network operators and cyber practitioners, poor detection accuracy reduces their confidence and can complicate their roles. In this paper we rigorously study the effects of networkmore » activity levels on the detection accuracy of passive network-based service dependency discovery methods. The accuracy of all except for one method was inversely proportional to network activity levels. Our proposed cross correlation method was particularly robust to the influence of network activity. The proposed experimental treatment will further advance a more scientific evaluation of methods and provide the ability to determine their operational boundaries.« less

A Responsive Client for Distributed Visualization

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bollig, E. F.; Jensen, P. A.; Erlebacher, G.; Yuen, D. A.; Momsen, A. R.

2006-12-01

As grids, web services and distributed computing continue to gain popularity in the scientific community, demand for virtual laboratories likewise increases. Today organizations such as the Virtual Laboratory for Earth and Planetary Sciences (VLab) are dedicated to developing web-based portals to perform various simulations remotely while abstracting away details of the underlying computation. Two of the biggest challenges in portal- based computing are fast visualization and smooth interrogation without over taxing clients resources. In response to this challenge, we have expanded on our previous data storage strategy and thick client visualization scheme [1] to develop a client-centric distributed application that utilizes remote visualization of large datasets and makes use of the local graphics processor for improved interactivity. Rather than waste precious client resources for visualization, a combination of 3D graphics and 2D server bitmaps are used to simulate the look and feel of local rendering. Java Web Start and Java Bindings for OpenGL enable install-on- demand functionality as well as low level access to client graphics for all platforms. Powerful visualization services based on VTK and auto-generated by the WATT compiler [2] are accessible through a standard web API. Data is permanently stored on compute nodes while separate visualization nodes fetch data requested by clients, caching it locally to prevent unnecessary transfers. We will demonstrate application capabilities in the context of simulated charge density visualization within the VLab portal. In addition, we will address generalizations of our application to interact with a wider number of WATT services and performance bottlenecks. [1] Ananthuni, R., Karki, B.B., Bollig, E.F., da Silva, C.R.S., Erlebacher, G., "A Web-Based Visualization and Reposition Scheme for Scientific Data," In Press, Proceedings of the 2006 International Conference on Modeling Simulation and Visualization Methods (MSV'06) (2006). [2] Jensen, P.A., Yuen, D.A., Erlebacher, G., Bollig, E.F., Kigelman, D.G., Shukh, E.A., Automated Generation of Web Services for Visualization Toolkits, Eos Trans. AGU, 86(52), Fall Meet. Suppl., Abstract IN42A-06, 2005.

Ontology Based Quality Evaluation for Spatial Data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yılmaz, C.; Cömert, Ç.

2015-08-01

Many institutions will be providing data to the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI). Current technical background of the NSDI is based on syntactic web services. It is expected that this will be replaced by semantic web services. The quality of the data provided is important in terms of the decision-making process and the accuracy of transactions. Therefore, the data quality needs to be tested. This topic has been neglected in Turkey. Data quality control for NSDI may be done by private or public "data accreditation" institutions. A methodology is required for data quality evaluation. There are studies for data quality including ISO standards, academic studies and software to evaluate spatial data quality. ISO 19157 standard defines the data quality elements. Proprietary software such as, 1Spatial's 1Validate and ESRI's Data Reviewer offers quality evaluation based on their own classification of rules. Commonly, rule based approaches are used for geospatial data quality check. In this study, we look for the technical components to devise and implement a rule based approach with ontologies using free and open source software in semantic web context. Semantic web uses ontologies to deliver well-defined web resources and make them accessible to end-users and processes. We have created an ontology conforming to the geospatial data and defined some sample rules to show how to test data with respect to data quality elements including; attribute, topo-semantic and geometrical consistency using free and open source software. To test data against rules, sample GeoSPARQL queries are created, associated with specifications.

Web service module for access to g-Lite

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Goranova, R.; Goranov, G.

2012-10-01

G-Lite is a lightweight grid middleware for grid computing installed on all clusters of the European Grid Infrastructure (EGI). The middleware is partially service-oriented and does not provide well-defined Web services for job management. The existing Web services in the environment cannot be directly used by grid users for building service compositions in the EGI. In this article we present a module of well-defined Web services for job management in the EGI. We describe the architecture of the module and the design of the developed Web services. The presented Web services are composable and can participate in service compositions (workflows). An example of usage of the module with tools for service compositions in g-Lite is shown.

Generating Mosaics of Astronomical Images

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Bergou, Attila; Berriman, Bruce; Good, John; Jacob, Joseph; Katz, Daniel; Laity, Anastasia; Prince, Thomas; Williams, Roy

2005-01-01

"Montage" is the name of a service of the National Virtual Observatory (NVO), and of software being developed to implement the service via the World Wide Web. Montage generates science-grade custom mosaics of astronomical images on demand from input files that comply with the Flexible Image Transport System (FITS) standard and contain image data registered on projections that comply with the World Coordinate System (WCS) standards. "Science-grade" in this context signifies that terrestrial and instrumental features are removed from images in a way that can be described quantitatively. "Custom" refers to user-specified parameters of projection, coordinates, size, rotation, and spatial sampling. The greatest value of Montage is expected to lie in its ability to analyze images at multiple wavelengths, delivering them on a common projection, coordinate system, and spatial sampling, and thereby enabling further analysis as though they were part of a single, multi-wavelength image. Montage will be deployed as a computation-intensive service through existing astronomy portals and other Web sites. It will be integrated into the emerging NVO architecture and will be executed on the TeraGrid. The Montage software will also be portable and publicly available.

Horror Image Recognition Based on Context-Aware Multi-Instance Learning.

PubMed

Li, Bing; Xiong, Weihua; Wu, Ou; Hu, Weiming; Maybank, Stephen; Yan, Shuicheng

2015-12-01

Horror content sharing on the Web is a growing phenomenon that can interfere with our daily life and affect the mental health of those involved. As an important form of expression, horror images have their own characteristics that can evoke extreme emotions. In this paper, we present a novel context-aware multi-instance learning (CMIL) algorithm for horror image recognition. The CMIL algorithm identifies horror images and picks out the regions that cause the sensation of horror in these horror images. It obtains contextual cues among adjacent regions in an image using a random walk on a contextual graph. Borrowing the strength of the fuzzy support vector machine (FSVM), we define a heuristic optimization procedure based on the FSVM to search for the optimal classifier for the CMIL. To improve the initialization of the CMIL, we propose a novel visual saliency model based on the tensor analysis. The average saliency value of each segmented region is set as its initial fuzzy membership in the CMIL. The advantage of the tensor-based visual saliency model is that it not only adaptively selects features, but also dynamically determines fusion weights for saliency value combination from different feature subspaces. The effectiveness of the proposed CMIL model is demonstrated by its use in horror image recognition on two large-scale image sets collected from the Internet.

BOWS (bioinformatics open web services) to centralize bioinformatics tools in web services.

PubMed

Velloso, Henrique; Vialle, Ricardo A; Ortega, J Miguel

2015-06-02

Bioinformaticians face a range of difficulties to get locally-installed tools running and producing results; they would greatly benefit from a system that could centralize most of the tools, using an easy interface for input and output. Web services, due to their universal nature and widely known interface, constitute a very good option to achieve this goal. Bioinformatics open web services (BOWS) is a system based on generic web services produced to allow programmatic access to applications running on high-performance computing (HPC) clusters. BOWS intermediates the access to registered tools by providing front-end and back-end web services. Programmers can install applications in HPC clusters in any programming language and use the back-end service to check for new jobs and their parameters, and then to send the results to BOWS. Programs running in simple computers consume the BOWS front-end service to submit new processes and read results. BOWS compiles Java clients, which encapsulate the front-end web service requisitions, and automatically creates a web page that disposes the registered applications and clients. Bioinformatics open web services registered applications can be accessed from virtually any programming language through web services, or using standard java clients. The back-end can run in HPC clusters, allowing bioinformaticians to remotely run high-processing demand applications directly from their machines.

Framework for Designing Context-Aware Learning Systems

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tortorella, Richard A. W.; Kinshuk; Chen, Nian-Shing

2018-01-01

Today people learn in many diverse locations and contexts, beyond the confines of classical brick and mortar classrooms. This trend is ever increasing, progressing hand-in-hand with the progress of technology. Context-aware learning systems are systems which adapt to the learner's context, providing tailored learning for a particular learning…

A Tactical Framework for Cyberspace Situational Awareness

DTIC Science & Technology

2010-06-01

Command & Control 1. VOIP Telephone 2. Internet Chat 3. Web App ( TBMCS ) 4. Email 5. Web App (PEX) 6. Database (CAMS) 7. Database (ARMS) 8...Database (LogMod) 9. Resource (WWW) 10. Application (PFPS) Mission Planning 1. Application (PFPS) 2. Email 3. Web App ( TBMCS ) 4. Internet Chat...1. Web App (PEX) 2. Database (ARMS) 3. Web App ( TBMCS ) 4. Email 5. Database (CAMS) 6. VOIP Telephone 7. Application (PFPS) 8. Internet Chat 9

Streamlining geospatial metadata in the Semantic Web

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fugazza, Cristiano; Pepe, Monica; Oggioni, Alessandro; Tagliolato, Paolo; Carrara, Paola

2016-04-01

In the geospatial realm, data annotation and discovery rely on a number of ad-hoc formats and protocols. These have been created to enable domain-specific use cases generalized search is not feasible for. Metadata are at the heart of the discovery process and nevertheless they are often neglected or encoded in formats that either are not aimed at efficient retrieval of resources or are plainly outdated. Particularly, the quantum leap represented by the Linked Open Data (LOD) movement did not induce so far a consistent, interlinked baseline in the geospatial domain. In a nutshell, datasets, scientific literature related to them, and ultimately the researchers behind these products are only loosely connected; the corresponding metadata intelligible only to humans, duplicated on different systems, seldom consistently. Instead, our workflow for metadata management envisages i) editing via customizable web- based forms, ii) encoding of records in any XML application profile, iii) translation into RDF (involving the semantic lift of metadata records), and finally iv) storage of the metadata as RDF and back-translation into the original XML format with added semantics-aware features. Phase iii) hinges on relating resource metadata to RDF data structures that represent keywords from code lists and controlled vocabularies, toponyms, researchers, institutes, and virtually any description one can retrieve (or directly publish) in the LOD Cloud. In the context of a distributed Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) built on free and open-source software, we detail phases iii) and iv) of our workflow for the semantics-aware management of geospatial metadata.

Modeling Battery Behavior on Sensory Operations for Context-Aware Smartphone Sensing

PubMed Central

Yurur, Ozgur; Liu, Chi Harold; Moreno, Wilfrido

2015-01-01

Energy consumption is a major concern in context-aware smartphone sensing. This paper first studies mobile device-based battery modeling, which adopts the kinetic battery model (KiBaM), under the scope of battery non-linearities with respect to variant loads. Second, this paper models the energy consumption behavior of accelerometers analytically and then provides extensive simulation results and a smartphone application to examine the proposed sensor model. Third, a Markov reward process is integrated to create energy consumption profiles, linking with sensory operations and their effects on battery non-linearity. Energy consumption profiles consist of different pairs of duty cycles and sampling frequencies during sensory operations. Furthermore, the total energy cost by each profile is represented by an accumulated reward in this process. Finally, three different methods are proposed on the evolution of the reward process, to present the linkage between different usage patterns on the accelerometer sensor through a smartphone application and the battery behavior. By doing this, this paper aims at achieving a fine efficiency in power consumption caused by sensory operations, while maintaining the accuracy of smartphone applications based on sensor usages. More importantly, this study intends that modeling the battery non-linearities together with investigating the effects of different usage patterns in sensory operations in terms of the power consumption and the battery discharge may lead to discovering optimal energy reduction strategies to extend the battery lifetime and help a continual improvement in context-aware mobile services. PMID:26016916

Modeling battery behavior on sensory operations for context-aware smartphone sensing.

PubMed

Yurur, Ozgur; Liu, Chi Harold; Moreno, Wilfrido

2015-05-26

Energy consumption is a major concern in context-aware smartphone sensing. This paper first studies mobile device-based battery modeling, which adopts the kinetic battery model (KiBaM), under the scope of battery non-linearities with respect to variant loads. Second, this paper models the energy consumption behavior of accelerometers analytically and then provides extensive simulation results and a smartphone application to examine the proposed sensor model. Third, a Markov reward process is integrated to create energy consumption profiles, linking with sensory operations and their effects on battery non-linearity. Energy consumption profiles consist of different pairs of duty cycles and sampling frequencies during sensory operations. Furthermore, the total energy cost by each profile is represented by an accumulated reward in this process. Finally, three different methods are proposed on the evolution of the reward process, to present the linkage between different usage patterns on the accelerometer sensor through a smartphone application and the battery behavior. By doing this, this paper aims at achieving a fine efficiency in power consumption caused by sensory operations, while maintaining the accuracy of smartphone applications based on sensor usages. More importantly, this study intends that modeling the battery non-linearities together with investigating the effects of different usage patterns in sensory operations in terms of the power consumption and the battery discharge may lead to discovering optimal energy reduction strategies to extend the battery lifetime and help a continual improvement in context-aware mobile services.

Space Environment Forecasting with Neutron Monitors: Establishing a novel service for the ESA SSA Program

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Papaioannou, Athanasios; Mavromichalaki, Helen; Souvatzoglou, George; Paschalis, Pavlos; Sarlanis, Christos; Dimitroulakos, John; Gerontidou, Maria

2013-04-01

High-energy particles released at the Sun during a solar flare or a very energetic coronal mass ejection, result to a significant intensity increase at neutron monitor measurements known as Ground Level Enhancements (GLEs). Due to their space weather impact (i.e. risks and failures at communication and navigation systems, spacecraft electronics and operations, space power systems, manned space missions, and commercial aircraft operations) it is crucial to establish a real-time operational system that would be in place to issue reliable and timely GLE Alerts. Currently, the Cosmic Ray group of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens is working towards the establishment of a Neutron Monitor Service that will be made available via the Space Weather Portal operated by the European Space Agency (ESA), under the Space Situational Awareness (SSA) Program. To this end, a web interface providing data from multiple Neutron Monitor stations as well as an upgraded GLE Alert will be provided. Both services are now under testing and validation and they will probably enter to an operational phase next year. The core of this Neutron Monitor Service is the GLE Alert software, and therefore, the main goal of this research effort is to upgrade the existing GLE Alert software, to minimize the probability of a false alarm and to enhance the usability of the corresponding results. The ESA Neutron Monitor Service is building upon the infrastructure made available with the implementation of the High-Resolution Neutron Monitor Database (NMDB). In this work the structure of the Neutron Monitor Service for ESA SSA Program and the impact of the novel GLE Alert Service that will be made available to future users via ESA SSA web portal will be presented and further discussed.

Web Services--A Buzz Word with Potentials

Treesearch

János T. Füstös

2006-01-01

The simplest definition of a web service is an application that provides a web API. The web API exposes the functionality of the solution to other applications. The web API relies on other Internet-based technologies to manage communications. The resulting web services are pervasive, vendor-independent, language-neutral, and very low-cost. The main purpose of a web API...

Applying Cognitive Fusion to Space Situational Awareness

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ingram, S.; Shaw, M.; Chan, M.

With recent increases in capability and frequency of rocket launches from countries across the world, maintaining a state-of-the-art Space Situational Awareness model is all the more necessary. We propose a fusion of real-time, natural language processing capability provided by IBM cognitive services with ground-based sensor data of positions and trajectories of satellites in all earth orbits. We believe such insight provided by cognitive services could help determine context to missile launches, help predict when a satellite of interest could be in danger, either by accident or by intent, and could alert interested parties to the perceived threat. We seek to implement an improved Space Situational Awareness model by developing a dynamic factor graph model informed by the fusion of ground-based ”structured” sensor data with ”unstructured” data from the public domain, such as news articles, blogs, and social media, in real time. To this end, we employ IBM’s Cognitive services, specifically, Watson Discovery. Watson Discovery allows real-time natural language processing of text including entity extraction, keyword search, taxonomy classification, concept tagging, relation extraction, sentiment analysis, and emotion analysis. We present various scenarios that demonstrate the utility of this new Space Situational Awareness model, each of which combine past structured information with related open source data. We demonstrate that should the model come to estimate a satellite is ”of interest”, it will indicate it as so, based on the most pertinent data, such as a reading from a sensor or by information available online. We present and discuss the most recent iterations of the model for satellites currently available on Space-Track.org.

BioServices: a common Python package to access biological Web Services programmatically.

PubMed

Cokelaer, Thomas; Pultz, Dennis; Harder, Lea M; Serra-Musach, Jordi; Saez-Rodriguez, Julio

2013-12-15

Web interfaces provide access to numerous biological databases. Many can be accessed to in a programmatic way thanks to Web Services. Building applications that combine several of them would benefit from a single framework. BioServices is a comprehensive Python framework that provides programmatic access to major bioinformatics Web Services (e.g. KEGG, UniProt, BioModels, ChEMBLdb). Wrapping additional Web Services based either on Representational State Transfer or Simple Object Access Protocol/Web Services Description Language technologies is eased by the usage of object-oriented programming. BioServices releases and documentation are available at http://pypi.python.org/pypi/bioservices under a GPL-v3 license.

Research on the development and preliminary application of Beijing agricultural sci-tech service hotline WebApp in agricultural consulting services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yu, Weishui; Luo, Changshou; Zheng, Yaming; Wei, Qingfeng; Cao, Chengzhong

2017-09-01

To deal with the “last kilometer” problem during the agricultural science and technology information service, we analyzed the feasibility, necessity and advantages of WebApp applied to agricultural information service and discussed the modes of WebApp used in agricultural information service based on the requirements analysis and the function of WebApp. To overcome the existing App’s defects of difficult installation and weak compatibility between the mobile operating systems, the Beijing Agricultural Sci-tech Service Hotline WebApp was developed based on the HTML and JAVA technology. The WebApp has greater compatibility and simpler operation than the Native App, what’s more, it can be linked to the WeChat public platform making it spread easily and run directly without setup process. The WebApp was used to provide agricultural expert consulting services and agriculture information push, obtained a good preliminary application achievement. Finally, we concluded the creative application of WebApp in agricultural consulting services and prospected the development of WebApp in agricultural information service.

