Context-Aware Sensing and Implicit Ground Truth Collection: Building a Foundation for Event Triggered Surveys on Autonomous Shuttles: Artikel

The LINC project aims to study interactions between passengers and autonomous vehicles in natural settings at the campus of Technical University of Denmark. To leverage the potential of IoT components in smartphone-based surveying, a system to identify specific spatial, temporal and occupancy contexts relevant for passengers’ experience was proposed as a central data collection strategy in the LINC project. Based on predefined contextual triggers specific questionnaires can be distributed to affected passengers. This work focuses on the data-based discrimination between two fundamental contexts for LINC passengers: be-in and be-out (BIBO) of the vehicle. We present empirical evidence that Bluetooth-low-energy beacons (BLE) have the potential for BIBO independent classification. We compare BLE with other smartphone onboard sensors, such as the global positioning system (GPS) and the accelerometer through: (i) random-forest (RF); (ii) multi-layer perceptron (MLP); and (iii) smartphone native off-the-shelve classifiers. We also perform a sensitivity analysis regarding the impact that faulty BIBO ground-truth has on the performance of the supervised classifiers (i) and (ii). Results show that BLE and GPS could allow reciprocal validation for BIBO passengers’ status. This potential might lift passengers from providing any further validation. We describe the smartphone-sensing platform deployed to gather the dataset used in this work, which involves passengers and autonomous vehicles in a realistic setting

The Evolution of Zinjanthropus boisei

Many people assume that OH 5, the type specimen of Paranthropus boisei, collected in 1959, was the first evidence of that taxon to be found, but OH 3, recovered in 1955, predated the discovery of OH 5 by four years. Thus, Paranthropus boisei recently celebrated the equivalent of its fiftieth birthday. This review marks that milestone by examining the way our understanding of this taxon has changed during its fifty, or so, year history

STARK Friendly Hash -- Survey and Recommendation

A report on the selection process of the STARK friendly hash (SFH) function for standardization by the Ethereum Foundation. The outcome of this process, described here, is our recommendation to use the Rescue function over a prime field of size approximately $2^{61}$ in sponge mode with $12$ field elements per state. With an Appendix by Jean-Charles Faugere and Ludovic Perret of CryptoNext Security

Beyond treatment effect estimation; new developments in policy evaluation

To what extent are hiring incentives targeting a specific group of vulnerable unemployed people more effective with respect to generalized incentives without a definite target? Do targeted policies have negative side effects on the labor market that are too important to accept them? Which are the channels guaranteeing a long-lasting effect of European Structural Funds? Even though there is vast literature on hiring subsidies and European Structural Funds, these questions remained unanswered. To answer them, it is necessary to go beyond the simple treatment effect estimation. We did it following two different paths. To answer the first two questions we compared the impact of two similar hiring policies, one oriented towards a target group of long-term unemployed people and one generalized, implemented on the Italian labor market. We considered administrative data on job contracts and workers, and applied counterfactual analysis methods. The results show that only the targeted policy has a positive and significant impact, while the effects of the generalized policy on the vulnerable group are negligible. Moreover, we did not detect any indirect negative side effect of the targeted policy on the local labor market. To answer the third question we introduced a new methodology, namely the Mediation Analysis Synthetic Control (MASC) and applied it to investigate on the impact of European Structural Funds reduction in Abruzzi region. MASC is a generalization of the Synthetic Control Method (SCM) that allows decomposing the total effect of the intervention into its indirect effects and its direct effect when data on only one treated and few control units are available. The results show that the negative impact of European Structural Funds reduction on economic growth is mainly driven by the indirect effect passing through employment reduction. Instead, only a small portion of the negative impact is due to the indirect effect passing through investments reduction

Archaeology and Historical Ecology of Late Holocene San Miguel Island

California’s northern Channel Islands have one of the longest and best-preserved archaeological records in the Americas, spanning some 13,000 calendar years. When European explorers first traveled to the area, these islands were inhabited by the Chumash, some of the most populous and culturally complex hunter-gatherers known. Chumash society was characterized by hereditary leaders, sophisticated exchange networks and interaction spheres, and diverse maritime economies. Focusing on the archaeology of five sites dated to the last 3,000 years, this book examines the archaeology and historical ecology of San Miguel Island, the westernmost and most isolated of the northern Channel Islands. Detailed faunal, artifact, and other data are woven together in a diachronic analysis that investigates the interplay of social and ecological developments on this unique island. The first to focus solely on San Miguel Island archaeology, this book examines issues ranging from coastal adaptations to emergent cultural complexity to historical ecology and human impacts on ancient environments.Series: Perspectives in California Archaeology

