Embedded Service Bus for Internet of Things Interoperability

Internet of Things (IoT) technologies are developing rapidly, and therefore there exist several standards of interconnection protocols and platforms. The existence of heterogeneous protocols and platforms has become a critical challenge for IoT system developers. To mitigate this challenge, few alliances and organizations have taken the initiative to build a framework that helps to integrate application silos. Some of these frameworks focus only on a specific domain like home automation. However, the resource constraints in the large proportion of connected devices make it difficult to build an interoperable system using such frameworks. Therefore, a general purpose, lightweight interoperability framework that can be used for a range of devices is required. To tackle the heterogeneous nature, this work introduces an embedded, distributed and lightweight service bus, Lightweight IoT Service bus Architecture (LISA), which fits inside the network stack of a small real-time operating system for constrained nodes. LISA provides a uniform application programming interface for an IoT system on a range of devices with variable resource constraints. It hides platform and protocol variations underneath it, thus facilitating interoperability in IoT implementations. LISA is inspired by the Network on Terminal Architecture, a service centric open architecture by Nokia Research Center. Unlike many other interoperability frameworks, LISA is designed specifically for resource constrained nodes and it provides essential features of a service bus for easy service oriented architecture implementation. The presented architecture utilizes an intermediate computing layer, a Fog layer, between the small nodes and the cloud, thereby facilitating the federation of constrained nodes into subnetworks. As a result of a modular and distributed design, the part of LISA running in the Fog layer handles the heavy lifting to assist the lightweight portion of LISA inside the resource constrained nodes. Furthermore, LISA introduces a new networking paradigm, Node Centric Networking, to route messages across protocol boundaries to facilitate interoperability. This thesis presents a concept implementation of the architecture and creates a foundation for future extension towards a comprehensive interoperability framework for IoT.

An in-depth analysis of real and perceived barriers to speech and language program participation for children with speech and language delays : a question of barriers to service?

The current study investigated the effects that barriers (both real and perceived) had on participation and completion of speech and language programs for preschool children with communication delays. I compared 36 families of preschool children with an identified communication delay that have completed services (completers) to 13 families that have not completed services (non-completers) prescribed by Speech and Language professionals. Data findings reported were drawn from an interview with the mother, a speech and language assessment of the child, and an extensive package of measures completed by the mother. Children ranged in age from 32 to 71 mos. These data were collected as part of a project funded by the Canadian Language and Literacy Research Networks of Centres of Excellence. Findings suggest that completers and non-completers shared commonalities in a number of parenting characteristics but differed significantly in two areas. Mothers in the noncompleting group were more permissive and had lower maternal education than mothers in the completing families. From a systemic standpoint, families also differed in the number of perceived barriers to treatment experienced during their time with Speech Services Niagara. Mothers in the non-completing group experienced more perceived barriers to treatment than completing mothers. Specifically, these mothers perceived more stressors and obstacles that competed with treatment, perceived more treatment demands and they perceived the relevance of treatment as less important than the completing group. Despite this, the findings suggest that non-completing families were 100% satisfied with services. Contrary to predictions, there were no significant differences in child characterisfics and economic characteristics between completers and non-completers. The findings in this study are considered exploratory and tentative due to the small sample size.

Investigation of Changes in Prescribed and Voluntary Job Roles in Community Service Delivery for People who have Intellectual Disabilities after the Implementation of the 3 Rs; Rights, Respect and Responsibility Project

The purpose of this thesis was to explore whether there is change in organizational citizenship behaviours in community agency staff following agency adoption of a rights - based service philosophy. Four community agency support staff were interviewed to investigate how residential care providers in services for persons who have intellectual disabilities describe their voluntary job related behaviours following training about human rights. The major finding was that the participants were actively engaged in displaying civic virtue, courtesy, and altruism discretionary behaviours. There was evidence of a post rights training shift in communication patterns with support staff reporting that they used language that prom,oted and advocated for human rights, and reported increased communication exchanges among persons supported by the agency, support staff and managers. Participants also suggested that the individuals they support asserted their rights more frequently and they were more active in their own life choices following rights training.

A Comparative Analysis of Community-Based Service Providers for "Extreme" Case ASD: Exploring Activity Program Options

The purpose of my research was to examine how community-based organizations in the Niagara region provide programs for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), who are considered to represent “extreme” or “severe” cases. A qualitative, comparative case study was conducted that focused on three organizations who provide summer recreation and activity programs, in order to examine the issues these organizations face when determining program structure and staff training; and to understand what the threshold for physical activity is in this type of setting, and how the unique needs surrounding these “severe” cases are met while attending the program. Purposeful sampling was employed to select a supervisor and senior staff member from each organization to discuss the training process, program development and implementation, and the resources and strategies used within their organization’s community-based program. A confirming comparative analysis was comparative analysis of a parents survey with six mothers whose children are considered “severe” indicated that camp staffs’ expectations are unrealistic where as the parents and supervisors have more realistic expectations within the “real world” of camp. There is no definition of “severe” or “extreme” and therefore severity is dependent upon the context.