A Security Architecture for Grid-enabling OGC Web Services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Angelini, Valerio; Petronzio, Luca

2010-05-01

In the proposed presentation we describe an architectural solution for enabling a secure access to Grids and possibly other large scale on-demand processing infrastructures through OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) Web Services (OWS). This work has been carried out in the context of the security thread of the G-OWS Working Group. G-OWS (gLite enablement of OGC Web Services) is an international open initiative started in 2008 by the European CYCLOPS , GENESI-DR, and DORII Project Consortia in order to collect/coordinate experiences in the enablement of OWS's on top of the gLite Grid middleware. G-OWS investigates the problem of the development of Spatial Data and Information Infrastructures (SDI and SII) based on the Grid/Cloud capacity in order to enable Earth Science applications and tools. Concerning security issues, the integration of OWS compliant infrastructures and gLite Grids needs to address relevant challenges, due to their respective design principles. In fact OWS's are part of a Web based architecture that demands security aspects to other specifications, whereas the gLite middleware implements the Grid paradigm with a strong security model (the gLite Grid Security Infrastructure: GSI). In our work we propose a Security Architectural Framework allowing the seamless use of Grid-enabled OGC Web Services through the federation of existing security systems (mostly web based) with the gLite GSI. This is made possible mediating between different security realms, whose mutual trust is established in advance during the deployment of the system itself. Our architecture is composed of three different security tiers: the user's security system, a specific G-OWS security system, and the gLite Grid Security Infrastructure. Applying the separation-of-concerns principle, each of these tiers is responsible for controlling the access to a well-defined resource set, respectively: the user's organization resources, the geospatial resources and services, and the Grid resources. While the gLite middleware is tied to a consolidated security approach based on X.509 certificates, our system is able to support different kinds of user's security infrastructures. Our central component, the G-OWS Security Framework, is based on the OASIS WS-Trust specifications and on the OGC GeoRM architectural framework. This allows to satisfy advanced requirements such as the enforcement of specific geospatial policies and complex secure web service chained requests. The typical use case is represented by a scientist belonging to a given organization who issues a request to a G-OWS Grid-enabled Web Service. The system initially asks the user to authenticate to his/her organization's security system and, after verification of the user's security credentials, it translates the user's digital identity into a G-OWS identity. This identity is linked to a set of attributes describing the user's access rights to the G-OWS services and resources. Inside the G-OWS Security system, access restrictions are applied making use of the enhanced Geospatial capabilities specified by the OGC GeoXACML. If the required action needs to make use of the Grid environment the system checks if the user is entitled to access a Grid infrastructure. In that case his/her identity is translated to a temporary Grid security token using the Short Lived Credential Services (IGTF Standard). In our case, for the specific gLite Grid infrastructure, some information (VOMS Attributes) is plugged into the Grid Security Token to grant the access to the user's Virtual Organization Grid resources. The resulting token is used to submit the request to the Grid and also by the various gLite middleware elements to verify the user's grants. Basing on the presented framework, the G-OWS Security Working Group developed a prototype, enabling the execution of OGC Web Services on the EGEE Production Grid through the federation with a Shibboleth based security infrastructure. Future plans aim to integrate other Web authentication services such as OpenID, Kerberos and WS-Federation.

Any information, anywhere, anytime for the warfighter

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lazaroff, Mark B.; Sage, Philip A.

1997-06-01

The objective of the DARPA battlefield awareness data dissemination (BADD) program is to deliver battlefield awareness information to the warfighter -- anywhere, anytime. BADD is an advanced concept technology demonstration (ACTD) to support proof of concept technology demonstrations and experiments with a goal of introducing new technology to support the operational needs and acceptance of the warfighter. BADD's information management technology provides a 'smart' push of information to the users by providing information subscription services implemented via user- generated profiles. The system also provides services for warfighter pull or 'reach-back' of information via ad hoc query support. The high bandwidth delivery of informtion via the Global Broadcast System (GBS) satellites enables users to receive battlefield awareness information virtually anywhere. Very similar goals have been established for data warehousing technology -- that is, deliver the right information, to the right user, at the right time so that effective decisions can be made. In this paper, we examine the BADD Phase II architecture and underlying information management technoloyg in the context of data warehousing technology and a data warehouse reference architecture. In particular, we foucs on the BADD segment that PSR is building, the Interface to Information Sources (I2S).

A decision framework for identifying models to estimate forest ecosystem services gains from restoration

USGS Publications Warehouse

Christin, Zachary; Bagstad, Kenneth J.; Verdone, Michael

2016-01-01

Restoring degraded forests and agricultural lands has become a global conservation priority. A growing number of tools can quantify ecosystem service tradeoffs associated with forest restoration. This evolving “tools landscape” presents a dilemma: more tools are available, but selecting appropriate tools has become more challenging. We present a Restoration Ecosystem Service Tool Selector (RESTS) framework that describes key characteristics of 13 ecosystem service assessment tools. Analysts enter information about their decision context, services to be analyzed, and desired outputs. Tools are filtered and presented based on five evaluative criteria: scalability, cost, time requirements, handling of uncertainty, and applicability to benefit-cost analysis. RESTS uses a spreadsheet interface but a web-based interface is planned. Given the rapid evolution of ecosystem services science, RESTS provides an adaptable framework to guide forest restoration decision makers toward tools that can help quantify ecosystem services in support of restoration.

From scientific literacy to sustainability literacy: An ecological framework for education

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Colucci-Gray, Laura; Camino, Elena; Barbiero, Giuseppe; Gray, Donald

2006-03-01

In this paper, we report some reflections on science and education, in relation to teaching and research in the field of complex and controversial socio-environmental issues. Starting from an examination of the literature on the epistemological aspects of the science of controversial issues, and introducing the perspective of complexity, the article argues for a complexity of content, context, and method in understanding current problems. Focusing on a model of learning which includes dialogical and reflective approaches, the final part of the article reports on aspect of the authors' experimental practice with role-play for dealing with complex issues. The review of the literature and our experience of action-research introduce a view of education which promotes young people's awareness of multiple points of view, an ability to establish relationships between processes, scales, and contexts which may be nonlinearly related, and practice with creative and nonviolent forms of interrelations with others. Such an approach in science education is coherent with a scenario of planet sustainability based on ecological webs and equity principles.

HIV Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis and Postexposure Prophylaxis in Japan: Context of Use and Directions for Future Research and Action.

PubMed

DiStefano, Anthony S; Takeda, Makiko

2017-02-01

Biomedical HIV prevention strategies are playing an increasingly prominent role in addressing HIV epidemics globally, but little is known about their use in Japan, where persistent HIV disparities and a recently stable, but not declining, national epidemic indicate the need for evolving approaches. We conducted an ethnographic study to determine the context of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and postexposure prophylaxis (PEP) use and to identify directions for future research and action in Japan. We used data from observational fieldwork in the Kansai region and Tokyo Metropolitan Area (n = 178 persons observed), qualitative interviews (n = 32), documents and web-based data sources (n = 321), and email correspondences (n = 9) in the period 2013-2016. Drug approvals by Japan's regulatory agencies, insurance coverage for medications, and policies by healthcare institutions and government agencies were the main factors affecting PrEP and PEP legality, use, and awareness. Awareness and the observable presence of PrEP and PEP were very limited, particularly at the community level. PrEP and PEP held appeal for Japanese scientists and activists, and for study participants who represented various other stakeholder groups; however, significant concerns prevented open endorsements. Japanese health officials should prioritize a national discussion, weigh empirical evidence, and strongly consider formal approval of antiretroviral (ARV) medications for use in PrEP and both occupational and nonoccupational PEP. Once approved, social marketing campaigns can be used to advertise widely and increase awareness. Future research would benefit from theoretical grounding in a diffusion of innovations framework. These findings can inform current and future ARV-based prevention strategies at a critical time in the international conversation.

Brief Report: Trends in U.S. National Autism Awareness from 2004 to 2014: The Impact of National Autism Awareness Month

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

DeVilbiss, Elizabeth A.; Lee, Brian K.

2014-01-01

We sought to evaluate the potential for using historical web search data on autism spectrum disorders (ASD)-related topics as an indicator of ASD awareness. Analysis of Google Trend data suggested that National Autism Awareness Month and televised reports concerning autism are an effective method of promoting online search interest in autism.

Information Retrieval System for Japanese Standard Disease-Code Master Using XML Web Service

PubMed Central

Hatano, Kenji; Ohe, Kazuhiko

2003-01-01

Information retrieval system of Japanese Standard Disease-Code Master Using XML Web Service is developed. XML Web Service is a new distributed processing system by standard internet technologies. With seamless remote method invocation of XML Web Service, users are able to get the latest disease code master information from their rich desktop applications or internet web sites, which refer to this service. PMID:14728364

Evaluation of Chlamydia Partner Notification Practices and Use of the “Let Them Know” Website by Family Planning Clinicians in Australia: Cross-Sectional Study

PubMed Central

Micallef, Joanne M; Mooney-Somers, Julie; Jamil, Muhammad S; Harvey, Caroline; Bateson, Deborah; van Gemert, Caroline; Wand, Handan; Kaldor, John

2016-01-01

Background Chlamydia, caused by Chlamydia trachomatis, is the most common reportable infection in many developed countries. Testing, treatment, and partner notification (PN) are key strategies for chlamydia control. In 2008 the Let Them Know (LTK) PN website was established, which provided means for people to send anonymous PN messages by text messaging (short message service, SMS), email, or letter. Objective We evaluated PN practices among Australian family planning clinicians following chlamydia diagnosis and assessed how often clinicians refer their patients to the LTK website. Methods A mixed methods approach included a Web-based cross-sectional survey of Australian family planning clinicians to examine PN attitudes and practices and focus groups to explore the context of LTK website use. Results Between May 2012 and June 2012, all clinicians from 29 different family planning services (n=212) were invited to complete the survey, and 164 participated (response rate=77.4%); of the clinicians, 96.3% (158/164) were females, 56.1% (92/164) nurses, and 43.9% (72/164) doctors. More than half (62.2%, 92/148) agreed that PN was primarily the client's responsibility; however, 93.2% (138/148) agreed it was the clinician's responsibility to support the client in informing their partners by providing information or access to resources. Almost half (49.4%, 76/154) of the clinicians said that they always or usually referred clients to the LTK website, with variation across clinics in Australian states and territories (0%-77%). Eleven focus groups among 70 clinicians at 11 family planning services found that the LTK website had been integrated into routine practice; that it was particularly useful for clients who found it difficult to contact partners; and that the LTK letters and fact sheets were useful. However, many clinicians were not aware of the website and noted a lack of internal clinic training about LTK. Conclusions The LTK website has become an important PN tool for family planning clinicians. The variation in referral of patients to the LTK website and lack of awareness among some clinicians suggest further promotion of the website, PN training, and clinic protocols are warranted. PMID:27342438

Describing and recognizing patterns of events in smart environments with description logic.

PubMed

Scalmato, Antonello; Sgorbissa, Antonio; Zaccaria, Renato

2013-12-01

This paper describes a system for context awareness in smart environments, which is based on an ontology expressed in description logic and implemented in OWL 2 EL, which is a subset of the Web Ontology Language that allows for reasoning in polynomial time. The approach is different from all other works in the literature since the proposed system requires only the basic reasoning mechanisms of description logic, i.e., subsumption and instance checking, without any additional external reasoning engine. Experiments performed with data collected in three different scenarios are described, i.e., the CASAS Project at Washington State University, the assisted living facility Villa Basilea in Genoa, and the Merry Porter mobile robot at the Polyclinic of Modena.

PLEXIL-DL: Language and Runtime for Context-Aware Robot Behaviour

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Moser, Herwig; Reichelt, Toni; Oswald, Norbert; Förster, Stefan

Faced with the growing complexity of application scenarios social robots are involved with, the perception of environmental circumstances and the sentient reactions are becoming more and more important abilities. Rather than regarding both abilities in isolation, the entire transformation process, from context-awareness to purposive behaviour, forms a robot’s adaptivity. While attaining context-awareness has received much attention in literature so far, translating it into appropriate actions still lacks a comprehensive approach. In this paper, we present PLEXIL-DL, an expressive language allowing complex context expressions as an integral part of constructs that define sophisticated behavioural reactions. Our approach extends NASA’s PLEXIL language by Description Logic queries, both in syntax and formal semantics. A prototypical implementation of a PLEXIL-DL interpreter shows the basic mechanisms facilitating the robot’s adaptivity through context-awareness.

Moodle 2.0 Web Services Layer and Its New Application Contexts

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Conde, Miguel Ángel; Aguilar, Diego Alonso Gómez; Del Pozo de Dios, Alberto; Peñalvo, Francisco José García

Owing to the intrinsic relation among actual education and new technologies, it results essential the fact to found the new ways to satisfy both sides of the modern eLearning platforms, the needs of students and tutors and the enough technologies to support it. Consequently, the possibility to interconnect the LMS with other external applications to enrich and strengthen the comprehension of learning process is one of the principal paths to follow.

Persistence and availability of Web services in computational biology.

PubMed

Schultheiss, Sebastian J; Münch, Marc-Christian; Andreeva, Gergana D; Rätsch, Gunnar

2011-01-01

We have conducted a study on the long-term availability of bioinformatics Web services: an observation of 927 Web services published in the annual Nucleic Acids Research Web Server Issues between 2003 and 2009. We found that 72% of Web sites are still available at the published addresses, only 9% of services are completely unavailable. Older addresses often redirect to new pages. We checked the functionality of all available services: for 33%, we could not test functionality because there was no example data or a related problem; 13% were truly no longer working as expected; we could positively confirm functionality only for 45% of all services. Additionally, we conducted a survey among 872 Web Server Issue corresponding authors; 274 replied. 78% of all respondents indicate their services have been developed solely by students and researchers without a permanent position. Consequently, these services are in danger of falling into disrepair after the original developers move to another institution, and indeed, for 24% of services, there is no plan for maintenance, according to the respondents. We introduce a Web service quality scoring system that correlates with the number of citations: services with a high score are cited 1.8 times more often than low-scoring services. We have identified key characteristics that are predictive of a service's survival, providing reviewers, editors, and Web service developers with the means to assess or improve Web services. A Web service conforming to these criteria receives more citations and provides more reliable service for its users. The most effective way of ensuring continued access to a service is a persistent Web address, offered either by the publishing journal, or created on the authors' own initiative, for example at http://bioweb.me. The community would benefit the most from a policy requiring any source code needed to reproduce results to be deposited in a public repository.

Persistence and Availability of Web Services in Computational Biology

PubMed Central

Schultheiss, Sebastian J.; Münch, Marc-Christian; Andreeva, Gergana D.; Rätsch, Gunnar

2011-01-01

We have conducted a study on the long-term availability of bioinformatics Web services: an observation of 927 Web services published in the annual Nucleic Acids Research Web Server Issues between 2003 and 2009. We found that 72% of Web sites are still available at the published addresses, only 9% of services are completely unavailable. Older addresses often redirect to new pages. We checked the functionality of all available services: for 33%, we could not test functionality because there was no example data or a related problem; 13% were truly no longer working as expected; we could positively confirm functionality only for 45% of all services. Additionally, we conducted a survey among 872 Web Server Issue corresponding authors; 274 replied. 78% of all respondents indicate their services have been developed solely by students and researchers without a permanent position. Consequently, these services are in danger of falling into disrepair after the original developers move to another institution, and indeed, for 24% of services, there is no plan for maintenance, according to the respondents. We introduce a Web service quality scoring system that correlates with the number of citations: services with a high score are cited 1.8 times more often than low-scoring services. We have identified key characteristics that are predictive of a service's survival, providing reviewers, editors, and Web service developers with the means to assess or improve Web services. A Web service conforming to these criteria receives more citations and provides more reliable service for its users. The most effective way of ensuring continued access to a service is a persistent Web address, offered either by the publishing journal, or created on the authors' own initiative, for example at http://bioweb.me. The community would benefit the most from a policy requiring any source code needed to reproduce results to be deposited in a public repository. PMID:21966383

Medical scientists' information practices in the research work context.

PubMed

Roos, Annikki

2015-03-01

The aim of the study was to investigate the information practices of medical scientists in the research work context. This is a qualitative study based on semi-structured interviews. The interviews were transcribed and analysed in a web tool for qualitative analysis. Activity theory was used as the theoretical framework. The generating motives for the information related activity come from the core activity, research work. The motives result in actions such as searching and using information. Usability, accessibility and ease of use are the most important conditions that determine information related operations. Medical scientists search and use information most of all in the beginning and at the end of the research work. Information practices appear as an instrument producing activity to the central activity. Information services should be embedded in this core activity and in practice libraries should follow researchers' workflow and embed their tools and services in it. © 2015 Health Libraries Journal.

Space Physics Data Facility Web Services

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Candey, Robert M.; Harris, Bernard T.; Chimiak, Reine A.

2005-01-01

The Space Physics Data Facility (SPDF) Web services provides a distributed programming interface to a portion of the SPDF software. (A general description of Web services is available at http://www.w3.org/ and in many current software-engineering texts and articles focused on distributed programming.) The SPDF Web services distributed programming interface enables additional collaboration and integration of the SPDF software system with other software systems, in furtherance of the SPDF mission to lead collaborative efforts in the collection and utilization of space physics data and mathematical models. This programming interface conforms to all applicable Web services specifications of the World Wide Web Consortium. The interface is specified by a Web Services Description Language (WSDL) file. The SPDF Web services software consists of the following components: 1) A server program for implementation of the Web services; and 2) A software developer s kit that consists of a WSDL file, a less formal description of the interface, a Java class library (which further eases development of Java-based client software), and Java source code for an example client program that illustrates the use of the interface.

