Reviewerly/exHarmony huggingface dataset:
Economics of incident response panels in cyber insurance

Cyber insurance is becoming a popular cyber risk management tool. Beyond pure financial risk transfer, prior theoretical works anticipated that cyber insurance would influence the mitigation measures employed by policyholders, such as by excluding losses caused by security mismanagement or by offering premium discounts for security controls. Empirical literature has shown cyber insurance is ineffective at influencing pre-breach security levels; however, it has also identified how insurers indemnify the cost of a team of post-breach providers with expertise spanning legal, technical, and communications. Our work models the peculiarities of the institution, the panel, that triages incidents and assigns firms. In particular, we model the incomplete aspect of this contract in which policyholders may be assigned a less efficient firm, which can be interpreted as a bait and switch. At the same time, our context for the bait and switch is business-to-business (B2B) and differs from the usual understanding of the phenomenon as an upsell. Consequently, new managerial implications arise on the insurer-side of the market. We characterise the conditions under which policyholders accept their insurer's hotline recommendation for incident response under the incomplete contract. We additionally show how panels can mitigate the adverse selection problem with respect to policyholders' losses by including providers of differentiated efficiency.
A systematic literature review of knowledge graph construction and application in education

In the dynamic landscape of modern education, the search for improved pedagogical methods, enriched learning experiences, and empowered educators remains a perpetual pursuit. In recent years, a remarkable technological innovation has asserted its dominance in education: Knowledge Graphs (KGs). These structured representations of knowledge are increasingly proving to be indispensable tools, fostering advancements driven by the growing recognition of their essential role in enriching personalised learning, curriculum design, concept mapping, and educational content recommendation systems. In this paper, a systematic literature review (SLR) has been conducted to comprehensively examine KG construction methodologies and their applications across five key domains in education. In each examined study, we highlight the specific KG functionalities, knowledge extraction techniques, knowledge base characteristics, resource requirements, evaluation criteria, and limitations. This paper distinguishes itself by offering a broad overview of KGs in education, analyzing state-of-the-art methodologies, and identifying research gaps and limitations, paving the way for future advancements.
Teaching with Augmented Reality Using Tablets, Both as a Tool and an Object of Learning

In this paper, we present a novel approach to utilizing tablets in chemistry education. In the context of education for sustainable development, we utilize tablets as objects of learning to address the lithium-ion battery. In addition, we used tablets as learning tools by making use of augmented reality technology. This way, we have created an innovative digital learning scenario that corresponds to a 3-h laboratory. Evaluation took place during the implementation of nonformal student laboratories. Results show positive effects in interest to working with tablets as a tool and an object of learning.
Overview of temporal action detection based on deep learning

Abstract Temporal Action Detection (TAD) aims to accurately capture each action interval in an untrimmed video and to understand human actions. This paper comprehensively surveys the state-of-the-art techniques and models used for TAD task. Firstly, it conducts comprehensive research on this field through Citespace and comprehensively introduce relevant dataset. Secondly, it summarizes three types of methods, i.e., anchor-based, boundary-based, and query-based, from the design method level. Thirdly, it summarizes three types of supervised learning methods from the level of learning methods, i.e., fully supervised, weakly supervised, and unsupervised. Finally, this paper explores the current problems, and proposes prospects in TAD task.
A Semantic Tree-Based Fast-Moving Object Trajectory Tracking Algorithm for Table Tennis

Table tennis is a popular sport around the world. A key technology in table tennis education and analysis system is reconstructing the trajectory of the fast-moving ball from videos. Typically the table tennis ball is too small and barely visible in the video, making it difficult to be recognized directly by detection models like YOLO. However, table tennis balls usually has obvious motion features, which are usually not found in similar false targets. It inspired the authors to first find all candidate targets and then use the motion features of table tennis ball to select them out. In this article, the authors propose a tree-based algorithm named T-FORT to track the ball and reconstruct its trajectory. Specifically, they consider all the possible objects in a tree-framework, and identify the real target by integrating visual features and moving patterns. The authors conduct a set of experiments on three datasets to evaluate the effectiveness and performance of the proposed algorithm. The experimental results show that the proposed method is more precise than existing algorithms, and is robust in various scenarios.
Classification Performance Analysis of Decision Tree-Based Algorithms with Noisy Class Variable

