Reviewerly/exHarmony huggingface dataset:
A Hybrid Domain Fragile Watermarking Technique for Authentication of Color Images

This paper presents a fragile watermarking method in which spatial, as well as frequency, domain is used for the embedding of data in color image planes. In this scheme, color images (general and medical) of size 512 × 512 are first separated into three planes. In the proposed method, two color image planes are used for embedding. The first plane, i.e., red plane is divided into four blocks, and embedding in this plane is done by using reversible watermarking based on histogram bin shifting (HBS). The second plane, i.e., the green plane is also divided into four blocks, then each block is separated into 16 × 16 blocks. Then, these blocks are further subdivided into 4 × 4 sub-blocks. Embedding in this plane is ensured by using discrete cosine transform (DCT) where coefficients are selected for embedding a fragile watermark. The third plane of an image is left unaltered. Using HBS and DCT together, the presented approach not only retrieves the data reversibly but can check the authenticity of the color images as well and, thus, validates security of the system. The presented method demonstrates an average peak signal to noise (PSNR) rate of 56.22 dB, while structural similarity index (SSIM) of 0.9985 is acquired which shows the superiority of the presented approach over previously existing colored watermarked images.
C-Wall: Conflict-Resistance in Privacy-Preserving Cloud Storage

Following the success of cloud computing, it has been shown its importance to realize various access control models in the cloud storage setting. Chinese Wall is a traditional access control model in business for solving the conflict of interest (CoI) problem, and it would be very interesting to achieve conflict-resistant in cloud storage system. However, the access control model does not ensure the privacy of users, and it may reveal the user's interest, investment tendency, etc. Therefore, it raises a big challenge to implement the Chinese Wall without compromising the user's privacy. In this paper, we focus on the Chinese Wall model and apply it to the cloud storage while protecting the access patterns of users. Specifically, we first formulate the tree-based Chinese Wall access control and then propose the Chinese Wall Protocol (called C-Wall). We prove that our C-Wall not only realizes the conflict-resistant but also protects the user's privacy with universally composable security. Besides, we also apply C-Wall to privacy-preserving cloud storage and propose the C<sup>2</sup>-Wall, which not only maintains C-Wall's features, but also ensures the sensitive files from being touched by "honest-but-curious" cloud servers. Furthermore, we evaluate our C<sup>2</sup>-Wall by theoretical analysis and experimental validation. Experimental results show its effectiveness and efficiency for practical deployment.
Reasoning About Active Objects: A Sound and Complete Assertional Proof Method

We present a novel assertional proof method for reasoning about global invariant properties of active objects in the context of the Abstract Behavioral Specification (ABS) language. The main result of this paper is a formal justification of the proof method which establishes both its soundness and completeness with respect to a formally defined operational trace semantics.
A Novel and Failsafe Blockchain Framework for Secure Ota Updates in Connected Autonomous Vehicles

Connected Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) are becoming data centers on wheels, amassing petabytes of data, as they require a combination of software and hardware systems and sub-systems in order to operate reliably and simply in real-time. However, due to the transient nature of Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I) networks, and CAVs dependency on connected software system for almost all of their functionalities, we are in need of a new paradigm for secure and immutable data exchange which emulates smart contracts. For this reason, the CAV manufacturers need to ensure that they maintain the latest version of software to protect CAVs from system failure and cyber threats in real-time, which is difficult with traditional centralized management. The key challenges that we must overcome are the authentication and secure sharing of the Over-The-Air (OTA) software updates, in addition to the scalability of distributing the updates at the level of the CAVs.This paper proposes a secure and scalable software updates framework in a distributed manner for the CAVs, leveraging Blockchain (BC) with smart contract technology. The framework is able to overcome slow processing speed which is one of the major limitations of BC in terms of lower latency and less packet overhead with a high level of security against possible cyber-attacks. We use a salting-based hashing scheme over the traditional Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) Key to ensure multi-factor authenticated protection from any malicious transaction while downloading and installing any new feature update in CAVs. Moreover, by using Hyperledger BC, our framework ensures cost-free transactions while successfully upgrading and deploying OTA software patches in any system of CAVs. In this paper, we suggest extensions of our previous work by analyzing our proposed BC framework's immutability and load management capability. Our simulation results have shown that this system is robust, secure and failsafe for CAV manufacturers and end-users.
Banking Management System—The Web Application Way

