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With the proliferation of raw Internet of Things (IoTs) data, Fog Computing is emerging as a computing paradigm for delay-sensitive streaming analytics with operators deploying big data distributed engines on Fog resources [1]. Nevertheless, the current (Cloud-based) distributed analytics solutions are unaware of the unique characteristics of Fog realms. For instance, task placement algorithms consider homogeneous underlying resources without considering the Fog nodes' heterogeneity and the non-uniform network connections, resulting in sub-optimal processing performance. Moreover, data quality can play an important role, where corrupted data, and network uncertainty may lead to less useful results. In turn, energy consumption can critically impact the overall cost and liveness of the underlying processing infrastructure. Specifically, scheduling tasks on nodes with energy-hungry profiles or battery-powered devices may temporarily be beneficial for the performance, but it may increase the overall cost, or/and the battery-powered devices may not be available when needed. A Fog-enabled analytics stack must allow users to optimize Fog-specific indicators or trade-offs among them. For instance, users may sacrifice a portion of the execution performance to minimize energy consumption or vice versa. Except for the performance issues raised by Fog, the state-of-the-art distributed processing engines offer only low-level procedural programming interfaces with operators facing a steep learning curve to master them. So, query abstractions are crucial for minimizing the deployment time, errors, and debugging.

Nowadays, social networks are a part of everyday life. Almost everyone possessing a computing device, even a mobile one, such as a smartphone or tablet, has access to these networks. Interacting with them often requires sharing information both with the other users of the social network and with the social network itself. One of the cases that information has to be exchanged is by using services such as Facebook’s “Nearby Friends,” where a user has to share her location in order to locate her nearby friends, an action that undermines the user’s privacy. Current privacy preservation mechanisms only consider range nearest neighbor queries for nearest friend searches, limiting private friend discovery within a user’s predefined range. In this paper, we take private friend searches a step further, by presenting Two-Hop Privacy, a novel method for discovering a user’s nearest friends within arbitrary distance, not being constrained by range boundaries, in sublinear time, preserving, at the same time, the location privacy of all involved users. This is achieved by exploiting positional information of publicly available datasets of points of interest together with a randomized selection algorithm. Two-Hop Privacy is fast, requiring less than 9 ms to locate the 64 nearest neighbors between 5000 interconnected users, and capable of achieving accuracy up to 100%. 61 1 85 105

In recent years, the increasing propagation of hate speech in online social networks and the need for effective counter-measures have drawn significant investment from social network companies and researchers. This has resulted in the development of many web platforms and mobile applications for reporting and monitoring online hate speech incidents. In this article, we present MANDOLA, a big-data processing system that monitors, detects, visualizes, and reports the spread and penetration of online hate-related speech using big-data approaches. MANDOLA consists of six individual components that intercommunicate to consume, process, store, and visualize statistical information regarding hate speech spread online. We also present a novel ensemble-based classification algorithm for hate speech detection that can significantly improve the performance of MANDOLA’s ability to detect hate speech. To present the functionality and usability of our system, we present a use case scenario of real-life event annotation and data correlation. As shown from the performance of the individual modules, as well as the usability and functionality of the whole system, MANDOLA is a powerful system for reporting and monitoring online hate speech.

We envision PDS2, a decentralized data marketplace in which consumers submit their tasks to be run within the platform, on the data of willing providers. The goal of PDS2is to ensure that users maintain full control on their data and do not compromise their privacy, while being rewarded for the value that their data generates. In order to achieve this, our marketplace architecture employs blockchain technology, privacy-preserving computation and decentralized machine learning. We then compare different potential solutions and identify the Ethereum blockchain, trusted execution environments and gossip learning as the most suitable for the implementation of PDS2. We also discuss the main open challenges that are left to tackle and possible directions for future work.

With the rapidly growing demand for DNA analysis, the need for storing and processing large-scale genome data has presented significant challenges. This paper describes how the Genome Analysis Toolkit (GATK) can be deployed to an elastic cloud, and defines policy to drive elastic scaling of the application. We extensively analyse the GATK to expose opportunities for resource elasticity, demonstrate that it can be practically deployed at scale in a cloud environment, and demonstrate that applying elastic scaling improves the performance to cost tradeoff achieved in a simulated environment. © 2015 Elsevier B.V. 67 368 381 Cited By :1