Concept de non-violence chez le théologien processuel David Ray Griffin entre la guerre du Vietnam et celle d'Iraq (1968-2008)

La non-violence fait référence à une idéologie et un ensemble de pratiques qui ont pour caractéristique commune de rejeter la violence sous toutes ses formes dans l’actualisation quotidienne. La non-violence est cependant devenue également un outil auquel certains recourrent dans des objectifs qui ne servent pas nécessairement le bien commun. En d’autres termes, la non-violence n’est pas systématiquement un outil de paix. Elle est un moyen d’obtenir ce que l’on veut, sans recourir à la violence. Cette thèse propose une vision de la non-violence au service du bien commun. Elle puise dans l’historicité de grands événements et acteurs qui ont utilisé la non-violence pour libérer une collectivité de formes d’oppression qui amenuisaient la dignité humaine. Elle fait référence à des auteurs et acteurs qui ont influencé le théologien processuel David Ray Griffin dans sa propre démarche d’enseignement et de recherche théologiques sur une quarantaine d’années, soient de la guerre du Vietnam à celle d’Iraq. Les dates survolées vont de 1968 à 2008. Une première démarche entreprise par la recherche est de comprendre le plus précisément possible quelles sont les avenues les plus récentes concernant la non-violence et d’explorer ses influences sur la vie et la carrière du théologien processuel États-Unien David Ray Griffin. En second lieu, une rétrospective historique des événements marquants aux États-Unis permet de cerner le contexte au sein duquel Griffin a évolué et comment son discours a laissé transparaître ces influences historiques, sociales et académiques. Une analyse plus centrée sur la politique extérieure des États-Unis en matière d’économie et de militarisme aiguille vers l’identification de signes que Griffin qualifie lui-même d’anti-théologiques, ce qui l’incite à élaborer une vision paradigmatique globalisante, équilibrée selon lui, où les ressources planétaires sont redistribuées dans un souci d’équité et de justice. Pour ce faire, un tribunal international, une religion globale, à l’image de ce que propose la pensée processuelle whiteheadienne-hartshornienne sont proposés. Griffin en brosse les grands traits dans un discours où l’exhortation s’assortit d’une méthodologie et d’une pédagogie éprouvés depuis 40 ans. Une grille d’analyse des textes griffiniens est par la suite élaborée, structurant les différentes composantes fondamentales de sa pensée. Un modèle d’intégration des valeurs de la non-violence est dégagé des lectures, applicable à d’autres disciplines. Appuyé sur une tradition authentique d’auteurs non-violents, David Ray Griffin présente les caractéristiques d’un homme de paix, duquel les idéaux débordent le cadre national pour rejoindre le planétaire, dans une visée résolument sotériologique. Cette visée devient urgente alors que les événements des attentats terroristes du World Trade Center du 11 septembre 2001 font dire à Griffin que non seulement les États-Unis sont engagés dans une démarche impérialiste démoniaque, mais qu’ils contribuent de manière accélérée à la destruction de la planète. Il faut absolument, croit-il, renverser le courant et devenir, pour le monde, un leader de la réparation des écosystèmes, des économies et des sociétés. S’adjoignant des auteurs d’autres disciplines, et toujours dans un cadre processuel, Griffin entreprend le long périple pédagogique qu’est celui de convaincre le plus grand nombre d’individus possible que le temps est venu d’agir.

L'oeuvre au service de la traduction : l'écriture vianesque, une invitation à la traduction créative

Stanley Chapman n’est pas un traducteur ni même un écrivain très connu. Le volume de ses écrits originaux, qui sont d’ailleurs difficiles voire impossibles à trouver, et des traductions à son actif reste mince. Peut-être serait-il même passé complètement inaperçu, sauf bien sûr chez ses compères du Collège de ’Pataphysique, de l’Oulipo et de l’Outrapo, s’il n’avait pas traduit deux romans phares de l’écrivain français Boris Vian: L’Écume des jours et L’Arrache-coeur. La prose singulière de Vian l’aurait-elle incité à passer à l’acte d’écriture qui trouve justement sa source et se déploie dans l’acte du traduire ? Par ailleurs, les affinités intellectuelles que partageaient Vian et Chapman pourraient-elles aussi être en cause dans cette expérience du traduire ? Henri Meschonnic et Antoine Berman nous informent que la critique de la traduction a le pouvoir de révéler le rapport intime entre la pensée, l’écriture et la traduction. À partir de la « poétique du traduire » de Meschonnic et de « l’analytique de la traduction » de Berman, ce mémoire interroge en quoi Heartsnatcher, la traduction anglaise de L’Arrache-coeur, peut être considérée comme un acte de « traduire-écrire ». Étayée des notions de rythme et de signifiance, notre critique identifie les stratégies qui émergent de cette activité de création qu’est la traduction et par le fait même, révèle la manière particulière dont Stanley Chapman est parvenu à traduire L’Arrache-coeur.

