The dissemination of patients’ medical records results in diverse risks to patients’ privacy as malicious activities on these records cause severe damage to the reputation, finances, and so on of all parties related directly or indirectly to the data. Current methods to effectively manage and protect medical records have been proved to be insufficient. In this paper, we propose MeDShare, a system that addresses the issue of medical data sharing among medical big data custodians in a trust-less environment. The system is blockchain-based and provides data provenance, auditing, and control for shared medical data in cloud repositories among big data entities. MeDShare monitors entities that access data for malicious use from a data custodian system. In MeDShare, data transitions and sharing from one entity to the other, along with all actions performed on the MeDShare system, are recorded in a tamper-proof manner. The design employs smart contracts and an access control mechanism to effectively track the behavior of the data and revoke access to offending entities on detection of violation of permissions on data. The performance of MeDShare is comparable to current cutting edge solutions to data sharing among cloud service providers. By implementing MeDShare, cloud service providers and other data guardians will be able to achieve data provenance and auditing while sharing medical data with entities such as research and medical institutions with minimal risk to data privacy.

MeDShare: Trust-Less Medical Data Sharing Among Cloud Service Providers via Blockchain

Agent technology has been considered as an important approach for developing distributed intelligent manufacturing systems. A number of researchers have attempted to apply agent technology to manufacturing enterprise integration, supply chain management, manufacturing planning, scheduling and control, materials handling, and holonic manufacturing systems. This paper gives a brief survey of some related projects in this area, and discusses some key issues in developing agent-based manufacturing systems such as agent technology for enterprise integration and supply chain management, agent encapsulation, system architectures, dynamic system reconfiguration, learning, design and manufacturability assessments, distributed dynamic scheduling, integration of planning and scheduling, concurrent scheduling and execution, factory control structures, potential tools and standards for developing agent-based manufacturing systems. An extensive annotated bibliography is provided.

Agent-Based Systems for Intelligent Manufacturing: A State-of-the-Art Survey

A translation apparatus is provided which comprises: an inputting section for inputting a source document in a natural language; a layout analyzing section for analyzing layout information including cascade information, itemization information, numbered itemization information, labeled itemization information and separator line information in the source document inputted by the inputting section and specifying a translation range on the basis of the layout information; a translation processing section for translating a source document text in the specified translation range into a second language; and an outputting section for outputting a translated text provided by the translation processing section.

Automated Planning: Theory and Practice.

Since wireless network virtualization enables abstraction and sharing of infrastructure and radio spectrum resources, the overall expenses of wireless network deployment and operation can be reduced significantly. Moreover, wireless network virtualization can provide easier migration to newer products or technologies by isolating part of the network. Despite the potential vision of wireless network virtualization, several significant research challenges remain to be addressed before widespread deployment of wireless network virtualization, including isolation, control signaling, resource discovery and allocation, mobility management, network management and operation, and security as well as non-technical issues such as governance regulations, etc. In this paper, we provide a brief survey on some of the works that have already been done to achieve wireless network virtualization, and discuss some research issues and challenges. We identify several important aspects of wireless network virtualization: overview, motivations, framework, performance metrics, enabling technologies, and challenges. Finally, we explore some broader perspectives in realizing wireless network virtualization.

