SESAME-S: Semantic Smart Home System for Energy Efficiency

As the urgent need for efficient and sustainable energy usage becomes ever more apparent, interest in Smart Homes is on the rise. The SESAME-S project (SEmantic SmArt Metering – Services for Energy Efficient Houses) uses semantically linked data to actively assist end-consumers in making well-informed decisions and controlling their energy consumption. By integrating smart metering and home automation functionality, SESAME-S works to effectively address the potential mass market of end-consumers with an easily customizable solution that can be widely implemented in domestic or business environments, with expected savings of over 20?% from the total energy bill. The developed system is a basis for conceptualizing, demonstrating, and evaluating a variety of innovative end-consumer services and their user interface paradigms. In this paper, we present the SESAME-S system as a whole and discuss the semantically enabled services, demonstrating that such systems may have broad acceptance in the future. The data obtained through such systems will be invaluable for future global energy-efficiency strategies and businesses.     

Semantische Technologien für Produktionsprozessinnovationen in der Landwirtschaft

Optimization of production processes in agriculture requires that innovation in form of efficiency enhancing devices is being continuously introduced and integrated within the production environments. This paper describes how semantic modelling, web services and automatic logical reasoning are used as system enablers for such value-adding integration in implementation of semantic-based diagnoses supporting optimization of milk production processes of dairy farms.     

Entrapment of Saccharomyces cerevisiae cells in u.v. crosslinked hydroxyethylcellulose/poly(ethylene oxide) double-layered gels

Double-layered gels, consisting of hydroxyethylcellulose cryogel core and poly(ethylene oxide) hydrogel shell, were synthesized with u.v. irradiation, using the same photoinitiator, (4-benzoylbenzyl) trimethylammoniumchloride (BBTMAC) for the both layers. The gels were characterized by measuring their rheological parameters, gel fraction yield, the degree of equilibrium swelling and diffusion coefficient. The diffusion coefficients for glucose and ethanol through the hydroxyethylcellulose cryogel were 3.9 × 10^?6 cm²/s and 0.97 × 10^?5 cm²/s, respectively. The applicability of these double-layered gels as carriers for immobilization was investigated by entrapment of Saccharomyces cerevisiae cells. The immobilization efficiency and cell retention were determined in batch fermentation for ethanol production from glucose. The operational stability of the gels was evaluated in batch fermentation with three consecutive runs. The ethanol yield was in the range from 60% to 77% of the theoretical yield.     

Modelling the residual strength of fatigue damage at a single semicircular edge notch: Semielliptical crack and through‐the‐thickness crack

In the present paper, computational framework for fatigue performance analysis of a semicircular edge notch with a through‐the‐thickness crack or a semielliptical crack is discussed. The failure behaviour of such configurations is theoretically examined through the stress‐intensity analysis and residual life estimation. The stress field of a damaged notch configuration is herein investigated by employing analytical and numerical approaches. Further, a fracture mechanics–based methodology, developed for fatigue life assessment, is taking into account the crack growth model proposed by Huang and Moan in which the stress ratio is involved. The efficiency of the obtained fatigue damage assessments, related to the edge notch configurations, is verified through appropriate experimental observations.     

Macro-azo-initiators having poly(ethylene glycol) units: Synthesis,characterization, and application to AB block copolymerization

Macro-azo-initiators (MAIs) having poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) units were obtained by various multistep synthetic approaches. In the first stage, macro-azo-initiators of PEG type with azo groups inserted in the main chain were prepared. MAIs were then characterized by chemical analyses, spectral methods, ¹H-NMR, GPC, and DSC techniques. They were used in the free-radical bulk polymerization of dicyclohexylitaconate to synthesize AB block copolymers of poly(ethylene glycol-b-dicyclohexylitaconate) (PEG-b-PDCHI). © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 65: 2173–2181, 1997     

Dynamic mechanical analysis study of the curing of phenol‐formaldehyde novolac resins

The curing reaction of typical commercial phenol‐formaldehyde novolac resins with hexamethylentetraamine (HMTA) was followed by dynamic mechanical analysis. The evolution of the rheological parameters, such as storage modulus G′, loss modulus G″, and tanδ (G″/G′), as a function of time, for samples of the phenolic resins on cloth, was recorded. The curing reaction, leading to the formation of a crosslinked structure, is described by a third‐order phenomenological equation. This equation takes into account a self‐acceleration effect, as a consequence not only of the chemical reaction of crosslinking after the gel point but of phase segregation as well. This rheokinetic model of the curing of phenolic novolac resins permits the determination of the numerical values of the kinetic equation constants. The influence of the composition, structure, and physical treatment on the curing kinetics of the novolac resins is evaluated. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 81: 1902–1913, 2001     