The EMBRACE web service collection

PubMed Central

Pettifer, Steve; Ison, Jon; Kalaš, Matúš; Thorne, Dave; McDermott, Philip; Jonassen, Inge; Liaquat, Ali; Fernández, José M.; Rodriguez, Jose M.; Partners, INB-; Pisano, David G.; Blanchet, Christophe; Uludag, Mahmut; Rice, Peter; Bartaseviciute, Edita; Rapacki, Kristoffer; Hekkelman, Maarten; Sand, Olivier; Stockinger, Heinz; Clegg, Andrew B.; Bongcam-Rudloff, Erik; Salzemann, Jean; Breton, Vincent; Attwood, Teresa K.; Cameron, Graham; Vriend, Gert

2010-01-01

The EMBRACE (European Model for Bioinformatics Research and Community Education) web service collection is the culmination of a 5-year project that set out to investigate issues involved in developing and deploying web services for use in the life sciences. The project concluded that in order for web services to achieve widespread adoption, standards must be defined for the choice of web service technology, for semantically annotating both service function and the data exchanged, and a mechanism for discovering services must be provided. Building on this, the project developed: EDAM, an ontology for describing life science web services; BioXSD, a schema for exchanging data between services; and a centralized registry (http://www.embraceregistry.net) that collects together around 1000 services developed by the consortium partners. This article presents the current status of the collection and its associated recommendations and standards definitions. PMID:20462862

Bridging the gap between Hydrologic and Atmospheric communities through a standard based framework

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Boldrini, E.; Salas, F.; Maidment, D. R.; Mazzetti, P.; Santoro, M.; Nativi, S.; Domenico, B.

2012-04-01

Data interoperability in the study of Earth sciences is essential to performing interdisciplinary multi-scale multi-dimensional analyses (e.g. hydrologic impacts of global warming, regional urbanization, global population growth etc.). This research aims to bridge the existing gap between hydrologic and atmospheric communities both at semantic and technological levels. Within the context of hydrology, scientists are usually concerned with data organized as time series: a time series can be seen as a variable measured at a particular point in space over a period of time (e.g. the stream flow values as periodically measured by a buoy sensor in a river); atmospheric scientists instead usually organize their data as coverages: a coverage can be seen as a multidimensional data array (e.g. satellite images acquired through time). These differences make non-trivial the set up of a common framework to perform data discovery and access. A set of web services specifications and implementations is already in place in both the scientific communities to allow data discovery and access in the different domains. The CUAHSI-Hydrologic Information System (HIS) service stack lists different services types and implementations: - a metacatalog (implemented as a CSW) used to discover metadata services by distributing the query to a set of catalogs - time series catalogs (implemented as CSW) used to discover datasets published by the feature services - feature services (implemented as WFS) containing features with data access link - sensor observation services (implemented as SOS) enabling access to the stream of acquisitions Within the Unidata framework, there lies a similar service stack for atmospheric data: - the broker service (implemented as a CSW) distributes a user query to a set of heterogeneous services (i.e. catalogs services, but also inventory and access services) - the catalog service (implemented as a CSW) is able to harvest the available metadata offered by THREDDS services, and executes complex queries against the available metadata. - inventory service (implemented as a THREDDS) being able to hierarchically organize and publish a local collection of multi-dimensional arrays (e.g. NetCDF, GRIB files), as well as publish auxiliary standard services to realize the actual data access and visualization (e.g. WCS, OPeNDAP, WMS). The approach followed in this research is to build on top of the existing standards and implementations, by setting up a standard-aware interoperable framework, able to deal with the existing heterogeneity in an organic way. As a methodology, interoperability tests against real services were performed; existing problems were thus highlighted and possibly solved. The use of flexible tools, able to deal in a smart way with heterogeneity has proven to be successful, in particular experiments were carried on with both GI-cat broker and ESRI GeoPortal frameworks. GI-cat discovery broker was proven successful at implementing the CSW interface, as well as federating heterogeneous resources, such as THREDDS and WCS services published by Unidata, HydroServer, WFS and SOS services published by CUAHSI. Experiments with ESRI GeoPortal were also successful: the GeoPortal was used to deploy a web interface able to distribute searches amongst catalog implementations from both the hydrologic and the atmospheric communities, including HydroServers and GI-cat, combining results from both the domains in a seamless way.

Vision-Aided Context-Aware Framework for Personal Navigation Services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Saeedi, S.; Moussa, A.; El-Sheimy, N., , Dr.

2012-07-01

The ubiquity of mobile devices (such as smartphones and tablet-PCs) has encouraged the use of location-based services (LBS) that are relevant to the current location and context of a mobile user. The main challenge of LBS is to find a pervasive and accurate personal navigation system (PNS) in different situations of a mobile user. In this paper, we propose a method of personal navigation for pedestrians that allows a user to freely move in outdoor environments. This system aims at detection of the context information which is useful for improving personal navigation. The context information for a PNS consists of user activity modes (e.g. walking, stationary, driving, and etc.) and the mobile device orientation and placement with respect to the user. After detecting the context information, a low-cost integrated positioning algorithm has been employed to estimate pedestrian navigation parameters. The method is based on the integration of the relative user's motion (changes of velocity and heading angle) estimation based on the video image matching and absolute position information provided by GPS. A Kalman filter (KF) has been used to improve the navigation solution when the user is walking and the phone is in his/her hand. The Experimental results demonstrate the capabilities of this method for outdoor personal navigation systems.

Mexican Space Weather Service (SCIESMEX)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gonzalez-Esparza, A.; De la Luz, V.; Mejia-Ambriz, J. C.; Aguilar-Rodriguez, E.; Corona-Romero, P.; Gonzalez, L. X.

2015-12-01

Recent modifications of the Civil Protection Law in Mexico include now specific mentions to space hazards and space weather phenomena. During the last few years, the UN has promoted international cooperation on Space Weather awareness, studies and monitoring. Internal and external conditions motivated the creation of a Space Weather Service in Mexico (SCIESMEX). The SCIESMEX (www.sciesmex.unam.mx) is operated by the Geophysics Institute at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). The UNAM has the experience of operating several critical national services, including the National Seismological Service (SSN); besides that has a well established scientific group with expertise in space physics and solar- terrestrial phenomena. The SCIESMEX is also related with the recent creation of the Mexican Space Agency (AEM). The project combines a network of different ground instruments covering solar, interplanetary, geomagnetic, and ionospheric observations. The SCIESMEX has already in operation computing infrastructure running the web application, a virtual observatory and a high performance computing server to run numerical models. SCIESMEX participates in the International Space Environment Services (ISES) and in the Inter-progamme Coordination Team on Space Weather (ICTSW) of the Word Meteorological Organization (WMO).

Online Formative Assessments with Social Network Awareness

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lin, Jian-Wei; Lai, Yuan-Cheng

2013-01-01

Social network awareness (SNA) has been used extensively as one of the strategies to increase knowledge sharing and collaboration opportunities. However, most SNA studies either focus on being aware of peer's knowledge context or on social context. This work proposes online formative assessments with SNA, trying to address the problems of online…

MUSTANG: A Community-Facing Web Service to Improve Seismic Data Quality Awareness Through Metrics

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Templeton, M. E.; Ahern, T. K.; Casey, R. E.; Sharer, G.; Weertman, B.; Ashmore, S.

2014-12-01

IRIS DMC is engaged in a new effort to provide broad and deep visibility into the quality of data and metadata found in its terabyte-scale geophysical data archive. Taking advantage of large and fast disk capacity, modern advances in open database technologies, and nimble provisioning of virtual machine resources, we are creating an openly accessible treasure trove of data measurements for scientists and the general public to utilize in providing new insights into the quality of this data. We have branded this statistical gathering system MUSTANG, and have constructed it as a component of the web services suite that IRIS DMC offers. MUSTANG measures over forty data metrics addressing issues with archive status, data statistics and continuity, signal anomalies, noise analysis, metadata checks, and station state of health. These metrics could potentially be used both by network operators to diagnose station problems and by data users to sort suitable data from unreliable or unusable data. Our poster details what MUSTANG is, how users can access it, what measurements they can find, and how MUSTANG fits into the IRIS DMC's data access ecosystem. Progress in data processing, approaches to data visualization, and case studies of MUSTANG's use for quality assurance will be presented. We want to illustrate what is possible with data quality assurance, the need for data quality assurance, and how the seismic community will benefit from this freely available analytics service.

STAR Online Meta-Data Collection Framework: Integration with the Pre-existing Controls Infrastructure

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Arkhipkin, D.; Lauret, J.

2017-10-01

One of the STAR experiment’s modular Messaging Interface and Reliable Architecture framework (MIRA) integration goals is to provide seamless and automatic connections with the existing control systems. After an initial proof of concept and operation of the MIRA system as a parallel data collection system for online use and real-time monitoring, the STAR Software and Computing group is now working on the integration of Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System (EPICS) with MIRA’s interfaces. This integration goals are to allow functional interoperability and, later on, to replace the existing/legacy Detector Control System components at the service level. In this report, we describe the evolutionary integration process and, as an example, will discuss the EPICS Alarm Handler conversion. We review the complete upgrade procedure starting with the integration of EPICS-originated alarm signals propagation into MIRA, followed by the replacement of the existing operator interface based on Motif Editor and Display Manager (MEDM) with modern portable web-based Alarm Handler interface. To achieve this aim, we have built an EPICS-to-MQTT [8] bridging service, and recreated the functionality of the original Alarm Handler using low-latency web messaging technologies. The integration of EPICS alarm handling into our messaging framework allowed STAR to improve the DCS alarm awareness of existing STAR DAQ and RTS services, which use MIRA as a primary source of experiment control information.

Search strategies on the Internet: general and specific.

PubMed

Bottrill, Krys

2004-06-01

Some of the most up-to-date information on scientific activity is to be found on the Internet; for example, on the websites of academic and other research institutions and in databases of currently funded research studies provided on the websites of funding bodies. Such information can be valuable in suggesting new approaches and techniques that could be applicable in a Three Rs context. However, the Internet is a chaotic medium, not subject to the meticulous classification and organisation of classical information resources. At the same time, Internet search engines do not match the sophistication of search systems used by database hosts. Also, although some offer relatively advanced features, user awareness of these tends to be low. Furthermore, much of the information on the Internet is not accessible to conventional search engines, giving rise to the concept of the "Invisible Web". General strategies and techniques for Internet searching are presented, together with a comparative survey of selected search engines. The question of how the Invisible Web can be accessed is discussed, as well as how to keep up-to-date with Internet content and improve searching skills.

Identifiers for the 21st century: How to design, provision, and reuse persistent identifiers to maximize utility and impact of life science data

PubMed Central

Juty, Nick; Blomberg, Niklas; Burdett, Tony; Conlin, Tom; Conte, Nathalie; Courtot, Mélanie; Deck, John; Dumontier, Michel; Fellows, Donal K.; Gonzalez-Beltran, Alejandra; Gormanns, Philipp; Grethe, Jeffrey; Hastings, Janna; Hériché, Jean-Karim; Hermjakob, Henning; Ison, Jon C.; Jimenez, Rafael C.; Jupp, Simon; Kunze, John; Laibe, Camille; Le Novère, Nicolas; Malone, James; Martin, Maria Jesus; McEntyre, Johanna R.; Morris, Chris; Muilu, Juha; Müller, Wolfgang; Rocca-Serra, Philippe; Sansone, Susanna-Assunta; Sariyar, Murat; Snoep, Jacky L.; Soiland-Reyes, Stian; Stanford, Natalie J.; Swainston, Neil; Washington, Nicole; Williams, Alan R.; Wimalaratne, Sarala M.; Winfree, Lilly M.; Wolstencroft, Katherine; Goble, Carole; Mungall, Christopher J.; Haendel, Melissa A.; Parkinson, Helen

2017-01-01

In many disciplines, data are highly decentralized across thousands of online databases (repositories, registries, and knowledgebases). Wringing value from such databases depends on the discipline of data science and on the humble bricks and mortar that make integration possible; identifiers are a core component of this integration infrastructure. Drawing on our experience and on work by other groups, we outline 10 lessons we have learned about the identifier qualities and best practices that facilitate large-scale data integration. Specifically, we propose actions that identifier practitioners (database providers) should take in the design, provision and reuse of identifiers. We also outline the important considerations for those referencing identifiers in various circumstances, including by authors and data generators. While the importance and relevance of each lesson will vary by context, there is a need for increased awareness about how to avoid and manage common identifier problems, especially those related to persistence and web-accessibility/resolvability. We focus strongly on web-based identifiers in the life sciences; however, the principles are broadly relevant to other disciplines. PMID:28662064

Identifiers for the 21st century: How to design, provision, and reuse persistent identifiers to maximize utility and impact of life science data.

PubMed

McMurry, Julie A; Juty, Nick; Blomberg, Niklas; Burdett, Tony; Conlin, Tom; Conte, Nathalie; Courtot, Mélanie; Deck, John; Dumontier, Michel; Fellows, Donal K; Gonzalez-Beltran, Alejandra; Gormanns, Philipp; Grethe, Jeffrey; Hastings, Janna; Hériché, Jean-Karim; Hermjakob, Henning; Ison, Jon C; Jimenez, Rafael C; Jupp, Simon; Kunze, John; Laibe, Camille; Le Novère, Nicolas; Malone, James; Martin, Maria Jesus; McEntyre, Johanna R; Morris, Chris; Muilu, Juha; Müller, Wolfgang; Rocca-Serra, Philippe; Sansone, Susanna-Assunta; Sariyar, Murat; Snoep, Jacky L; Soiland-Reyes, Stian; Stanford, Natalie J; Swainston, Neil; Washington, Nicole; Williams, Alan R; Wimalaratne, Sarala M; Winfree, Lilly M; Wolstencroft, Katherine; Goble, Carole; Mungall, Christopher J; Haendel, Melissa A; Parkinson, Helen

2017-06-01

In many disciplines, data are highly decentralized across thousands of online databases (repositories, registries, and knowledgebases). Wringing value from such databases depends on the discipline of data science and on the humble bricks and mortar that make integration possible; identifiers are a core component of this integration infrastructure. Drawing on our experience and on work by other groups, we outline 10 lessons we have learned about the identifier qualities and best practices that facilitate large-scale data integration. Specifically, we propose actions that identifier practitioners (database providers) should take in the design, provision and reuse of identifiers. We also outline the important considerations for those referencing identifiers in various circumstances, including by authors and data generators. While the importance and relevance of each lesson will vary by context, there is a need for increased awareness about how to avoid and manage common identifier problems, especially those related to persistence and web-accessibility/resolvability. We focus strongly on web-based identifiers in the life sciences; however, the principles are broadly relevant to other disciplines.

Enhancing UCSF Chimera through web services

PubMed Central

Huang, Conrad C.; Meng, Elaine C.; Morris, John H.; Pettersen, Eric F.; Ferrin, Thomas E.

2014-01-01

Integrating access to web services with desktop applications allows for an expanded set of application features, including performing computationally intensive tasks and convenient searches of databases. We describe how we have enhanced UCSF Chimera (http://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimera/), a program for the interactive visualization and analysis of molecular structures and related data, through the addition of several web services (http://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/webservices.html). By streamlining access to web services, including the entire job submission, monitoring and retrieval process, Chimera makes it simpler for users to focus on their science projects rather than data manipulation. Chimera uses Opal, a toolkit for wrapping scientific applications as web services, to provide scalable and transparent access to several popular software packages. We illustrate Chimera's use of web services with an example workflow that interleaves use of these services with interactive manipulation of molecular sequences and structures, and we provide an example Python program to demonstrate how easily Opal-based web services can be accessed from within an application. Web server availability: http://webservices.rbvi.ucsf.edu/opal2/dashboard?command=serviceList. PMID:24861624

Real-time GIS data model and sensor web service platform for environmental data management.

PubMed

Gong, Jianya; Geng, Jing; Chen, Zeqiang

2015-01-09

Effective environmental data management is meaningful for human health. In the past, environmental data management involved developing a specific environmental data management system, but this method often lacks real-time data retrieving and sharing/interoperating capability. With the development of information technology, a Geospatial Service Web method is proposed that can be employed for environmental data management. The purpose of this study is to determine a method to realize environmental data management under the Geospatial Service Web framework. A real-time GIS (Geographic Information System) data model and a Sensor Web service platform to realize environmental data management under the Geospatial Service Web framework are proposed in this study. The real-time GIS data model manages real-time data. The Sensor Web service platform is applied to support the realization of the real-time GIS data model based on the Sensor Web technologies. To support the realization of the proposed real-time GIS data model, a Sensor Web service platform is implemented. Real-time environmental data, such as meteorological data, air quality data, soil moisture data, soil temperature data, and landslide data, are managed in the Sensor Web service platform. In addition, two use cases of real-time air quality monitoring and real-time soil moisture monitoring based on the real-time GIS data model in the Sensor Web service platform are realized and demonstrated. The total time efficiency of the two experiments is 3.7 s and 9.2 s. The experimental results show that the method integrating real-time GIS data model and Sensor Web Service Platform is an effective way to manage environmental data under the Geospatial Service Web framework.

