Aftershocks of the Syrian revolt hit Lebanon

For years, Hezbollah’s arms have been on the mind of decision-makers across the world. For the first time since the Arab Spring began in December 2010, those arms are again at the forefront, as the violence in Syria threatens to spill over into Lebanon, bringing the Shiite group into direct confrontation with Sunni extremists emboldened by the two-year old Syrian revolt

Tree-based Intelligent Intrusion Detection System in Internet of Vehicles

The use of autonomous vehicles (AVs) is a promising technology in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSs) to improve safety and driving efficiency. Vehicle-to-everything (V2X) technology enables communication among vehicles and other infrastructures. However, AVs and Internet of Vehicles (IoV) are vulnerable to different types of cyber-attacks such as denial of service, spoofing, and sniffing attacks. In this paper, an intelligent intrusion detection system (IDS) is proposed based on tree-structure machine learning models. The results from the implementation of the proposed intrusion detection system on standard data sets indicate that the system has the ability to identify various cyber-attacks in the AV networks. Furthermore, the proposed ensemble learning and feature selection approaches enable the proposed system to achieve high detection rate and low computational cost simultaneously.Comment: Accepted in IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM) 201

SMS spam filtering using probabilistic topic modelling and Stacked Denoising Autoencoder.

In This paper we present a novel approach to spam filtering and demonstrate its applicability with respect to SMS messages. Our approach requires minimum features engineering and a small set of labelled data samples. Features are extracted using topic modelling based on latent Dirichlet allocation, and then a comprehensive data model is created using a Stacked Denoising Autoencoder (SDA). Topic modelling summarises the data providing ease of use and high interpretability by visualising the topics using word clouds. Given that the SMS messages can be regarded as either spam (unwanted) or ham (wanted), the SDA is able to model the messages and accurately discriminate between the two classes without the need for a pre-labelled training set. The results are compared against the state-of-the-art spam detection algorithms with our proposed approach achieving over 97 % accuracy which compares favourably to the best reported algorithms presented in the literature

An Exploration of Dropout with RNNs for Natural Language Inference

Dropout is a crucial regularization technique for the Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) models of Natural Language Inference (NLI). However, dropout has not been evaluated for the effectiveness at different layers and dropout rates in NLI models. In this paper, we propose a novel RNN model for NLI and empirically evaluate the effect of applying dropout at different layers in the model. We also investigate the impact of varying dropout rates at these layers. Our empirical evaluation on a large (Stanford Natural Language Inference (SNLI)) and a small (SciTail) dataset suggest that dropout at each feed-forward connection severely affects the model accuracy at increasing dropout rates. We also show that regularizing the embedding layer is efficient for SNLI whereas regularizing the recurrent layer improves the accuracy for SciTail. Our model achieved an accuracy 86.14% on the SNLI dataset and 77.05% on SciTail

Rheocricotopus (s. str.) costai sp. n. and R. (s. str.) pyrenaeus sp. n., two relict species from glacial rheocrenes and streams in corsica and the eastern pyrenees (diptera: chironomidae, orthocladiinae)