Interactive reconstructive student modeling: A machine‐learning approach

Reconstructive bug modeling is a well‐known approach to student modeling in intelligent tutoring systems, suitable for modeling procedural tasks. Domain knowledge is decomposed into the set of primitive operators and the set of conditions of their applicability. Reconstructive modeling is capable of describing errors that come from irregular application of correct operators. The main obstacle to successfulness of this approach is such decomposition of domain knowledge to primitive operators with a very low level of abstraction so that bugs could never occur within them. The other drawback of this modeling scheme is its efficiency because it is usually done offline, due to vast search spaces involved.

This article reports a novel approach to reconstructive modeling based on machine‐learning techniques for inducing procedures from traces. The approach overcomes the problems of reconstructive modeling by its interactive nature. It allows online model generation by using domain knowledge and knowledge about the student to focus the search on the portion of the problem space the student is likely to traverse while solving the problem. Furthermore, the approach is not only incremental, but also truly interactive because it involves the student in explicit dialogs about his or her goals. In such a way, it is possible to determine whether the student knows the operator he or she is trying to apply. Pedagogical actions and the student model are generated interchangeably, thus allowing for dynamic adaptation of instruction, problem generation, and immediate feedback on student's errors. The approach presented is examined in the context of the symbolic integration tutoring system (SINT), an intelligent tutoring system (ITS) for the domain of symbolic integration.     

A portable Raman acoustic levitation spectroscopic system for the identification and environmental monitoring of algal cells

We report the coupling of a portable Raman spectrometer to an acoustic levitation device to enable environmental monitoring and the potential taxonomic identification of microalgae. Spectra of living cells were recorded at 785 nm using a fiber-optic probe coupled to a portable Raman spectrometer. The spectra exhibit an excellent signal-to-noise ratio and clearly show bands from chlorophyll a and beta-carotene. Spectra of levitated photobleached microalgae clearly show a reduction in chlorophyll a concentration relative to beta-carotene after 10 min of exposure to a quartz halogen lamp. Spectra recorded from levitated nitrogen-limited cells also show a significant reduction in bands associated with chlorophyll a, as compared to nitrogen-replete cells. To investigate the diagnostic capability of the technique, four species of microalgae were analyzed. Good quality spectra of all four species were obtained showing varying ratios of beta-carotene to chlorophyll. The combination of an acoustic levitation device and a portable Raman spectrometer shows potential as a taxonomic and environmental monitoring tool with direct application to field studies in remote environments.     

Using tuple-spaces to manage the storage and dissemination of spatial–temporal content

Structured, spatial–temporal content arises in application areas such as mobile computing, intelligent transportation, urban mobility, and ubiquitous sensing. For the distributed storage and dissemination of such content, peer-to-peer solutions appear to be the natural choice. However, a closer analysis shows that distributed hash tables (DHT) alone are not enough: firstly, they do not maintain the original data structure needed to efficiently access the comprising attributes, and secondly, they lead to high signaling traffic when the data is short lived, such as in high mobility scenarios. In order to address these two problems we propose a novel content dissemination architecture based on an overlay of space-based containers. Furthermore, we apply the proposed concept to realize a concrete application in the field of intelligent transportation, and present the results of the performance evaluation conducted with the system prototype.     

Middleware Challenges in Robotic Fleets for Precision Agriculture

The past decade has witnessed a huge increase in the number of proposed middleware solutions for robotic fleets operating in unstructured environments. As a result, it has become difficult to decide which middleware is the most appropriate for a specific application or application domain. In this paper we first extract a set of common and specific challenges that middlewares address, and group them according to the source domain they have originated within. These challenges are derived from a specific precision agriculture use-case based on the robotic fleet for weed control elaborated within the European project RHEA-robot fleets for highly effective agriculture and forestry management. Furthermore, the paper provides an analysis of a number of different middlewares and suggests a set of criteria for systemizing representative solutions. The aim of this analysis is to assist the process of finding an adequate middleware for a specific application domain.