Brandenburg 3D - a comprehensive 3D Subsurface Model, Conception of an Infrastructure Node and a Web Application

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kerschke, Dorit; Schilling, Maik; Simon, Andreas; Wächter, Joachim

2014-05-01

The Energiewende and the increasing scarcity of raw materials will lead to an intensified utilization of the subsurface in Germany. Within this context, geological 3D modeling is a fundamental approach for integrated decision and planning processes. Initiated by the development of the European Geospatial Infrastructure INSPIRE, the German State Geological Offices started digitizing their predominantly analog archive inventory. Until now, a comprehensive 3D subsurface model of Brandenburg did not exist. Therefore the project B3D strived to develop a new 3D model as well as a subsequent infrastructure node to integrate all geological and spatial data within the Geodaten-Infrastruktur Brandenburg (Geospatial Infrastructure, GDI-BB) and provide it to the public through an interactive 2D/3D web application. The functionality of the web application is based on a client-server architecture. Server-sided, all available spatial data is published through GeoServer. GeoServer is designed for interoperability and acts as the reference implementation of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Feature Service (WFS) standard that provides the interface that allows requests for geographical features. In addition, GeoServer implements, among others, the high performance certified compliant Web Map Service (WMS) that serves geo-referenced map images. For publishing 3D data, the OGC Web 3D Service (W3DS), a portrayal service for three-dimensional geo-data, is used. The W3DS displays elements representing the geometry, appearance, and behavior of geographic objects. On the client side, the web application is solely based on Free and Open Source Software and leans on the JavaScript API WebGL that allows the interactive rendering of 2D and 3D graphics by means of GPU accelerated usage of physics and image processing as part of the web page canvas without the use of plug-ins. WebGL is supported by most web browsers (e.g., Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, and Opera). The web application enables an intuitive navigation through all available information and allows the visualization of geological maps (2D), seismic transects (2D/3D), wells (2D/3D), and the 3D-model. These achievements will alleviate spatial and geological data management within the German State Geological Offices and foster the interoperability of heterogeneous systems. It will provide guidance to a systematic subsurface management across system, domain and administrative boundaries on the basis of a federated spatial data infrastructure, and include the public in the decision processes (e-Governance). Yet, the interoperability of the systems has to be strongly propelled forward through agreements on standards that need to be decided upon in responsible committees. The project B3D is funded with resources from the European Fund for Regional Development (EFRE).

A Social Approach to High-Level Context Generation for Supporting Context-Aware M-Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pan, Xu-Wei; Ding, Ling; Zhu, Xi-Yong; Yang, Zhao-Xiang

2017-01-01

In m-learning environments, context-awareness is for wide use where learners' situations are varied, dynamic and unpredictable. We are facing the challenge of requirements of both generality and depth in generating and processing high-level context. In this paper, we present a social approach which exploits social dynamics and social computing for…

Similarity Based Semantic Web Service Match

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Peng, Hui; Niu, Wenjia; Huang, Ronghuai

Semantic web service discovery aims at returning the most matching advertised services to the service requester by comparing the semantic of the request service with an advertised service. The semantic of a web service are described in terms of inputs, outputs, preconditions and results in Ontology Web Language for Service (OWL-S) which formalized by W3C. In this paper we proposed an algorithm to calculate the semantic similarity of two services by weighted averaging their inputs and outputs similarities. Case study and applications show the effectiveness of our algorithm in service match.

Depression Literacy and Awareness of Psychopathological Symptoms During the Perinatal Period.

PubMed

Fonseca, Ana; Silva, Sheila; Canavarro, Maria Cristina

To characterize women's depression literacy during the perinatal period, including their ability to recognize clinically significant symptoms of depression. A quantitative, cross-sectional, survey design. Internet communities and Web sites focused on the topics of pregnancy and motherhood. A total of 194 women during the perinatal period (32.5% pregnant, 67.5% postnatal) completed the survey; 34.0% had clinically significant psychopathological symptoms. Most women were married/cohabiting (82.0%) and employed (71.8%). Women answered self-report questionnaires to assess depression literacy, symptoms of depression, emotional competence, and awareness/recognition of psychopathological symptoms. Women had moderate levels of depression literacy during the perinatal period, with higher literacy levels concerning depression-related characteristics than depression-related treatments. Lower education and lower income were associated with poor depression literacy, whereas prior history of psychiatric problems or treatments was associated with higher levels of depression literacy. An indirect effect through emotional competence in the relationship between depression literacy and awareness/recognition of symptoms was found: women with poor depression literacy tended to have a greater lack of emotional clarity, which negatively affected their symptom awareness and recognition. Our results support the need to improve women's mental health literacy during the perinatal period. Education on mental health topics in the context of a trusting relationship with health professionals may contribute to the promotion of women's depression literacy and emotional competence. Copyright © 2017 AWHONN, the Association of Women’s Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Evaluating the Implementation and Feasibility of a Web-Based Tool to Support Timely Identification and Care for the Frail Population in Primary Healthcare Settings.

PubMed

Lawson, Beverley; Sampalli, Tara; Wood, Stephanie; Warner, Grace; Moorhouse, Paige; Gibson, Rick; Mallery, Laurie; Burge, Fred; Bedford, Lisa G

2017-03-07

Understanding and addressing the needs of frail persons is an emerging health priority for Nova Scotia and internationally. Primary healthcare (PHC) providers regularly encounter frail persons in their daily clinical work. However, routine identification and measurement of frailty is not standard practice and, in general, there is a lack of awareness about how to identify and respond to frailty. A web-based tool called the Frailty Portal was developed to aid in identifying, screening, and providing care for frail patients in PHC settings. In this study, we will assess the implementation feasibility and impact of the Frailty Portal to: (1) support increased awareness of frailty among providers and patients, (2) identify the degree of frailty within individual patients, and (3) develop and deliver actions to respond to frailtyl in community PHC practice. This study will be approached using a convergent mixed method design where quantitative and qualitative data are collected concurrently, in this case, over a 9-month period, analyzed separately, and then merged to summarize, interpret and produce a more comprehensive understanding of the initiative's feasibility and scalability. Methods will be informed by the 'Implementing the Frailty Portal in Community Primary Care Practice' logic model and questions will be guided by domains and constructs from an implementation science framework, the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR). The 'Frailty Portal' aims to improve access to, and coordination of, primary care services for persons experiencing frailty. It also aims to increase primary care providers' ability to care for patients in the context of their frailty. Our goal is to help optimize care in the community by helping community providers gain the knowledge they may lack about frailty both in general and in their practice, support improved identification of frailty with the use of screening tools, offer evidence based severity-specific care goals and connect providers with local available community supports. © 2017 The Author(s); Published by Kerman University of Medical Sciences. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Leveraging search and content exploration by exploiting context in folksonomy systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Abel, Fabian; Baldoni, Matteo; Baroglio, Cristina; Henze, Nicola; Kawase, Ricardo; Krause, Daniel; Patti, Viviana

2010-04-01

With the advent of Web 2.0 tagging became a popular feature in social media systems. People tag diverse kinds of content, e.g. products at Amazon, music at Last.fm, images at Flickr, etc. In the last years several researchers analyzed the impact of tags on information retrieval. Most works focused on tags only and ignored context information. In this article we present context-aware approaches for learning semantics and improve personalized information retrieval in tagging systems. We investigate how explorative search, initialized by clicking on tags, can be enhanced with automatically produced context information so that search results better fit to the actual information needs of the users. We introduce the SocialHITS algorithm and present an experiment where we compare different algorithms for ranking users, tags, and resources in a contextualized way. We showcase our approaches in the domain of images and present the TagMe! system that enables users to explore and tag Flickr pictures. In TagMe! we further demonstrate how advanced context information can easily be generated: TagMe! allows users to attach tag assignments to a specific area within an image and to categorize tag assignments. In our corresponding evaluation we show that those additional facets of tag assignments gain valuable semantics, which can be applied to improve existing search and ranking algorithms significantly.

Policy-Aware Content Reuse on the Web

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Seneviratne, Oshani; Kagal, Lalana; Berners-Lee, Tim

The Web allows users to share their work very effectively leading to the rapid re-use and remixing of content on the Web including text, images, and videos. Scientific research data, social networks, blogs, photo sharing sites and other such applications known collectively as the Social Web have lots of increasingly complex information. Such information from several Web pages can be very easily aggregated, mashed up and presented in other Web pages. Content generation of this nature inevitably leads to many copyright and license violations, motivating research into effective methods to detect and prevent such violations.

SWE-based Observation Data Delivery from the Instrument to the User - Sensor Web Technology in the NeXOS Project

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jirka, Simon; del Rio, Joaquin; Toma, Daniel; Martinez, Enoc; Delory, Eric; Pearlman, Jay; Rieke, Matthes; Stasch, Christoph

2017-04-01

The rapidly evolving technology for building Web-based (spatial) information infrastructures and Sensor Webs, there are new opportunities to improve the process how ocean data is collected and managed. A central element in this development is the suite of Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) standards specified by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). This framework of standards comprises on the one hand data models as well as formats for measurement data (ISO/OGC Observations and Measurement, O&M) and metadata describing measurement processes and sensors (OGC Sensor Model Language, SensorML). On the other hand the SWE standards comprise (Web service) interface specifications for pull-based access to observation data (OGC Sensor Observation Service, SOS) and for controlling or configuring sensors (OGC Sensor Planning Service, SPS). Also within the European INSPIRE framework the SWE standards play an important role as the SOS is the recommended download service interface for O&M-encoded observation data sets. In the context of the EU-funded Oceans of Tomorrow initiative the NeXOS (Next generation, Cost-effective, Compact, Multifunctional Web Enabled Ocean Sensor Systems Empowering Marine, Maritime and Fisheries Management) project is developing a new generation of in-situ sensors that make use of the SWE standards to facilitate the data publication process and the integration into Web based information infrastructures. This includes the development of a dedicated firmware for instruments and sensor platforms (SEISI, Smart Electronic Interface for Sensors and Instruments) maintained by the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC). Among other features, SEISI makes use of OGC SWE standards such OGC-PUCK, to enable a plug-and-play mechanism for sensors based on SensorML encoded metadata. Thus, if a new instrument is attached to a SEISI-based platform, it automatically configures the connection to these instruments, automatically generated data files compliant with the ISO/OGC Observations and Measurements standard and initiates the data transmission into the NeXOS Sensor Web infrastructure. Besides these platform-related developments, NeXOS has realised the full path of data transmission from the sensor to the end user application. The conceptual architecture design is implemented by a series of open source SWE software packages provided by 52°North. This comprises especially different SWE server components (i.e. OGC Sensor Observation Service), tools for data visualisation (e.g. the 52°North Helgoland SOS viewer), and an editor for providing SensorML-based metadata (52°North smle). As a result, NeXOS has demonstrated how the SWE standards help to improve marine observation data collection. Within this presentation, we will present the experiences and findings of the NeXOS project and will provide recommendation for future work directions.

Boverhof's App Earns Honorable Mention in Amazon's Web Services

Science.gov Websites

» Boverhof's App Earns Honorable Mention in Amazon's Web Services Competition News & Publications News Publications Facebook Google+ Twitter Boverhof's App Earns Honorable Mention in Amazon's Web Services by Amazon Web Services (AWS). Amazon officially announced the winners of its EC2 Spotathon on Monday

Biological Web Service Repositories Review

PubMed Central

Urdidiales‐Nieto, David; Navas‐Delgado, Ismael

2016-01-01

Abstract Web services play a key role in bioinformatics enabling the integration of database access and analysis of algorithms. However, Web service repositories do not usually publish information on the changes made to their registered Web services. Dynamism is directly related to the changes in the repositories (services registered or unregistered) and at service level (annotation changes). Thus, users, software clients or workflow based approaches lack enough relevant information to decide when they should review or re‐execute a Web service or workflow to get updated or improved results. The dynamism of the repository could be a measure for workflow developers to re‐check service availability and annotation changes in the services of interest to them. This paper presents a review on the most well‐known Web service repositories in the life sciences including an analysis of their dynamism. Freshness is introduced in this paper, and has been used as the measure for the dynamism of these repositories. PMID:27783459

PDBe: towards reusable data delivery infrastructure at protein data bank in Europe.

PubMed

Mir, Saqib; Alhroub, Younes; Anyango, Stephen; Armstrong, David R; Berrisford, John M; Clark, Alice R; Conroy, Matthew J; Dana, Jose M; Deshpande, Mandar; Gupta, Deepti; Gutmanas, Aleksandras; Haslam, Pauline; Mak, Lora; Mukhopadhyay, Abhik; Nadzirin, Nurul; Paysan-Lafosse, Typhaine; Sehnal, David; Sen, Sanchayita; Smart, Oliver S; Varadi, Mihaly; Kleywegt, Gerard J; Velankar, Sameer

2018-01-04

The Protein Data Bank in Europe (PDBe, pdbe.org) is actively engaged in the deposition, annotation, remediation, enrichment and dissemination of macromolecular structure data. This paper describes new developments and improvements at PDBe addressing three challenging areas: data enrichment, data dissemination and functional reusability. New features of the PDBe Web site are discussed, including a context dependent menu providing links to raw experimental data and improved presentation of structures solved by hybrid methods. The paper also summarizes the features of the LiteMol suite, which is a set of services enabling fast and interactive 3D visualization of structures, with associated experimental maps, annotations and quality assessment information. We introduce a library of Web components which can be easily reused to port data and functionality available at PDBe to other services. We also introduce updates to the SIFTS resource which maps PDB data to other bioinformatics resources, and the PDBe REST API. © The Author(s) 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Nucleic Acids Research.

patterns of doctor–patient interaction in online environment.

PubMed

Zummo, Marianna Lya

2015-01-01

This paper questions the nature of the communicative event that takes place in online contexts between doctors and web-users, showing computer-mediated linguistic norms and discussing the nature of the participants’ roles. Based on an analysis of 1005 posts occurring between doctors and the users of health service websites, I analyse how doctor–patient communication is affected by the medium and how health professionals overcome issues concerning the virtual medical visit. Results suggest that (a) online medical answers offer a different service from that expected by users, as doctors cannot always fulfill patient requests, and (b) net consultations use aspects of traditional doctor–patient exchange and yet present a language and a style that are affected by the computer-mediated environment. Additionally, it seems that this new form leads to a different model of doctor–patient relationship. The findings are intended to provide new insights into web-based discourse in doctor–patient communication and to demonstrate the emergence of a new style in medical communication.

Weather forecasting with open source software

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rautenhaus, Marc; Dörnbrack, Andreas

2013-04-01

To forecast the weather situation during aircraft-based atmospheric field campaigns, we employ a tool chain of existing and self-developed open source software tools and open standards. Of particular value are the Python programming language with its extension libraries NumPy, SciPy, PyQt4, Matplotlib and the basemap toolkit, the NetCDF standard with the Climate and Forecast (CF) Metadata conventions, and the Open Geospatial Consortium Web Map Service standard. These open source libraries and open standards helped to implement the "Mission Support System", a Web Map Service based tool to support weather forecasting and flight planning during field campaigns. The tool has been implemented in Python and has also been released as open source (Rautenhaus et al., Geosci. Model Dev., 5, 55-71, 2012). In this presentation we discuss the usage of free and open source software for weather forecasting in the context of research flight planning, and highlight how the field campaign work benefits from using open source tools and open standards.

Understanding social disparities in hypertension prevalence, awareness, treatment, and control: the role of neighborhood context.

PubMed

Morenoff, Jeffrey D; House, James S; Hansen, Ben B; Williams, David R; Kaplan, George A; Hunte, Haslyn E

2007-11-01

The spatial segregation of the US population by socioeconomic position and especially race/ethnicity suggests that the social contexts or "neighborhoods" in which people live may substantially contribute to social disparities in hypertension. The Chicago Community Adult Health Study did face-to-face interviews, including direct measurement of blood pressure, with a representative probability sample of adults in Chicago. These data were used to estimate socioeconomic and racial-ethnic disparities in the prevalence, awareness, treatment, and control of hypertension, and to analyze how these disparities are related to the areas in which people live. Hypertension was significantly negatively associated with neighborhood affluence/gentrification, and adjustments for context eliminated the highly significant disparity between blacks/African-Americans and whites, and reduced the significant educational disparity by 10-15% to borderline statistical significance. Awareness of hypertension was significantly higher in more disadvantaged neighborhoods and in places with higher concentrations of blacks (and lower concentrations of Hispanics and immigrants). Adjustment for context completely eliminated blacks' greater awareness, but slightly accentuated the lesser awareness of Hispanics and the greater levels of awareness among the less educated. There was no consistent evidence of either social disparities in or contextual associations with treatment of hypertension, given awareness. Among those on medication, blacks were only 40-50% as likely as whites to have their hypertension controlled, but context played little or no role in either the level of or disparities in control of hypertension. In sum, residential contexts potentially play a large role in accounting for racial/ethnic and, to a lesser degree, socioeconomic disparities in hypertension prevalence and, in a different way, awareness, but not in treatment or control of diagnosed hypertension.

Understanding Social Disparities in Hypertension Prevalence, Awareness, Treatment, and Control: The Role of Neighborhood Context

PubMed Central

House, James S; Hansen, Ben B; Williams, David R; Kaplan, George A; Hunte, Haslyn E

2007-01-01

The spatial segregation of the U.S. population by socioeconomic position and especially race-ethnicity suggests that the social contexts or “neighborhoods” in which people live may substantially contribute to social disparities in hypertension. The Chicago Community Adult Health Study did face-to-face interviews, including direct measurement of blood pressure, with a representative probability sample of adults in Chicago. These data were used to estimate socioeconomic and racial-ethnic disparities in the prevalence, awareness, treatment, and control of hypertension, and to analyze how these disparities are related to the areas in which people live. Hypertension was significantly negatively associated with neighborhood affluence/gentrification, and adjustments for context eliminated the highly significant disparity between blacks/African-Americans and whites, and reduced the significant educational disparity by 10–15% to borderline statistical significance. Awareness of hypertension was significantly higher in more disadvantaged neighborhoods and in places with higher concentrations of blacks (and lower concentrations of Hispanics and immigrants). Adjustment for context completely eliminated blacks’ greater awareness, but slightly accentuated the lesser awareness of Hispanics and the greater levels of awareness among the less educated. There was no consistent evidence of either social disparities in or contextual associations with treatment of hypertension, given awareness. Among those on medication, blacks were only 40–50% as likely as whites to have their hypertension controlled, but context played little or no role in either the level of or disparities in control of hypertension. In sum, residential contexts potentially play a large role in accounting for racial-ethnic, and to a lesser degree, socioeconomic disparities in hypertension prevalence and, in a different way, awareness, but not in treatment or control of diagnosed hypertension. PMID:17640788

Facilitating values awareness through the education of health professionals: Can web based decision making technology help?

