6,596 research outputs found

    A Survey on Forensics and Compliance Auditing for Critical Infrastructure Protection

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    The broadening dependency and reliance that modern societies have on essential services provided by Critical Infrastructures is increasing the relevance of their trustworthiness. However, Critical Infrastructures are attractive targets for cyberattacks, due to the potential for considerable impact, not just at the economic level but also in terms of physical damage and even loss of human life. Complementing traditional security mechanisms, forensics and compliance audit processes play an important role in ensuring Critical Infrastructure trustworthiness. Compliance auditing contributes to checking if security measures are in place and compliant with standards and internal policies. Forensics assist the investigation of past security incidents. Since these two areas significantly overlap, in terms of data sources, tools and techniques, they can be merged into unified Forensics and Compliance Auditing (FCA) frameworks. In this paper, we survey the latest developments, methodologies, challenges, and solutions addressing forensics and compliance auditing in the scope of Critical Infrastructure Protection. This survey focuses on relevant contributions, capable of tackling the requirements imposed by massively distributed and complex Industrial Automation and Control Systems, in terms of handling large volumes of heterogeneous data (that can be noisy, ambiguous, and redundant) for analytic purposes, with adequate performance and reliability. The achieved results produced a taxonomy in the field of FCA whose key categories denote the relevant topics in the literature. Also, the collected knowledge resulted in the establishment of a reference FCA architecture, proposed as a generic template for a converged platform. These results are intended to guide future research on forensics and compliance auditing for Critical Infrastructure Protection.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

    La enseñanza-aprendizaje del español como lengua extranjera en Rumanía. Análisis de la situación y propuesta de mejora

