Performance Analysis of Blockchain Platforms

Blockchain technologies have drawn massive attention to the world these past few years mostly because of the burst of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Etherium, Ripple and many others. A Blockchain, also known as distributed ledger technology, has demonstrated huge potential in saving time and costs. This open-source technology which generates a decentralized public ledger of transactions is widely appreciated for ensuring a high level of privacy through encryption and thus sharing the transaction details only amongst the participants involved in the transactions. The Blockchain is used not only for cryptocurrency but also by various companies to meet their business ends, such as efficient management of supply chains and logistics. The rise and fall of numerous crypto-currencies based on blockchain technology have generated debate among tech-giants and regulatory bodies. There are various groups which are working on standardizing the blockchain technology. At the same time, numerous groups are actively working, developing and fine-tuning their own blockchain platforms. Platforms such as etherium, hyperledger, parity, etc. have their own pros and cons. This research is focused on the performance analysis of blockchain platforms which gives a comparative understanding of these platforms

From Social Data Mining to Forecasting Socio-Economic Crisis

Socio-economic data mining has a great potential in terms of gaining a better understanding of problems that our economy and society are facing, such as financial instability, shortages of resources, or conflicts. Without large-scale data mining, progress in these areas seems hard or impossible. Therefore, a suitable, distributed data mining infrastructure and research centers should be built in Europe. It also appears appropriate to build a network of Crisis Observatories. They can be imagined as laboratories devoted to the gathering and processing of enormous volumes of data on both natural systems such as the Earth and its ecosystem, as well as on human techno-socio-economic systems, so as to gain early warnings of impending events. Reality mining provides the chance to adapt more quickly and more accurately to changing situations. Further opportunities arise by individually customized services, which however should be provided in a privacy-respecting way. This requires the development of novel ICT (such as a self- organizing Web), but most likely new legal regulations and suitable institutions as well. As long as such regulations are lacking on a world-wide scale, it is in the public interest that scientists explore what can be done with the huge data available. Big data do have the potential to change or even threaten democratic societies. The same applies to sudden and large-scale failures of ICT systems. Therefore, dealing with data must be done with a large degree of responsibility and care. Self-interests of individuals, companies or institutions have limits, where the public interest is affected, and public interest is not a sufficient justification to violate human rights of individuals. Privacy is a high good, as confidentiality is, and damaging it would have serious side effects for society.Comment: 65 pages, 1 figure, Visioneer White Paper, see http://www.visioneer.ethz.c

Personal data broker instead of blockchain for students’ data privacy assurance

Data logs about learning activities are being recorded at a growing pace due to the adoption and evolution of educational technologies (Edtech). Data analytics has entered the field of education under the name of learning analytics. Data analytics can provide insights that can be used to enhance learning activities for educational stakeholders, as well as helping online learning applications providers to enhance their services. However, despite the goodwill in the use of Edtech, some service providers use it as a means to collect private data about the students for their own interests and benefits. This is showcased in recent cases seen in media of bad use of students’ personal information. This growth in cases is due to the recent tightening in data privacy regulations, especially in the EU. The students or their parents should be the owners of the information about them and their learning activities online. Thus they should have the right tools to control how their information is accessed and for what purposes. Currently, there is no technological solution to prevent leaks or the misuse of data about the students or their activity. It seems appropriate to try to solve it from an automation technology perspective. In this paper, we consider the use of Blockchain technologies as a possible basis for a solution to this problem. Our analysis indicates that the Blockchain is not a suitable solution. Finally, we propose a cloud-based solution with a central personal point of management that we have called Personal Data Broker.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Secure and Trustable Electronic Medical Records Sharing using Blockchain

Electronic medical records (EMRs) are critical, highly sensitive private information in healthcare, and need to be frequently shared among peers. Blockchain provides a shared, immutable and transparent history of all the transactions to build applications with trust, accountability and transparency. This provides a unique opportunity to develop a secure and trustable EMR data management and sharing system using blockchain. In this paper, we present our perspectives on blockchain based healthcare data management, in particular, for EMR data sharing between healthcare providers and for research studies. We propose a framework on managing and sharing EMR data for cancer patient care. In collaboration with Stony Brook University Hospital, we implemented our framework in a prototype that ensures privacy, security, availability, and fine-grained access control over EMR data. The proposed work can significantly reduce the turnaround time for EMR sharing, improve decision making for medical care, and reduce the overall costComment: AMIA 2017 Annual Symposium Proceeding

Cloud based testing of business applications and web services

This paper deals with testing of applications based on the principles of cloud computing. It is aimed to describe options of testing business software in clouds (cloud testing). It identifies the needs for cloud testing tools including multi-layer testing; service level agreement (SLA) based testing, large scale simulation, and on-demand test environment. In a cloud-based model, ICT services are distributed and accessed over networks such as intranet or internet, which offer large data centers deliver on demand, resources as a service, eliminating the need for investments in specific hardware, software, or on data center infrastructure. Businesses can apply those new technologies in the contest of intellectual capital management to lower the cost and increase competitiveness and also earnings. Based on comparison of the testing tools and techniques, the paper further investigates future trend of cloud based testing tools research and development. It is also important to say that this comparison and classification of testing tools describes a new area and it has not yet been done

Social media analytics: a survey of techniques, tools and platforms

This paper is written for (social science) researchers seeking to analyze the wealth of social media now available. It presents a comprehensive review of software tools for social networking media, wikis, really simple syndication feeds, blogs, newsgroups, chat and news feeds. For completeness, it also includes introductions to social media scraping, storage, data cleaning and sentiment analysis. Although principally a review, the paper also provides a methodology and a critique of social media tools. Analyzing social media, in particular Twitter feeds for sentiment analysis, has become a major research and business activity due to the availability of web-based application programming interfaces (APIs) provided by Twitter, Facebook and News services. This has led to an ‘explosion’ of data services, software tools for scraping and analysis and social media analytics platforms. It is also a research area undergoing rapid change and evolution due to commercial pressures and the potential for using social media data for computational (social science) research. Using a simple taxonomy, this paper provides a review of leading software tools and how to use them to scrape, cleanse and analyze the spectrum of social media. In addition, it discussed the requirement of an experimental computational environment for social media research and presents as an illustration the system architecture of a social media (analytics) platform built by University College London. The principal contribution of this paper is to provide an overview (including code fragments) for scientists seeking to utilize social media scraping and analytics either in their research or business. The data retrieval techniques that are presented in this paper are valid at the time of writing this paper (June 2014), but they are subject to change since social media data scraping APIs are rapidly changing

E-finance-lab at the House of Finance : about us

The financial services industry is believed to be on the verge of a dramatic [r]evolution. A substantial redesign of its value chains aimed at reducing costs, providing more efficient and flexible services and enabling new products and revenue streams is imminent. But there seems to be no clear migration path nor goal which can cast light on the question where the finance industry and its various players will be and should be in a decade from now. The mission of the E-Finance Lab is the development and application of research methodologies in the financial industry that promote and assess how business strategies and structures are shared and supported by strategies and structures of information systems. Important challenges include the design of smart production infrastructures, the development and evaluation of advantageous sourcing strategies and smart selling concepts to enable new revenue streams for financial service providers in the future. Overall, our goal is to contribute methods and views to the realignment of the E-Finance value chain. ..