Wireless Network Virtualization: A Survey, Some Research Issues and Challenges

http://www.parkjonghyuk.net/lecture/2015-1st-lecture/networksecurity/Paper2.pdf

Security in cloud computing

The crucial role that networking plays in Cloud computing calls for a holistic vision that allows combined control, management, and optimization of both networking and computing resources in a Cloud environment, which leads to a convergence of networking and Cloud computing. Network virtualization is being adopted in both telecommunications and the Internet as a key attribute for the next generation networking. Virtualization, as a potential enabler of profound changes in both communications and computing domains, is expected to bridge the gap between these two fields. Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), when applied in network virtualization, enables a Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) paradigm that may greatly facilitate the convergence of networking and Cloud computing. Recently the application of SOA in network virtualization has attracted extensive interest from both academia and industry. Although numerous relevant research works have been published, they are currently scattered across multiple fields in the literature, including telecommunications, computer networking, Web services, and Cloud computing. In this article we present a comprehensive survey on the latest developments in service-oriented network virtualization for supporting Cloud computing, particularly from a perspective of network and Cloud convergence through NaaS. Specifically, we first introduce the SOA principle and review recent research progress on applying SOA to support network virtualization in both telecommunications and the Internet. Then we present a framework of network-Cloud convergence based on service-oriented network virtualization and give a survey on key technologies for realizing NaaS, mainly focusing on state of the art of network service description, discovery, and composition. We also discuss the challenges brought in by network-Cloud convergence to these technologies and research opportunities available in these areas, with a hope to arouse the research community's interest in this emerging interdisciplinary field.

A Survey on Service-Oriented Network Virtualization Toward Convergence of Networking and Cloud Computing

In this paper, we have studied a common Web service composition problem, the syntactic matching problem, where the output parameters of a Web service can be used as the input parameters of another Web service. Many automatic Web service composition algorithms based on AI planning techniques have been proposed. However, most of them do not scale well when the number of Web services increases, or may miss finding a solution even if one exists. The planning graph, another AI planning technique, provides a unique search space. We have found that when we model the Web service composition problem as a planning graph, it actually provides a trivial solution to the problem. Instead of following the usual way to find a solution by a backward search, we put our efforts into removing the redundant Web services contained in the planning graph. Our approach can find a solution in polynomial time, but with possible redundant Web services. We have tested our algorithms on the data set used in ICEBEpsila05 and compared our results with existing methods.

An Efficient Syntactic Web Service Composition Algorithm Based on the Planning Graph Model

Both workflow and agent technology have recently been applied to business process management. The integration of these two technologies definitely provides solutions to problems that cannot be solved by either of them individually. This paper summarises the capabilities of these two technologies and discusses the forms and benefits of integrating them for business process management. Generally, agent-enhanced workflow management and agent-based workflow management are the main forms of application of intelligent agents to workflow systems. Some research issues in each form are discussed. A conclusion, with a discussion about future research directions, is also given.

Integration of workflow and agent technology for business process management

http://directory.umm.ac.id/Data%20Elmu/jurnal/I/International%20Journal%20of%20Production%20Economics/Vol68.Issue2.Nov2000/2260.pdf

Application of multiagent systems in project management

Web services based on a service-oriented architecture framework provide a suitable technical foundation for business process management and integration. A business process can be composed of a set of Web services that belong to different companies and interact with each other by sending messages. Web service orchestration languages are deﬁned by standard organizations to describe business processes composed of Web services. A business process can fail for many reasons, such as faulty Web services or mismatching messages. It is important to ﬁnd out which Web services are responsible for a failed business process because we could penalize these Web services and exclude them from the business process in the future. In this paper, we propose a model-based approach to diagnose the faults in a Web service-composed business process. We convert a Web service orchestration language, more speciﬁcally BPEL4WS, into synchronized automata, so that we have a formal description of the topology and variable dependency of the business process. After an exception is thrown, the diagnoser can calculate the business process execution trajectory based on the formal model and the observed evolution of the business process. The faulty Web services are deduced from the variable dependency on the execution trajectory. We demonstrate our diagnosis technique with an example.

/pdf/a-model-based-approach-for-diagnosing-fault-in-web-service-50l60ql7hr.pdf

Yuhong Yan

Papers

A Survey on Service-Oriented Network Virtualization Toward Convergence of Networking and Cloud Computing

An Efficient Syntactic Web Service Composition Algorithm Based on the Planning Graph Model

Integration of workflow and agent technology for business process management

Application of multiagent systems in project management

A Model-based Approach for Diagnosing Fault in Web Service Processes