1,354,186 research outputs found
A Novel OMNeT++-Based Simulation Tool for Vehicular Cloud Computing in ETSI MEC-Compliant 5G Environments
No full textVehicular cloud computing is gaining popularity thanks to the rapid advancements in next generation wireless communication networks. Similarly, Edge Computing, along with its standard proposals such as European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC), will play a vital role in these scenarios, by enabling the execution of cloud-based services at the edge of the network. Together, these solutions have the potential to create real micro-datacenters at the network edge, favoring several benefits like minimal latency, real-time data processing, and data locality. However, the research community has not yet the opportunity to use integrated simulation frameworks for the easy testing of applications that exploit both the vehicular cloud paradigm and MEC-compliant 5G deployment environments. In this paper, we present our simulation tool as a platform for researchers and engineers to design, test, and enhance applications utilizing the concepts of vehi cular and edge cloud. The tool implements our ETSI MEC-compliant architecture that leverages resources provided by vehicles. Moreover, the paper analyzes and reports performance results for our simulation platform, as well as provides a use case where our simulator is used to support the design, test, and validation of an algorithm to distribute MEC application components on vehicular cloud resources
A digital twin decision support system for the urban facility management process
No full textThe ever increasing pace of IoT deployment is opening the door to concrete implementa-tions of smart city applications, enabling the large-scale sensing and modeling of (near-)real-time digital replicas of physical processes and environments. This digital replica could serve as the basis of a decision support system, providing insights into possible optimizations of resources in a smart city scenario. In this article, we discuss an extension of a prior work, presenting a detailed proof-of-concept implementation of a Digital Twin solution for the Urban Facility Management (UFM) process. The Interactive Planning Platform for City District Adaptive Maintenance Operations (IPPODAMO) is a distributed geographical system, fed with and ingesting heterogeneous data sources originating from different urban data providers. The data are subject to continuous refinements and algorithmic processes, used to quantify and build synthetic indexes measuring the activity level inside an area of interest. IPPODAMO takes into account potential interference from other stakeholders in the urban environment, enabling the informed scheduling of operations, aimed at minimizing interference and the costs of operations
A Layered Architecture Enabling Metaverse Applications in Smart Manufacturing Environments
No full textThe steady rollout of Industrial IoT (IIoT) technology in the manufacturing domain embodies the potential to implement smarter and more resilient production processes. To this end, it is expected that there will be a strong reliance of manufacturing processes on cloud/edge services so as to act intelligently and flexibly. While automation is necessary to handle the environment's complexity, human-in-the-loop design approaches are paramount. In this context, Digital Twins play a crucial role by allowing human operators to inspect and monitor the environment to ensure stability and reliability. Integrating the IIoT with the Metaverse enhances the system's capabilities even further, offering new opportunities for efficiency and collaboration while enabling integrated management of assets and processes. This article presents a layered conceptual architecture as an enabler for smart manufacturing metaverse environments, targeting real-time data collection and representations from shopfloor assets and processes. At the bottom layer, our proposal relies on middleware technology, serving differentiated Quality of Service (QoS) needs of the Operation Technology (OT) monitoring processes. The latter contributes to feeding a virtual layer where data processes reside, creating representations of the monitored phenomena at different timescales. Metaverse applications can consume data by tapping into the metaverse engine, a microservice-oriented and accelerated Platform as a Service (PaaS) layer tasked with bringing data to life. Without loss of generality, we profile different facets of our proposal by relying on two different proof-of-concept inspection applications aimed at real-time monitoring of the network fabric activity and a visual asset monitoring one
A Novel Design for Advanced 5G Deployment Environments with Virtualized Resources at Vehicular and MEC Nodes
No full textIoT and edge computing are profoundly changing the information era, bringing a hyper-connected and context-aware computing environment to reality. Connected vehicles are a critical outcome of this synergy, allowing for the seamless interconnection of autonomous mobile/fixed objects, giving rise to a decentralized vehicle-to-everything (V2X) paradigm. On this front, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) proposed the Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) standard, addressing the execution of cloud-like services at the very edge of the infrastructure, thus facilitating the support of low-latency services at the far-edge. In this article, we go a step further and propose a novel ETSI MEC-compliant architecture that fully exploits the synergies between the edge and far-edge, extending the pool of virtualized resources available at MEC nodes with vehicular ones found in the vicinity. In particular, our approach allows vehicle entities to access and partake in a negotiation process embodying a rewarding scheme, while addressing resource volatility as vehicles join and leave the resource pool. To demonstrate the viability and flexibility of our proposed approach, we have built an ETSI MEC-compliant simulation model, which could be tailored to distribute application requests based on the availability of both local and remote resources, managing their transparent migration and execution. In addition, the paper reports on the experimental validation of our proposal in a 5G network setting, contrasting different service delivery modes, by highlighting the potential of the dynamic exploitation of far-edge vehicular resources
Bio-Driven Sustainable Extraction and AI-Optimized Recovery of Functional Compounds from Plant Waste: A Comprehensive Review
