Massively multiplayer online games and social capital: A systematic literature review

peer reviewedVideo gaming has historically been regarded as a pastime with addictive potential and has subsequently been the subject of public scrutiny, in media and academia. In the early 2000s, massively multiplayer online games (MMO) in particular were the locus of addiction-centred debates. However, over time different avenues of research into the outcomes of MMOs have opened up, honing in on social and psychological consequences. The present systematic literature review organises and examines research on the social impact of playing MMOs on their players, analysing a sample of 22 studies leaning on the PRISMA framework. The results indicate that a number of facets adhering to MMO gameplay, such as collective play, game involvement and being part of a community are beneficial to an individual's social capital and related concepts, while gaming time was a significant negative predictor. Offline social capital and leadership research were scarcely present in the collected studies, however the results imply a positive relation between MMO gameplay and these variables. Overall, the results suggest a high potential for transferability of social capital, even so there seems to be diminishing returns. Beyond a certain threshold of gaming time, the relation becomes negative, indicating the importance of balanced engagement

Robust shortcut and disordered robustness: Improving adversarial training through adaptive smoothing

peer reviewedDeep neural networks are highly susceptible to adversarial perturbations: artificial noise that corrupts input data in ways imperceptible to humans but causes incorrect predictions. Among the various defenses against these attacks, adversarial training has emerged as the most effective. In this work, we aim to enhance adversarial training to improve robustness against adversarial attacks. We begin by analyzing how adversarial vulnerability evolves during training from an instance-wise perspective. This analysis reveals two previously unrecognized phenomena: robust shortcut and disordered robustness. We then demonstrate that these phenomena are related to robust overfitting, a well-known issue in adversarial training. Building on these insights, we propose a novel adversarial training method: Instance-adaptive Smoothness Enhanced Adversarial Training (ISEAT). This method jointly smooths the input and weight loss landscapes in an instance-adaptive manner, preventing the exploitation of robust shortcut and thereby mitigating robust overfitting. Extensive experiments demonstrate the efficacy of ISEAT and its superiority over existing adversarial training methods. Code is available at https://github.com/TreeLLi/ISEAT

Fostering interdisciplinary exchanges through peer feedback to improve academic writing skills

peer reviewedThe University of Luxembourg is quadrilingual, with mono-, bi-, tri- and quadrilingual programmes in French, German, English and Luxembourgish. PhD students can choose to write their thesis in any one of these languages. Two teaching approaches are practised for thesis writing: critiquing groups, in which doctoral students read and comment on the writing of other students, and productivity groups, in which students write alongside each other (Guerin & Aitchison, 2023). Agreeing to submit a piece of writing to peers can help students apply information obtained from theoretical reading to their research results. But in the course of this feedback on written work, which is a stage-by-stage, multilayered process (Becker, 1986), general inconsistencies in reasoning and local misconceptions remain. The peer proofreading process takes place among students at the same hierarchical level, which facilitates discussions on the meaning of passages in the text (Lejot, 2017). But some students point to the fact that peers are not sufficiently qualified to give comments comparable to those provided by higher education professors (Rollinson, 2005). The interdisciplinary nature of texts written by different PhD students also contributes to the lack of qualification of proofreaders. This article will address the following research question: What impact do interdisciplinarity and multilingualism have on peer proofreading? To answer the question, we will analyse questionnaires completed by 50 doctoral students who participated in an academic writing course including peer proofreading. We will analyse the responses to the questionnaire and the feedback given on the course. First results suggest that the interdisciplinary nature of peer proofreading, in other words doctoral students in medicine, physics, political science, education and literature reading each other’s texts, initially gives rise to scepticism among participants before ultimately leading to discussions and explanations of respective discipline-specific conventions, and therefore a better awareness and understanding of one’s own ways of working. We will suggest applicable recommendations to promote favourable conditions for our PhD students to write in a multilingual environment, thereby improving the sense of belonging to an academic community (Vincent et al, 2022)

