ILR Impact Brief - Ownership Status Matters: Call Centers, Employment Systems, and Turnover

Each type of call center (i.e., ownership status) is associated with particular strategies and systems, which in turn influence quit rates. In-house call centers typically focus on service quality and adopt quasi-professional employment systems (higher pay, more opportunities for employee problem-solving, minimal performance monitoring). Cost control, by contrast, is the strategic driver of outsourced and offshore call centers, which favor low-commitment employment systems that depend on close monitoring and limited on-the-job discretion. Turnover, a major problem for the entire industry, is lowest at in-house call centers and highest at outsourced facilities

Insights From Three Online Art Educators: Strategies for Instruction, Interaction, and Assessment

Currently, the entire world is experiencing an unprecedented threat due to the outbreak of COVID-19, which requires the majority of K-16 education to be temporarily taught online. The three authors have been teaching virtual courses with a studio art focus for a number of years. We share our collective insights for approaches to instruction, interaction, and assessment in virtual courses that might help other art educators to achieve successful learning outcomes for their students. We learned that building a learning community and peer connections is of the utmost importance; we propose mixing asynchronous and synchronous methods and providing prompt and comprehensive feedback on students’ artwork. The authors encourage other art educators to stay open-minded to new and flexible teaching environments, transforming this crisis into an opportunity to incorporate innovations into their teaching that even more effectively meet every student’s needs

Nature or Nurture? An Analysis of Rational Addiction to Mobile Social Applications

Through the lens of rational addiction theory (Becker and Murphy, 1988), this study investigates whether addiction to mobile social apps should be viewed as a rational behavior rather than an uncontrollable, irrational disorder. To derive the analytical model, this study extends the rational addiction framework to include a utility-level network effect as the key factor that regulates the inter-temporal consumption of mobile social apps. Further, to validate empirically the rational addiction model in this context, we gathered and analyzed longitudinal panel data on the weekly app usage of thousands of smartphone users. The findings suggest that consistent with the rational addiction theory, users of mobile social apps are rational and forward-looking. They determine their current consumption based on both past and future consumption and the utility derived from network effects. However, the extent of rational addiction to mobile social apps varies considerably across diverse demographic groups and app categories

Digital Forensic Methodology for Detection of Abnormal Flight of Drones

When a drone accident has occurred, it is difficult to decide whether it is due to a crime, malfunction, mistake, or external force. Although the cause of the accident is elucidated through analysis of artifacts or flight data, there are many limitations. In this study, we present a method for detecting an abnormal flight using the motor current values and controller direction values of a drone. The experimental result revealed that, in the case of a normal flight, the current values of four motors were similar in hovering state and the current value of rear motors were increased when the drone was flying forwards. In the case of an abnormal flight, when the drone moved rightwards due to external force in hovering state, the current values of the two motors on the right side were increased greatly. After a period of time following the movement to the right side, the current values of all the motors converged to 0. In the future, motor current values and controller direction values may be used to determine whether an abnormal flight in a drone accident has occurred because of external force by wind, birds, persons, or the like

Parallel Quantum Addition for Korean Block Cipher

Adversaries using quantum computers can employ new attacks on cryptography that are not possible with classical computers. Grover\u27s search algorithm, a well-known quantum algorithm, can reduce the search complexity of $O(2^n)$ to $\sqrt{2^n}$ for symmetric key cryptography using an $n$-bit key. To apply the Grover search algorithm, the target encryption process must be implemented as a quantum circuit. In this paper, we present optimized quantum circuits for Korean block ciphers based on ARX architectures. We adopt the optimal quantum adder and design in parallel way with only a few trade-offs between quantum resources. As a result, we provide a performance improvement of 78\% in LEA, 85\% in HIGHT, and 70\% in CHAM in terms of circuit depth, respectively. Finally, we estimate the cost of the Grover key search for Korean block ciphers and evaluate the post-quantum security based on the criteria presented by NIST

Recognition of Transmembrane Protein 39A as a Tumor-Specific Marker in Brain Tumor

Transmembrane protein 39A (TMEM39A) belongs to the TMEM39 family. TMEM39A gene is a susceptibility locus for multiple sclerosis. In addition, TMEM39A seems to be implicated in systemic lupus erythematosus. However, any possible involvement of TMEM39A in cancer remains largely unknown. In the present report, we provide evidence that TMEM39A may play a role in brain tumors. Western blotting using an anti-TMEM39A antibody indicated that TMEM39A was overexpressed in glioblastoma cell lines, including U87-MG and U251-MG. Deep-sequencing transcriptomic profiling of U87-MG and U251-MG cells revealed that TMEM39A transcripts were upregulated in such cells compared with those of the cerebral cortex. Confocal microscopic analysis of U251-MG cells stained with anti-TMEM39A antibody showed that TMEM39A was located in dot-like structures lying close to the nucleus. TMEM39A probably located to mitochondria or to endosomes. Immunohistochemical analysis of glioma tissue specimens indicated that TMEM39A was markedly upregulated in such samples. Bioinformatic analysis of the Rembrandt knowledge base also supported upregulation of TMEM39A mRNA levels in glioma patients. Together, the results afford strong evidence that TMEM39A is upregulated in glioma cell lines and glioma tissue specimens. Therefore, TMEM39A may serve as a novel diagnostic marker of, and a therapeutic target for, gliomas and other cancers

