Monitoring of the Launched Girder Bridge over the Iowa River on US 20, March 2004

The objective of the study presented in this report was to document the launch of the Iowa River Bridge and to monitor and evaluate the structural performance of the bridge superstructure and substructure during the launch. The Iowa Department of Transportation used an incremental launching method, which is relatively unique for steel I-girder bridges, to construct the Iowa River Bridge over an environmentally sensitive river valley in central Iowa. The bridge was designed as two separate roadways consisting of four steel plate girders each that are approximately 11 ft deep and span approximately 301 ft each over five spans. The concrete bridge deck was not placed until after both roadways had been launched. One of the most significant monitoring and evaluation observations related to the superstructure was that the bottom flange (and associated web region) was subjected to extremely large stresses during the crossing of launch rollers. Regarding the substructure performance, the column stresses did not exceed reasonable design limits during the daylong launches. The scope of the study did not allow adequate quantification of the measured applied launch forces at the piers. Future proposed esearch should provide an opportunity to address this. The overall experimental performance of the bridge during the launch was compared with the predicted design performance. In general, the substructure design, girder contact stress, and total launching force assumptions correlated well with the experimental results. The design assumptions for total axial force in crossframe members, on the other hand, differed from the experimental results by as much as 300%.

The EU-ADR Web Platform: delivering advanced pharmacovigilance tools

PURPOSE: Pharmacovigilance methods have advanced greatly during the last decades, making post-market drug assessment an essential drug evaluation component. These methods mainly rely on the use of spontaneous reporting systems and health information databases to collect expertise from huge amounts of real-world reports. The EU-ADR Web Platform was built to further facilitate accessing, monitoring and exploring these data, enabling an in-depth analysis of adverse drug reactions risks.METHODS: The EU-ADR Web Platform exploits the wealth of data collected within a large-scale European initiative, the EU-ADR project. Millions of electronic health records, provided by national health agencies, are mined for specific drug events, which are correlated with literature, protein and pathway data, resulting in a rich drug-event dataset. Next, advanced distributed computing methods are tailored to coordinate the execution of data-mining and statistical analysis tasks. This permits obtaining a ranked drug-event list, removing spurious entries and highlighting relationships with high risk potential.RESULTS: The EU-ADR Web Platform is an open workspace for the integrated analysis of pharmacovigilance datasets. Using this software, researchers can access a variety of tools provided by distinct partners in a single centralized environment. Besides performing standalone drug-event assessments, they can also control the pipeline for an improved batch analysis of custom datasets. Drug-event pairs can be substantiated and statistically analysed within the platform's innovative working environment.CONCLUSIONS: A pioneering workspace that helps in explaining the biological path of adverse drug reactions was developed within the EU-ADR project consortium. This tool, targeted at the pharmacovigilance community, is available online at https://bioinformatics.ua.pt/euadr/. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Web Content Customization

Tavoitteena on tutkia sisällön räätälöintiä Internetissä. Yritysten tarjoama sisällön määrä WWW-sivuillaan on kasvanut räjähdysmäisesti. Räätälöinnin avulla asiakkaat saavat juuri haluamaansa ja tarvitsemaansa sisältöä. Räätälöinti edellyttää asiakkaiden profilointia. Asiakastietojen kerääminen aiheuttaa huolta yksityisyyden menettämisestä. Tutkimus toteutetaan case-tutkimuksena. Tutkimuksen kohteena on viisi yritystä, jotka toimivat sisällön tarjoajina. Tutkimus pohjautuu valmiiseen aineistoon sekä osallistuvaan havainnointiin kohde yrityksistä. Sisällön räätälöinnistä voidaan havaita neljä eri perus lähestymistapaa. Profilointi toteutetaan pääsääntöisesti joko asiakkaan itse antamien tietojen pohjalta tai havainnoimalla hänen käyttäytymistään WWW-sivulla. Tulevaisuudessa tarvitaan selkeät pelisäännöt asiakastietojen keräämiseen ja käyttämiseen. Asiakkaat haluavat räätälöityä sisältöä, mutta sisällön tarjoajien on saavutettava heidän luottamuksensa yksityisyyden suojasta. Luottamuksen merkitys kasvaa entisestään, kun räätälöintiä kehitetään pidemmälle.

CRM and higher education : developing a monitoring system to improve relationships in e-learning environments

Peer-reviewed

Implementing gateway monitoring service for infrastructure sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks and its applications have been widely researched and implemented in both commercial and non commercial areas. The usage of wireless sensor network has developed its market from military usage to daily use of human livings. Wireless sensor network applications from monitoring prospect are used in home monitoring, farm fields and habitant monitoring to buildings structural monitoring. As the usage boundaries of wireless sensor networks and its applications are emerging there are definite ongoing research, such as lifetime for wireless sensor network, security of sensor nodes and expanding the applications with modern day scenarios of applications as web services. The main focus in this thesis work is to study and implement monitoring application for infrastructure based sensor network and expand its usability as web service to facilitate mobile clients. The developed application is implemented for wireless sensor nodes information collection and monitoring purpose enabling home or office environment remote monitoring for a user.