In the current times, time is equivalent to money. Nobody wishes to spend their half a day at banks for transactions such as enquiring balance, transferring funds etc. Entire banking system which here is made on java aim’s complete resolution to bank related deeds and one may do their crucial bank rituals from the safety of their house. The idea behind the creation of this application is efficient management of client’s bank account. We in this project have tried to provide all the basic functionalities of the banks that the user might require. The aim was to provide an application that enables users to perform all the banking chores in a well-built environment. Besides we have also laid emphasis on the security that we give to the clients through our work so that only the legitimate users are able to access their bank account. This project on Banking Management System that has been crafted here has involved in it use of technologies solely based on relevance. The ultimate goal of the work being done here is to create software that allows users to deal with their bank related work with greater ease. It is a common understanding that things that are done manually can be done with much more efficiency if performed by means of some technology.
Strategies to Reduce Occupational Fraud in Small Restaurants

Occupational fraud is a growing business risk that is causing greater financial losses in small businesses than large businesses. Business owners lose approximately 5% of their revenues due to occupational fraud. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore the strategies used by some business owners of small restaurants to reduce occupational fraud. The fraud triangle theory was the conceptual framework for this study. Three small restaurant owners from Puerto Rico participated in face-to-face, semi-structured interviews to reveal their successful strategies to minimize fraud. The data collection process also included business documents and researcher observations that assisted in establishing methodological triangulation. Using Yin’s 5-step process, data were coded and analyzed to identify emergent themes. The primary emergent themes obtained from data analysis revealed that owner monitoring, analytical procedures, and segregation of duties are effective strategies to minimize employee fraud. Participants revealed that implementing these strategies may reduce organizational losses associated with the fraud. The findings of this study may contribute to social change by reducing fraud activities, business failures, unemployment level, and criminality rate while promoting trust between community members and their institutions.
Teaching English in the Era of Digitalization

The article discusses the features of teaching a foreign language using information and communication and digital technologies.
Virtual Safety Assistant: An Efficient Tool for Ensuring Safety During Covid-19 Pandemic

Using intelligent virtual assistants for controlling employee population in workspaces is a research area that remains unexplored. This paper presents a novel application of virtual humans to enforce Covid-19 safety measures in a corporate workplace. For this purpose, we develop a virtual assistant platform, Chloe, equipped with automatic temperature sensing, facial recognition, and dedicated chatbots to act as an initial filter for ensuring public health. Whilst providing an engaging user interaction experience, Chloe minimizes human to human contact, thus reducing the spread of infectious diseases. Chloe restricts the employee population within the office to government-approved safety norms. We experimented with Chloe as a virtual safety assistant in a company, where she interacted and screened the employees for Covid-19 symptoms. Participants filled an online survey to quantify Chloe's performance in terms of interactivity, system latency, engagement, and accuracy, for which we received positive feedback. We performed statistical analysis on the survey results that reveal positive results and show effectiveness of Chloe in such applications. We detail system architecture, results and limitations.
Designing AI-Support VR by Self-supervised and Initiative Selective Supports

To provide flexible support ways and intelligent support contents for users in VR contexts, compared with the existing support ways of either single or combination of sensing functions, e.g., support of gesture, head or body movement. In our proposal, to provide flexible support functions conditioned on VR contexts or user’s feedbacks, we propose to use a semi-automatic selection of interactive supports. In modeling of semi-selection by user’s feedbacks and VR contexts, we propose to evaluate the performance by consideration of both intelligent AI evaluation, based on data of users’ performance in VR, and user’s initiative feedbacks. Furthermore, to provide customizable or personalized estimation in the VR support, we propose to apply the machine learning of self-supervised learning. Therefore, we are able to train or retrain estimation models with efficiency of low-cost of data works, including reduction of data-labeling cost or reuse of existing models. We require to evaluate the timing of applying selection or modification of support ways, the balance of ratios of automatics or user-initiative due to user preference or experiences or smoothness of VR contexts, and even user awareness or understanding, etc. Further, we require to evaluate the scale, numbers, size, and limitation of data or training that are needed for stable, accurate, and useful estimations of VR support.
A Multi-person Collaborative Workshop RULA Verification Method Based on Augmented Reality

