Using i* to represent OSS ecosystems for risk assessment

Open Source Software (OSS) is a strategic asset for organisations thanks to its short time-to-market, the opportunity for a reduced development effort and total cost of ownership, and its customization capabilities. OSS-based solutions include projects that are developed and co-evolve within the same organisation, OSS communities, companies, and regulatory bodies, forming an articulated strategic business ecosystem. The adoption of OSS in commercial projects leads to numerous challenges in the wide spectrum of available OSS solutions and risks emerging from the intrinsic structure of an OSS project. In this position paper we devise the use of i* models for understanding the strategic perspective of OSS ecosystems, representing actors, intentional dependencies and responsibilities. We argue that these models can play a crucial role in the analysis of organisational risks inherent to OSS component adoption and in the definition of risk mitigation activities.Postprint (published version

Legal compliance by design (LCbD) and through design (LCtD) : preliminary survey

1st Workshop on Technologies for Regulatory Compliance co-located with the 30th International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems (JURIX 2017). The purpose of this paper is twofold: (i) carrying out a preliminary survey of the literature and research projects on Compliance by Design (CbD); and (ii) clarifying the double process of (a) extending business managing techniques to other regulatory fields, and (b) converging trends in legal theory, legal technology and Artificial Intelligence. The paper highlights the connections and differences we found across different domains and proposals. We distinguish three different policydriven types of CbD: (i) business, (ii) regulatory, (iii) and legal. The recent deployment of ethical views, and the implementation of general principles of privacy and data protection lead to the conclusion that, in order to appropriately define legal compliance, Compliance through Design (CtD) should be differentiated from CbD

A Study on the Effects of Using Sampling for Metagenomic Comparison

openNowadays, ecological sciences depend heavily on genetic studies. Among these, analysis of environmental genetic material — i.e., metagenomics — is becoming increasingly popular for inferring essential information about microbial life and its interaction with ecosystems. An interesting application of metagenomics in this field is metagenomic comparison, that is the assessment of biotic dissimilarity between microbial environments. Current technologies allow us to produce Terabytes of metagenomic data with little effort. Consequently, the analysis of datasets of such size requires a large amount of computational resources. This led to the development and application of several strategies of dimensionality reduction, which are now being exploited for metagenomic comparison too. In this thesis, we analyse three different methods of reducing dimensionality to see what an impact they have in relation to reference-based methods. Our results show that a sketching on distinct k-mers, as implemented in the tool SimkaMin, have almost no impact on both abundance-based and presence-absence-based comparison for a sketching size larger than 10^5 distinct k-mers. On smaller sketches, quality of results decreases. On SPRISS’ sampling scheme, in which reads are selected uniformly at random with replacement, abundance-based Bray-Curtis dissimilarity showed no significant variations on moderated sampling rates — e.g., above 2% — and a marked quality decline on lower sampling rates. When the k-mers used are too short, 12 bp for instance, this sampling scheme seems to improve drastically dissimilarity measures. On the presence-absence Jaccard distance, instead, SPRISS’ subsampling scheme improves the correlation between reference-based and compositional-based methods at moderate sampling rates. Lastly, comparison of approximate sets of frequent k-mers, as outputted by SPRISS, hold lower correlation with reference-based dissimilarities, except on very short k-mers. Overall, our study suggests that rare k-mers are of both types: weakly informative and noise. Their impact is imperceivable on abundance-based dissimilarity, whereas the noisy part of them affect negatively the quality of the Jaccard index, which benefits from a moderate subsampling indeed.Nowadays, ecological sciences depend heavily on genetic studies. Among these, analysis of environmental genetic material — i.e., metagenomics — is becoming increasingly popular for inferring essential information about microbial life and its interaction with ecosystems. An interesting application of metagenomics in this field is metagenomic comparison, that is the assessment of biotic dissimilarity between microbial environments. Current technologies allow us to produce Terabytes of metagenomic data with little effort. Consequently, the analysis of datasets of such size requires a large amount of computational resources. This led to the development and application of several strategies of dimensionality reduction, which are now being exploited for metagenomic comparison too. In this thesis, we analyse three different methods of reducing dimensionality to see what an impact they have in relation to reference-based methods. Our results show that a sketching on distinct k-mers, as implemented in the tool SimkaMin, have almost no impact on both abundance-based and presence-absence-based comparison for a sketching size larger than 10^5 distinct k-mers. On smaller sketches, quality of results decreases. On SPRISS’ sampling scheme, in which reads are selected uniformly at random with replacement, abundance-based Bray-Curtis dissimilarity showed no significant variations on moderated sampling rates — e.g., above 2% — and a marked quality decline on lower sampling rates. When the k-mers used are too short, 12 bp for instance, this sampling scheme seems to improve drastically dissimilarity measures. On the presence-absence Jaccard distance, instead, SPRISS’ subsampling scheme improves the correlation between reference-based and compositional-based methods at moderate sampling rates. Lastly, comparison of approximate sets of frequent k-mers, as outputted by SPRISS, hold lower correlation with reference-based dissimilarities, except on very short k-mers. Overall, our study suggests that rare k-mers are of both types: weakly informative and noise. Their impact is imperceivable on abundance-based dissimilarity, whereas the noisy part of them affect negatively the quality of the Jaccard index, which benefits from a moderate subsampling indeed

