Microservices-based student support framework (MicSSF) to enhance equity in education

COVID-19 has exposed and widened the disparity in education. The paper reviews the efforts made by educational institutions and organizations to offer services to the disadvantaged in an effort to eliminate the educational gap. Based on the literature, the primary issues which led to increasing in the gap of educational inequality were identified as the need for books, internet connection, study gadgets/devices, extra tutoring, food and study space, and psychological counseling. This paper proposes an online system using the microservices architecture to provide a holistic system that addresses the key concerns that contributed to the educational discrepancy. The application proposes a variety of business services that are logically separated from each other, and that can be deployed and scaled independently. Each of the provided services is autonomous and can communicate with other services. © 2023 Wiley Periodicals LLC.

E-Passport COVID-19 Adopting RFID Implants based on Microservices

COVID-19 has spread throughout the global and has restrained humans in all aspects of life including society, economy, education, etc. The first Corona virus appeared in China on 2019 and had mutated into several variants such as B.1.1.7 (Alpha), B.1.351 (Beta), E484Q (Delta), and BA.2 (Omicron). In order to block the virus to mutate and spread in the communities, we proposed a design of E-Passport by adopting RFID Implants with integrated Microservices technology. Our concepts is we design an android application (E-passport) that will be used by every institution on public places to stop the positive patients getting inside the public space to spread the virus. The checker in every public places need to scan the RFID implants on every humans hand by using NFC technology embedded on android phone with installed E-Passport to determine whether can enter or forbidden to enter. The RFID Implant stored a unique code that can be read as the reference of the person's data information stored in cloud database based on Microservices infrastructure. Our proposed design and architecture are dedicated to stop the COVID-19 virus to spread among public communities. © 2022 IEEE.

Resource Oriented Programming: Design Pattern for Describing Restful Service Composition

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated digital transformation in the world. A consequence of this pandemic is the growing demand for the development of applications in a relatively short time. To solve this problem we present in this paper a language to simplify implementing REST resources using rewriting and code reuse. For this, we first introduce the resource-oriented programming concept in which we represent a resource as a combination of other (existing) resources. We then formalize the different possible combinations thanks to design patterns from object-oriented programming. Finally, we show the relevance of our language by presenting firstly some use cases of design patterns for solving recurring issues in web applications such as over-fetching and under-fetching and then comparing our approach to that of object programming for solving the minimalist management of a stock. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Technology Adoption and Usage by the Public During the COVID-19 Pandemic

This research article determines the most adopted and used technology by common public and end consumers during the COVID-19 pandemic and tries to determine the technologies that will continue to see increased adoption rate beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. It examines examples of how digital technologies and services have been employed in daily lives of individuals and enterprises/businesses during the COVID-19 crisis. We have used responses to the survey built using Google Forms as the method for data collection. The study undertaken was exploratory in nature to identify the most adopted and used technology among common public during the COVID-19 pandemic. We used descriptive statistics, R-test, R-squared test, and ANOVA for the study. The results show that video-based collaboration technology-related services had the highest adoption and usage among respondents, followed by process automation, mobile/web-based services and microservices, and artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics. As an implication of the study, businesses can focus upon technologies such as video-based collaboration technology, process automation, mobile/web-based services and microservices, and AI and analytics—in that order—to roll out new services and models while dealing with their end customers and prospects, during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.

Science gateway adoption using plug-in middleware for evidence-based healthcare data management

There is a growing need for next-generation science gateways to increase the accessibility of emerging large-scale datasets for data consumers (e.g., clinicians, researchers) who aim to combat COVID-19-related challenges. Such science gateways that enable access to distributed computing resources for large-scale data management need to be made more programmable, extensible, and scalable. In this article, we propose a novel socio-technical approach for developing a next-generation healthcare science gateway, namely, OnTimeEvidence that addresses data consumer challenges surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic related data analytics. OnTimeEvidence implements an intelligent agent, namely, Vidura Advisor that integrates an evidence-based filtering method to transform manual practices and improve scalability of data analytics. It also features a plug-in management middleware that improves the programmability and extensibility of the science gateway capabilities using microservices. Lastly, we present a usability study that shows the important factors from data consumers' perspective to adopt OnTimeEvidence with chatbot-assisted middleware support to increase their productivity and collaborations to access vast publication archives for rapid knowledge discovery tasks. © 2022 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Using IoT Assistive Technologies for Older People Non-Invasive Monitoring and Living Support in Their Homes.

Many western societies are confronted with issues in planning and adapting their health policies due to an ageing population living alone. The "NOt Alone at Home-NOAH" project aimed to involve older people in the Agile co-creation of services for a collaborative monitoring and awareness notification for remote caregivers. Our research aim was to create a scalable and modern information system that permitted a non-invasive monitorization of the users for keeping their caregivers up to date. This was done via a cloud IoT (Internet of Things), which collects and processes data from its domotic sensors. The notifications generated by the system, via the three applications we developed (NOAH/NOAH Care/Admin Centre), offer caregivers an easy way of detecting changes in the day-to-day behaviour and activities of their patients, giving them time to intervene in case of abnormal activity. Such an approach would lead to a longer and more independent life for the older people. We evaluated our system by conducting a year-long pilot-study, offering caregivers constant information from the end-users while still living independently. For creating our pilot groups, we used the ABAS (Adaptive Behaviour Assessment System) II, which we then matched with the pre-profiled Behavioral Analysis Models of older people familiar with modern communication devices. Our results showed a low association between daily skills and the sensors we used, in contrast with the results from previous studies done in this field. Another result was efficiently capturing the behaviour changes that took place due to the COVID-19 Lockdown measures.