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    [ES] El auge de la lengua española en muchos países es indudable y esto impulsa la investigación de su enseñanza y aprendizaje. Son múltiples los estudios realizados (Fernández Saavedra y Gómez, 2010; Fondo y Gago, 2022; Manzanares, 2020; Merziq, 2022; Rabadán y Orgambídez, 2018; Rodríguez García, 2022) en diferentes contextos educativos y sus aportaciones y relevancia son de suma importancia para la didáctica de las lenguas. Ante el cambio constante y acelerado en el mundo, principalmente en los ámbitos económico, social y tecnológico, mejorar la actuación docente supone muchos beneficios para la sociedad. Permite formar al estudiantado para su futuro laboral, así como promover el uso de tendencias pedagógicas actuales y plantear nuevas propuestas adaptadas a las demandas de la sociedad. La presente tesis doctoral tiene como objetivo general investigar la situación actual de la enseñanza-aprendizaje del español como lengua extranjera en Rumanía a nivel de secundaria y de universidad para detectar necesidades y carencias y ofrecer propuestas pedago-didácticas innovadoras, aplicables al aula. Para conseguirlo, primero se hace una incursión teórica en los métodos de enseñanza-aprendizaje y en la evolución del español en Rumanía. Después, la metodología de investigación adopta un enfoque mixto de recogida de datos basado en técnicas cuantitativas y cualitativas. Se recolecta información acerca de las características, creencias, necesidades y dificultades del profesorado y alumnado rumano de secundaria superior y universitario. Se trabaja con una muestra de 60 docentes y 470 estudiantes de diferentes centros educativos del país. Los datos se analizan estadística y manualmente. En base a ello se diseñan dos propuestas de mejora: una guía de buenas prácticas basada en las tendencias pedagógicas actuales y un proyecto formativo para el profesorado de Español Lengua Extranjera (ELE). Su implementación en la realidad educativa rumana se lleva a la práctica utilizando dos vías: la guía se aplica a un grupo clase de 23 estudiantes universitarios de la Universidad Babe¿-Bolyai de Cluj-Napoca y el proyecto formativo se da a conocer entre los docentes del país y se difunde bajo la forma de Encuentros virtuales a nivel nacional e internacional. Los resultados obtenidos revelan la necesidad de un cambio en el sistema educativo y en la metodología docente para adaptarse a los intereses de los actuales aprendientes. Asimismo, ponen de manifiesto el requisito del profesorado de formarse en las tendencias actuales de enseñanza-aprendizaje. Las propuestas responden a los deseos expresados y consiguen motivar al estudiantado y entusiasmar a los docentes. Las conclusiones evidencian los beneficios que reporta la presente tesis doctoral a la comunidad educativa y científica, transferibles a contextos educativos similares.[CA] L'auge de la llengua espanyola en molts països és indubtable i això impulsa la investigació del seu ensenyament i aprenentatge. Són múltiples els estudis realitzats (Fernández Saavedra i Gómez, 2010; Fons i Gago, 2022; Manzanares, 2020; Merziq, 2022; Rabadán i Orgambídez, 2018; Rodríguez García, 2022) en diferents contextos educatius i les seues aportacions i rellevància són de summa importància per a la didàctica de les llengües. Davant el canvi constant i accelerat en el món, principalment en els àmbits econòmic, social i tecnològic, millorar l'actuació docent suposa molts beneficis per a la societat. Permet formar a l'estudiantat per al seu futur laboral, així com promoure l'ús de tendències pedagògiques actuals i plantejar noves propostes adaptades a les demandes de la societat. La present tesi doctoral té com a objectiu general investigar la situació actual de l'ensenyament-aprenentatge de l'espanyol com a llengua estrangera a Romania a nivell de secundària i d'universitat per a detectar necessitats i mancances i oferir propostes pedago- didàctiques innovadores, aplicables a l'aula. Per a aconseguir-ho, primer es fa una incursió teòrica en els mètodes d'ensenyament-aprenentatge i en l'evolució de l'espanyol a Romania. Després, la metodologia d'investigació adopta un enfocament mixt de recollida de dades basat en tècniques quantitatives i qualitatives. Es recol·lecta informació sobre les característiques, creences, necessitats i dificultats del professorat i alumnat romanés de secundària superior i universitari. Es treballa amb una mostra de 60 docents i 470 estudiants de diferents centres educatius del país. Les dades s'analitzen estadística i manualment. Sobre la base d'això es dissenyen dues propostes de millora: una guia de bones pràctiques basada en les tendències pedagògiques actuals i un projecte formatiu per al professorat d'Espanyol Llengua Estrangera (ELA). La seua implementació en la realitat educativa romanesa s'emporta a la pràctica utilitzant dues vies: la guia s'aplica a un grup classe de 23 estudiants universitaris de la Universitat Babe¿-Bolyai de Cluj-Napoca i el projecte formatiu es dona a conéixer entre els docents del país i es difon sota la forma de Trobades virtuals a nivell nacional i internacional. Els resultats obtinguts revelen la necessitat d'un canvi en el sistema educatiu i en la metodologia docent per a adaptar-se als interessos dels actuals aprendientes. Així mateix, posen de manifest el requisit del professorat de formar-se en les tendències actuals d'ensenyament- aprenentatge. Les propostes responen als desitjos expressats i aconsegueixen motivar a l'estudiantat i entusiasmar als docents. Les conclusions evidencien els beneficis que reporta la present tesi doctoral a la comunitat educativa i científica, transferibles a contextos educatius similars.[EN] The increased interest in studying Spanish as a Foreign Language in numerous countries is unquestionable and thus encourages us to research peculiarities about its teaching and learning. Multiple investigations (Fernández Saavedra y Gómez, 2010; Fondo y Gago, 2022; Manzanares, 2020; Merziq, 2022; Rabadán y Orgambídez, 2018; Rodríguez García, 2022) have been conducted in different educational contexts and their contributions and relevance are of the utmost importance for language teaching. Given the constant and rapid changes in the world, mainly in the economic, social and technological fields, improving teaching performance brings a number of benefits into our society. It allows the student body to be trained for its future inclusion in the labor market, but also promotes the use of current pedagogical trends and proposes new programmes adapted to the demands of the society. The general objective of this doctoral thesis is to investigate the current situation of the process of teaching-learning Spanish as a foreign language in Romania in both secondary and university levels in order to detect needs and deficiencies and offer innovative pedagogical and didactic proposals, applicable to the classroom. To achieve this, first a theoretical incursion is made into the teaching-learning methods and the evolution of Spanish in Romania. Then, the research methodology adopts a mixed approach to data collection based on quantitative and qualitative techniques. Information is collected about the characteristics, beliefs, needs and difficulties of Romanian upper secondary and university teachers and students. A sample of 60 teachers and 470 students from different educational centers in the country was used. The data is statistically and manually analyzed. Based on this, two proposals for improvement are designed: a guide to good practices based on current pedagogical trends and a training project for teachers of Spanish as a Foreign Language (ELE). Its implementation in the Romanian educational context is put into practice using two approaches: the guide is applied to a class group of 23 university students from the Babe¿-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca and the training project is made known amongst teachers in the country and is disseminated in the form of virtual meetings at the national and international level. The results obtained reveal the need for a change in the educational system and in the teaching methodology in order to adapt to the interests of current learners. Likewise, they highlight the requirement of teachers to be trained in the current teaching-learning trends. The proposals are based on the highlighted requests and advise to motivate the students and enthuse the teachers. The conclusions demonstrate the benefits that this doctoral thesis reports to the educational and scientific community and how they are transferable to similar educational contexts.Stînga, PA. (2023). La enseñanza-aprendizaje del español como lengua extranjera en Rumanía. Análisis de la situación y propuesta de mejora [Tesis doctoral]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/20155