Skaalautuvan grafiikka- ja käyttöliittymäkirjaston valinta ja hyödyntäminen reaaliaikaisessa web-sovelluksessa

Skaalautuvien web-sivujen merkitys kasvaa nykypäivänä, koska web-sivuja katsotaan hyvin erikokoisilla ja -resoluutiosilla laitteilla. Sivujen skaalautuessa eri laitteille ei tarvitse erikseen tehdä mobiilisivuja tai perinteistä natiivia ohjelmistoa joka laitteelle, vaan yksi sivu toimii kaikilla laitteilla. Ongelmana on saada web-sovellukset toimimaan eri laitteilla, koska laitteiden selaimissa saattaa olla pieni eroja, joiden vuoksi on työlästä saada skaalautuva käyttöliittymä toimimaan kaikilla eri laitteilla. Skaalautuvien sivujen kehittämisen avuksi on luotu erilaisia käyttöliittymä- ja grafiikkakirjastoja, jotka auttavat sivun skaalautuvuuden toteuttamisessa. Kirjastoja käyttämällä säästetään kehitystyöhön käytettävää aikaa ja ulkoistetaan kirjaston ylläpito kolmannelle osapuolelle. Tällöin jää enemmän aikaa varsinaisten sovelluksen kehitystyölle. Tässä työssä tutkitaan eri käyttöliittymä- ja grafiikkakirjastovaihtoehtoja käyttöliittymän toteuttamiseksi. Työssä toteutetaan yksinkertainen verkkoseurantajärjestelmän prototyyppi ja valitaan sille skaalautuva käyttöliittymä- ja grafiikkakirjasto. Järjestelmä koostuu kolmesta osasta: käyttöliittymästä, palvelusta ja tietolähteistä, joista palvelu kerää tietoa käyttöliittymälle näytettäväksi.

An Alternative Approach To Computer System Security Monitoring And Enhancement Through System Call Sequence Analysis

Modern computer systems are plagued with stability and security problems: applications lose data, web servers are hacked, and systems crash under heavy load. Many of these problems or anomalies arise from rare program behavior caused by attacks or errors. A substantial percentage of the web-based attacks are due to buffer overflows. Many methods have been devised to detect and prevent anomalous situations that arise from buffer overflows. The current state-of-art of anomaly detection systems is relatively primitive and mainly depend on static code checking to take care of buffer overflow attacks. For protection, Stack Guards and I-leap Guards are also used in wide varieties.This dissertation proposes an anomaly detection system, based on frequencies of system calls in the system call trace. System call traces represented as frequency sequences are profiled using sequence sets. A sequence set is identified by the starting sequence and frequencies of specific system calls. The deviations of the current input sequence from the corresponding normal profile in the frequency pattern of system calls is computed and expressed as an anomaly score. A simple Bayesian model is used for an accurate detection.Experimental results are reported which show that frequency of system calls represented using sequence sets, captures the normal behavior of programs under normal conditions of usage. This captured behavior allows the system to detect anomalies with a low rate of false positives. Data are presented which show that Bayesian Network on frequency variations responds effectively to induced buffer overflows. It can also help administrators to detect deviations in program flow introduced due to errors.

Managing Quality Properties of Web Service Compositions

Web services from different partners can be combined to applications that realize a more complex business goal. Such applications built as Web service compositions define how interactions between Web services take place in order to implement the business logic. Web service compositions not only have to provide the desired functionality but also have to comply with certain Quality of Service (QoS) levels. Maximizing the users' satisfaction, also reflected as Quality of Experience (QoE), is a primary goal to be achieved in a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). Unfortunately, in a dynamic environment like SOA unforeseen situations might appear like services not being available or not responding in the desired time frame. In such situations, appropriate actions need to be triggered in order to avoid the violation of QoS and QoE constraints. In this thesis, proper solutions are developed to manage Web services and Web service compositions with regard to QoS and QoE requirements. The Business Process Rules Language (BPRules) was developed to manage Web service compositions when undesired QoS or QoE values are detected. BPRules provides a rich set of management actions that may be triggered for controlling the service composition and for improving its quality behavior. Regarding the quality properties, BPRules allows to distinguish between the QoS values as they are promised by the service providers, QoE values that were assigned by end-users, the monitored QoS as measured by our BPR framework, and the predicted QoS and QoE values. BPRules facilitates the specification of certain user groups characterized by different context properties and allows triggering a personalized, context-aware service selection tailored for the specified user groups. In a service market where a multitude of services with the same functionality and different quality values are available, the right services need to be selected for realizing the service composition. We developed new and efficient heuristic algorithms that are applied to choose high quality services for the composition. BPRules offers the possibility to integrate multiple service selection algorithms. The selection algorithms are applicable also for non-linear objective functions and constraints. The BPR framework includes new approaches for context-aware service selection and quality property predictions. We consider the location information of users and services as context dimension for the prediction of response time and throughput. The BPR framework combines all new features and contributions to a comprehensive management solution. Furthermore, it facilitates flexible monitoring of QoS properties without having to modify the description of the service composition. We show how the different modules of the BPR framework work together in order to execute the management rules. We evaluate how our selection algorithms outperform a genetic algorithm from related research. The evaluation reveals how context data can be used for a personalized prediction of response time and throughput.