Advancing genomic epidemiology by addressing the bioinformatics bottleneck: Challenges, design principles, and a Swiss example.

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic led to a huge increase in global pathogen genome sequencing efforts, and the resulting data are becoming increasingly important to detect variants of concern, monitor outbreaks, and quantify transmission dynamics. However, this rapid up-scaling in data generation brought with it many IT infrastructure challenges. In this paper, we report about developing an improved system for genomic epidemiology. We (i) highlight key challenges that were exacerbated by the pandemic situation, (ii) provide data infrastructure design principles to address them, and (iii) give an implementation example developed by the Swiss SARS-CoV-2 Sequencing Consortium (S3C) in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, we discuss remaining challenges to data infrastructure for genomic epidemiology. Improving these infrastructures will help better detect, monitor, and respond to future public health threats.

Contigo: Monitoring People’s Activity App for Anomalies Detection

The pandemic situation produced by COVID-19 has made access to medical services and personal treatment difficult. For the older adults, this has been a major problem because they often need assistance to facilitate their daily lives. Different types of solutions have been put into place very quickly to alleviate this problem, such as telemedicine or telecare. However, most of these solutions require people to perform some actions manually. This paper presents a solution to monitor people’s activity in a way that is transparent to them. This solution is based on a mobile application that records their movements and estimates a certain amount of activity, and a web platform that allows authorized personnel to request this information by using different type of microservices. This application offers a simple and easy-to-access solution that allows the monitoring of the activity of the older adults to know their status and to be able to act accordingly in case of unusual situations. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Design of a Joint Microservices-based Smart Epidemic Prevention Platform

Currently, as COVID-19 spreads around the world, epidemic prevention departments from different provinces and regions often need to carry out cross-regional cooperation. In the paper, some new office platforms based on some office needs of the joint prevention and control work are tried to build. In the paper, the platforms built is capable of visualizing the risk map of regional risks, covering a multi-segment integrated joint prevention and control collaborative business platform system of the CDC, customs, relevant medical institutions and health tracking management departments. For the staff in each business link, they can access the data of cases, close contacts and key health tracking objects through the platform. Based on the work, it's necessary to print relevant certificates online, and at the same time, they also supplement the business data of the link to the data chain, providing better information services for improving the efficiency of joint prevention and control. In the process of making an analysis of the business needs, it is found that when building the platform, it will face problems such as many functional modules, variable demand, and too large amount of concurrency at a certain time. In the paper, the implemented architecture techniques would be explained, the details of the key technology implementation adopted by micro-services in realizing the platform would be clarified, and the significance of the platform to the epidemic prevention work would be finally discussed. © 2021 IEEE.

MI-OPJ: A Microservices-based Online Programming Judge

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic we are experiencing the last few years has resulted in a shift of many of our everyday life activities from the physical to the digital world. Education is a typical example of such a case with both tutors and students experiencing difficulties and delays in communication. To assist towards this direction, also considering the already forming future of online education, we present MI-OPJ, a microservices-based online programming judge. © 2021 IEEE.

COVID-19 Multi-Modal Data Analysis with Alexa Voice and Conversational AI Applications : Voice First System Tracking Novel Coronavirus

Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) has changed the life of the planet. It is extremely important to monitor the situation in real time. Our secure methodology can help people to trace the situation in their country or state without touching a single computer key, just using voice-first computing devices. We have been using the data from multiple sources, created a suite of Alexa skills (Voice-first applications) and observed how the data evolves. The coronavirus data is downloaded automatically to the AWS Cloud and stored securely in the No-SQL DynamoDB database and S3 buckets to help users to monitor up-to-date statistics. Moreover, Alexa Echo devices with screens will display comprehensive graphs containing the most vital numbers - new cases, new deaths, mortality rate and hospitalizations since the pandemic started. Our system is safe, secure, automatic and resilient. It helps users to maintain social distancing and obtain up-to-date information about coronavirus in the location of interest without a single touch, just by using voice. During our journey we have designed and implemented many convenient commands, improving usability and multi-modal user experience. Our innovative approach, serverless architecture and Big Data methodology can help millions of people to stay on top of the coronavirus situation and make day-to-day choices using the information provided. It can also help officials to make educated decisions about opening certain businesses, institutions or activities. Since more and more voice assistants (AI devices) appear in public places - hotels, restaurants, and airports, our approach will help people to stay informed everywhere. Using our touch-free Alexa analytical skills will also promote social distancing. © 2021 IEEE.

Design of a framework of military defense system for governance of geoinformation

A defense system for geoinformation governance must be able to manage geographic information related to national security. A Geographic Information System (GIS) is useful for the defense of the country, as in the case of monitoring the spread of COVID-19, enabling authorities to make decisions based on data (data-driven). The difficulty in developing a GIS for defense is that the system requires specific functionalities from military organizations and is fault-tolerant. A case study was conducted based on requirements engineering ISO/IEC/IEEE 29148:2018, to promote common understanding among all stakeholders, design a framework of GIS for defense, capable of isolating demands in a system developed in modules individualized. The system validation was demonstrated by obtaining the prototype of a tool of the defense system for geoinformation governance. The system framework is composed of input data, migrator, operational core, solver, output bus, geoportal, and external accessors. The application is under development and already has features such as tracing routes and identifying troop access. © 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.