Binary Field Montgomery Multiplication on Quantum Computers

Optimizing arithmetic operations into quantum circuits to utilize quantum algorithms, such as the Shor algorithm and Grover search algorithm for cryptanalysis, is an active research field in cryptography implementation. In particular, reducing quantum resources is important for efficient implementation. In this paper, binary field ($GF(2^n)$) Montgomery multiplication in quantum circuits is presented. We utilize the bit-level Montgomery algorithm to efficiently compute the Montgomery product $C = A \cdot B \cdot r^{-1}$ in the binary field $GF(2^n)$. Additionally, we also present an efficient Montgomery multiplication quantum circuit in the case where the modulus of $GF(2^n)$ is specified

Optimized Implementation of SM4 on AVR Microcontrollers, RISC-V Processors, and ARM Processors

The SM4 block cipher is a Chinese domestic crpytographic that was introduced in 2003. Since the algorithm was developed for the use in wireless sensor networks, it is mandated in the Chinese National Standard for Wireless LAN WAPI (Wired Authentication and Privacy Infrastructure). The SM4 block cipher uses a 128-bit block size and a 32-bit round key. This consists of 32 rounds and one reverse translation \texttt{R}. In this paper, we present the optimized implementation of the SM4 block cipher on 8-bit AVR microcontrollers, which are widely used in wireless sensor devices, the optimized implementation of the SM4 block cipher on 32-bit RISC-V processors, which are open-source based computer architectures, and the optimized implementation of SM4 on 64-bit ARM processors with the parallel computation, which are widely used in smartphone and tablet. In the AVR microcontroller, it is implemented in three versions, including speed-optimization, memory-optimization, and code-optimization. As a result, speed-optimization, memory-optimization, and code-optimization achieved 205.2 cycles per byte, 213.3 cycles per byte and 207.4 cycles per byte, respectively. This is faster than the reference implementation written in C (1670.7 cycles per byte). The implementation on 32-bit RISC-V processors 128.8 cycles per byte. This is faster than the reference C code implementation (345.7 cycles per byte). The implementation on 64-bit ARM processors is 8.62 cycles per byte. This is faster than the reference C code implementation (120.07 cycles per byte)

All the Polynomial Multiplication You Need on RISC-V

Polynomial multiplication is a core operation for public key cryptography, such as pre-quantum cryptography (e.g. elliptic curve cryptography) and post-quantum cryptography (e.g. code-based cryptography and multivariate-based cryptography). For this reason, the efficient and secure implementation of polynomial multiplication has been actively conducted for high availability and security level in application services. In this paper, we present all polynomial multiplication methods on modern 32-bit RISC-V processors. We re-designed expensive implementations of polynomial multiplication on legacy microcontrollers (e.g. 8-bit AVR, 16-bit MSP, and 32-bit ARM) for new instruction sets of 32-bit RISC-V processors. Secondly, we suggest the optimal operand length for each polynomial multiplication on 32-bit RISC-V processors. With this implementation technique and Karatsuba algorithm, we achieved scalable features, which ensures the polynomial multiplication in any operand lengths with reasonably fast performance. Third, we propose instruction set extensions for the optimal implementation of polynomial multiplication on 32-bit RISC-V processors. This new feature introduces significant performance enhancements. Lastly, the proposed implementation is a public domain and following researchers can easily re-produce the result

SPEEDY on Cortex--M3: Efficient Software Implementation of SPEEDY on ARM Cortex--M3

The SPEEDY block cipher suite announced at CHES 2021 shows excellent hardware performance. However, SPEEDY was not designed to be efficient in software implementations. SPEEDY\u27s 6-bit sbox and bit permutation operations generally do not work efficiently in software. We implemented SPEEDY block cipher by applying the implementation technique of bit slicing. As an implementation technique of bit slicing, SPEEDY can be operated in software very efficiently and can be applied in microcontroller. By calculating the round key in advance, the performance on ARM Cortex-M3 for SPEEDY-5-192, SPEEDY-6-192, and SPEEDY-7-192 are 65.7, 75.25, and 85.16 clock cycles per byte (i.e. cpb), respectively. It showed better performance than AES-128 constant-time implementation and GIFT constant-time implementation in the same platform. Through this, we conclude that SPEEDY can show good performance on embedded environments