Numerous tools for layout verification have been developed in the past few years, which can verify the layout of industrial workshops based on 2D/3D data. However, it is difficult for these tools to visualize and realistically display the interaction and processing between workers and the layout. Augmented reality (AR) can provide visualizations and interact with real‐like three‐dimensional virtual objects, and it is a new tool for industrial workshop layout planning. This paper presents a methodology and the associated tool for using augmented reality in the collaborative layout planning of industrial workshops. Moreover, this paper uses motion capture technology to provide accurate human motion data for layout verification. It first describes the collaborative architecture of the application. Subsequently, application features like virtual model cloud loading, multi-person collaborative operation, and RULA-based layout verification. Finally, the paper illustrates possible usages and benefits of how the AR tool helps verify industrial workshops.
Interpretation of Complex Event and the Semantics Structure of General Verbs

The semantic analysis of general verbs has always been a difficult problem because of their vague meaning. Taking gao (搞) as an example, this paper attempts to analyze the semantics and functions of general verbs. The main findings are as follows. First of all, through the analysis of semantic structure, it is found that the meaning evolution of gao (搞) has two paths: “process salience” and “result salience”, which develop two kinds of meaning with activity as the core and result as the core respectively. The latter develops “causativity meaning” further through “removal process”. Secondly, it is a common feature of general verbs to report and interpret complex events from the long-range perspective, which is also the source of vague meaning.
Implicit Interaction Mechanisms in VR-Controlled Interactive Visual Novels

Virtual reality (VR) environments are increasingly being addressed by Human-Computer Interaction researchers and practitioners, due to the recent and rapid development of affordable hardware targeted to the mass market. In that respect, implicit interactions are the go-to paradigm for conceiving VR applications, particularly in simulation and gaming. However, to the best of our knowledge, there is still a significant gap in literature regarding models and practical guidelines to assist designers and software developers when building interactive applications in this domain. As a way to provide a common ground for designing interactive applications in VR environments, this paper presents a formal conceptualization of implicit interaction mechanisms. To do so, we propose a set of formal models and we show a working example implementing such interaction mechanisms in an interactive visual novel, i.e., a video game comprising a compelling narrative extended by the interaction within an immersive environment, which in this case corresponds to a VR world. As a way to gauge user acceptance of the produced video game, we conducted a controlled user study measuring perceived immersion and player experience with a particular focus in the implementation of the proposed implicit interaction mechanisms. The obtained results are highly promising, highlighting the understandability and flexibility of the proposed mechanisms.
Application and Improvement of VR Content Creation Support System in Classes

One of the reasons for virtual reality (VR) not being widely used in the field of education is that its handling requires specialized knowledge and the installation of VR equipment, which can be a burden for teachers. Therefore, we developed a system that allows teachers to easily create VR learning contents, which have been attracting attention in recent years. However, a problem with this system is encountered when the contents consist only of events reproducible in real and do not make use of the characteristics of VR. In this study, we develop a support system for creating VR learning contents that enables object manipulation in the VR space with only simple editing operations on a personal computer. Then, based on the evaluation by subject with teaching experience, we examine ways to improve the system to make it easier to use. Additionally, based on the results of the interviews with the subject, we consider ways to improve the system further.
Disambiguation of Network Informal Language Expressions Based on Construction Grammar

Network Informal Language Expression (NILE) has the characteristics of novelty, unconventionality and colloquialism, and it is often ambiguous in comprehension. The correct understanding of NILE is of great significance to natural language processing. Construction Grammar demonstrates that sentence meaning results from the interaction between constructional meaning and lexical meaning. This viewpoint provides a new way to resolve the ambiguity of NILE. Through the analysis of the 20,000 Weibo posts and comments from the NLPIR Weibo Content Corpus, it is found that the expression characteristics of NILE are mainly reflected in vocabulary and construction. NILE can be divided into three categories at the lexical level (including 12 sub-categories in total), and two effects of constructional meaning on lexical meaning can be summarized at the constructional level. Based on both constructional meaning and lexical features, a NILE disambiguation system is designed, and tested to prove its effectiveness in resolving the ambiguity of NILE.
Alice in Wineland: A Fairy Tale with Contracts

In this tale Alice ends up in Wineland, where she tries to attend the birthday party of one of its most beloved inhabitants. In order to do so, she must learn about contracts and how important they are. She gets exposed to several contract languages, with their syntax and semantics, such as pre- and post-conditions, state machines, context-free grammars, and interval logic. She learns for what type of properties they are appropriate to use, and how to formally verify that programs meet their contracts.
Between Shanshui and Landscape: An AI Aesthetics Study Connecting Chinese and Western Paintings