PubMed

Godbold, Rosemary; Lees, Amanda

2016-03-01

Recent events in the health care landscape have focused nursing's collective mind on the role of values in health care delivery. For example, in England, the government has issued a mandate to health educators that places primacy on developing a workforce who prioritise and implement the core values of the National Health Service. In the current environment in which 'values' have become common currency, this paper begins by asking what values are, arguing for greater understanding and recognition of their intrinsic role in driving decisions. It then reports on research carried out in New Zealand exploring the potential of the Values Exchange web based educational technology to promote and facilitate a values aware health workforce. Qualitative thematic analysis from a cohort of pre-registration health professionals revealed new understandings about values through the facilitation of deeper, multi-layered thinking. The unique online space provided a safe pre-registration environment for deliberating complex cases, with students readily identifying advantages for future practice and patients. For lasting and meaningful change to occur, a fundamental shift is required in our understanding of values and how they ultimately impact on the way we individually and collectively deliver care to our patients. The Values Exchange may offer a contemporary and timely vehicle for achieving these goals. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Teaching E-Commerce Web Page Evaluation and Design: A Pilot Study Using Tourism Destination Sites

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Susser, Bernard; Ariga, Taeko

2006-01-01

This study explores a teaching method for improving business students' skills in e-commerce page evaluation and making Web design majors aware of business content issues through cooperative learning. Two groups of female students at a Japanese university studying either tourism or Web page design were assigned tasks that required cooperation to…

Web Enhanced Learning and Student Awareness of Strategy Use.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Crozier, Jane

This study continues the research into Web-based learning by examining a mid-level Web-based learning environment as a support for an informal learning experience. The informal learning situation was a group of undergraduate students that were Fellows in the Honors program and who served as the selection committee for the finalists of a global…

Enhancing the AliEn Web Service Authentication

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhu, Jianlin; Saiz, Pablo; Carminati, Federico; Betev, Latchezar; Zhou, Daicui; Mendez Lorenzo, Patricia; Grigoras, Alina Gabriela; Grigoras, Costin; Furano, Fabrizio; Schreiner, Steffen; Vladimirovna Datskova, Olga; Sankar Banerjee, Subho; Zhang, Guoping

2011-12-01

Web Services are an XML based technology that allow applications to communicate with each other across disparate systems. Web Services are becoming the de facto standard that enable inter operability between heterogeneous processes and systems. AliEn2 is a grid environment based on web services. The AliEn2 services can be divided in three categories: Central services, deployed once per organization; Site services, deployed on each of the participating centers; Job Agents running on the worker nodes automatically. A security model to protect these services is essential for the whole system. Current implementations of web server, such as Apache, are not suitable to be used within the grid environment. Apache with the mod_ssl and OpenSSL only supports the X.509 certificates. But in the grid environment, the common credential is the proxy certificate for the purpose of providing restricted proxy and delegation. An Authentication framework was taken for AliEn2 web services to add the ability to accept X.509 certificates and proxy certificates from client-side to Apache Web Server. The authentication framework could also allow the generation of access control policies to limit access to the AliEn2 web services.

Wired Widgets: Agile Visualization for Space Situational Awareness

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gerschefske, K.; Witmer, J.

2012-09-01

Continued advancement in sensors and analysis techniques have resulted in a wealth of Space Situational Awareness (SSA) data, made available via tools and Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) such as those in the Joint Space Operations Center Mission Systems (JMS) environment. Current visualization software cannot quickly adapt to rapidly changing missions and data, preventing operators and analysts from performing their jobs effectively. The value of this wealth of SSA data is not fully realized, as the operators' existing software is not built with the flexibility to consume new or changing sources of data or to rapidly customize their visualization as the mission evolves. While tools like the JMS user-defined operational picture (UDOP) have begun to fill this gap, this paper presents a further evolution, leveraging Web 2.0 technologies for maximum agility. We demonstrate a flexible Web widget framework with inter-widget data sharing, publish-subscribe eventing, and an API providing the basis for consumption of new data sources and adaptable visualization. Wired Widgets offers cross-portal widgets along with a widget communication framework and development toolkit for rapid new widget development, giving operators the ability to answer relevant questions as the mission evolves. Wired Widgets has been applied in a number of dynamic mission domains including disaster response, combat operations, and noncombatant evacuation scenarios. The variety of applications demonstrate that Wired Widgets provides a flexible, data driven solution for visualization in changing environments. In this paper, we show how, deployed in the Ozone Widget Framework portal environment, Wired Widgets can provide an agile, web-based visualization to support the SSA mission. Furthermore, we discuss how the tenets of agile visualization can generally be applied to the SSA problem space to provide operators flexibility, potentially informing future acquisition and system development.

The efficacy of online communication platforms for plastic surgeons providing extended disaster relief.

PubMed

Fan, Kenneth L; Avashia, Yash J; Dayicioglu, Deniz; DeGennaro, Vincent A; Thaller, Seth R

2014-04-01

Immediately after the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, plastic surgeons provided disaster relief services through the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine for 5 months. To improve surgical care and promote awareness of plastic surgery's role in humanitarian assistance, an online communication platform (OCP) was initiated. An OCP is a Web-based application combining Web blogging, picture uploading, news posting, and private messaging systems into a single platform. The purpose of this study was to analyze the use of OCP during disaster relief. Surgeries performed during the period from January 13 to May 28, 2010, were documented. The OCP was established with 4 priorities: ease of use, multimedia integration, organization capabilities, and security. Web traffic was documented. A 17-question survey was administered to 18 plastic surgeons who used the OCP after 1 year to assess their attitudes and perceptions. From January 13 to May 28, 2010, 413 operations were performed at the field hospital. Of the overall number of procedures, 46.9% were performed by plastic surgery teams. In a year, beginning from January 12, 2011, the OCP had 1117 visits with 530 absolute unique visitors. Of 17 plastic surgeons, 71% responded that the OCP improved follow-up and continuity of care by debriefing rotating plastic surgery teams. One hundred percent claimed that the OCP conveyed the role of plastic surgeons with the public. Results demonstrate the necessity of OCP during disaster relief. Online communication platform permitted secure exchange of surgical management details, follow-up, photos, and miscellaneous necessary recommendations. Posted experiences and field hospital progress assisted in generating substantial awareness regarding the significant role and contribution played by plastic surgeons in disaster relief.

The impact of web services at the IRIS DMC

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Weekly, R. T.; Trabant, C. M.; Ahern, T. K.; Stults, M.; Suleiman, Y. Y.; Van Fossen, M.; Weertman, B.

2015-12-01

The IRIS Data Management Center (DMC) has served the seismological community for nearly 25 years. In that time we have offered data and information from our archive using a variety of mechanisms ranging from email-based to desktop applications to web applications and web services. Of these, web services have quickly become the primary method for data extraction at the DMC. In 2011, the first full year of operation, web services accounted for over 40% of the data shipped from the DMC. In 2014, over ~450 TB of data was delivered directly to users through web services, representing nearly 70% of all shipments from the DMC that year. In addition to handling requests directly from users, the DMC switched all data extraction methods to use web services in 2014. On average the DMC now handles between 10 and 20 million requests per day submitted to web service interfaces. The rapid adoption of web services is attributed to the many advantages they bring. For users, they provide on-demand data using an interface technology, HTTP, that is widely supported in nearly every computing environment and language. These characteristics, combined with human-readable documentation and existing tools make integration of data access into existing workflows relatively easy. For the DMC, the web services provide an abstraction layer to internal repositories allowing for concentrated optimization of extraction workflow and easier evolution of those repositories. Lending further support to DMC's push in this direction, the core web services for station metadata, timeseries data and event parameters were adopted as standards by the International Federation of Digital Seismograph Networks (FDSN). We expect to continue enhancing existing services and building new capabilities for this platform. For example, the DMC has created a federation system and tools allowing researchers to discover and collect seismic data from data centers running the FDSN-standardized services. A future capability will leverage the DMC's MUSTANG project to select data based on data quality measurements. Within five years, the DMC's web services have proven to be a robust and flexible platform that enables continued growth for the DMC. We expect continued enhancements and adoption of web services.

Concept of a spatial data infrastructure for web-mapping, processing and service provision for geo-hazards

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Weinke, Elisabeth; Hölbling, Daniel; Albrecht, Florian; Friedl, Barbara

2017-04-01

Geo-hazards and their effects are distributed geographically over wide regions. The effective mapping and monitoring is essential for hazard assessment and mitigation. It is often best achieved using satellite imagery and new object-based image analysis approaches to identify and delineate geo-hazard objects (landslides, floods, forest fires, storm damages, etc.). At the moment, several local/national databases and platforms provide and publish data of different types of geo-hazards as well as web-based risk maps and decision support systems. Also, the European commission implemented the Copernicus Emergency Management Service (EMS) in 2015 that publishes information about natural and man-made disasters and risks. Currently, no platform for landslides or geo-hazards as such exists that enables the integration of the user in the mapping and monitoring process. In this study we introduce the concept of a spatial data infrastructure for object delineation, web-processing and service provision of landslide information with the focus on user interaction in all processes. A first prototype for the processing and mapping of landslides in Austria and Italy has been developed within the project Land@Slide, funded by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency FFG in the Austrian Space Applications Program ASAP. The spatial data infrastructure and its services for the mapping, processing and analysis of landslides can be extended to other regions and to all types of geo-hazards for analysis and delineation based on Earth Observation (EO) data. The architecture of the first prototypical spatial data infrastructure includes four main areas of technical components. The data tier consists of a file storage system and the spatial data catalogue for the management of EO-data, other geospatial data on geo-hazards, as well as descriptions and protocols for the data processing and analysis. An interface to extend the data integration from external sources (e.g. Sentinel-2 data) is planned for the possibility of rapid mapping. The server tier consists of java based web and GIS server. Sub and main services are part of the service tier. Sub services are for example map services, feature editing services, geometry services, geoprocessing services and metadata services. For (meta)data provision and to support data interoperability, web standards of the OGC and the rest-interface is used. Four central main services are designed and developed: (1) a mapping service (including image segmentation and classification approaches), (2) a monitoring service to monitor changes over time, (3) a validation service to analyze landslide delineations from different sources and (4) an infrastructure service to identify affected landslides. The main services use and combine parts of the sub services. Furthermore, a series of client applications based on new technology standards making use of the data and services offered by the spatial data infrastructure. Next steps include the design to extend the current spatial data infrastructure to other areas and geo-hazard types to develop a spatial data infrastructure that can assist targeted mapping and monitoring of geo-hazards on a global context.

Web service discovery among large service pools utilising semantic similarity and clustering

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chen, Fuzan; Li, Minqiang; Wu, Harris; Xie, Lingli

2017-03-01

With the rapid development of electronic business, Web services have attracted much attention in recent years. Enterprises can combine individual Web services to provide new value-added services. An emerging challenge is the timely discovery of close matches to service requests among large service pools. In this study, we first define a new semantic similarity measure combining functional similarity and process similarity. We then present a service discovery mechanism that utilises the new semantic similarity measure for service matching. All the published Web services are pre-grouped into functional clusters prior to the matching process. For a user's service request, the discovery mechanism first identifies matching services clusters and then identifies the best matching Web services within these matching clusters. Experimental results show that the proposed semantic discovery mechanism performs better than a conventional lexical similarity-based mechanism.

A verification strategy for web services composition using enhanced stacked automata model.

PubMed

Nagamouttou, Danapaquiame; Egambaram, Ilavarasan; Krishnan, Muthumanickam; Narasingam, Poonkuzhali

2015-01-01

Currently, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is becoming the most popular software architecture of contemporary enterprise applications, and one crucial technique of its implementation is web services. Individual service offered by some service providers may symbolize limited business functionality; however, by composing individual services from different service providers, a composite service describing the intact business process of an enterprise can be made. Many new standards have been defined to decipher web service composition problem namely Business Process Execution Language (BPEL). BPEL provides an initial work for forming an Extended Markup Language (XML) specification language for defining and implementing business practice workflows for web services. The problems with most realistic approaches to service composition are the verification of composed web services. It has to depend on formal verification method to ensure the correctness of composed services. A few research works has been carried out in the literature survey for verification of web services for deterministic system. Moreover the existing models did not address the verification properties like dead transition, deadlock, reachability and safetyness. In this paper, a new model to verify the composed web services using Enhanced Stacked Automata Model (ESAM) has been proposed. The correctness properties of the non-deterministic system have been evaluated based on the properties like dead transition, deadlock, safetyness, liveness and reachability. Initially web services are composed using Business Process Execution Language for Web Service (BPEL4WS) and it is converted into ESAM (combination of Muller Automata (MA) and Push Down Automata (PDA)) and it is transformed into Promela language, an input language for Simple ProMeLa Interpreter (SPIN) tool. The model is verified using SPIN tool and the results revealed better recital in terms of finding dead transition and deadlock in contrast to the existing models.

Educating Managers with Tomorrow's Technologies. Research in Management Education and Development Series.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wankel, Charles, Ed.; DeFillippi, Robert, Ed.

This volume demonstrates how technology is impacting management education and learning in a variety of educational contexts. Some of the issues and trends in management education addressed include: technotrends; web-based management learning; the changing nature of the web as a context for learning; online simulations; web-format case studies;…

Access and completion of a Web-based treatment in a population-based sample of tornado-affected adolescents.

PubMed

Price, Matthew; Yuen, Erica K; Davidson, Tatiana M; Hubel, Grace; Ruggiero, Kenneth J

2015-08-01

Although Web-based treatments have significant potential to assess and treat difficult-to-reach populations, such as trauma-exposed adolescents, the extent that such treatments are accessed and used is unclear. The present study evaluated the proportion of adolescents who accessed and completed a Web-based treatment for postdisaster mental health symptoms. Correlates of access and completion were examined. A sample of 2,000 adolescents living in tornado-affected communities was assessed via structured telephone interview and invited to a Web-based treatment. The modular treatment addressed symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, and alcohol and tobacco use. Participants were randomized to experimental or control conditions after accessing the site. Overall access for the intervention was 35.8%. Module completion for those who accessed ranged from 52.8% to 85.6%. Adolescents with parents who used the Internet to obtain health-related information were more likely to access the treatment. Adolescent males were less likely to access the treatment. Future work is needed to identify strategies to further increase the reach of Web-based treatments to provide clinical services in a postdisaster context. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Access and Completion of a Web-Based Treatment in a Population-Based Sample of Tornado-Affected Adolescents

PubMed Central

Price, Matthew; Yuen, Erica; Davidson, Tatiana M.; Hubel, Grace; Ruggiero, Kenneth J.

2015-01-01

Although web-based treatments have significant potential to assess and treat difficult to reach populations, such as trauma-exposed adolescents, the extent that such treatments are accessed and used is unclear. The present study evaluated the proportion of adolescents who accessed and completed a web-based treatment for post-disaster mental health symptoms. Correlates of access and completion were examined. A sample of 2,000 adolescents living in tornado-affected communities was assessed via structured telephone interview and invited to a web-based treatment. The modular treatment addressed symptoms of PTSD, depression, and alcohol and tobacco use. Participants were randomized to experimental or control conditions after accessing the site. Overall access for the intervention was 35.8%. Module completion for those who accessed ranged from 52.8% to 85.6%. Adolescents with parents who used the Internet to obtain health-related information were more likely to access the treatment. Adolescent males were less likely to access the treatment. Future work is needed to identify strategies to further increase the reach of web-based treatments to provide clinical services in a post-disaster context. PMID:25622071

SSSA Outreach: Dig It: The Secrets of Soil, Public Service Announcements, and Science Policy Efforts

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Pierzynski, Gary M.; Megonigal, Patrick; Glasener, Karl; Bergfeld, Ellen; Brevik, Eric

2013-04-01

The Soil Science Society of America has invested heavily in two significant outreach efforts to help raise awareness of the soil resource among the general public and with elected officials and relevant federal agencies in Washington DC. Dig It: The Secrets of Soil began as an exhibit at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and ran from July 2008 through January 2010. The exhibit was rich in the use of audio-visual elements and contained a collection of the state soils from all 50 states and numerous interactive displays for all ages. Variations of the exhibit have been on display at three locations outside of Washington DC with the current location being the Bell Museum of Natural History in Minneapolis. The exhibit has been extremely successful in elevating awareness of soils to audiences with little preconceived knowledge on the subject. The success of the Dig It exhibit encouraged SSSA to further invest in three public service announcements that have been widely distributed with 570 downloads and >17,000 views (in English and Spanish) on YouTube and the I "Heart" Soil web site. In addition, I "Heart" Soil stickers were developed and >50,000 have been requested and distributed. Our Science Policy Office has recently been expanded based on evidence of positive impact in Washington DC. The formation of the Congressional Soils Caucus has increased awareness of soils within the House of Representatives and is being expanded to the Senate. A new Urban Lands Coalition has been developed that will greatly expand awareness of the value of soils in urban environments, particularly for elected officials. The Science Policy office organizes member visits with elected officials to advocate for science funding, agency visits to promote awareness of the discipline among a wide ranging of funding sources for research, has had substantial impact on a number of high profile reports, and works closely with allied scientific and professional organizations with common interests.