Jitter measurements for Performance enhancement in the Service Sector

In a leading service economy like India, services lie at the very center of economic activity. Competitive organizations now look not only at the skills and knowledge, but also at the behavior required by an employee to be successful on the job. Emotionally competent employees can effectively deal with occupational stress and maintain psychological well-being. This study explores the scope of the first two formants and jitter to assess seven common emotional states present in the natural speech in English. The k-means method was used to classify emotional speech as neutral, happy, surprised, angry, disgusted and sad. The accuracy of classification obtained using raw jitter was more than 65 percent for happy and sad but less accurate for the others. The overall classification accuracy was 72% in the case of preprocessed jitter. The experimental study was done on 1664 English utterances of 6 females. This is a simple, interesting and more proactive method for employees from varied backgrounds to become aware of their own communication styles as well as that of their colleagues' and customers and is therefore socially beneficial. It is a cheap method also as it requires only a computer. Since knowledge of sophisticated software or signal processing is not necessary, it is easy to analyze

Static Pricing for a Network Service Provider

This article studies the static pricing problem of a network service provider who has a fixed capacity and faces different types of customers (classes). Each type of customers can have its own capacity constraint but it is assumed that all classes have the same resource requirement. The provider must decide a static price for each class. The customer types are characterized by their arrival process, with a price-dependant arrival rate, and the random time they remain in the system. Many real-life situations could fit in this framework, for example an Internet provider or a call center, but originally this problem was thought for a company that sells phone-cards and needs to set the price-per-minute for each destination. Our goal is to characterize the optimal static prices in order to maximize the provider's revenue. We note that the model here presented, with some slight modifications and additional assumptions can be used in those cases when the objective is to maximize social welfare.

Enhanced multi-layer protection in multi-service GMPLS networks

This paper focuses on QoS routing with protection in an MPLS network over an optical layer. In this multi-layer scenario each layer deploys its own fault management methods. A partially protected optical layer is proposed and the rest of the network is protected at the MPLS layer. New protection schemes that avoid protection duplications are proposed. Moreover, this paper also introduces a new traffic classification based on the level of reliability. The failure impact is evaluated in terms of recovery time depending on the traffic class. The proposed schemes also include a novel variation of minimum interference routing and shared segment backup computation. A complete set of experiments proves that the proposed schemes are more efficient as compared to the previous ones, in terms of resources used to protect the network, failure impact and the request rejection ratio

Análisis estructural de la visión estratégica futura internacional de la organización para alcanzar objetivos diferenciales enfocados en contact center: MAPFRE, ANDIASISTENCIA

Por medio del estudio realizado a los diferentes enfoques y estudios hechos hacia el área de recursos humanos y cultura (organizacional y nacional) se han logrado identificar ciertos procesos y características que pueden ser implementados en el modelo de integración de operaciones de Call Center de Mapfre. Partiendo de la cultura organizacional pasando por la cultura nacional y sabiendo como ingresar y ser aceptado en una cultura internacional. Características y procesos totalmente opuestos desde su implementación pasando por sus costos y su posterior gestión; debido al choque cultural y la forma de gestión planteada por la organización basado en su modelo estructural de jerarquización y centralización de toma de decisiones. Queriendo lograr con éste trabajo generar un proyecto de unificación de un sector operativo dirigido hacia servicio al cliente y de la misma manera servir como un ejemplo a demás organizaciones nacionales o multinacionales con el objetivo de aumentar la eficiencia de su administración y la eficiencia de su estructura de costos siempre enfocado a un bien último que es el servicio al cliente.

Plan de empresa : S. R. Contact Center

El presente trabajo de grado esgrime un plan de empresa. S.R. Contact Center es una compañía del sector servicios en Colombia, que como su nombre lo indica se dedica a tercerizar operaciones relacionadas con los centros de contacto. El contenido que encontrará en sus páginas abarca un análisis del sector en el que se encuentra, una revisión a la competencia y el espacio que hay en el mercado para la empresa. Se profundiza en la forma de trabajar, un esquema desvinculado del espacio físico, con alto componente tecnológico y de innovación, que dará nuevas oportunidades de empleo a una población menos favorecida; la empresa se enfocará al minucioso cuidado y aplicación de la información y de sus clientes y usuarios del sistema. También se analiza la viabilidad de la empresa desde el punto de vista jurídico, comercial, financiero y social.

