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Diabetes is one of today’s greatest global problems, and it is only becoming bigger. Constant measuring of blood glucose level is a prerequisite for monitoring glucose blood level and establishing diabetes treatment procedures. The usual way of glucose level measuring is by an invasive procedure that requires finger pricking with the lancet and might become painful and obeying, especially if this becomes a daily routine. In this study, we analyze noninvasive glucose measurement approaches and present several classification dimensions according to different criteria: size, invasiveness, analyzed media, sensing properties, applied method, activation type, response delay, measurement duration, and access to results. We set the focus on using machine learning and neural network methods and correlation with heart rate variability and electrocardiogram, as a new research and development trend.

The speedup is usually limited by two main laws in high-performance computing, that is, the Amdahl's and Gustafson's laws. However, the speedup sometimes can reach far beyond the limited linear speedup, known as superlinear speedup, which means that the speedup is greater than the number of processors that are used. Although the superlinear speedup is not a new concept and many authors have already reported its existence, most of them reported it as a side effect, without explaining why and how it is happening. In this paper, we analyze several different superlinear speedup types and define a taxonomy for them. Additionally, we present several explanations and cases of superlinearity existence for different types of granular algorithms (tasks), which means that they can be divided into many sub-tasks and scattered to the processors for execution. Apart from frequent explanation that having more cache memory in parallel execution is the main reason, we summarize other different effects that cause the superlinearity, including the superlinear speedup in cloud virtual environment for both vertical and horizontal scaling.

Disaster-resilient solutions are those realistic, time dependent and policy driven processes to enable technical solutions working even in the case of a disaster. Two issues are tackled within this paper, what are the eHealth IoT solutions for disasters and analyze if these eHealth IoT solutions can be disaster-resilient. We present a scenario when eHealth IoT solutions can be used to manage the consequences after a natural or any other disaster as a kind of a technology enabled crisis management. Consequences occur when the existing policies allow unpreparedness, unprotectedness, and inability to respond effectively. Technology- enabled disaster resilience, in our case, is a way-out strategy using an eHealth IoT solution. We introduce a new IoT eHealth solution to be used in an emergency after a disaster. However, the design of this solution should be also disaster resilient, without dependence on infrastructure that might be also exposed to a disaster. The corresponding architecture and solution are described and their properties analyzed.

Cloud computing is the latest evolution of computing where the IT resources are offered as services following the “pay-per-usage” pricing model. Cloud’s scalability feature causes variable price for resources governed by the cloud service providers. Therefore, the cloud customers’ main interest is whether the performance scales to the price for the leased resources in the cloud. In this paper we analyze the variable server load impact on the performance and the cost of two web services that utilize memory and CPU resources. In order to determine the real cost of the rented CPU resources, we experimented with different number of concurrent messages with different sizes. The results concerning the memory demanding web service show that the lowest cost is obtained when the web service is hosted on two CPUs, whereas the results concerning the web service which additionally utilizes CPU show that the lowest cost is achieved when it is hosted on one CPU and linearly rises with the resources.

The e-Deposit is a deposit that can be managed in electronic form. The concept of a fund accessible for different financial transactions makes the e-Deposit appropriate for use at universities. The application is implemented in three-tier architecture. Because of the extensive exchange of financial data over the internet, the data integrity is secured. The business and data access tier are implemented in a modular manner helping the robustness of the application and reducing the risk of unwanted behavior. Special modules are used, that enable the integration of an e-commerce scenario in an already existing university information system.

This research is motivated by several open research questions about cloud solutions, such as how to wisely choose a cloud host for services and how to change the cloud provider in an easy manner. The ability to move the services from one to another provider in a simpler manner is the definition of the cloud service portability, as an open research area which deserves more attention. In this paper we propose a new cloud portability service platform and we give an overview of the current trends in the area of cloud service portability, especially analyzing the TOSCA's approach. Our new platform proposal is based on establishing an adapter model ,which offers the desired cloud portability. The new solution describes the services by a XML TOSCA approach aiming to build a custom Platform as a Service (PaaS) that can accept and exchange installations of any portable application. The scenario for the new approach assumes that the applications are described by appropriate installation requirements and application structure using the TOSCA specificationandthe platform performs the necessary installation according to the specificationto continue with automatic deployment of application/services.

The vision about having information at our fingertips anytime and anyplace was only a dream in the mid 1990's. Today, Web access, mobile applications and ubiquitous mail is a reality experienced by millions of users worldwide. The main obstacle for today's mobile devices is the lack of resources, since today's applications are becoming more and resource extensive. This requires increasing the processing power of the device, increasing the memory, a need for greater durability of the battery and so on. All of these tendencies would increase the processing speed of applications and would improve the way they function. Therefore, the need for a more powerful device with a better processing speed becomes inevitable. This is a valid reason for introducing cloudlets, which represent intermediate layers located between the cloud and each mobile device. In this way, instead of accessing a distant cloud, the users connect to the nearest cloudlet through a wireless network. The purpose of this article is to explain the importance of using Cloudlets in our everyday life, by presenting the main challenges and possibilities of further research. We present a short introduction about Cloudlets; the cloudlets architecture and the way they operate. Moreover, we discuss about what their features are, how they work with thin and tick clients, and how they operate as offload elements. In the end, we state the challenges and open research question related to the topic.