Competition in and through artificial intelligence

editorial reviewedThis chapter maps the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies on competition. It argues that the technical capabilities and complexities associated with AI systems are directly relevant for understanding markets in a digital age, both in the emerging markets for AI technologies and in the myriad downstream markets in which AI is used to supply products, services, or even to carry out regulatory tasks. To make this point, it first shows how the dependence of AI systems on resources such as high-level expertise, big data, and vast computational resources promotes the formation of technological ecosystems centred around platforms, and structures competition within, between, and across said ecosystems. Then, it maps how market actors and regulators incorporate AI systems into their practices, with an emphasis on how AI can be used to sustain and detect anti-competitive practices. Finally, it discusses the effects of AI regulation on competition.16. Peace, justice and strong institutions9. Industry, innovation and infrastructur

"Double vaccinated, 5G boosted!": Learning Attitudes towards COVID-19 Vaccination from Social Media

peer reviewedThe sudden onset of the recently concluded COVID-19 pandemic has driven substantial progress in various scientific fields. One notable example is the comprehension of public vaccination attitudes and the timely monitoring of their fluctuations through social media platforms. This approach can serve as a cost-effective means to supplement surveys in gathering public vaccine hesitancy levels. In this article, we propose a deep learning framework leveraging textual posts on social media to extract and track users' vaccination stances in near real time. Compared to previous works, we integrate into the framework the recent posts of a user's social network friends to collaboratively detect the user's genuine attitude towards vaccination. Based on our annotated dataset from X (formerly known as Twitter), the models instantiated from our framework can increase the performance of attitude extraction by up to 23% compared to the state-of-the-art text-only models. Using this framework, we successfully confirm the feasibility of using social media to track the evolution of vaccination attitudes in real life. In addition, we illustrate the generality of our framework in extracting other public opinions such as political ideology. We further show one practical use of our framework by validating the possibility of forecasting a user's vaccine hesitancy changes with information perceived from social media

Effect of the European Union Emission Trading System on promoting industrial electrification

peer reviewedThe European Union designed the Emission Trading System (EU-ETS) aiming to achieve climate neutrality by 2050. Theoretically, this mechanism should incentivize consumers to emit less CO2 and invest in green technologies. While there is evidence that it helped reduce CO2 emissions, it is unclear whether it helped promote green investments. This paper answers such a question based on a large European industry. We demonstrate that historical EU-ETS prices have not been incentive enough for this industry to transition from gas to electricity to produce steam. Our calculations show that companies would have to pay at least 30,57% more for operational costs when using only electricity for heat generation compared to natural gas, even with the addition of EU-ETS prices. We argue that using both conventional and green technologies might be the way to proceed since such a hybrid solution can reduce energy costs by up to 1,68% and CO2 emissions by 16,23%. These savings could pay back the electric boiler's investment until the gas boiler's lifetime is terminated. Nevertheless, even with the addition of the EU-ETS cost, the operational cost of the electric boiler in 2030 is expected to be higher than gas unless electricity spot prices are controlled

Evaluer pour la qualité de l’expérience d’apprentissage

Cette présentation propose un cadre conceptuel et une méthode pour décrire et comprendre les pratiques d’apprentissage des étudiants dans les dispositifs hybrides de formation. Après avoir présenté les questions et hypothèses de recherche guidant la démarche, une illustration proposée sur la base d’une recherche exploratoire montrera comment la description de pratiques d’apprentissage d’étudiants confrontés à des dispositifs hybrides contrastés permet de mieux les comprendre en fonction des caractéristiques des dispositifs et de caractéristiques des étudiants et de suggérer des recommandations aux étudiants et enseignants pour améliorer pratiques d’apprentissage et dispositifs hybrides.4. Quality educatio