Tech Imaginations

Prof. Dr. Jens Schröter, Christoph Borbach, Max Kanderske und Prof. Dr. Benjamin Beil sind Herausgeber der Reihe. Die Herausgeber*innen der einzelnen Hefte sind renommierte Wissenschaftler*innen aus dem In- und Ausland.Technologies and especially media technologies are pervasive in modern societies. But even more omnipresent are the imaginaries of modern technologies – what technologies are thought to be capable of or what effects they are supposed to have. These imaginations reveal a lot of the political and ideological self-descriptions of societies, hence the (techno-)imaginary also functions as a kind of epistemic tool. Concepts of the imaginary therefore have experienced an increasing attention in cultural theory and the social sciences in recent years. In particular, work from political philosophy, but also approaches from science and technology studies (STS) or communication and media studies are worth mentioning here. The term "techno-imagination", coined by Vilém Flusser in the early 1990s, refers to the close interconnection of (digital) media and imaginations, whose coupling can not only be understood as a driver of future technology via fictional discourses (e.g. science fiction), but much more fundamentally also as a constitutive element of society and sociality itself, as Castoriadis has argued. In the first part of the issue several theoretical contributions add new aspects to the discussion of socio-technical imaginaries, while in the second part a workshop held in January 2022 at the CAIS in Bochum is documented, in which the case of the imaginaries of “Future Internets” was discussed

Robotics, AI, and Humanity

This open access book examines recent advances in how artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics have elicited widespread debate over their benefits and drawbacks for humanity. The emergent technologies have for instance implications within medicine and health care, employment, transport, manufacturing, agriculture, and armed conflict. While there has been considerable attention devoted to robotics/AI applications in each of these domains, a fuller picture of their connections and the possible consequences for our shared humanity seems needed. This volume covers multidisciplinary research, examines current research frontiers in AI/robotics and likely impacts on societal well-being, human – robot relationships, as well as the opportunities and risks for sustainable development and peace. The attendant ethical and religious dimensions of these technologies are addressed and implications for regulatory policies on the use and future development of AI/robotics technologies are elaborated

Elements of Structural Syntax

This volume is now finally available in English, sixty years after the death of its author, Lucien Tesnière. It has been translated from the French original into German, Spanish, Italian, and Russian, and now at long last into English as well. The volume contains a comprehensive approach to the syntax of natural languages, an approach that is foundational for an entire stream in the modern study of syntax and grammar. This stream is known today as dependency grammar (DG). Drawing examples from dozens of languages, many of which he was proficient in, Tesnière presents insightful analyses of numerous phenomena of syntax. Among the highlights are the concepts of valency and head-initial vs. head-final languages. These concepts are now taken for granted by most modern theories of syntax, even by phrase structure grammars, which represent, in a sense, the opposite sort of approach to syntax from what Tesnière was advocating

Middle Byzantine silk in context: integrating the textual and material evidence

This work represents the most comprehensive investigation of silk in the middle Byzantine period to date. The current interpretation of silk as an imperial prerogative confined to elite use is poorly integrated with the body of evidence and lacks explanatory value. The difficult terminology and scattered mentions in written sources limits application of conventional research methods. Although a number of silk fragments survive in institutional collections, the lack of find and contextual information represents a formidable obstacle. This dissertation redefines silk in Byzantium by demonstrating its social importance, contribution to technology development, and integration in the regional economy. Findings are based on intensive analysis of production and consumption data from parallel investigation of texts and textile fragments according to a common framework. To aid data collection and analysis, information technology tools involving relational database methods and digital imaging were devised for this purpose. The evidence suggests that the historical process involving silk was shaped by a continuing cycle of elite differentiation and imitative reproduction, which contributed to the transmission of the material and production in the region. From a broader perspective, this work demonstrates the relevance of textile studies to the interpretation of economic and social history