No full textThe agrifood industry produces copious amounts of waste, which represent an execrable wastage of natural resources and result in economic losses over the entire value chain. This review compares conventional and biological methods for the recovery of functional compounds from plant wastes to rescues part of the intrinsic valuable elements contained therein. Biological methods involve bioprocesses based on hydrolytic enzymes and engineered bacterial strains, to facilitate the release of valuable compounds. Then, this review explores the innovative and transformative role of artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques for real-time monitoring, optimizing, and digitizing the extraction procedures. By combining the potential of biological extraction and AI integration, this review provides insights on how these approaches can revolutionize the agrifood sector, increasing the efficiency and environmental sustainability of the plant waste valorization process
IPPODAMO: A digital twin support for smart cities facility management
No full textThe steady deployment of IoT is paving the road toward concrete implementations of the smart city concept, allowing public/private institutions to sense and model (near) real-time digital replicas of physical processes and environments. This Digital Twin (DT) could be used proactively, as a decision support system, providing insights into possible optimizations of processes in a smart city context. In this article, we present the design and main building blocks of a DT solution for the Urban Facility Management (UFM) process in the metropolitan area of Bologna, Italy. The Interactive Planning Platform for city District Adaptive Maintenance Operations (IPPODAMO) is a proof of concept solution consisting of a (distributed) multi-layer geographical system, fed with heterogeneous data sources originating from different urban data providers. The data are subject to continuous refinements and algorithmic processes, used to quantify and predict near-to-long term evolution of the urban activity level, exploited for planning purposes, scheduling urban maintenance operations and interventions
Data for the synthesis of oligo-gamma-glutamylglutamines as model compounds for gamma-glutamyltransferases (GGTs) and for normalization of activities of different GGTs
No full textgamma-Glutamyltransferases (GGTs) are widespread, conserved enzymes that catalyze the transfer of the gamma-glutamyl moiety from a donor substrate to water (hydrolysis) or to an acceptor amino acid (transpeptidation) through the formation of a gamma-glutamyl enzyme intermediate.
Although the vast majority of the known GGTs has a short sequence called lid-loop covering the glutamate binding site, B. subtilis GGT and some other enzymes from Bacillus spp. lack the lid loop. In order to assess the possible role of the lid loop of GGTs in substrate selection, synthetic oligo-gamma-glutamylglutamines containing up to three gamma-glutamyl residues were used as model substrates. The activities of the enzymes under investigation were standardized with respect to a common reaction to ensure comparable results. The activity of an engineered mutant enzyme containing the amino acid sequence of the lid loop from E. coli GGT inserted into the backbone of B. subtilis GGT was compared to that of the lid loop-deficient B. subtilis GGT and the lid loop-carrier E. coli GGT (Calvio, Romagnuolo, Vulcano, Speranza, Morelli Enz. Micr. Technol. 2018 [1]). Here we report the experimental procedures for the synthesis of model substrates gamma-glutamylglutamines through the method of the N-phtaloyl-L-glutamic acid anhydride and the spectral data of the synthetized compounds. The data obtained in the normalization procedure of the activities of the three enzymes are also reported
Poly-γ-Glutamic Acid and Its Application in Bioremediation: A Critical Review
No full textPoly-gamma glutamic acid (γ-PGA) is an anionic bacterial polymer constituted by glutamic acid residues only. It has the intrinsic ability to strongly interact with positively charged ions and flocculate them. For this reason, a large body of literature has accumulated on its application in bioremediation, particularly targeted to positively charged heavy metals. In this work, the most important characteristics of γ-PGA and of its production are summarized, highlighting the advantages, but also the limits, in its application in bioremediation
Swarming and poly-gamma-glutamate synthesis depend on the synergic action of SwrAA and DegU in Bacillus subtilis
No full textIsogenic populations of Bacillus subtilis are multicellular communities consisting of distinct differentiated cell types and the two component system DegS-DegU has a central role in the control of single cell fates. The level of DegU phosphorylation attained inside each cell is one of the main parameters used to select specific cell fates but is not the only parameter that triggers a particular genetic programme. In laboratory strains, cooperativity between DegU and SwrAA has been observed in motility: a wild-type copy of the gene (swrAA+) confers a full swimming capacity and the ability to swarm on semi-solid surfaces when DegU is present but it does not show any motility advantage if the two component system DegS/U is deleted (1).
We will show that the synergic action of DegU and SwrAA is a conserved “modus operandi” since it is also observed in the production of poly-gamma-glutamic acid (gamma-PGA), an extracellular anionic polymer composed of thousands of glutamic acid residues linked by gamma-glutamyl bonds, produced and secreted by Bacilli. Domesticated B. subtilis strains synthesize gamma-PGA if they carry a degQH (2) or a degU32(Hy) / degS200(Hy) mutation and the wild type swrAA allele. These data indicate that the activation of the biosynthetic pgs operon is dependent on the co-presence of a high level of DegU~P and SwrAA. The presence of either SwrAA or DegU~P alone has only a marginal effect on gamma-PGA production and pgs operon transcription. The effect of SwrAA and DegU~P is cooperative rather than additive. Motility is not involved in gamma-PGA production since a sigD null mutation or a large deletion in the main flagellar operon (fla/che) do not affect gamma-PGA synthesis in degU32(Hy) swrAA+ strains. Moreover, a fla/che promoter up-mutation, that allows swarming and full swimming motilities in a degU32(Hy) swrAA- strain, does not confer the ability to produce gamma-PGA.
Activation of gamma-PGA synthesis is therefore a motility-independent phenotype in which SwrAA and DegU~P display a cooperative effect.
1) Calvio et al., 2008. J Bacteriol 190:5720-28.
2) Stanley NR and Lazazzera BA, 2005. Mol Microbiol 57:1143-
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