Rubric-based tools to support the monitoring and assessment of Bachelor???s Final Projects

Resumen basado en el de la publicaci??n

Mobile systems for monitoring Parkinson's disease

A challenge for the clinical management of Parkinson's disease (PD) is the large within- and between-patient variability in symptom profiles as well as the emergence of motor complications which represent a significant source of disability in patients. This thesis deals with the development and evaluation of methods and systems for supporting the management of PD by using repeated measures, consisting of subjective assessments of symptoms and objective assessments of motor function through fine motor tests (spirography and tapping), collected by means of a telemetry touch screen device. One aim of the thesis was to develop methods for objective quantification and analysis of the severity of motor impairments being represented in spiral drawings and tapping results. This was accomplished by first quantifying the digitized movement data with time series analysis and then using them in data-driven modelling for automating the process of assessment of symptom severity. The objective measures were then analysed with respect to subjective assessments of motor conditions. Another aim was to develop a method for providing comparable information content as clinical rating scales by combining subjective and objective measures into composite scores, using time series analysis and data-driven methods. The scores represent six symptom dimensions and an overall test score for reflecting the global health condition of the patient. In addition, the thesis presents the development of a web-based system for providing a visual representation of symptoms over time allowing clinicians to remotely monitor the symptom profiles of their patients. The quality of the methods was assessed by reporting different metrics of validity, reliability and sensitivity to treatment interventions and natural PD progression over time. Results from two studies demonstrated that the methods developed for the fine motor tests had good metrics indicating that they are appropriate to quantitatively and objectively assess the severity of motor impairments of PD patients. The fine motor tests captured different symptoms; spiral drawing impairment and tapping accuracy related to dyskinesias (involuntary movements) whereas tapping speed related to bradykinesia (slowness of movements). A longitudinal data analysis indicated that the six symptom dimensions and the overall test score contained important elements of information of the clinical scales and can be used to measure effects of PD treatment interventions and disease progression. A usability evaluation of the web-based system showed that the information presented in the system was comparable to qualitative clinical observations and the system was recognized as a tool that will assist in the management of patients.

From Smart Meters To Smart Decisions: Web-Based Support For The Water Efficient Household

Smart water metering technologies for residential buildings offer, in principle, great opportunities for sustainable urban water management. However, much of this potential is as yet unrealized. Despite that several ICT solutions have already been deployed aiming at optimum operations on the water utilities side (e.g. real time control for water networks, dynamic pump scheduling etc.), little work has been done to date on the consumer side. This paper presents a web-based platform targeting primarily the household end user. The platform enables consumers to monitor, on a real-time basis, the water demand of their household, providing feedback not only on the total water consumption and relevant costs but also on the efficiency (or otherwise) of specific indoor and outdoor uses. Targeting the reduction of consumption, the provided feedback is combined with notifications about possible leakages\bursts, and customised suggestions to improve the efficiency of existing household uses. It also enables various comparisons, with past consumption or even with that of similar households, aiming to motivate further the householder to become an active player in the water efficiency challenge. The issue of enhancing the platform’s functionality with energy timeseries is also discussed in view of recent advances in smart metering and the concept of “smart cities”. The paper presents a prototype of this web-based application and critically discusses first testing results and insights. It also presents the way in which the platform communicates with central databases, at the water utility level. It is suggested that such developments are closing the gap between technology availability and usefulness to end users and could help both the uptake of smart metering and awareness raising leading, potentially, to significant reductions of urban water consumption. The work has received funding from the European Union FP7 Programme through the iWIDGET Project, under grant agreement no318272.

Novas ferramentas para monitoramento ambiental usando SIG Web

The use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) has becoming very important in fields where detailed and precise study of earth surface features is required. Applications in environmental protection are such an example that requires the use of GIS tools for analysis and decision by managers and enrolled community of protected areas. In this specific field, a challenge that remains is to build a GIS that can be dynamically fed with data, allowing researchers and other agents to recover actual and up to date information. In some cases, data is acquired in several ways and come from different sources. To solve this problem, some tools were implemented that includes a model for spatial data treatment on the Web. The research issues involved start with the feeding and processing of environmental control data collected in-loco as biotic and geological variables and finishes with the presentation of all information on theWeb. For this dynamic processing, it was developed some tools that make MapServer more flexible and dynamic, allowing data uploading by the proper users. Furthermore, it was also developed a module that uses interpolation to aiming spatial data analysis. A complex application that has validated this research is to feed the system with data coming from coral reef regions located in northeast of Brazil. The system was implemented using the best interactivity concept provided by the AJAX model and resulted in a substantial contribution for efficiently accessing information, being an essential mechanism for controlling events in the environmental monitoring