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As the number of migrants arriving in Europe increases, host societies face the challenge of supporting their smooth integration, respecting their needs and recognizing their competencies. A key element for their new life is their integration in the labour market. This paper presents a platform which offers a set of tools that has been developed to support migrants to find their way into the labour market in EU countries. This set includes tools for skill assessment, artificial intelligence tools providing recommendations for jobs that match their personal skills and needs, tools for suggesting training paths and options to empower their candidacy, and easy-to-use tools for creating their CV/portfolio. We focus on the evaluation of this platform in real life settings in two countries (Greece and Spain), which is part of our co-creation approach. The results are very promising and show the satisfaction of the migrants. Additionally, they provide valuable insights for both those that develop such tools and those that can use them in their work/activities with the migrants (such as the non-governmental organisations and host authorities). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The standardization of passive optical networks capable of transporting Ethernet frames at gigabit-per-second speeds, currently in progress in both ITU-T and IEEE, constitutes a major milestone toward cost-effective photonization of the last (aka first) mile. This article presents an Ethernet Gigabit PON (GPON) system aligned with the philosophy of the evolving FSAN/ITU-T specification, which focuses on the efficient support of any level of quality of service. The intelligence of this system, in terms of traffic quality guarantees, lies in the MAC protocol, which controls the distributed multiplexing/concentration function by allocating variable length slots to every user of the shared upstream (toward the network) medium. The way transport of information is organized in an ITU-T GPON system and the operation of a MAC protocol that preserves all QoS guarantees are presented and evaluated in this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the extremely competitive environment of shipping, minimizing shipping cost is the key factor for the survival and growth of shipping companies. However, stricter rules and regulations that aim at the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions published by the International Maritime Organization, force shipping companies to increase the operational efficiency of their fleet. The prediction of a ship speed in actual seas with a given power by its engine is the most important performance indicator and thus makes it the "holy grail" in pursuing better efficiency. Traditionally, tank model tests and semi-empirical formulas were the preferred solution for the aforementioned prediction and are still widely applied. However, currently, with the increased computational power that is widely available, novel and more sophisticated methods taking into consideration computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and machine learning (ML) algorithms are emerging. In this paper, we briefly present the different approaches in the prediction of a ship's speed but focus on ML methods comparing a representative number of the latest data-driven models used in papers, to provide guidelines, discover trends and identify the challenges to be faced by researchers. From this comparison, we can distinguish that artificial neural networks (ANN), being used in 73.3% of the reviewed papers, dominate as the algorithm of choice. Researchers mostly rely on physical laws governing the phenomena in the crucial part of data preprocessing tasks. Lastly, most researchers rely on data acquisition systems installed at ships in order to achieve usable results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a new routing and touring service both for outdoor and indoor places of touristic and cultural interest designed to be used in the wider area of Attica, Greece. This service is the result of the work performed in OPTORER (OPTORER: OPtimal rouTing and explOration of touRistic and cultural arEas of interest within Attica given personalized adaptive preferences, promoted underlying purpose, and interactive experience), project, and it aspires to offer a range of innovative and thematic routes to several specified points of interest in the selected area of Attica, encouraging the combination of indoor and outdoor routes in a single tour. The aim is to optimize the user experience while promoting specific, user-centric features, with safety and social welfare being a priority for every designed tour, resulting in enhancing the touristic experience in the area. Using a common smartphone device, as well as common wearable devices (i.e., smartwatches), the OPTORER service will provide an end-to-end solution by developing the algorithms and end-user applications, together with an orchestration platform responsible for managing, operating, and executing the service that produces and presents to the end user results derived from solving dynamically complex optimization problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The explosion of current demand has brought the contemporary multidomain core network paradigm to its limit. In the quest for new approaches that exploit recent developments in optical technology, a novel network architecture that obviates most of the expensive and loss-prone centralized all-optical switches is described in this work. It is based on clustered architecture for nodes in optical networks and features a reconciliation between dynamic resource allocation and guaranteed end-to-end network performance in a multidomain network. This article enhances the distributed, collision-free slot aggregation inside domains of clustered core nodes with dynamic switching of slots/frames between the domains. Thus, it can support dynamic sub-wavelength allocations between network domains, using standard burst-switching techniques. This extends the high efficiency and multiplexing gain into the inter-domain network even under highly bursty traffic. It features both low-cost optical add/drop edge nodes exploiting WDM transmission and agile and modular centralized electro-optical switches that are presented in conjunction with the overall network architecture. Its performance exhibits very low burst loss probability traded for a higher but tolerable and bounded delay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the advent of Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) technologies, the networking infrastructures are becoming increasingly agile in their attempts to offer the quality of services needed by the users, maximizing the efficiency of infrastructure utilization. This in essence mandates the statistical multiplexing of demands across the infrastructures of different Network Providers (NPs), which would allow them to cope with the increasing demand, upgrading their infrastructures at a slower pace. However, to enjoy the benefits of statistical multiplexing, a trusted authority to govern it would be required. At the same time, blockchain technology aspires to offer a solid advantage in such untrusted environments, enabling the development of decentralized solutions that ensure the integrity and immutability of the information stored in the digital ledger. To this end, in this paper, we propose a blockchain-based solution that allows NPs to trade their (processing and networking) resources. We implemented the solution in a test-bed deployed on the cloud and we present the gathered performance results, showing that a blockchain-based solution is feasible and appropriate. We also discuss further improvements and challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]