Boundary Crossing during Pre-service Teacher Training: empowering or hampering professional growth?

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Harrison, Christine

2017-10-01

Yuli Rahmawati's paper presents an auto-ethnographic inquiry into her lived experiences as a science teacher in different countries. Through her reflections and analysis of events, Yuli captures and builds a model of her identity and explores the influence of inter- and intra-cultural perspectives in shaping how she recognizes herself and brings meaning to her professional life. Yuli's insights and explanations of teaching within different cultural contexts highlight the importance of personally relevant and meaningful knowledge, where expectations and accepted norms, that might fit well within one community, may be seen quite differently in another. While for Yuli, this led to professional growth as she inquired and made sense of her new context, my concern is that the social and cultural change could, in some instances, lead to disengagement rather than professional growth. My concern is that the conflict that arises from boundary crossing may be experienced even stronger by inexperienced professionals, such as pre-service teachers. The learning trajectory of pre-service teachers is steep; they need to gain stronger knowledge of curriculum and pedagogy and an awareness of how their students learn. They also need to build confidence in their professional self and what they can do to support and trigger student learning. For this to happen, in the tight time frames available on teacher education courses, pre-service teachers need to understand and engage with the new community that they are placed in very quickly, to make sense of both their role and that of others within the community. This paper suggests that pre-service providers should carefully consider the learning opportunities offered by school contexts, that may vary dramatically from the social and cultural contexts experienced by their teachers as part of their own education, to prevent disengagement or misunderstanding hampering professional growth.

Learning from diverse contexts: equity and inclusion in the responses to AIDS.

PubMed

Loewenson, R

2007-01-01

This paper situates the findings of the diverse studies reported in this journal supplement in a global context that both fuels the epidemic through inequality and poverty and also provides new opportunities for global commitments, solidarity and resources. The studies in this issue signal that, while information and awareness about HIV and AIDS is now high, there is still poor access to services for people to know their own risk and a deeper need to address the asymmetries of power and access to resources that influence the control people have over their sexual relationships and lives. The studies in this supplement describe, in very different contexts, responses to the impact of AIDS that are grounded within the actions of individuals, households and extended families, against a background of existing disadvantage in assets, endowment and access to state and private sector resources. Community networks reduce social isolation and provide solidarity to households struggling to respond to AIDS. The extra work involved is often done by women, particularly where the weakening of the state has left communities disadvantaged. The paper argues that connections across communities to support survival need vertical links to national and global resources, services and markets to support, sustain and transform lives. The studies demonstrate the positive effect of this through primary healthcare systems, non-government organisation support and the social movements of people living with HIV and AIDS. If the first wave of the global response to AIDS built awareness and an emergency response to prevention, treatment and care, there is now need for a 'second wave' that provides strong measures to connect communities to social, national and global resources. Elements of this 'second wave' include people's--especially women and young people's--access to services to know their individual risk, measures that enhance their autonomy and the need for a massive increase in investment in and access to decent work.

QoS measurement of workflow-based web service compositions using Colored Petri net.

PubMed

Nematzadeh, Hossein; Motameni, Homayun; Mohamad, Radziah; Nematzadeh, Zahra

2014-01-01

Workflow-based web service compositions (WB-WSCs) is one of the main composition categories in service oriented architecture (SOA). Eflow, polymorphic process model (PPM), and business process execution language (BPEL) are the main techniques of the category of WB-WSCs. Due to maturity of web services, measuring the quality of composite web services being developed by different techniques becomes one of the most important challenges in today's web environments. Business should try to provide good quality regarding the customers' requirements to a composed web service. Thus, quality of service (QoS) which refers to nonfunctional parameters is important to be measured since the quality degree of a certain web service composition could be achieved. This paper tried to find a deterministic analytical method for dependability and performance measurement using Colored Petri net (CPN) with explicit routing constructs and application of theory of probability. A computer tool called WSET was also developed for modeling and supporting QoS measurement through simulation.

Using a Context-aware Medical Application to Address Information Needs for Extubation Decisions

PubMed Central

Zhu, Xinxin; Lord, William

2005-01-01

Information overload has been one of the causes of preventable medical errors [1] and escalating costs [2]. A context-aware application with embedded clinical knowledge is proposed to provide practitioners with the appropriate amount of information and content. We developed a prototype of a context-aware medical application to address clinicians’ information needs that arise in a data-intensive unit, the Cardio-Thoracic Intensive Care Unit (CTICU). A major clinical decision supported by the prototype, the extubation decision, is illustrated. PMID:16779455

Research on dynamic performance design of mobile phone application based on context awareness

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bo, Zhang

2018-05-01

It aims to explore the dynamic performance of different mobile phone applications and the user's cognitive differences, reduce the cognitive burden, and enhance the sense of experience. By analyzing the dynamic design performance in four different interactive contexts, and constructing the framework of information service process in the interactive context perception and the two perception principles of the cognitive consensus between designer and user, and the two kinds of knowledge in accordance with the perception principles. The analysis of the context will help users sense the dynamic performance more intuitively, so that the details of interaction will be performed more vividly and smoothly, thus enhance user's experience in the interactive process. The common perception experience enables designers and users to produce emotional resonance in different interactive contexts, and help them achieve rapid understanding of interactive content and perceive the logic and hierarchy of the content and the structure, therefore the effectiveness of mobile applications will be improved.

Enhancing UCSF Chimera through web services.

PubMed

Huang, Conrad C; Meng, Elaine C; Morris, John H; Pettersen, Eric F; Ferrin, Thomas E

2014-07-01

Integrating access to web services with desktop applications allows for an expanded set of application features, including performing computationally intensive tasks and convenient searches of databases. We describe how we have enhanced UCSF Chimera (http://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimera/), a program for the interactive visualization and analysis of molecular structures and related data, through the addition of several web services (http://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/webservices.html). By streamlining access to web services, including the entire job submission, monitoring and retrieval process, Chimera makes it simpler for users to focus on their science projects rather than data manipulation. Chimera uses Opal, a toolkit for wrapping scientific applications as web services, to provide scalable and transparent access to several popular software packages. We illustrate Chimera's use of web services with an example workflow that interleaves use of these services with interactive manipulation of molecular sequences and structures, and we provide an example Python program to demonstrate how easily Opal-based web services can be accessed from within an application. Web server availability: http://webservices.rbvi.ucsf.edu/opal2/dashboard?command=serviceList. © The Author(s) 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Nucleic Acids Research.

A Knowledge-Based Approach to Retrieving Teaching Materials for Context-Aware Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shih, Wen-Chung; Tseng, Shian-Shyong

2009-01-01

With the rapid development of wireless communication and sensor technologies, ubiquitous learning has become a promising solution to educational problems. In context-aware ubiquitous learning environments, it is required that learning content is retrieved according to environmental contexts, such as learners' location. Also, a learning content…

Security and Dependability Solutions for Networks and Devices

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gücrgens, Sigrid; Fuchs, Andreas

In this chapter we give an overview over the denotation of the SERENITY artefacts S&D Classes, Patterns and Implementations in the context of networks and devices. In order to demonstrate their necessity we sketch an example for confidential and authentic communication and storage that utilizes a trusted platform module, and model the relevant pattern. We then dissociate solutions for network and device related S&D requirements from those targeting the context of organizational or workflow and web services based solutions. Then we give a summary of the broad field of application for network and device solutions. Finally we clarify the meaning and interaction between classes, patterns and implementations by giving some concrete examples.

MAppERS experience: natural processes and preparedness in the societal context

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Frigerio, Simone; Schenato, Luca; Bossi, Giulia; Mantovani, Matteo; Marcato, Gianluca; Pasuto, Alessandro

2016-04-01

Within natural processes responsibilities from central authorities to local levels as first actors of civil protection is a changing pattern. Prevention and preparedness in natural hazards are long-term goals based on capacities of professional volunteers, and improving the awareness of the citizens as local inhabitants. Local people have impacts on their lives but training and involvement towards specific techniques change their role within risk communication and emergency preparedness. A collaborative user environment is useful for emergency response and support in the wake of disasters, feeding updated information on the ground directly to on-site responders. MAppERS (Mobile Application for Emergency Response and Support) is a funded project (2013-2015 Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection, ECHO A5) based on human role as "crowd-sourced mappers" through smart phone application able to share GPS-localised and detailed parameters. The feedback from testing and the training courses aim to raising public awareness and participation in a networked disaster response. The project implies design and test of smart phone linked with a real-time dashboard platform for rescue services citizens and volunteers of civil protection. Two pilot sites, including trainings on modules functioning control usability and quality of the product. The synchronized platform offers the activity of cloud data collection with a central data dashboard. Information is collected in a context of floods processes, with crowdsourcing action from local population, for proper awareness with own personal flood plan and long-term preparedness. A second context tested pre-emergency actions on field with rescue team, collecting state-of-art and condition of hazards.

User Needs of Digital Service Web Portals: A Case Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Heo, Misook; Song, Jung-Sook; Seol, Moon-Won

2013-01-01

The authors examined the needs of digital information service web portal users. More specifically, the needs of Korean cultural portal users were examined as a case study. The conceptual framework of a web-based portal is that it is a complex, web-based service application with characteristics of information systems and service agents. In…

Evaluation of a multi-pronged intervention to improve access to safe abortion care in two districts in Jharkhand

PubMed Central

2014-01-01

Background Despite the adoption of the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act in 1972, access to safe abortion services remains limited in India. Awareness of the legality of abortion also remains low, leading many women to seek services outside the health system. Medical abortion (MA) is an option that has the potential to expand access to safe abortion services. A multi-pronged intervention covering a population of 161,000 in 253 villages in the Silli and Khunti blocks of Jharkhand was conducted between 2007 and 2009, seeking to improve medical abortion services and create awareness at the community level by providing information through community intermediaries and creating an enabling environment through a behavior change communication campaign. The study evaluates the changes in knowledge about abortion-related issues, changes in abortion care-seeking, and service utilization as a result of this intervention. Methods A baseline cross-sectional survey was conducted pre-intervention (n = 1,253) followed by an endline survey (n = 1,290) one year after the completion of the intervention phase. In addition, monitoring data from intervention facilities was collected monthly over the study period. Results Nearly 85% of respondents reported being exposed to safe abortion messaging as a result of the intervention. Awareness of the legality of abortion increased significantly from 19.7% to 57.6% for women, as did awareness of the specific conditions for which abortion is allowed. Results were similar for men. There was also a significant increase in the proportion of men and women who knew of a legal and safe provider and place from where abortion services could be obtained. Multivariate analysis showed positive associations between exposure to any component of the intervention and increased knowledge about legality and gestational age limits, however only interpersonal communication was associated with a significant increase in knowledge of where to obtain safe services (OR 4.8, SE 0.67). Utilization of safe abortion services, and in particular MA, increased at all intervention sites over the duration of the intervention with a shift towards women seeking care earlier in pregnancy. Conclusion The evaluation demonstrates the success of the intervention and its potential for replication in similar contexts within India. PMID:24886273

Evaluation of a multi-pronged intervention to improve access to safe abortion care in two districts in Jharkhand.

PubMed

Banerjee, Sushanta K; Andersen, Kathryn L; Baird, Traci L; Ganatra, Bela; Batra, Sangeeta; Warvadekar, Janardan

2014-05-21

Despite the adoption of the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act in 1972, access to safe abortion services remains limited in India. Awareness of the legality of abortion also remains low, leading many women to seek services outside the health system. Medical abortion (MA) is an option that has the potential to expand access to safe abortion services. A multi-pronged intervention covering a population of 161,000 in 253 villages in the Silli and Khunti blocks of Jharkhand was conducted between 2007 and 2009, seeking to improve medical abortion services and create awareness at the community level by providing information through community intermediaries and creating an enabling environment through a behavior change communication campaign. The study evaluates the changes in knowledge about abortion-related issues, changes in abortion care-seeking, and service utilization as a result of this intervention. A baseline cross-sectional survey was conducted pre-intervention (n = 1,253) followed by an endline survey (n = 1,290) one year after the completion of the intervention phase. In addition, monitoring data from intervention facilities was collected monthly over the study period. Nearly 85% of respondents reported being exposed to safe abortion messaging as a result of the intervention. Awareness of the legality of abortion increased significantly from 19.7% to 57.6% for women, as did awareness of the specific conditions for which abortion is allowed. Results were similar for men. There was also a significant increase in the proportion of men and women who knew of a legal and safe provider and place from where abortion services could be obtained. Multivariate analysis showed positive associations between exposure to any component of the intervention and increased knowledge about legality and gestational age limits, however only interpersonal communication was associated with a significant increase in knowledge of where to obtain safe services (OR 4.8, SE 0.67). Utilization of safe abortion services, and in particular MA, increased at all intervention sites over the duration of the intervention with a shift towards women seeking care earlier in pregnancy. The evaluation demonstrates the success of the intervention and its potential for replication in similar contexts within India.

A snapshot of 3649 Web-based services published between 1994 and 2017 shows a decrease in availability after 2 years.

PubMed

Osz, Ágnes; Pongor, Lorinc Sándor; Szirmai, Danuta; Gyorffy, Balázs

2017-12-08

The long-term availability of online Web services is of utmost importance to ensure reproducibility of analytical results. However, because of lack of maintenance following acceptance, many servers become unavailable after a short period of time. Our aim was to monitor the accessibility and the decay rate of published Web services as well as to determine the factors underlying trends changes. We searched PubMed to identify publications containing Web server-related terms published between 1994 and 2017. Automatic and manual screening was used to check the status of each Web service. Kruskall-Wallis, Mann-Whitney and Chi-square tests were used to evaluate various parameters, including availability, accessibility, platform, origin of authors, citation, journal impact factor and publication year. We identified 3649 publications in 375 journals of which 2522 (69%) were currently active. Over 95% of sites were running in the first 2 years, but this rate dropped to 84% in the third year and gradually sank afterwards (P < 1e-16). The mean half-life of Web services is 10.39 years. Working Web services were published in journals with higher impact factors (P = 4.8e-04). Services published before the year 2000 received minimal attention. The citation of offline services was less than for those online (P = 0.022). The majority of Web services provide analytical tools, and the proportion of databases is slowly decreasing. Conclusions. Almost one-third of Web services published to date went out of service. We recommend continued support of Web-based services to increase the reproducibility of published results. © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press.

Analysis Tool Web Services from the EMBL-EBI.

PubMed

McWilliam, Hamish; Li, Weizhong; Uludag, Mahmut; Squizzato, Silvano; Park, Young Mi; Buso, Nicola; Cowley, Andrew Peter; Lopez, Rodrigo

2013-07-01

Since 2004 the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) has provided access to a wide range of databases and analysis tools via Web Services interfaces. This comprises services to search across the databases available from the EMBL-EBI and to explore the network of cross-references present in the data (e.g. EB-eye), services to retrieve entry data in various data formats and to access the data in specific fields (e.g. dbfetch), and analysis tool services, for example, sequence similarity search (e.g. FASTA and NCBI BLAST), multiple sequence alignment (e.g. Clustal Omega and MUSCLE), pairwise sequence alignment and protein functional analysis (e.g. InterProScan and Phobius). The REST/SOAP Web Services (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/Tools/webservices/) interfaces to these databases and tools allow their integration into other tools, applications, web sites, pipeline processes and analytical workflows. To get users started using the Web Services, sample clients are provided covering a range of programming languages and popular Web Service tool kits, and a brief guide to Web Services technologies, including a set of tutorials, is available for those wishing to learn more and develop their own clients. Users of the Web Services are informed of improvements and updates via a range of methods.

Analysis Tool Web Services from the EMBL-EBI

PubMed Central

McWilliam, Hamish; Li, Weizhong; Uludag, Mahmut; Squizzato, Silvano; Park, Young Mi; Buso, Nicola; Cowley, Andrew Peter; Lopez, Rodrigo

2013-01-01

Since 2004 the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) has provided access to a wide range of databases and analysis tools via Web Services interfaces. This comprises services to search across the databases available from the EMBL-EBI and to explore the network of cross-references present in the data (e.g. EB-eye), services to retrieve entry data in various data formats and to access the data in specific fields (e.g. dbfetch), and analysis tool services, for example, sequence similarity search (e.g. FASTA and NCBI BLAST), multiple sequence alignment (e.g. Clustal Omega and MUSCLE), pairwise sequence alignment and protein functional analysis (e.g. InterProScan and Phobius). The REST/SOAP Web Services (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/Tools/webservices/) interfaces to these databases and tools allow their integration into other tools, applications, web sites, pipeline processes and analytical workflows. To get users started using the Web Services, sample clients are provided covering a range of programming languages and popular Web Service tool kits, and a brief guide to Web Services technologies, including a set of tutorials, is available for those wishing to learn more and develop their own clients. Users of the Web Services are informed of improvements and updates via a range of methods. PMID:23671338

Information Retrieval for Education: Making Search Engines Language Aware

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ott, Niels; Meurers, Detmar

2010-01-01

Search engines have been a major factor in making the web the successful and widely used information source it is today. Generally speaking, they make it possible to retrieve web pages on a topic specified by the keywords entered by the user. Yet web searching currently does not take into account which of the search results are comprehensible for…

Biological Web Service Repositories Review.

PubMed

Urdidiales-Nieto, David; Navas-Delgado, Ismael; Aldana-Montes, José F

2017-05-01

Web services play a key role in bioinformatics enabling the integration of database access and analysis of algorithms. However, Web service repositories do not usually publish information on the changes made to their registered Web services. Dynamism is directly related to the changes in the repositories (services registered or unregistered) and at service level (annotation changes). Thus, users, software clients or workflow based approaches lack enough relevant information to decide when they should review or re-execute a Web service or workflow to get updated or improved results. The dynamism of the repository could be a measure for workflow developers to re-check service availability and annotation changes in the services of interest to them. This paper presents a review on the most well-known Web service repositories in the life sciences including an analysis of their dynamism. Freshness is introduced in this paper, and has been used as the measure for the dynamism of these repositories. © 2017 The Authors. Published by Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

The value of Web-based library services at Cedars-Sinai Health System.

