364 research outputs found

    LIPIcs, Volume 251, ITCS 2023, Complete Volume

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    LIPIcs, Volume 251, ITCS 2023, Complete Volum

    LIPIcs, Volume 261, ICALP 2023, Complete Volume

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    LIPIcs, Volume 261, ICALP 2023, Complete Volum

    Pushing the Boundaries of Spacecraft Autonomy and Resilience with a Custom Software Framework and Onboard Digital Twin

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    This research addresses the high CubeSat mission failure rates caused by inadequate software and overreliance on ground control. By applying a reliable design methodology to flight software development and developing an onboard digital twin platform with fault prediction capabilities, this study provides a solution to increase satellite resilience and autonomy, thus reducing the risk of mission failure. These findings have implications for spacecraft of all sizes, paving the way for more resilient space missions

    LASSO – an observatorium for the dynamic selection, analysis and comparison of software

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    Mining software repositories at the scale of 'big code' (i.e., big data) is a challenging activity. As well as finding a suitable software corpus and making it programmatically accessible through an index or database, researchers and practitioners have to establish an efficient analysis infrastructure and precisely define the metrics and data extraction approaches to be applied. Moreover, for analysis results to be generalisable, these tasks have to be applied at a large enough scale to have statistical significance, and if they are to be repeatable, the artefacts need to be carefully maintained and curated over time. Today, however, a lot of this work is still performed by human beings on a case-by-case basis, with the level of effort involved often having a significant negative impact on the generalisability and repeatability of studies, and thus on their overall scientific value. The general purpose, 'code mining' repositories and infrastructures that have emerged in recent years represent a significant step forward because they automate many software mining tasks at an ultra-large scale and allow researchers and practitioners to focus on defining the questions they would like to explore at an abstract level. However, they are currently limited to static analysis and data extraction techniques, and thus cannot support (i.e., help automate) any studies which involve the execution of software systems. This includes experimental validations of techniques and tools that hypothesise about the behaviour (i.e., semantics) of software, or data analysis and extraction techniques that aim to measure dynamic properties of software. In this thesis a platform called LASSO (Large-Scale Software Observatorium) is introduced that overcomes this limitation by automating the collection of dynamic (i.e., execution-based) information about software alongside static information. It features a single, ultra-large scale corpus of executable software systems created by amalgamating existing Open Source software repositories and a dedicated DSL for defining abstract selection and analysis pipelines. Its key innovations are integrated capabilities for searching for selecting software systems based on their exhibited behaviour and an 'arena' that allows their responses to software tests to be compared in a purely data-driven way. We call the platform a 'software observatorium' since it is a place where the behaviour of large numbers of software systems can be observed, analysed and compared

    A corpus-based contrastive analysis of modal adverbs of certainty in English and Urdu