Class noise is a common issue that affects the performance of classification techniques on real-world data sets. Class noise appears when a class variable in data sets has incorrect class labels. In the case of noisy data, the robustness of classification techniques against noise could be more important than the performance results on noise-free data sets. The decision tree method is one of the most popular techniques for classification tasks. The C4.5, CART, and random forest (RF) algorithms are considered to be three of the most used algorithms in decision trees. The aim of this paper is to reach conclusions on which decision tree algorithm is better to use for building decision trees in terms of its performance and robustness against class noise. In order to achieve this aim, we study and compare the performance of the models when applied to class variables with noise. The results obtained indicate that the RF algorithm is more robust to data sets with noisy class variable than other algorithms.
Rate distortion optimization for adaptive gradient quantization in federated learning

Federated Learning (FL) is an emerging machine learning framework designed to preserve privacy. However, the continuous updating of model parameters over uplink channels with limited throughput leads to a huge communication overload, which is a major challenge for FL. To address this issue, we propose an adaptive gradient quantization approach that enhances communication efficiency. Aiming to minimize the total communication costs, we consider both the correlation of gradients between local clients and the correlation of gradients between communication rounds, namely, in the time and space dimensions. The compression strategy is based on rate distortion theory, which allows us to find an optimal quantization strategy for the gradients. To further reduce the computational complexity, we introduce the Kalman filter into the proposed approach. Finally, numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed rate-distortion optimization adaptive gradient quantization approach in significantly reducing the communication costs when compared to other quantization methods.
The role of political hate speech in promoting extreme ideologies and manipulating public discourse for social approval in Pakistan

Abstract The proliferation of politically motivated hate speech towards rival politicians has been rapidly increasing in Pakistan. However, the literature on political hate speech and its association with extreme ideologies is under‐theorized in the Pakistani context. We have utilized van Dijk's manipulative discourse and Walther's social approval theory to structure political hate speech and its consequences. The data was based on two Pakistani mainstream politicians’ public speeches and partisans’ comments available on YouTube. Findings reveal that politicians commonly exploit discursive categories, such as name‐calling, offensive metaphors and sarcasm, in their hate speech to dehumanize, ridicule and threaten their rivals. Their hateful slurs showcase extreme ideologies, such as polarization, intolerance, threat and violence. They use the hateful epithets to manipulate partisans, to sell fear of being betrayed and enslaved to the military and foreign powers, and to obtain, in exchange, audience and consent. The study theorizes that Pakistani mainstream politicians deliberately sensationalize hatred in their public speeches to harangue their rivals and foment extreme ideologies for the purpose of increasing their audience.
Property probes: Live exploration of program analysis results

We present property probes, a mechanism for helping a developer explore partial program analysis results in terms of the source program interactively while the program is edited. A node locator data structure is introduced that maps between source code spans and program representation nodes, and that helps identify probed nodes in a robust way, after modifications to the source code. We have developed a client–server based tool CodeProber supporting property probes, and argue that it is very helpful in debugging and understanding program analyses. We have evaluated our tool on several languages and analyses, including a full Java compiler and a tool for intraprocedural dataflow analysis. Our performance results show that the probe overhead is negligible even when analyzing large projects.
Distributed Learning in the IoT–Edge–Cloud Continuum

The goal of the IoT–Edge–Cloud Continuum approach is to distribute computation and data loads across multiple types of devices taking advantage of the different strengths of each, such as proximity to the data source, data access, or computing power, while mitigating potential weaknesses. Most current machine learning operations are currently concentrated on remote high-performance computing devices, such as the cloud, which leads to challenges related to latency, privacy, and other inefficiencies. Distributed learning approaches can address these issues by enabling the distribution of machine learning operations throughout the IoT–Edge–Cloud Continuum by incorporating Edge and even IoT layers into machine learning operations more directly. Approaches like transfer learning could help to transfer the knowledge from more performant IoT–Edge–Cloud Continuum layers to more resource-constrained devices, e.g., IoT. The implementation of these methods in machine learning operations, including the related data handling security and privacy approaches, is challenging and actively being researched. In this article the distributed learning and transfer learning domains are researched, focusing on security, robustness, and privacy aspects, and their potential usage in the IoT–Edge–Cloud Continuum, including research on tools to use for implementing these methods. To achieve this, we have reviewed 145 sources and described the relevant methods as well as their relevant attack vectors and provided suggestions on mitigation.
A soft voting ensemble learning approach for credit card fraud detection