    The Monarch Initiative in 2024: an analytic platform integrating phenotypes, genes and diseases across species.

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    Bridging the gap between genetic variations, environmental determinants, and phenotypic outcomes is critical for supporting clinical diagnosis and understanding mechanisms of diseases. It requires integrating open data at a global scale. The Monarch Initiative advances these goals by developing open ontologies, semantic data models, and knowledge graphs for translational research. The Monarch App is an integrated platform combining data about genes, phenotypes, and diseases across species. Monarch\u27s APIs enable access to carefully curated datasets and advanced analysis tools that support the understanding and diagnosis of disease for diverse applications such as variant prioritization, deep phenotyping, and patient profile-matching. We have migrated our system into a scalable, cloud-based infrastructure; simplified Monarch\u27s data ingestion and knowledge graph integration systems; enhanced data mapping and integration standards; and developed a new user interface with novel search and graph navigation features. Furthermore, we advanced Monarch\u27s analytic tools by developing a customized plugin for OpenAI\u27s ChatGPT to increase the reliability of its responses about phenotypic data, allowing us to interrogate the knowledge in the Monarch graph using state-of-the-art Large Language Models. The resources of the Monarch Initiative can be found at monarchinitiative.org and its corresponding code repository at github.com/monarch-initiative/monarch-app

    Information actors beyond modernity and coloniality in times of climate change:A comparative design ethnography on the making of monitors for sustainable futures in Curaçao and Amsterdam, between 2019-2022

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    In his dissertation, Mr. Goilo developed a cutting-edge theoretical framework for an Anthropology of Information. This study compares information in the context of modernity in Amsterdam and coloniality in Curaçao through the making process of monitors and develops five ways to understand how information can act towards sustainable futures. The research also discusses how the two contexts, that is modernity and coloniality, have been in informational symbiosis for centuries which is producing negative informational side effects within the age of the Anthropocene. By exploring the modernity-coloniality symbiosis of information, the author explains how scholars, policymakers, and data-analysts can act through historical and structural roots of contemporary global inequities related to the production and distribution of information. Ultimately, the five theses propose conditions towards the collective production of knowledge towards a more sustainable planet

    INSPIRE datahub: a pan-African integrated suite of services for harmonising longitudinal population health data using OHDSI tools