PubMed

Halub, L P

1999-07-01

Cedars-Sinai Medical Library/Information Center has maintained Web-based services since 1995 on the Cedars-Sinai Health System network. In that time, the librarians have found the provision of Web-based services to be a very worthwhile endeavor. Library users value the services that they access from their desktops because the services save time. They also appreciate being able to access services at their convenience, without restriction by the library's hours of operation. The library values its Web site because it brings increased visibility within the health system, and it enables library staff to expand services when budget restrictions have forced reduced hours of operation. In creating and maintaining the information center Web site, the librarians have learned the following lessons: consider the design carefully; offer what services you can, but weigh the advantages of providing the services against the time required to maintain them; make the content as accessible as possible; promote your Web site; and make friends in other departments, especially information services.

The value of Web-based library services at Cedars-Sinai Health System.

PubMed Central

Halub, L P

1999-01-01

Cedars-Sinai Medical Library/Information Center has maintained Web-based services since 1995 on the Cedars-Sinai Health System network. In that time, the librarians have found the provision of Web-based services to be a very worthwhile endeavor. Library users value the services that they access from their desktops because the services save time. They also appreciate being able to access services at their convenience, without restriction by the library's hours of operation. The library values its Web site because it brings increased visibility within the health system, and it enables library staff to expand services when budget restrictions have forced reduced hours of operation. In creating and maintaining the information center Web site, the librarians have learned the following lessons: consider the design carefully; offer what services you can, but weigh the advantages of providing the services against the time required to maintain them; make the content as accessible as possible; promote your Web site; and make friends in other departments, especially information services. PMID:10427423

Web-based tailored nutrition education: results of a randomized controlled trial.

PubMed

Oenema, A; Brug, J; Lechner, L

2001-12-01

There is ample evidence that printed, computer-tailored nutrition education is a more effective tool for motivating people to change to healthier diets than general nutrition education. New technology is now providing more advanced ways of delivering tailored messages, e.g. via the World Wide Web (WWW). Before disseminating a tailored intervention via the web, it is important to investigate the potential of web-based tailored nutrition education. The present study investigated the immediate impact of web-based computer-tailored nutrition education on personal awareness and intentions related to intake of fat, fruit and vegetables. A randomized controlled trial, with a pre-test-post-test control group design was conducted. Significant differences in awareness and intention to change were found between the intervention and control group at post-test. The tailored intervention was appreciated better, was rated as more personally relevant, and had more subjective impact on opinion and intentions to change than the general nutrition information. Computer literacy had no effect on these ratings. The results indicate that interactive, web-based computer-tailored nutrition education can lead to changes in determinants of behavior. Future research should be aimed at longer-term (behavioral) effects and the practicability of distributing tailored interventions via the WWW.

MedlinePlus Connect: How it Works

MedlinePlus

... it looks depends on how it is implemented. Web Application The Web application returns a formatted response ... for more examples of Web Application response pages. Web Service The MedlinePlus Connect REST-based Web service ...

Interacting With A Near Real-Time Urban Digital Watershed Using Emerging Geospatial Web Technologies

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liu, Y.; Fazio, D. J.; Abdelzaher, T.; Minsker, B.

2007-12-01

The value of real-time hydrologic data dissemination including river stage, streamflow, and precipitation for operational stormwater management efforts is particularly high for communities where flash flooding is common and costly. Ideally, such data would be presented within a watershed-scale geospatial context to portray a holistic view of the watershed. Local hydrologic sensor networks usually lack comprehensive integration with sensor networks managed by other agencies sharing the same watershed due to administrative, political, but mostly technical barriers. Recent efforts on providing unified access to hydrological data have concentrated on creating new SOAP-based web services and common data format (e.g. WaterML and Observation Data Model) for users to access the data (e.g. HIS and HydroSeek). Geospatial Web technology including OGC sensor web enablement (SWE), GeoRSS, Geo tags, Geospatial browsers such as Google Earth and Microsoft Virtual Earth and other location-based service tools provides possibilities for us to interact with a digital watershed in near-real-time. OGC SWE proposes a revolutionary concept towards a web-connected/controllable sensor networks. However, these efforts have not provided the capability to allow dynamic data integration/fusion among heterogeneous sources, data filtering and support for workflows or domain specific applications where both push and pull mode of retrieving data may be needed. We propose a light weight integration framework by extending SWE with open source Enterprise Service Bus (e.g., mule) as a backbone component to dynamically transform, transport, and integrate both heterogeneous sensor data sources and simulation model outputs. We will report our progress on building such framework where multi-agencies" sensor data and hydro-model outputs (with map layers) will be integrated and disseminated in a geospatial browser (e.g. Microsoft Virtual Earth). This is a collaborative project among NCSA, USGS Illinois Water Science Center, Computer Science Department at UIUC funded by the Adaptive Environmental Infrastructure Sensing and Information Systems initiative at UIUC.

Identifying and managing inappropriate hospital utilization: a policy synthesis.

PubMed Central

Payne, S M

1987-01-01

Utilization review, the assessment of the appropriateness and efficiency of hospital care through review of the medical record, and utilization management, deliberate action by payers or hospital administrators to influence providers of hospital services to increase the efficiency and effectiveness with which services are provided, are valuable but relatively unfamiliar strategies for containing hospital costs. The purpose of this synthesis is to increase awareness of the scope of and potential for these approaches among health services managers and administrators, third-party payers, policy analysts, and health services researchers. The synthesis will assist the reader to trace the conceptual context and the historical development of utilization review from unstructured methods using individual physicians' professional judgment to structured methods using explicit criteria; to establish the context of utilization review and clarify its uses; to understand the concepts and tools used in assessing the efficiency of hospital use; and to select, design, and evaluate utilization review and utilization management programs. The extent of inappropriate (medical unnecessary) hospital utilization and the factors associated with it are described. Implications for managers, providers, and third-party payers in targeting utilization review and in designing and evaluating utilization management programs are discussed. PMID:3121538

Characterizing Awareness of Schizophrenia Among Facebook Users by Leveraging Facebook Advertisement Estimates.

PubMed

Saha, Koustuv; Weber, Ingmar; Birnbaum, Michael L; De Choudhury, Munmun

2017-05-08

Schizophrenia is a rare but devastating condition, affecting about 1% of the world's population and resulting in about 2% of the US health care expenditure. Major impediments to appropriate and timely care include misconceptions, high levels of stigma, and lack of public awareness. Facebook offers novel opportunities to understand public awareness and information access related to schizophrenia, and thus can complement survey-based approaches to assessing awareness that are limited in scale, robustness, and temporal and demographic granularity. The aims of this study were to (1) construct an index that measured the awareness of different demographic groups around schizophrenia-related information on Facebook; (2) study how this index differed across demographic groups and how it correlated with complementary Web-based (Google Trends) and non-Web-based variables about population well-being (mental health indicators and infrastructure), and (3) examine the relationship of Facebook derived schizophrenia index with other types of online activity as well as offline health and mental health outcomes and indicators. Data from Facebook's advertising platform was programmatically collected to compute the proportion of users in a target demographic group with an interest related to schizophrenia. On consultation with a clinical expert, several topics were combined to obtain a single index measuring schizophrenia awareness. This index was then analyzed for differences across US states, gender, age, ethnic affinity, and education level. A statistical approach was developed to model a group's awareness index based on the group's characteristics. Overall, 1.03% of Facebook users in the United States have a schizophrenia-related interest. The schizophrenia awareness index (SAI) is higher for females than for males (1.06 vs 0.97, P<.001), and it is highest for the people who are aged 25-44 years (1.35 vs 1.03 for all ages, P<.001). The awareness index drops for higher education levels (0.68 for MA or PhD vs 1.92 for no high school degree, P<.001), and Hispanics have the highest level of interest (1.57 vs 1.03 for all ethnic affinities, P<.001). A regression model fit to predict a group's interest level achieves an adjusted R 2 =0.55. We also observe a positive association between our SAI and mental health services (or institutions) per 100,000 residents in a US state (Pearson r=.238, P<.001), but a negative association with the state-level human development index (HDI) in United States (Pearson r=-.145, P<.001) and state-level volume of mental health issues in United States (Pearson r=-.145, P<.001). Facebook's advertising platform can be used to construct a plausible index of population-scale schizophrenia awareness. However, only estimates of awareness can be obtained, and the index provides no information on the quality of the information users receive online. ©Koustuv Saha, Ingmar Weber, Michael L Birnbaum, Munmun De Choudhury. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (http://www.jmir.org), 08.05.2017.

Characterizing Awareness of Schizophrenia Among Facebook Users by Leveraging Facebook Advertisement Estimates

PubMed Central

Weber, Ingmar; Birnbaum, Michael L; De Choudhury, Munmun

2017-01-01

Background Schizophrenia is a rare but devastating condition, affecting about 1% of the world’s population and resulting in about 2% of the US health care expenditure. Major impediments to appropriate and timely care include misconceptions, high levels of stigma, and lack of public awareness. Facebook offers novel opportunities to understand public awareness and information access related to schizophrenia, and thus can complement survey-based approaches to assessing awareness that are limited in scale, robustness, and temporal and demographic granularity. Objective The aims of this study were to (1) construct an index that measured the awareness of different demographic groups around schizophrenia-related information on Facebook; (2) study how this index differed across demographic groups and how it correlated with complementary Web-based (Google Trends) and non–Web-based variables about population well-being (mental health indicators and infrastructure), and (3) examine the relationship of Facebook derived schizophrenia index with other types of online activity as well as offline health and mental health outcomes and indicators. Methods Data from Facebook’s advertising platform was programmatically collected to compute the proportion of users in a target demographic group with an interest related to schizophrenia. On consultation with a clinical expert, several topics were combined to obtain a single index measuring schizophrenia awareness. This index was then analyzed for differences across US states, gender, age, ethnic affinity, and education level. A statistical approach was developed to model a group’s awareness index based on the group’s characteristics. Results Overall, 1.03% of Facebook users in the United States have a schizophrenia-related interest. The schizophrenia awareness index (SAI) is higher for females than for males (1.06 vs 0.97, P<.001), and it is highest for the people who are aged 25-44 years (1.35 vs 1.03 for all ages, P<.001). The awareness index drops for higher education levels (0.68 for MA or PhD vs 1.92 for no high school degree, P<.001), and Hispanics have the highest level of interest (1.57 vs 1.03 for all ethnic affinities, P<.001). A regression model fit to predict a group’s interest level achieves an adjusted R2=0.55. We also observe a positive association between our SAI and mental health services (or institutions) per 100,000 residents in a US state (Pearson r=.238, P<.001), but a negative association with the state-level human development index (HDI) in United States (Pearson r=−.145, P<.001) and state-level volume of mental health issues in United States (Pearson r=−.145, P<.001). Conclusions Facebook’s advertising platform can be used to construct a plausible index of population-scale schizophrenia awareness. However, only estimates of awareness can be obtained, and the index provides no information on the quality of the information users receive online. PMID:28483739

Unifying Access to National Hydrologic Data Repositories via Web Services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Valentine, D. W.; Jennings, B.; Zaslavsky, I.; Maidment, D. R.

2006-12-01

The CUAHSI hydrologic information system (HIS) is designed to be a live, multiscale web portal system for accessing, querying, visualizing, and publishing distributed hydrologic observation data and models for any location or region in the United States. The HIS design follows the principles of open service oriented architecture, i.e. system components are represented as web services with well defined standard service APIs. WaterOneFlow web services are the main component of the design. The currently available services have been completely re-written compared to the previous version, and provide programmatic access to USGS NWIS. (steam flow, groundwater and water quality repositories), DAYMET daily observations, NASA MODIS, and Unidata NAM streams, with several additional web service wrappers being added (EPA STORET, NCDC and others.). Different repositories of hydrologic data use different vocabularies, and support different types of query access. Resolving semantic and structural heterogeneities across different hydrologic observation archives and distilling a generic set of service signatures is one of the main scalability challenges in this project, and a requirement in our web service design. To accomplish the uniformity of the web services API, data repositories are modeled following the CUAHSI Observation Data Model. The web service responses are document-based, and use an XML schema to express the semantics in a standard format. Access to station metadata is provided via web service methods, GetSites, GetSiteInfo and GetVariableInfo. The methdods form the foundation of CUAHSI HIS discovery interface and may execute over locally-stored metadata or request the information from remote repositories directly. Observation values are retrieved via a generic GetValues method which is executed against national data repositories. The service is implemented in ASP.Net, and other providers are implementing WaterOneFlow services in java. Reference implementation of WaterOneFlow web services is available. More information about the ongoing development of CUAHSI HIS is available from http://www.cuahsi.org/his/.

A Fine-Grained API Link Prediction Approach Supporting CMDA Mashup Recommendation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, J.; Bao, Q.; Lee, T. J.; Ramachandran, R.; Lee, S.; Pan, L.; Gatlin, P. N.; Maskey, M.

2017-12-01

Service (API) discovery and recommendation is key to the wide spread of service oriented architecture and service oriented software engineering. Service recommendation typically relies on service linkage prediction calculated by the semantic distances (or similarities) among services based on their collection of inherent attributes. Given a specific context (mashup goal), however, different attributes may contribute differently to a service linkage. In this work, instead of training a model for all attributes as a whole, a novel approach is presented to simultaneously train separate models for individual attributes. Our contributions are summarized in three-fold. First is that we have developed a scalable attribute-level data model, featuring scalability and extensibility. We have extended Multiplicative Attribute Graph (MAG) model to represent node profiles featuring rich categorical attributes, while relaxing its constraint of requiring a priori knowledge of predefined attributes. LDA is leveraged to dynamically identify attributes based on attribute modeling, and multiple Gaussian fit is applied to find global optimal values. The second contribution is that we have seamlessly integrated the latent relationships between API attributes as well as observed network structure based on historical API usage data. Such a layered information model enables us to predict the probability of a link between two APIs based on their attribute link affinities carrying a variety of information including meta data, semantic data, historical usage data, as well as crowdsourcing user comments and annotations. The third contribution is that we have developed a finegrained context-aware mashup-API recommendation technique. On top of individual models trained for separate attributes, a dedicated layer is trained to represent the latent attribute distribution regarding mashup purpose, i.e., sensitivity of attributes to context. Thus, given the description of an intended mashup, the attributes sensitive to the goal will be identified, and corresponding attribute models will be exploited to compute the possibility of API linkages under the context. Such a layered model increases search accuracy.

A Privacy Access Control Framework for Web Services Collaboration with Role Mechanisms

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liu, Linyuan; Huang, Zhiqiu; Zhu, Haibin

With the popularity of Internet technology, web services are becoming the most promising paradigm for distributed computing. This increased use of web services has meant that more and more personal information of consumers is being shared with web service providers, leading to the need to guarantee the privacy of consumers. This paper proposes a role-based privacy access control framework for Web services collaboration, it utilizes roles to specify the privacy privileges of services, and considers the impact on the reputation degree of the historic experience of services in playing roles. Comparing to the traditional privacy access control approaches, this framework can make the fine-grained authorization decision, thus efficiently protecting consumers' privacy.

Context-awareness in ubiquitous computing and the mobile devices

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Akçit, Nuhcan; Tomur, Emrah; Karslıoǧlu, Mahmut Onur

2015-06-01

Mobile device use has vastly increased in the last few years. Many people use many mobile devices in their daily lives. Context-aware computing is the main feature of pervasive and ubiquitous computing. Context awareness is also an important topic that becomes more available with ubiquitous computing. As the sensors increase, the data collected via mobile device sensors and sensor networks do not have much value because of the difficulty in analysis and understanding the data. Context-aware computing helps us store contextual information and use or search it by mobile devices when we want to see or analyze it. Contextual data can be made more meaningful by context-aware processing. There are different types of data and context information that must be considered. By combining spatial and contextual data, we obtain more meaningful data based on the entities. Contextual data is any information that can be used to characterize the situation of the entity. The entity is a person, place, or object considered relevant to the interaction between the user and an application, including the users and the applications. Using contextual data and good integration to mobile devices adds great value to this data, and combining these with our other data sets will allow us to obtain more useful information and analysis.

The perceptions of older people in Wales about service provision.

PubMed

Morgan, Gareth; Mitchell, Clive; Gallacher, John

2011-01-01

The 'Age Well Feel Good' programme is a cohort study of older people in Wales. There is a gap in knowledge on how older people in Wales perceive health and social care services. Research is necessary to help address this gap and to provide an evidence base that informs policy making and service delivery. A representative sample of 15 000 men and women aged 50 years and over, living in Cardiff, the Welsh capital, were invited to participate in a web-based study of successful ageing. A wide range of data were collected in the study. These included psychological and cognitive assessments, self-reported health, financial status and deprivation measures. Based on over 500 responses, information on health and social care service perceptions was analysed. Overall, the perception of service availability was rated as good, yet there was widespread dissatisfaction. Furthermore, only 14% of older people were aware of a major health and social care programme in Wales, the National Service Framework for Older People. The main observation is the difference between service availability and satisfaction that views are sought. In the main, health service availability is good, yet there is widespread dissatisfaction. This raises some questions about the services provided. The evidence provided in this article is a further contribution to the policy-making process. Further work is needed.

A contextual data mining approach toward assisting the treatment of anxiety disorders.