Entrepreneurship is a core driver of economic growth and societal prosperity, as it fosters the innovation necessary for exploiting new opportunities, enhancing productivity, increasing employment opportunities and providing more effective solutions. Aiming for a resilient economic recovery and growth, Cyprus strives to actively participate in the entrepreneurship and innovation global arena. This is reflected in recently formulated mechanisms and policy frameworks that aim to drive the country’s entrepreneurial activity towards growth and internationalization, including the formulation of a Deputy Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digital Policy. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) has been keeping its finger on the pulse of the state of entrepreneurship since 1999, both in terms of the state of the entrepreneurial mind-set, motivations, activities and ambition, as well as the national framework conditions required to allow entrepreneurship to flourish in an economy. GEM’s conceptual framework contains a comprehensive set of indicators on entrepreneurship, allowing for the construction of detailed profiles of entrepreneurship in each participating country. These include societal attitudes and beliefs towards entrepreneurship, the characteristics, status and expected impact of entrepreneurial activity and also the conditions of each country’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. GEM 2019/2020 Adult Population Survey (APS) included 50 different economies. GEM’s framework is well positioned to assess the current status of entrepreneurship in each country. Our country’s participation in GEM places Cyprus on the global map of entrepreneurship and innovation. This is the fourth successive year Cyprus participates in GEM, which allows for a longitudinal analysis of the evolution of the local entrepreneurial ecosystem. The national GEM report at hand aims to present an overview of the status of entrepreneurial intention and activity, the characteristics of entrepreneurs, the expected outcomes and the advantages and burdens of the national entrepreneurship ecosystems. Furthermore, the report also reflects on the changes recorded across the recent years. In order to serve as a powerful tool for informing the country’s entrepreneurial status, the report also compares Cyprus’ index rates with Greece’s and Luxembourg’s as well as the European average rates. GEM Cyprus 2019/2020 highlight the advantages as the inhibitors of the island’s entrepreneurial activity. On the positive side, societal challenges towards entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial activity in Cyprus have improved compared to the previous years. In 2019/2020 a larger part of the population perceives that entrepreneurship is a good career choice (69.9% in 2018/2019, 7.3% in 2019/2020) and high status is associated to successful entrepreneurs (67.6% in 2018/2019, 76.7% in 2019/2020). Similarly, the perceived capabilities to initiate entrepreneurial activity has improved (45.9% in 2018/2019, 58.2% in 2019/2020). Cyprus’ TEA rate has notably increased this year (3.9% in 2018/2019, 12.2% in 2019/2020). Comparing Cyprus’ TEA with other European countries participating in this year’s GEM, Cyprus’ is ranked 9th. Similarly, Cyprus’ rate of established businesses (6.1% in 2018/2019, 10.1% in 2019/2020) and intrapreneurship (5.4% in 2018/2019, 6.2% in 2019/2020) have both increased. Cyprus’ entrepreneurship ecosystem benefits from its high-quality physical infrastructure and commercial and services infrastructure, which remain the greatest strengths of the local entrepreneurial ecosystem across the years. Entrepreneurial education at post-school level is also a strength of the island’s ecosystem. However, entrepreneurial opportunities, fear of failure, gender gap as well as other factors inhibit Cyprus’ entrepreneurial activity. Approximately two in five individuals in Cyprus perceive that there are available opportunities for initiating entrepreneurial activity (38.5%) while the index rate has decreased compared to last year (45.9%). Along the same lines, although fear of failure has decreased compared to the previous years, in 2019/2020, 36.4% of the population expressed their fear of failure related to entrepreneurial activity. There is also a disproportionate involvement of females and males in entrepreneurial activity (0.6 ratio). The gender gap ratio remains unchanged across the years, highlighting the need to take further action. The country’s entrepreneurial ecosystem lacks sufficient entrepreneurial education at school stage, funding and R&D transfer. Most of these inhibitors persist across the years, highlighting the need for additional and more effective policies. Overall, Cyprus’ status of entrepreneurial activity has improved, while positive changes have also been recorded on societal perceptions. Despite these improvements, GEM 2019/2020 also shed light on the weaknesses of the ecosystem. The results underline the need for a disruptive shift from an economic, cultural and educational perspective. Indeed, the availability of financial resources needs to be increased, both for high-risk early stage endeavors as well as for more mature start-ups in need of venture capital. The risk-averse culture of the population needs to be altered through enhanced life-long education, whereas enhanced media attention and entrepreneurship programs could further contribute to increasing female entrepreneurship. Education at school stage also needs to be transformed to promote creativity, risk-taking and international orientation from an early-stage. The formulation of a Deputy Ministry of Innovation and Digital Policy is the first step towards orchestrating the different government initiatives and providing more targeted support for the start-up ecosystem. This year’s special section exhibits the aims and strategies of the deputy ministry and describes its planned actions. Cyprus’ annual participation in GEM provides useful and comparable insights on the country’s entrepreneurial status and makes policy recommendations. We aspire that GEM results can serve as a useful tool for further elevating and enhancing the country’s entrepreneurial activity. Ministry of Energy Commerce Industry & Tourism PricewaterhouseCoopers