As a preliminary study for painting AI development work, we conducted experimental creations based on human-AI collaboration. The materials for creation were from Chinese Shanshui paintings and Western landscape paintings. Various experimental methods, such as AI painting, human hand-painting, and human-AI collaboration painting, were tried. The creation themes included line drawing, colorization, deconstruction and reconstruction, and the experimental results were discussed from the aspects of visual cognition, visual expression, and visual imagination. Rethinking the relationships of human, AI and art probably help us find the better paradigm of painting AI. We suggest designing painting AI centered on the human-AI joint subject to stimulate more creativity and deepen aesthetic experience.
A Comparison of Laboratory and Synchronous Remote Usability Testing Methods Using AR

Structured AR usability testing in the product development phase enables obtaining early user feedback, allowing companies to focus on UX from the early design phase. Therefore, several studies of usability testing using AR have been conducted, and there have been attempts to perform AR usability testing with remote settings. However, the authentic AR experience has not been provided to the participants due to complicated setup and logistics problems. They revealed many challenges such as different experimental mindsets, communication with participants, a sense of distance from the actual AR experience, and technical issues. This study was aimed to make such a direct comparison between the conventional lab-based (as a control group) usability testing, conventional lab-based AR usability testing, and a remote synchronous AR usability testing method to determine whether typical outcome variables (e.g. performance, satisfaction, accuracy) of usability tests would be affected by the reduced experiment control (e.g. presence of experimenter, user environment). Three different approaches would be conducted to compare the validity and usability for AR.
Optimal Touchscreen Button Size and Button Spacing for Next Generation Fighter Aircrafts

The popularity of integrating touchscreen technology into next-generation fighter aircraft’s flight decks has increased recently. Therefore, the touch button size and button spacing have gained importance in human factors. In this way, the current study aimed to investigate the optimal button size and button spacing for next-generation fighter aircraft’s touchscreen. In accordance with that purpose, fourteen participants consisting of flight test engineers and pilots performed experimental tasks in a flight simulator on the six different keyboard designs consisting of three different sized buttons (12.7 mm, 15.87 mm & 19.05 mm) and two different sized spacing (1.65 mm & 2.54 mm). Dependent variables consisted of task completion time, total errors, subjective workload scale scores, and user preference. A button size of 12.7 mm and a button spacing of 2.54 mm are optimal when considered task completion time and workload. No significant difference was found in terms of total error. Participants mostly favored a button size of 15.87 mm. Optimal button size and button spacing can be affected by the factors such as maneuvering and pilot equipment (e.g., gloves). Hence, it is recommended that human factors researchers replicate this study by manipulating these factors, especially in simulator settings with jet fighter pilots.
Designing Social Interactions for Learning Personalized Knowledge in Service Robots

Service robots are required to effectively gather and utilize personalized knowledge in a working environment, especially through social interaction with their users. Existing works have shown the significant influence of interaction design on the efficiency, accuracy, and user experience of learning interactions. Designing social interaction for learning personalized knowledge poses new challenges for HRI designers, which signifies a need for designerly knowledge in the form of tools, methods, and effective patterns. In this paper, we present a toolkit to help the design of social interaction with service robots for the learning of personalized knowledge, by informing designers of key challenges and potentially applicable patterns to help ideation. We discuss five key challenges for interactively learning personalized knowledge based on existing literature, and propose ten interaction design patterns that can be employed to help the ideation. We then present a preliminary evaluation of the toolkit through workshop sessions with HRI designers. Questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were used to gather feedback from the participants. The results show the ability of the toolkit for aiding ideation and its potential for flexible ways of use, and point towards future directions to improve and expand the toolkit.
Development of Fingering Learning Support System Using Fingertip Tracking from Monocular Camera

In recent years, as smartphones have become a part of life of young generation, opportunities to enter text using keyboards have decreased, and the speed of keyboard text entry has declined. However, it is still necessary for young children to use keyboards. In typing using a keyboard, the correspondence between keys and fingers is defined; however, there is no practical system for learning fingering to press keys with the correct fingers. A general typing learning software can only judge whether the correct input has been given or not and does not consider the correct fingering of the keys. If the system can evaluate fingering when learning typing, the user can concentrate on typing without having to judge the correctness of their own fingering. In previous research, there have been methods to acquire fingertip coordinates by attaching color stickers to fingers as markers or by using a distance camera, but these methods lack versatility. In this study, we used a monocular camera to acquire fingertip images on a keyboard. After obtaining images, we used MediaPipe to perform hand tracking and obtain the position of the fingertip. For each frame, the system calculates the distance between each key coordinate and each fingertip coordinate, determines that the closest finger hits the key, and feeds back the fingering information.