PubMed

Panagiotakopoulos, Theodor Chris; Lyras, Dimitrios Panagiotis; Livaditis, Miltos; Sgarbas, Kyriakos N; Anastassopoulos, George C; Lymberopoulos, Dimitrios K

2010-05-01

Anxiety disorders are considered the most prevalent of mental disorders. Nevertheless, the exact reasons that provoke them to patients remain yet not clearly specified, while the literature concerning the environment for monitoring and treatment support is rather scarce warranting further investigation. Toward this direction, in this study a context-aware approach is proposed, aiming to provide medical supervisors with a series of applications and personalized services targeted to exploit the multiparameter contextual data collected through a long-term monitoring procedure. More specifically, an application that assists the archiving and retrieving of the patients' health records was developed, and four treatment supportive services were considered. The three of them focus on the discovery of possible associations between the patient's contextual data; the last service aims at predicting the stress level a patient might suffer from, in a given context. The proposed approach was experimentally evaluated quantitatively (in terms of computational efficiency and time requirements) and qualitatively by experts on the field of mental health domain. The feedback received was very encouraging and the proposed approach seems quite useful to the anxiety disorders' treatment.

Mexican Space Weather Service (SCiESMEX)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gonzalez-Esparza, J. A.; De la Luz, V.; Corona-Romero, P.; Mejia-Ambriz, J. C.; Gonzalez, L. X.; Sergeeva, M. A.; Romero-Hernandez, E.; Aguilar-Rodriguez, E.

2017-01-01

Legislative modifications of the General Civil Protection Law in Mexico in 2014 included specific references to space hazards and space weather phenomena. The legislation is consistent with United Nations promotion of international engagement and cooperation on space weather awareness, studies, and monitoring. These internal and external conditions motivated the creation of a space weather service in Mexico. The Mexican Space Weather Service (SCiESMEX in Spanish) (www.sciesmex.unam.mx) was initiated in October 2014 and is operated by the Institute of Geophysics at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM). SCiESMEX became a Regional Warning Center of the International Space Environment Services (ISES) in June 2015. We present the characteristics of the service, some products, and the initial actions for developing a space weather strategy in Mexico. The service operates a computing infrastructure including a web application, data repository, and a high-performance computing server to run numerical models. SCiESMEX uses data of the ground-based instrumental network of the National Space Weather Laboratory (LANCE), covering solar radio burst emissions, solar wind and interplanetary disturbances (by interplanetary scintillation observations), geomagnetic measurements, and analysis of the total electron content (TEC) of the ionosphere (by employing data from local networks of GPS receiver stations).

Conversational sensemaking

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Preece, Alun; Webberley, Will; Braines, Dave

2015-05-01

Recent advances in natural language question-answering systems and context-aware mobile apps create opportunities for improved sensemaking in a tactical setting. Users equipped with mobile devices act as both sensors (able to acquire information) and effectors (able to act in situ), operating alone or in collectives. The currently- dominant technical approaches follow either a pull model (e.g. Apple's Siri or IBM's Watson which respond to users' natural language queries) or a push model (e.g. Google's Now which sends notifications to a user based on their context). There is growing recognition that users need more flexible styles of conversational interaction, where they are able to freely ask or tell, be asked or told, seek explanations and clarifications. Ideally such conversations should involve a mix of human and machine agents, able to collaborate in collective sensemaking activities with as few barriers as possible. Desirable capabilities include adding new knowledge, collaboratively building models, invoking specific services, and drawing inferences. As a step towards this goal, we collect evidence from a number of recent pilot studies including natural experiments (e.g. situation awareness in the context of organised protests) and synthetic experiments (e.g. human and machine agents collaborating in information seeking and spot reporting). We identify some principles and areas of future research for "conversational sensemaking".

Open semantic annotation of scientific publications using DOMEO.

PubMed

Ciccarese, Paolo; Ocana, Marco; Clark, Tim

2012-04-24

Our group has developed a useful shared software framework for performing, versioning, sharing and viewing Web annotations of a number of kinds, using an open representation model. The Domeo Annotation Tool was developed in tandem with this open model, the Annotation Ontology (AO). Development of both the Annotation Framework and the open model was driven by requirements of several different types of alpha users, including bench scientists and biomedical curators from university research labs, online scientific communities, publishing and pharmaceutical companies.Several use cases were incrementally implemented by the toolkit. These use cases in biomedical communications include personal note-taking, group document annotation, semantic tagging, claim-evidence-context extraction, reagent tagging, and curation of textmining results from entity extraction algorithms. We report on the Domeo user interface here. Domeo has been deployed in beta release as part of the NIH Neuroscience Information Framework (NIF, http://www.neuinfo.org) and is scheduled for production deployment in the NIF's next full release.Future papers will describe other aspects of this work in detail, including Annotation Framework Services and components for integrating with external textmining services, such as the NCBO Annotator web service, and with other textmining applications using the Apache UIMA framework.

Open semantic annotation of scientific publications using DOMEO

PubMed Central

2012-01-01

Background Our group has developed a useful shared software framework for performing, versioning, sharing and viewing Web annotations of a number of kinds, using an open representation model. Methods The Domeo Annotation Tool was developed in tandem with this open model, the Annotation Ontology (AO). Development of both the Annotation Framework and the open model was driven by requirements of several different types of alpha users, including bench scientists and biomedical curators from university research labs, online scientific communities, publishing and pharmaceutical companies. Several use cases were incrementally implemented by the toolkit. These use cases in biomedical communications include personal note-taking, group document annotation, semantic tagging, claim-evidence-context extraction, reagent tagging, and curation of textmining results from entity extraction algorithms. Results We report on the Domeo user interface here. Domeo has been deployed in beta release as part of the NIH Neuroscience Information Framework (NIF, http://www.neuinfo.org) and is scheduled for production deployment in the NIF’s next full release. Future papers will describe other aspects of this work in detail, including Annotation Framework Services and components for integrating with external textmining services, such as the NCBO Annotator web service, and with other textmining applications using the Apache UIMA framework. PMID:22541592

Web-based spatial analysis with the ILWIS open source GIS software and satellite images from GEONETCast

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lemmens, R.; Maathuis, B.; Mannaerts, C.; Foerster, T.; Schaeffer, B.; Wytzisk, A.

2009-12-01

This paper involves easy accessible integrated web-based analysis of satellite images with a plug-in based open source software. The paper is targeted to both users and developers of geospatial software. Guided by a use case scenario, we describe the ILWIS software and its toolbox to access satellite images through the GEONETCast broadcasting system. The last two decades have shown a major shift from stand-alone software systems to networked ones, often client/server applications using distributed geo-(web-)services. This allows organisations to combine without much effort their own data with remotely available data and processing functionality. Key to this integrated spatial data analysis is a low-cost access to data from within a user-friendly and flexible software. Web-based open source software solutions are more often a powerful option for developing countries. The Integrated Land and Water Information System (ILWIS) is a PC-based GIS & Remote Sensing software, comprising a complete package of image processing, spatial analysis and digital mapping and was developed as commercial software from the early nineties onwards. Recent project efforts have migrated ILWIS into a modular, plug-in-based open source software, and provide web-service support for OGC-based web mapping and processing. The core objective of the ILWIS Open source project is to provide a maintainable framework for researchers and software developers to implement training components, scientific toolboxes and (web-) services. The latest plug-ins have been developed for multi-criteria decision making, water resources analysis and spatial statistics analysis. The development of this framework is done since 2007 in the context of 52°North, which is an open initiative that advances the development of cutting edge open source geospatial software, using the GPL license. GEONETCast, as part of the emerging Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), puts essential environmental data at the fingertips of users around the globe. This user-friendly and low-cost information dissemination provides global information as a basis for decision-making in a number of critical areas, including public health, energy, agriculture, weather, water, climate, natural disasters and ecosystems. GEONETCast makes available satellite images via Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) technology. An OGC WMS interface and plug-ins which convert GEONETCast data streams allow an ILWIS user to integrate various distributed data sources with data locally stored on his machine. Our paper describes a use case in which ILWIS is used with GEONETCast satellite imagery for decision making processes in Ghana. We also explain how the ILWIS software can be extended with additional functionality by means of building plug-ins and unfold our plans to implement other OGC standards, such as WCS and WPS in the same context. Especially, the latter one can be seen as a major step forward in terms of moving well-proven desktop based processing functionality to the web. This enables the embedding of ILWIS functionality in Spatial Data Infrastructures or even the execution in scalable and on-demand cloud computing environments.

Context Sensing System Analysis for Privacy Preservation Based on Game Theory.

PubMed

Wang, Shengling; Li, Luyun; Sun, Weiman; Guo, Junqi; Bie, Rongfang; Lin, Kai

2017-02-10

In a context sensing system in which a sensor-equipped mobile phone runs an unreliable context-aware application, the application can infer the user's contexts, based on which it provides personalized services. However, the application may sell the user's contexts to some malicious adversaries to earn extra profits, which will hinder its widespread use. In the real world, the actions of the user, the application and the adversary in the context sensing system affect each other, so that their payoffs are constrained mutually. To figure out under which conditions they behave well (the user releases, the application does not leak and the adversary does not retrieve the context), we take advantage of game theory to analyze the context sensing system. We use the extensive form game and the repeated game, respectively, to analyze two typical scenarios, single interaction and multiple interaction among three players, from which Nash equilibriums and cooperation conditions are obtained. Our results show that the reputation mechanism for the context-sensing system in the former scenario is crucial to privacy preservation, so is the extent to which the participants are concerned about future payoffs in the latter one.

SIDECACHE: Information access, management and dissemination framework for web services.

PubMed

Doderer, Mark S; Burkhardt, Cory; Robbins, Kay A

2011-06-14

Many bioinformatics algorithms and data sets are deployed using web services so that the results can be explored via the Internet and easily integrated into other tools and services. These services often include data from other sites that is accessed either dynamically or through file downloads. Developers of these services face several problems because of the dynamic nature of the information from the upstream services. Many publicly available repositories of bioinformatics data frequently update their information. When such an update occurs, the developers of the downstream service may also need to update. For file downloads, this process is typically performed manually followed by web service restart. Requests for information obtained by dynamic access of upstream sources is sometimes subject to rate restrictions. SideCache provides a framework for deploying web services that integrate information extracted from other databases and from web sources that are periodically updated. This situation occurs frequently in biotechnology where new information is being continuously generated and the latest information is important. SideCache provides several types of services including proxy access and rate control, local caching, and automatic web service updating. We have used the SideCache framework to automate the deployment and updating of a number of bioinformatics web services and tools that extract information from remote primary sources such as NCBI, NCIBI, and Ensembl. The SideCache framework also has been used to share research results through the use of a SideCache derived web service.

Design for Connecting Spatial Data Infrastructures with Sensor Web (sensdi)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bhattacharya, D.; M., M.

2016-06-01

Integrating Sensor Web With Spatial Data Infrastructures (SENSDI) aims to extend SDIs with sensor web enablement, converging geospatial and built infrastructure, and implement test cases with sensor data and SDI. It is about research to harness the sensed environment by utilizing domain specific sensor data to create a generalized sensor webframework. The challenges being semantic enablement for Spatial Data Infrastructures, and connecting the interfaces of SDI with interfaces of Sensor Web. The proposed research plan is to Identify sensor data sources, Setup an open source SDI, Match the APIs and functions between Sensor Web and SDI, and Case studies like hazard applications, urban applications etc. We take up co-operative development of SDI best practices to enable a new realm of a location enabled and semantically enriched World Wide Web - the "Geospatial Web" or "Geosemantic Web" by setting up one to one correspondence between WMS, WFS, WCS, Metadata and 'Sensor Observation Service' (SOS); 'Sensor Planning Service' (SPS); 'Sensor Alert Service' (SAS); a service that facilitates asynchronous message interchange between users and services, and between two OGC-SWE services, called the 'Web Notification Service' (WNS). Hence in conclusion, it is of importance to geospatial studies to integrate SDI with Sensor Web. The integration can be done through merging the common OGC interfaces of SDI and Sensor Web. Multi-usability studies to validate integration has to be undertaken as future research.

Description and testing of the Geo Data Portal: Data integration framework and Web processing services for environmental science collaboration

USGS Publications Warehouse

Blodgett, David L.; Booth, Nathaniel L.; Kunicki, Thomas C.; Walker, Jordan I.; Viger, Roland J.

2011-01-01

Interest in sharing interdisciplinary environmental modeling results and related data is increasing among scientists. The U.S. Geological Survey Geo Data Portal project enables data sharing by assembling open-standard Web services into an integrated data retrieval and analysis Web application design methodology that streamlines time-consuming and resource-intensive data management tasks. Data-serving Web services allow Web-based processing services to access Internet-available data sources. The Web processing services developed for the project create commonly needed derivatives of data in numerous formats. Coordinate reference system manipulation and spatial statistics calculation components implemented for the Web processing services were confirmed using ArcGIS 9.3.1, a geographic information science software package. Outcomes of the Geo Data Portal project support the rapid development of user interfaces for accessing and manipulating environmental data.

Implementation of Context Aware e-Health Environments Based on Social Sensor Networks

PubMed Central

Aguirre, Erik; Led, Santiago; Lopez-Iturri, Peio; Azpilicueta, Leyre; Serrano, Luís; Falcone, Francisco

2016-01-01

In this work, context aware scenarios applied to e-Health and m-Health in the framework of typical households (urban and rural) by means of deploying Social Sensors will be described. Interaction with end-users and social/medical staff is achieved using a multi-signal input/output device, capable of sensing and transmitting environmental, biomedical or activity signals and information with the aid of a combined Bluetooth and Mobile system platform. The devices, which play the role of Social Sensors, are implemented and tested in order to guarantee adequate service levels in terms of multiple signal processing tasks as well as robustness in relation with the use wireless transceivers and channel variability. Initial tests within a Living Lab environment have been performed in order to validate overall system operation. The results obtained show good acceptance of the proposed system both by end users as well as by medical and social staff, increasing interaction, reducing overall response time and social inclusion levels, with a compact and moderate cost solution that can readily be largely deployed. PMID:26938539

Implementation of Context Aware e-Health Environments Based on Social Sensor Networks.

PubMed

Aguirre, Erik; Led, Santiago; Lopez-Iturri, Peio; Azpilicueta, Leyre; Serrano, Luís; Falcone, Francisco

2016-03-01

In this work, context aware scenarios applied to e-Health and m-Health in the framework of typical households (urban and rural) by means of deploying Social Sensors will be described. Interaction with end-users and social/medical staff is achieved using a multi-signal input/output device, capable of sensing and transmitting environmental, biomedical or activity signals and information with the aid of a combined Bluetooth and Mobile system platform. The devices, which play the role of Social Sensors, are implemented and tested in order to guarantee adequate service levels in terms of multiple signal processing tasks as well as robustness in relation with the use wireless transceivers and channel variability. Initial tests within a Living Lab environment have been performed in order to validate overall system operation. The results obtained show good acceptance of the proposed system both by end users as well as by medical and social staff, increasing interaction, reducing overall response time and social inclusion levels, with a compact and moderate cost solution that can readily be largely deployed.

Earth and Space Science Informatics: Raising Awareness of the Scientists and the Public

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Messerotti, M.; Cobabe-Ammann, E.

2009-04-01

The recent developments in Earth and Space Science Informatics led to the availability of advanced tools for data search, visualization and analysis through e.g. the Virtual Observatories or distributed data handling infrastructures. Such facilities are accessible via web interfaces and allow refined data handling to be carried out. Notwithstanding, to date their use is not exploited by the scientific community for a variety of reasons that we will analyze in this work by considering viable strategies to overcome the issue. Similarly, such facilities are powerful tools for teaching and for popularization provided that e-learning programs involving the teachers and respectively the communicators are made available. In this context we will consider the present activities and projects by stressing the role and the legacy of the Electronic Geophysical Year.

Dynamic Generation of Reduced Ontologies to Support Resource Constraints of Mobile Devices

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schrimpsher, Dan

2011-01-01

As Web Services and the Semantic Web become more important, enabling technologies such as web service ontologies will grow larger. At the same time, use of mobile devices to access web services has doubled in the last year. The ability of these resource constrained devices to download and reason across these ontologies to support service discovery…

A Smart Modeling Framework for Integrating BMI-enabled Models as Web Services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jiang, P.; Elag, M.; Kumar, P.; Peckham, S. D.; Liu, R.; Marini, L.; Hsu, L.

2015-12-01

Serviced-oriented computing provides an opportunity to couple web service models using semantic web technology. Through this approach, models that are exposed as web services can be conserved in their own local environment, thus making it easy for modelers to maintain and update the models. In integrated modeling, the serviced-oriented loose-coupling approach requires (1) a set of models as web services, (2) the model metadata describing the external features of a model (e.g., variable name, unit, computational grid, etc.) and (3) a model integration framework. We present the architecture of coupling web service models that are self-describing by utilizing a smart modeling framework. We expose models that are encapsulated with CSDMS (Community Surface Dynamics Modeling System) Basic Model Interfaces (BMI) as web services. The BMI-enabled models are self-describing by uncovering models' metadata through BMI functions. After a BMI-enabled model is serviced, a client can initialize, execute and retrieve the meta-information of the model by calling its BMI functions over the web. Furthermore, a revised version of EMELI (Peckham, 2015), an Experimental Modeling Environment for Linking and Interoperability, is chosen as the framework for coupling BMI-enabled web service models. EMELI allows users to combine a set of component models into a complex model by standardizing model interface using BMI as well as providing a set of utilities smoothing the integration process (e.g., temporal interpolation). We modify the original EMELI so that the revised modeling framework is able to initialize, execute and find the dependencies of the BMI-enabled web service models. By using the revised EMELI, an example will be presented on integrating a set of topoflow model components that are BMI-enabled and exposed as web services. Reference: Peckham, S.D. (2014) EMELI 1.0: An experimental smart modeling framework for automatic coupling of self-describing models, Proceedings of HIC 2014, 11th International Conf. on Hydroinformatics, New York, NY.