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    Introduction Population health data integration remains a critical challenge in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC), hindering the generation of actionable insights to inform policy and decision-making. This paper proposes a pan-African, Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) research architecture and infrastructure named the INSPIRE datahub. This cloud-based Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and on-premises setup aims to enhance the discovery, integration, and analysis of clinical, population-based surveys, and other health data sources. Methods The INSPIRE datahub, part of the Implementation Network for Sharing Population Information from Research Entities (INSPIRE), employs the Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics (OHDSI) open-source stack of tools and the Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership (OMOP) Common Data Model (CDM) to harmonise data from African longitudinal population studies. Operating on Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services cloud platforms, and on on-premises servers, the architecture offers adaptability and scalability for other cloud providers and technology infrastructure. The OHDSI-based tools enable a comprehensive suite of services for data pipeline development, profiling, mapping, extraction, transformation, loading, documentation, anonymization, and analysis. Results The INSPIRE datahub's “On-ramp” services facilitate the integration of data and metadata from diverse sources into the OMOP CDM. The datahub supports the implementation of OMOP CDM across data producers, harmonizing source data semantically with standard vocabularies and structurally conforming to OMOP table structures. Leveraging OHDSI tools, the datahub performs quality assessment and analysis of the transformed data. It ensures FAIR data by establishing metadata flows, capturing provenance throughout the ETL processes, and providing accessible metadata for potential users. The ETL provenance is documented in a machine- and human-readable Implementation Guide (IG), enhancing transparency and usability. Conclusion The pan-African INSPIRE datahub presents a scalable and systematic solution for integrating health data in LMICs. By adhering to FAIR principles and leveraging established standards like OMOP CDM, this architecture addresses the current gap in generating evidence to support policy and decision-making for improving the well-being of LMIC populations. The federated research network provisions allow data producers to maintain control over their data, fostering collaboration while respecting data privacy and security concerns. A use-case demonstrated the pipeline using OHDSI and other open-source tools

    Improving Cross-Lingual Transfer Learning for Event Detection

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    The widespread adoption of applications powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) backbones has unquestionably changed the way we interact with the world around us. Applications such as automated personal assistants, automatic question answering, and machine-based translation systems have become mainstays of modern culture thanks to the recent considerable advances in Natural Language Processing (NLP) research. Nonetheless, with over 7000 spoken languages in the world, there still remain a considerable number of marginalized communities that are unable to benefit from these technological advancements largely due to the language they speak. Cross-Lingual Learning (CLL) looks to address this issue by transferring the knowledge acquired from a popular, high-resource source language (e.g., English, Chinese, or Spanish) to a less favored, lower-resourced target language (e.g., Urdu or Swahili). This dissertation leverages the Event Detection (ED) sub-task of Information Extraction (IE) as a testbed and presents three novel approaches that improve cross-lingual transfer learning from distinct perspectives: (1) direct knowledge transfer, (2) hybrid knowledge transfer, and (3) few-shot learning

    INTEGRATED COMPUTER-AIDED DESIGN, EXPERIMENTATION, AND OPTIMIZATION APPROACH FOR PEROVSKITES AND PETROLEUM PACKAGING PROCESSES

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    According to the World Economic Forum report, the U.S. currently has an energy efficiency of just 30%, thus illustrating the potential scope and need for efficiency enhancement and waste minimization. In the U.S. energy sector, petroleum and solar energy are the two key pillars that have the potential to create research opportunities for transition to a cleaner, greener, and sustainable future. In this research endeavor, the focus is on two pivotal areas: (i) Computer-aided perovskite solar cell synthesis; and (ii) Optimization of flow processes through multiproduct petroleum pipelines. In the area of perovskite synthesis, the emphasis is on the enhancement of structural stability, lower costs, and sustainability. Utilizing modeling and optimization methods for computer-aided molecular design (CAMD), efficient, sustainable, less toxic, and economically viable alternatives to conventional lead-based perovskites are obtained. In the second area of optimization of flow processes through multiproduct petroleum pipelines, an actual industrial-scale operation for packaging multiple lube-oil blends is studied. Through an integrated approach of experimental characterization, process design, procedural improvements, testing protocols, control mechanisms, mathematical modeling, and optimization, the limitations of traditional packaging operations are identified, and innovative operational paradigms and strategies are developed by incorporating methods from process systems engineering and data-driven approaches

    Safe passage for attachment systems:Can attachment security at international schools be measured, and is it at risk?

