Pump and Dumps in the Bitcoin Era: Real Time Detection of Cryptocurrency Market Manipulations

In the last years, cryptocurrencies are increasingly popular. Even people who are not experts have started to invest in these securities and nowadays cryptocurrency exchanges process transactions for over 100 billion US dollars per month. However, many cryptocurrencies have low liquidity and therefore they are highly prone to market manipulation schemes. In this paper, we perform an in-depth analysis of pump and dump schemes organized by communities over the Internet. We observe how these communities are organized and how they carry out the fraud. Then, we report on two case studies related to pump and dump groups. Lastly, we introduce an approach to detect the fraud in real time that outperforms the current state of the art, so to help investors stay out of the market when a pump and dump scheme is in action.Comment: Accepted for publication at The 29th International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks (ICCCN 2020

Understanding evolutionary processes during past Quaternary climatic cycles: Can it be applied to the future?

Climate change affected ecological community make-up during the Quaternary which was probably both the cause of, and was caused by, evolutionary processes such as species evolution, adaptation and extinction of species and populations

Gender and Inclusion Toolbox: Participatory Research in Climate Change and Agriculture

This manual is a resource and toolbox for NGO practitioners and programme designers interested in diagnostic and action research for gender sensitive and socially inclusive climate change programmes in the rural development context. It is meant to be an easy to use manual, increasing the research capacity, skills and knowledge of its users. Integrating gender and social differentiation frameworks should ideally begin from the start of the programme cycle and be coordinated throughout research, design, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation phases. The data gathered using this toolbox supports this programme work. While the manual emphasizes participatory and qualitative approaches, many of the activities and tools can produce quantitative data. Each chapter features a bundle of research tools intended to be used sequentially. However, we know that each organization has its diverse needs. The chapters are in modular format so that teams can assemble their own research toolbox specific to their needs