Iara Augustin

Learning in a large-scale pervasive environment

The idea of pervasive learning is to create a network of devices, people and situation that allow learning experiences to play out. This idea is attractive, but is not easily implemented. This paper presents a pervasive learning architecture called GlobalEdu which is composed by educational services (ES) and pervasive personal pedagogical agent (P3A) implemented above the ISAM platform. It is a software architecture that manages a large scale pervasive environment. ES expands the ISAM services to educational domain to provide knowledge management, context management, control and communication. P3A is shall always be with the learner, assisting the process of learning, independent of users device at the moment

Context-Aware Model in a Ubiquitous Learning Environment

The idea of ubiquitous learning is to create a network of devices, people and situation that allows learning experiences to play out. This idea is attractive but it is not easily implemented. The GlobalEdu is a ubiquitous learning architecture integrated in ISAM, a software architecture that manages a large-scale pervasive environment. This paper presents a context-aware model implemented in GlobalEdu. Especially, we present the context management educational service and its interface with a pedagogical agent. A scenario application will be present too

Resource scheduling on grid: handling uncertainty

The heterogeneity and the highly dynamic behavior of the grid computing demands a new class of scheduling strategies. These strategies must not only consider the instantaneous information provided by sensors, but also probabilities of the information received to keep its values in a near future.

A Context-Aware Recommendation System to Behavioral Based Authentication in Mobile and Pervasive Environments

Mobile devices use traditional authentication processes, which are vulnerable and unsuitable for highly dynamic environments, such as ubiquitous and pervasive environments. Therefore, new approaches are necessary in such environments. These approaches must be (i) context-aware by considering environmental and operational characteristics, restrictions of devices and information provided by sensors within the pervasive space, and (ii) customizable for balancing the systems proactivity with the control that the user wants to have over his systems. In this paper, it is presented an approach that provides a recommendation system based on the user behavior and the pervasive space where he belongs. The user behavior is defined by the actions and events that compose the activity that is being performed. The experimental results indicate (a) a dynamic and autonomic mechanism, which is more suitable for authenticating users in mobile and pervasive environments, and (b) significant efficiency to detect authentication anomalies by using a similarity model and a spatio-temporal permutation model.

Managing the follow-me semantics to build large-scale pervasive applications

In this paper, we present the concept of follow-me semantics of the large-scale pervasive application and discuss the features and services to its implementation based on the integration of three computing fields: mobile, context-aware and grid computing. We also discuss the adopted context-aware adaptation model, main feature embedded in both applications and middleware design, to allow the wide physical and logical mobility.

PerDiS: a scalable resource discovery service for the ISAM pervasive environment

This paper presents the PerDiS model for resource discovery in the scope of the ISAM architecture, ISAM aims to provide an integrated solution, from the development to the execution, for general-purpose pervasive applications. PerDiS considers a set of new requirements imposed by pervasive computing for resource discovery. In this paper, we emphasize the scalability issues and we propose a discovery service based on super-peer networks, which is suitable for the ISAM pervasive environment.

A2BeST: An adaptive authentication service based on mobile user's behavior and spatio-temporal context

Mobile devices are becoming mandatory equipment in modern life. However, the connections are usually based on traditional authentication processes, which do not consider the environmental characteristics, restrictions of devices, and information provided by sensors within the pervasive space. In this paper, it is presented a novel adaptive authentication service based on mobile users behavior and spatio-temporal context (A2BeST). It adopts user authentication on mobile devices based on a spatio-temporal context, which allows the modeling of the user behavior witch defines events and tasks that compound the user activity. The experimental results indicate a more dynamic and autonomic mechanism for authenticating users. In addition, it provides a relevant efficiency of proposal using a space-time permutation model and similarity vector model to detect authentication anomalies.

A framework for exploiting adaptation in high heterogeneous distributed processing

ISAM is a proposal directed to resource management in heterogeneous networks, supporting physical and logical mobility, dynamic adaptation and the execution of distributed applications based on components. In order to achieve its goals, ISAM uses, as strategy, an integrated environment that: (a) provides a programming paradigm and its execution environment; (b) handles the adaptation process through a multilevel collaborative model, in which both the system and the application contribute. In this paper we discuss the main mechanisms used to implement the ISAM features, and we also present a parallel application that explores some of this features.

Collaborative multilevel adaptation in distributed mobile applications

The next years will be characterized by high levels of heterogeneity and interactions among devices connected to global networks. The first researches involving wide-area distributed systems answered many questions concerning resource management, although they fail in treating questions related to heterogeneity and dynamic adaptation. More recent works, through technologies like CORBA and Java/Jini, deal with heterogeneity problem, but do not deepen into adaptability aspects. In this article, we present the ISAM architecture. ISAM is a middleware directed to resource management in heterogeneous networks, supporting physical and logical mobilities, dynamic adaptation and the execution of distributed mobile applications based on components. In order to achieve its goal, ISAM uses, as strategy, an integrated environment that: (a) provides a programming paradigm and its execution environment; (b) handles the adaptation process through a multilevel collaborative model, in which both the system and the application contribute.

Middleware for management of end-user programming of clinical activities in a pervasive environment

Currently, Pervasive Computing has focused on the development of programmable and interactive environments, which are intended to help the user in daily activities. The health system of the future envisages the use of Pervasive Computing as a way of optimizing and automating clinical activities. Under such perspective, the present study has tried to adapt a middleware for pervasive environment management to support and manage the accomplishment of clinical tasks (pervasive applications that help physicians perform their activities), fulfilling some requirements of activities-oriented computing, and creating a tool that will help physicians in their daily tasks.