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    This study uses the corpus-based contrastive approach to explore the syntactic patterns and semantic and pragmatic meanings of modal adverbs of certainty (MACs) in English and Urdu. MACs are a descriptive category of epistemic modal adverb that semantically express a degree of certainty. Due to the paucity of research to date on Urdu MACs, the study draws on existing literature on English MACs for cross-linguistic description of characteristics of English and Urdu MACs. A framework is constructed based on Boye’s (2012) description of syntactic characteristics of MACs, in terms of clause type and position within the clause; and on Simon-Vandenbergen and Aijmer’s (2007) description of their functional characteristics including both semantic (e.g. certainty, possibility) and pragmatic (e.g. authority, politeness) functions. Following Boye’s (2012) model, MACs may be grouped according to meaning: high certainty support – HCS (e.g. certainly); probability support – PS (e.g. perhaps); probability support for negative content – PSNC (e.g. perhaps not); and high certainty support for negative content – HCSNC (e.g. certainly not). Methodologically, the framework identified as suitable is one that primarily follows earlier studies that relied on corpus-based methods and parallel and comparable corpora for cross-linguistic comparative or contrastive analysis of some linguistic element or pattern. An approach to grammatical description based on such works as Quirk et al. (1985) and Biber et al. (1999) is likewise identified as suitable for this study. An existing parallel corpus (EMILLE) and newly created comparable monolingual corpora of English and Urdu are utilised. The novel comparable corpora are web-based, comprised of news and chat forum texts; the data is POS-tagged. Using the parallel corpus, Urdu MACs equivalent to the English MACs preidentified from the existing literature are identified. Then, the comparable corpora are used to extract data on the relative frequencies of MACs and their distribution across various text types. This quantitative analysis demonstrates that in both languages all four semantic categories of MAC are found in all text types, but the distribution across text types is not uniform. HCS MACs, although diverse, are considerably lower in frequency than PS MACs in both English and Urdu. HCSNC and PSNC MACs are notably rarer than HCS and PS MACs in both languages. The analysis demonstrates striking similarities in the syntactic positioning of MACs in English and Urdu, with minor differences. Except for Urdu PSNC MACs, all categories most frequently occur in clause medial position, in both independent and dependent clauses, in both languages. This difference is because hƍ nahÄ«áč saktā ‘possibly not’ is most frequent in clause final position. MACs in both languages most often have scope over the whole clause in which they occur; semantically, the core function of MACs is to express speaker’s certainty and high confidence (for HCS and HCSNC) or low certainty and low confidence (for PS and PSNC) in the truth of a proposition. These groups thus primarily function as certainty markers and probability markers, respectively. In both languages, speakers also use MACs short responses to questions, and in responses to their own rhetorical questions. HCS and PS MACs in clause final position may in addition function as tags which prompt a response from the interlocutor. When they cooccur with modal verbs, MACs emphasise or downtone, but do not entirely change, the modal verb’s epistemic or deontic meaning. In both languages, all MACs preferentially occur in the then-clause of a conditional sentence. Pragmatically, MACs are used for emphasis, expectation, counter-expectation and politeness. Additionally, HCS and HCSNC MACs are used to express solidarity and authority, and PS and PSNC MACs are used as hedges. Readings of expectation, hedge, politeness, and solidarity may be relevant simultaneously. Interestingly, reduplication for emphasis, common in Urdu, is only observed for one Urdu MAC, ĆŒarĆ«r ‘definitely’, whereas all English MACs reduplicate for emphasis in at least some cases. Another difference is that, in Urdu, the sequence ƛāyad nahÄ«áč yaqÄ«nān ‘not perhaps, certainly’ expresses speaker authority within a response to a previous speaker, but no English MAC exhibits this behaviour. Despite overall similarity, minor dissimilarities in the use of English and Urdu MACs are observable, in the use of MACs as replies to questions, and in their use within interrogative clauses. This analysis supports the contention that, cross-linguistically, despite linguistic variation, the conceptual structures and functional-communicative considerations that shape natural languages are largely universal. This study makes two main contributions. First, conducting a descriptive analysis of English and Urdu MACs using a corpus-based contrastive method both illuminates this specific question in modality but also sets a precedent for future corpus-based descriptive studies of Urdu. The second is its inclusion of priorly considered distinct categories of modal adverbs of certainty and possibility in a single category of modal adverbs that are used to express a degree of certainty, i.e. MACs. From the practical standpoint, an additional contribution of this study is the creation and open release of a large Urdu corpus designed for comparable corpus research, the Lancaster Urdu Web Corpus, fulfilling a need for such a corpus in the field

    Cyber Attack Surface Mapping For Offensive Security Testing

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    Security testing consists of automated processes, like Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) and Static Application Security Testing (SAST), as well as manual offensive security testing, like Penetration Testing and Red Teaming. This nonautomated testing is frequently time-constrained and difficult to scale. Previous literature suggests that most research is spent in support of improving fully automated processes or in finding specific vulnerabilities, with little time spent improving the interpretation of the scanned attack surface critical to nonautomated testing. In this work, agglomerative hierarchical clustering is used to compress the Internet-facing hosts of 13 representative companies as collected by the Shodan search engine, resulting in an average 89% reduction in attack surface complexity. The work is then extended to map network services and also analyze the characteristics of the Log4Shell security vulnerability and its impact on attack surface mapping. The results highlighted outliers indicative of possible anti-patterns as well as opportunities to improve how testers and tools map the web attack surface. Ultimately the work is extended to compress web attack surfaces based on security relevant features, demonstrating via accuracy measurements not only that this compression is feasible but can also be automated. In the process a framework is created which could be extended in future work to compress other attack surfaces, including physical structures/campuses for physical security testing and even humans for social engineering tests

    Mapping Urban Spaces. Designing the European City

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    open5siVolume edito sia a stampa (hardback e paperback) che in formato elettronico (Open Access)Mapping Urban Spaces focuses on medium- sized European cities and more specifically on their open spaces from psychological, sociological, and aesthetic points of view. The chapters illustrate how the characteristics that make life in medium- sized European cities pleasant and sustainable – accessibility, ease of travel, urban sustainability, social inclusiveness – can be traced back to the nature of that space. The chapters develop from a phenomenological study of space to contributions on places and landscapes in the city. Centralities and their meaning are studied, as well as the social space and its complexity. The contributions focus on history and theory as well as concrete research and mapping approaches and the resulting design applications. The case studies come from countries around Europe including Poland, Italy, Greece, Germany, and France, among others. The book will be of interest to students, scholars, and practitioners in architecture, urban planning, and landscape architecture.openLamberto Amistadi, Valter Balducci, Tomasz Bradecki, Enrico Prandi, Uwe SchroederLamberto Amistadi, Valter Balducci, Tomasz Bradecki, Enrico Prandi, Uwe Schroede
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