With the advancement of e-commerce and modern technological development, credit cards are widely used for both online and offline purchases, which has increased the number of daily fraudulent transactions. Many organizations and financial institutions worldwide lose billions of dollars annually because of credit card fraud. Due to the global distribution of both legitimate and fraudulent transactions, it is difficult to discern between the two. Furthermore, because only a small proportion of transactions are fraudulent, there is a problem of class imbalance. Hence, an effective fraud-detection methodology is required to sustain the reliability of the payment system. Machine learning has recently emerged as a viable substitute for identifying this type of fraud. However, ML approaches have difficulty identifying fraud with high prediction accuracy, while also decreasing misclassification costs due to the size of the imbalanced data. In this research, a soft voting ensemble learning approach for detecting credit card fraud on imbalanced data is proposed. To do this, the proposed approach is evaluated and compared with numerous sophisticated sampling techniques (i.e., oversampling, undersampling, and hybrid sampling) to overcome the class imbalance problem. We develop several credit card fraud classifiers, including ensemble classifiers, with and without sampling techniques. According to the experimental results, the proposed soft-voting approach outperforms individual classifiers. With a false negative rate (FNR) of 0.0306, it achieves a precision of 0.9870, recall of 0.9694, f1-score of 0.8764, and AUROC of 0.9936.
Sublinear Scaling in Non-Markovian Open Quantum Systems Simulations

An exact algorithm to calculate process tensors---compact representations of environmental influences---provides a scaling advantage over previous algorithms and enables tackling problems in open quantum systems that are currently out of reach.
Efficient color image steganography based on new adapted chaotic dynamical system with discrete orthogonal moment transforms

In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, safeguarding the secure transmission of sensitive information is paramount. Traditional steganography methods, while effective at data concealment, have grown vulnerable to brute force attacks in our age of powerful computing. This paper addresses the pressing need to bolster data transmission security. To address the challenges posed by limited key space and security concerns associated with 1-D chaotic maps in data transmission, we introduce a novel 1-D chaotic map, the Multi-Parameter Chebyshev Map (MCM). The MCM boasts four control parameters, each with a broad chaotic range and high chaos level, significantly enhancing security. Furthermore, we present an innovative steganography technique for color images that leverages the MCM in conjunction with discrete moment transforms. This method chaotically embeds the secret message within the moment coefficients of a cover color image using MCM and quantization rules. The expansive chaotic range and high chaos level of the MCM substantially reinforce the security of this approach. The considered moment transforms include Tchebichef, Krawtchouk, Hahn, Charlier, Meixner, Shmaliy, Racah, and Dual-Hahn. The performance of the proposed steganography method is thoroughly evaluated and compared with other state-of-the-art methods in terms of hiding capacity and image quality in both spatial and transform domains. The quantization of moment coefficients demonstrates its superior performance. This method holds crucial implications for practical applications requiring secure communication of color images, such as military and medical contexts. The combination of MCM and moment transforms in this method presents a promising avenue for future research in the field of information hiding.
Optimizing Session-Aware Recommenders: A Deep Dive into GRU-Based Latent Interaction Integration

This study introduces session-aware recommendation models, leveraging GRU (Gated Recurrent Unit) and attention mechanisms for advanced latent interaction data integration. A primary advancement is enhancing latent context, a critical factor for boosting recommendation accuracy. We address the existing models’ rigidity by dynamically blending short-term (most recent) and long-term (historical) preferences, moving beyond static period definitions. Our approaches, pre-combination (LCII-Pre) and post-combination (LCII-Post), with fixed (Fix) and flexible learning (LP) weight configurations, are thoroughly evaluated. We conducted extensive experiments to assess our models’ performance on public datasets such as Amazon and MovieLens 1M. Notably, on the MovieLens 1M dataset, LCII-PreFix achieved a 1.85% and 2.54% higher Recall@20 than II-RNN and BERT4Rec+st+TSA, respectively. On the Steam dataset, LCII-PostLP outperformed these models by 18.66% and 5.5%. Furthermore, on the Amazon dataset, LCII showed a 2.59% and 1.89% improvement in Recall@20 over II-RNN and CAII. These results affirm the significant enhancement our models bring to session-aware recommendation systems, showcasing their potential for both academic and practical applications in the field.
Unveiling Cryptocurrency Impact on Financial Markets and Traditional Banking Systems: Lessons for Sustainable Blockchain and Interdisciplinary Collaborations

