AfriSenti: A Twitter Sentiment Analysis Benchmark for African Languages

Africa is home to over 2000 languages from over six language families and has the highest linguistic diversity among all continents. This includes 75 languages with at least one million speakers each. Yet, there is little NLP research conducted on African languages. Crucial in enabling such research is the availability of high-quality annotated datasets. In this paper, we introduce AfriSenti, which consists of 14 sentiment datasets of 110,000+ tweets in 14 African languages (Amharic, Algerian Arabic, Hausa, Igbo, Kinyarwanda, Moroccan Arabic, Mozambican Portuguese, Nigerian Pidgin, Oromo, Swahili, Tigrinya, Twi, Xitsonga, and Yor\`ub\'a) from four language families annotated by native speakers. The data is used in SemEval 2023 Task 12, the first Afro-centric SemEval shared task. We describe the data collection methodology, annotation process, and related challenges when curating each of the datasets. We conduct experiments with different sentiment classification baselines and discuss their usefulness. We hope AfriSenti enables new work on under-represented languages. The dataset is available at https://github.com/afrisenti-semeval/afrisent-semeval-2023 and can also be loaded as a huggingface datasets (https://huggingface.co/datasets/shmuhammad/AfriSenti).Comment: 15 pages, 6 Figures, 9 Table

CHERI JNI: Sinking the Java Security Model into the C

Java provides security and robustness by building a high- level security model atop the foundation of memory protection. Unfortunately, any native code linked into a Java program – including the million lines used to implement the standard library – is able to bypass both the memory protection and the higher-level policies. We present a hardware-assisted implementation of the Java native code interface, which extends the guarantees required for Java’s security model to native code. Our design supports safe direct access to buffers owned by the JVM, including hardware-enforced read-only access where appropriate. We also present Java language syntax to declaratively describe isolated compartments for native code. We show that it is possible to preserve the memory safety and isolation requirements of the Java security model in C code, allowing native code to run in the same process as Java code with the same impact on security as running equivalent Java code. Our approach has a negligible impact on performance, compared with the existing unsafe native code interface. We demonstrate a prototype implementation running on the CHERI microprocessor synthesized in FPGA.Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Google, Inc. Isaac Newton Trust Thales E-Securit

Acute Exposure to Terrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA) has effects on the electroencephalogram and electrocardiogram, consistent with vagal nerve stimulation

BACKGROUND: Terrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA) is a telecommunications system widely used by police and emergency services around the world. The Stewart Report on mobile telephony and health raised questions about possible health effects associated with TETRA signals. This study investigates possible effects of TETRA signals on the electroencephalogram and electrocardiogram in human volunteers. METHODS: Blinded randomized provocation study with a standardized TETRA signal or sham exposure. In the first of two experiments, police officers had a TETRA set placed first against the left temple and then the upper-left quadrant of the chest and the electroencephalogram was recorded during rest and active cognitive processing. In the second experiment, volunteers were subject to chest exposure of TETRA whilst their electroencephalogram and heart rate variability derived from the electrocardiogram were recorded. RESULTS: In the first experiment, we found that exposure to TETRA had consistent neurophysiological effects on the electroencephalogram, but only during chest exposure, in a pattern suggestive of vagal nerve stimulation. In the second experiment, we observed changes in heart rate variability during exposure to TETRA but the electroencephalogram effects were not replicated. CONCLUSIONS: Observed effects of exposure to TETRA signals on the electroencephalogram (first experiment) and electrocardiogram are consistent with vagal nerve stimulation in the chest by TETRA. However given the small effect on heart rate variability and the lack of consistency on the electroencephalogram, it seems unlikely that this will have a significant impact on health. Long-term monitoring of the health of the police force in relation to TETRA use is on-going

Priority questions in multidisciplinary drought research

Addressing timely and relevant questions across a multitude of spatio-temporal scales, state-of-the-art interdisciplinary drought research will likely increase in importance under projected climate change. Given the complexity of the various direct and indirect causes and consequences of a drier world, scientific tasks need to be coordinated efficiently. Drought-related research endeavors ranging from individual projects to global initiatives therefore require prioritization. Here, we present 60 priority questions for optimizing future drought research. This topical catalogue reflects the experience of 65 scholars from 21 countries and almost 20 fields of research in both natural sciences and the humanities. The set of drought-related questions primarily covers drought monitoring, impacts, forecasting, climatology, adaptation, as well as planning and policy. The questions highlight the increasingly important role of remote sensing techniques in drought monitoring, importance of drought forecasting and understanding the relationships between drought parameters and drought impacts, but also challenges of drought adaptation and preparedness policies

Documentary evidence of past floods in Europe and their utility in flood frequency estimation

International audienceThis review outlines the use of documentary evidence of historical flood events in contemporary flood frequency estimation in European countries. The study shows that despite widespread consensus in the scientific literature on the utility of documentary evidence, the actual migration from academic to practical application has been limited. A detailed review of flood frequency estimation guidelines from different countries showed that the value of historical data is generally recognised, but practical methods for systematic and routine inclusion of this type of data into risk analysis are in most cases not available. Studies of historical events were identified in most countries, and good examples of national databases attempting to collate the available information were identified. The conclusion is that there is considerable potential for improving the reliability of the current flood risk assessments by harvesting the valuable information on past extreme events contained in the historical data sets.Cet article présente une revue de l'utilisation de l'information documentaire sur les crues historiques par les pays européens pour l'analyse fréquentielle des crues. L'étude montre que, malgré l'existence d'un consensus scientifique sur l'intérêt de ce type d'information, son utilisation reste encore limitée d'un point de vue opérationnel. Si les guides pratiques sur l'estimation des crues mentionnent en général bien l'intérêt de l'information historique, il existe encore peu de logiciel disponible utilisant cette information. Des travaux sont en cours dans plusieurs pays pour constituer des bases de données nationales sur les crues historiques. La conclusion est qu'il y aurait un fort bénéfice à exploiter ces informations pour l'estimation du risque de crue

Where are the large and difficult datasets?

Error rate, Meta-analysis, Comparative studies, Repositories, 6207, 68T10,