Reinforced Concrete: A Fast Hash Function for Verifiable Computation

We propose a new hash function Reinforced Concrete, which is the first generic purpose hash that is fast both for a zero-knowledge prover and in native x86 computations. It is suitable for a various range of zero-knowledge proofs and protocols, from set membership to generic purpose verifiable computation. Being up to 15x faster than its predecessor Poseidon hash, Reinforced Concrete inherits security from traditional time-tested schemes such as AES, whereas taking the zero-knowledge performance from a novel and efficient decomposition of a prime field into compact buckets. The new hash function is suitable for a wide range of applications like privacy-preserving cryptocurrencies, verifiable encryption, protocols with state membership proofs, or verifiable computation. It may serve as a drop-in replacement for various prime-field hashes such as variants of MiMC, Poseidon, Pedersen hash, and others

Visions in the Ville: Looking toward the next 125 years. Volume 2: Design proposals

The 2014 “Visions in the Ville” summer studio explored Aggieville’s potential as the community looks toward the future. The studio spanned eight weeks and was offered by the Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional & Community Planning at Kansas State University. Associate Professors Blake Belanger and Howard Hahn directed the efforts of fourteen mid-level graduate landscape architecture students, and documented the studio’s research and design findings in two volumes: Volume 1: Critical Mapping and Volume 2: Design Proposals. The intent of the studio was to identify ideas, visions, and strategies that will contribute to a community dialogue about enhancing Aggieville’s future. The studio researched the history, character, economics, demographics, and ecological conditions of Aggieville, as well as the district’s broader role in the evolving community and regional context. Volume 2 builds on the studio’s research and strategies developed through critical mapping, and presents five planning and design proposals for Aggieville and its context. Students repeatedly engaged community stakeholders to discuss design development and presented their final ideas in various venues, including a public open house, a presentation to the Manhattan City Commission, and a public exhibit at “Aggieville’s 125th Birthday Street Fair and Dance.” Primary findings include design proposals for improving physical connectivity and partnerships across the community, providing medium to high-density mixed-use urban infill, developing permanent and temporary regional attractions, and enhancing civic space in and around Aggieville

Privacy-preserving E-ticketing Systems for Public Transport Based on RFID/NFC Technologies

Pervasive digitization of human environment has dramatically changed our everyday lives. New technologies which have become an integral part of our daily routine have deeply affected our perception of the surrounding world and have opened qualitatively new opportunities. In an urban environment, the influence of such changes is especially tangible and acute. For example, ubiquitous computing (also commonly referred to as UbiComp) is a pure vision no more and has transformed the digital world dramatically. Pervasive use of smartphones, integration of processing power into various artefacts as well as the overall miniaturization of computing devices can already be witnessed on a daily basis even by laypersons. In particular, transport being an integral part of any urban ecosystem have been affected by these changes. Consequently, public transport systems have undergone transformation as well and are currently dynamically evolving. In many cities around the world, the concept of the so-called electronic ticketing (e-ticketing) is being extensively used for issuing travel permissions which may eventually result in conventional paper-based tickets being completely phased out already in the nearest future. Opal Card in Sydney, Oyster Card in London, Touch & Travel in Germany and many more are all the examples of how well the e-ticketing has been accepted both by customers and public transport companies. Despite numerous benefits provided by such e-ticketing systems for public transport, serious privacy concern arise. The main reason lies in the fact that using these systems may imply the dramatic multiplication of digital traces left by individuals, also beyond the transport scope. Unfortunately, there has been little effort so far to explicitly tackle this issue. There is still not enough motivation and public pressure imposed on industry to invest into privacy. In academia, the majority of solutions targeted at this problem quite often limit the real-world pertinence of the resultant privacy-preserving concepts due to the fact that inherent advantages of e-ticketing systems for public transport cannot be fully leveraged. This thesis is aimed at solving the aforementioned problem by providing a privacy-preserving framework which can be used for developing e-ticketing systems for public transport with privacy protection integrated from the outset. At the same time, the advantages of e-ticketing such as fine-grained billing, flexible pricing schemes, and transparent use (which are often the main drivers for public to roll out such systems) can be retained