Papel de la diplomacia cultural de corea del sur para consolidar su marca país en Colombia en el periodo 2011- 2013

El presente trabajo de investigación busca analizar el papel de la Diplomacia Cultural de Corea del Sur en el posicionamiento de su marca país en Colombia en el periodo 2011-2013. Se pretende demostrar que desde el 2011 la diplomacia cultural de Corea del Sur ha sido usada como estrategia sistemática y armónica del Gobierno de Lee Myung Bak en alianza con los sectores público y privado, a fin de posicionar su marca país en Colombia y promover a través de la llamada “Ola Coreana” la demanda por parte de la sociedad colombiana de productos culturales y educativos coreanos. Al ser este un estudio de caso que aborda experiencias concretas durante un periodo de tiempo de 3 años, el diseño metodológico será longitudinal dentro de un marco cualitativo de investigación, usando como principal técnica el análisis documental.

Respuesta inflamatoria sistémica en el donante como predictor de infección en el primer mes del trasplante renal

Introducción: El objetivo principal de la selección del donante es disminuir la posibilidad de transmisión de enfermedades infecciosas o neoplásicas en el receptor. De forma cruda se calcula que aproximadamente el 50% de los potenciales donantes son contraindicados, la mayoría por infección. La alta demanda de órganos obliga a revalorar las contraindicaciones que hasta hace poco eran absolutas, el reto es diferenciar el SIRS del donante por Muerte Encefálica con el SIRS por infecciones. Método: Estudio de cohorte retrospectivo; que busca evaluar la respuesta inflamatoria sistémica (SIRS) como predictor de infección en pacientes con trasplante renal en el primer mes pos trasplante. Resultados: El contraste de hipótesis proporciono una significancia bilateral (P= 0,071). La pruebas de hipótesis aceptaron la hipótesis nula (P= 0,071), que no existe asociación entre la presencia de SIRS en el donante con la incidencia de infección en el primer mes del pos trasplante renal. La estimación del riesgo de no reingreso por infección al primer mes pos trasplante renal es de 0.881 veces para los donantes con SIRS (IC 0.757 – 1.025). Conclusión: A pesar de no encontrar significancia estadística: el SIRS en el donante no se asocia con un aumento en la incidencia de infección en el primer mes postrasplante. Para encontrar la significancia se propone un estudio con un tamaño de muestra mayor.

Virtual reality Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) exposure therapy results with active duty OIF/OEF service members

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is reported to be caused by exposure to traumatic events including (but not limited to) military combat, violent personal assault, being kidnapped or taken hostage and terrorist attacks. Initial data suggest that at least 1 out of 6 Iraq War veterans are exhibiting symptoms of depression, anxiety and PTSD. Virtual reality (VR) delivered exposure therapy for PTSD has been used with reports of positive outcomes. The aim of the current paper, is to present the rationale and brief description of a Virtual Iraq/Afghanistan PTSD VR therapy application and present initial findings from its use with PTSD patients. Thus far, Virtual Iraq/Afghanistan consists of a series of customizable virtual scenarios designed to represent relevant Middle Eastern VR contexts for exposure therapy, including a city and desert road convoy environment. User-centered design feedback, needed to iteratively evolve the system, was gathered from returning Iraq War veterans in the USA and from a system deployed in Iraq and tested by an Army Combat Stress Control Team. Results from an open clinical trial at San Diego Naval Medical Center of the first 20 treatment completers indicate that 16 no longer met PTSD screening criteria at post-treatment, with only one not maintaining treatment gains at 3 month follow-up.

Collaborative personal profiling for web service ranking and recommendation

Web service is one of the most fundamental technologies in implementing service oriented architecture (SOA) based applications. One essential challenge related to web service is to find suitable candidates with regard to web service consumer’s requests, which is normally called web service discovery. During a web service discovery protocol, it is expected that the consumer will find it hard to distinguish which ones are more suitable in the retrieval set, thereby making selection of web services a critical task. In this paper, inspired by the idea that the service composition pattern is significant hint for service selection, a personal profiling mechanism is proposed to improve ranking and recommendation performance. Since service selection is highly dependent on the composition process, personal knowledge is accumulated from previous service composition process and shared via collaborative filtering where a set of users with similar interest will be firstly identified. Afterwards a web service re-ranking mechanism is employed for personalised recommendation. Experimental studies are conduced and analysed to demonstrate the promising potential of this research.