The advent of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology has sparked a revolutionary shift in the financial sector. This study sets out on a wide-ranging investigation to understand the nuanced dynamics, repercussions, and potential future paths of this shifting environment in the UK and USA. The primary goals of the research are to examine how cryptocurrencies affect financial markets and conventional banking systems; to examine how blockchain technology might be used in the financial sector; to assess policy and regulatory considerations; and to predict and plan for the future. This research digs into how cryptocurrencies have revolutionized the banking and finance sectors. Analysis of adoption rates, market volatility, and integration methods sheds light on the changing position of cryptocurrencies in investment portfolios, reconfiguration of asset classes, and coping mechanisms of conventional financial institutions. When looking at the financial sector as a whole, the transformational potential of blockchain technology becomes clear. The advent of DeFi, smart contracts, and asset tokenization offers new prospects to improve financial transactions, increase transparency, and broaden participation in the investment market. The research analyzes cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology from a policy and regulatory perspective. The delicate balancing act between stimulating innovation and guaranteeing consumer protection, market integrity, and financial stability is highlighted by a comparison of the regulatory methods adopted in the United Kingdom and United States, as well as proposals from international organizations. The research identifies potential future paths for these technologies and their implications. Opportunities and challenges that will influence the future of finance emerge, with a focus on central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), sustainable blockchain solutions, and interdisciplinary collaborations. As this deep dive comes to a close, the transformational power of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology is highlighted. It sheds light on the forces that are altering the structures of the world’s financial markets, conventional banking structures, and regulatory frameworks. The findings and critical assessment stress the need for well-considered choices, ethical innovation, and interdisciplinary cooperation in order to succeed in an ever-changing environment. To further democratize access, improve transparency, and reshape the economic fabric of our planet, the future of finance resides at the confluence of tradition and innovation, where cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology exist.
Multi-Channel Graph Convolutional Networks for Graphs with Inconsistent Structures and Features

Graph convolutional networks (GCNs) have attracted increasing attention in various fields due to their significant capacity to process graph-structured data. Typically, the GCN model and its variants heavily rely on the transmission of node features across the graph structure, which implicitly assumes that the graph structure and node features are consistent, i.e., they carry related information. However, in many real-world networks, node features may unexpectedly mismatch with the structural information. Existing GCNs fail to generalize to inconsistent scenarios and are even outperformed by models that ignore the graph structure or node features. To address this problem, we investigate how to extract representations from both the graph structure and node features. Consequently, we propose the multi-channel graph convolutional network (MCGCN) for graphs with inconsistent structures and features. Specifically, the MCGCN encodes the graph structure and node features using two specific convolution channels to extract two separate specific representations. Additionally, two joint convolution channels are constructed to extract the common information shared by the graph structure and node features. Finally, an attention mechanism is utilized to adaptively learn the importance weights of these channels under the guidance of the node classification task. In this way, our model can handle both consistent and inconsistent scenarios. Extensive experiments on both synthetic and real-world datasets for node classification and recommendation tasks show that our methods, MCGCN-A and MCGCN-I, achieve the best performance on seven out of eight datasets and the second-best performance on the remaining dataset. For simpler graph structures or tasks where the overhead of multiple convolution channels is not justified, traditional single-channel GCN models might be more efficient.
Locality-Based Action-Poisoning Attack against the Continuous Control of an Autonomous Driving Model

Various studies have been conducted on Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL) to control multiple agents to drive effectively and safely in a simulation, demonstrating the applicability of MARL in autonomous driving. However, several studies have indicated that MARL is vulnerable to poisoning attacks. This study proposes a ’locality-based action-poisoning attack’ against MARL-based continuous control systems. Each bird in a flock interacts with its neighbors to generate the collective behavior, which is implemented through rules in the Reynolds’ flocking algorithm, where each individual maintains an appropriate distance from its neighbors and moves in a similar direction. We use this concept to propose an action-poisoning attack, based on the hypothesis that if an agent is performing significantly different behaviors from neighboring agents, it can disturb the driving stability of the entirety of the agents. We demonstrate that when a MARL-based continuous control system is trained in an environment where a single target agent performs an action that violates Reynolds’ rules, the driving performance of all victim agents decreases, and the model can converge to a suboptimal policy. The proposed attack method can disrupt the training performance of the victim model by up to 97% compared to the original model in certain setting, when the attacker is allowed black-box access.
Leveraging Swarm Intelligence for Optimal Thermal Camera and Sensor Placement in Industrial Environments

This research addresses the sensor placement optimization problem (SPOP) in the industrial sector, aiming to enhance operational efficiency and safety through the strategic deployment of sensors. The focus is on optimizing the locations of thermal cameras and motion sensors, with a dual objective of maximizing coverage and minimizing redundancy in the production hall. To solve this challenge, a method based on the application of the nature-inspired bat algorithm was employed. The study reveals noteworthy findings, emphasizing the proficiency of the bat algorithm (BA) in optimizing the placement of thermal cameras and motion sensors. Numeric outcomes demonstrate the algorithm’s effectiveness in maximizing machine coverage while minimizing sensor usage within a real-world industrial environment. These results underscore the versatility and reliability of the BA, establishing it as a valuable tool for addressing complex optimization tasks in industrial settings.