Fostering critical thinking to strengthen democracy

ABSTRACT: L’Europe Direct de l’Université du Luxembourg (ED-UNILU) compte parmi les partenaires de l’édition 2025 des « Rencontres européennes » (RELUX 2025), programmées du 21 mars au 4 avril 2025 à l’Athénée du Luxembourg sur le thème « Former à l’esprit critique pour renforcer la démocratie ». Les participants aux RELUX 2025 seront invités à s’interroger et à débattre des questions charnières de la formation et de l’éducation, y compris citoyenne, à l’ère numérique, parmi lesquelles : Comment former les jeunes (et les moins jeunes) à l’esprit critique ? Quels sont les outils et mécanismes leur permettant de comprendre les enjeux du XXIe siècle ? Comment s’assurer de la liberté de pensé et de prise de décision dans le contexte de l’omniprésence de l’intelligence artificielle ? Quelles missions pour l’école et l’université dans ce nouvel environnement ? Quel est le rôle de l’UE, des États membres et des citoyens dans la défense des principes et valeurs démocratiques ?Présentation RELUX: « Les Rencontres Européennes de Luxembourg » (RELUX) est une association sans but lucratif fondée en 1997 avec l’objectif d’encourager des échanges ouverts et pluridisciplinaires à l’échelle européenne et d’œuvrer pour stimuler le développement de débats éthiques, sociaux et politiques sur l’avenir de nos sociétés et les défis de l’Europe unie. Depuis sa création, RELUX organise une manifestation annuelle éponyme qui offre à un large public l’occasion de rencontrer des chercheurs, experts et praticiens d’horizons disciplinaires variés et d’échanger sur des sujets d’intérêt général, comme par exemple : la cohésion économique et sociale en temps de crise, l’évolution de la justice et de l’Etat de droit, l’Europe de la défense, le rôle des médias en société, les citoyens face aux défis environnementaux et dérèglement climatique.ABSTRACT: Europe Direct at the University of Luxembourg (ED-UNILU) is among the partners of the 2025 edition of the “Rencontres Européennes” (RELUX 2025), which will take place from March 21 to April 4, 2025, at the Athénée de Luxembourg under the theme: “Cultivating Critical Thinking to Strengthen Democracy.” Participants in RELUX 2025 will be invited to reflect on and debate key questions related to education and training—including civic education—in the digital age. These include: * How can we foster critical thinking in young people (and adults alike)? * What tools and mechanisms can help them grasp the major issues of the 21st century? * How can we ensure freedom of thought and decision-making in a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence? * What are the roles of schools and universities in this new landscape? * What responsibilities do the EU, its Member States, and citizens bear in defending democratic principles and values?RELUX presentation: "Les Rencontres Européennes de Luxembourg" (RELUX) is a non-profit association founded in 1997 with the aim of fostering open, multidisciplinary dialogue at the European level and promoting the development of ethical, social, and political debates on the future of our societies and the challenges facing a united Europe. Since its inception, RELUX has organized an annual event bearing the same name, offering a broad audience the opportunity to engage with researchers, experts, and practitioners from diverse disciplines and to discuss topics of general interest. These have included: economic and social cohesion in times of crisis, the evolution of justice and the rule of law, European defense, the role of media in society, and how citizens respond to environmental challenges and climate change.Europe Direct at the University of Luxembourg (2021-2025)4. Quality education16. Peace, justice and strong institutions17. Partnerships for the goals5. Gender equalit

Tracing the History of Digital History as Global History

editorial reviewedThis paper traces the circulation of technological knowledge and expertise among transnational networks of historians in the post-WWII period. Though having clear prewar antecedents, this transnational circulation of knowledge became especially salient in the 1950s and 1960s when historians begin to use analog and later digital computing in the United States, Western Europe and the communist bloc, against the backdrop of the Cold War and a general surge in the use of computing in various humanities disciplines. By the late 1960s, we begin to see the establishment of communicative spaces and networks to support what could be called an emerging transnational field of computing historians. Following the advent of micro- and personal computing in the early 1980s, the influx of new user generations of computing historians led to the formation of the almost forgotten International Association for History and Computing in 1987. Its final conference took place in 2005, at a time when the transition to the field we now call ‘digital history’ was well underway. The paper will argue that probing these transnational connections, networks and broader processes of field formation is key to understanding technology’s transformative impacts on historical knowledge production in the 20th century, and indispensable to understanding the emergence of the field of digital history in the early 2000s. As digital approaches are a logical companion of global history, the history and genealogies of digital history itself offer a prime example to illustrate the point