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    Relocations challenge attachment networks. Regardless of whether a person moves or is moved away from, relocation produces separation and loss. When such losses are repeatedly experienced without being adequately processed, a defensive shutting down of the attachment system could result, particularly when such experiences occur during or across the developmental years. At schools with substantial turnover, this possibility could be shaping youth in ways that compromise attachment security and young people’s willingness or ability to develop and maintain deep long-term relationships. Given the well-documented associations between attachment security, social support, and long-term physical and mental health, the hypothesis that mobility could erode attachment and relational health warrants exploration. International schools are logical settings to test such a hypothesis, given their frequently high turnover without confounding factors (e.g. war trauma or refugee experiences). In addition, repeated experiences of separation and loss in international school settings would seem likely to create mental associations for the young people involved regarding how they and others tend to respond to such situations in such settings, raising the possibility that people at such schools, or even the school itself, could collectively be represented as an attachment figure. Questions like these have received scant attention in the literature. They warrant consideration because of their potential to shape young people’s most general convictions regarding attachment, which could, in turn, have implications for young people’s ability to experience meaning in their lives

    Ethnographies of Collaborative Economies across Europe: Understanding Sharing and Caring

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    "Sharing economy" and "collaborative economy" refer to a proliferation of initiatives, business models, digital platforms and forms of work that characterise contemporary life: from community-led initiatives and activist campaigns, to the impact of global sharing platforms in contexts such as network hospitality, transportation, etc. Sharing the common lens of ethnographic methods, this book presents in-depth examinations of collaborative economy phenomena. The book combines qualitative research and ethnographic methodology with a range of different collaborative economy case studies and topics across Europe. It uniquely offers a truly interdisciplinary approach. It emerges from a unique, long-term, multinational, cross-European collaboration between researchers from various disciplines (e.g., sociology, anthropology, geography, business studies, law, computing, information systems), career stages, and epistemological backgrounds, brought together by a shared research interest in the collaborative economy. This book is a further contribution to the in-depth qualitative understanding of the complexities of the collaborative economy phenomenon. These rich accounts contribute to the painting of a complex landscape that spans several countries and regions, and diverse political, cultural, and organisational backdrops. This book also offers important reflections on the role of ethnographic researchers, and on their stance and outlook, that are of paramount interest across the disciplines involved in collaborative economy research

    Economic and Financial Performance of the Portuguese Wine Market: Business Intelligence Approach

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    Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Data Science and Advanced Analytics, specialization in Business AnalyticsIn the past years, the international wine industry has been subject to intensive globalization and international competition as a result of the aggressive entrance of new players (New World Wine) as well as the consolidation of traditional producers’ countries (Old World Wine), which brings, simultaneously, challenges and opportunities to the industry. In Portugal, winemaking is one of the most relevant socio-economic activities, which makes it one of the most critical industries in Portugal. This study aims to develop a prototype business analytics solution that delivers the necessary inputs to evaluate Portuguese winemaking enterprises’ financial and economic health. Consequently, three research questions were defined: How can one create segments of Portuguese winemaking companies based on their financial performance? What was the evolution of the main financial indicators and margins within each segment and vineyard region? What has been the impact of COVID-19 on these companies’ profitability? Multiple financial ratios for 148 Portuguese companies were computed based on information from 2016 through 2020. Additionally, data of the entire sector was retrieved from the Bank of Portugal for the same period. This study uses analytical tools and dashboards to analyze the wine sector performance and the firms’ performance under each region by comparing their financial results. This study contributes to the literature by expanding on previous research on specific regions of Portugal. Additionally, this study presents the results employing a business analytics solution, including cluster techniques and AI insights. It was concluded, through the analysis of the economic-financial performance, that large companies have higher financial performance. Additionally, the sector, in general, suffered a drop in financial results because of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic
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