Two new species of the genus Rheocricotopus subgenus Rheocricotopus (R. costai sp. n. and R. pyrenaeus sp. n.) are diagnosed and described, based on material collected in some glacial rheocrenes and streams located in the high mountains of Corsica and the Eastern Pyrenees. Rheocricotopus costai sp. n. is described as male and pupal exuviae, while R. pyrenaeus sp. n. is described as male and female adults and pupal exuviae. Rheocricotopus costai sp. n. is known from both western Corsica and the Eastern Pyrenees, while the geographical distribution of R. pyrenaeus sp. n. is restricted to the protected area of the Mantet Nature Reserve (Eastern Pyrenees). Larvae of both R. costai sp. n. and R. pyrenaeus sp. n. are exclusively rheophilic being confined to lotic habitats located at high altitude (crenal and rhithral). Apart from the presence of an additional median circular small patch of spinules on tergite III of the exuviae, R. costai sp. n. directly keys into the effusus-group on the basis of several specific characters found in the male adult. Nevertheless, R. pyrenaeus sp. n. keys near both of R. reduncus Sæther & Schnell, 1988 (known from Finland, Norway and Russian Far East) and R. tchernovskii Makarchenko & Makarchenko, 2005 (known from Russian Far East), based in particular, on the unusual shape of the superior volsella which is inwardly markedly turned over distally. The genus Rheocricotopus is currently represented by 10 species in continental France and by 8 species in Corsica (Moubayed-Breil 2016). Consequently, the description of R. costai sp. n. and R. pyrenaeus sp. n. increases the total number in the genus to 12 for continental France and to 9 for Corsica. Taxonomic remarks, discussion and comments on the ecology and geographical distribution of the two new species are given.Bu çalışmada, Korsika ve Pireneler'deki yüksek dağlarda yer alan glasiyal rheokrenler ve akarsulardan toplanmış materyal incelenmiş ve Rheocricotopus cinsine ait iki yeni tür (R. costai sp. n. and R. pyrenaeus sp. n.) tanımlanmıştır. Rheocricotopus costai sp. n. erkek birey ve pupal kılıf ile tanımlanırken R. pyrenaeus sp. n. yetişkin erkek ve dişi bireyler ve pupal kılıf ile tanımlanmıştır. Rheocricotopus costai sp. n. hem Batı Korsika'dan hem de Pireneler’in doğusundan elde edilirken R. pyrenaeus sp. n.'nın coğrafik dağılımı Doğu Pirenler’de bir koruma alanı olan Mantet doğa koruma alanı ile sınırlıdır. Hem R. costai sp. n. hem de R. pyrenaeus sp. n. larvaları yüksek rakımlardaki lotik habitatlarda sınırlı olduklarından reofilik özelliktedirler. Rheocricotopus costai sp. n., pupal kılıfın 3. tergiti üzerinde medyan alanda yer alan küçük dairesel spinül yamasına ek olarak yetişkin erkeklerdeki çeşitli spesifik karakterleri ile effusus-grubu içinde yer almaktadır. Rheocricotopus pyrenaeus sp. n. ise özellikle distalde içe doğru dönük olan superior volsellanın olağan olmayan şekli bakımından Finlandiya, Norveç ve Uzak Doğu Rusyası'ndan bilinen R. reduncus Sæther & Schnell, 1988 ile Uzak Doğu Rusyası'ndan bilinen R. tchernovskii Makarchenko & Makarchenko, 2005'e benzemektedir. Rheocricotopus cinsi Fransa'da 10, Korsika'da ise 8 tür ile temsil edilmekteydi (Moubayed-Breil 2016). Sonuç olarak, R. costai sp. n. and R. pyrenaeus sp. n.'nın tanımlanması ile cinsin Fransa'daki tür sayısı 12'ye, Korsika'daki tür sayısı ile 9'a çıkmıştır. İki yeni türün ekolojileri ve coğrafik dağılımları ile ilgili taksonomik notlar, görüşler ve değerlendirmeler verilmiştir

Implementing Agenda 2030 in the Arab world: Contextualization, action areas and policy planning

This article is a critical assessment of the implementation frameworks of Agenda 2030 in the Arab region through a study of the deficiencies pertaining to the contextualization of the Agenda in the region. Seeking to identify the scope of implementation that would allow for the eventual streamlining of action towards the achievement of all of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the authors argue that the region’s political and institutional context is one of peacebuilding and resilience-building, imposing several overarching considerations pertaining to the priority intervention areas. Drawing on the findings of Ianovichina (2018), the article identifies the key levers of peacebuilding as being the reduction of real inequalities, the resumption of public and social services, and the promotion of equity and the rule of law. It then explores the policy deficiencies underlying the mobilization of these key levers. While domestic resources mobilization remains crippled by political exclusiveness and institutional inefficiency, the implementation of foreign financing frameworks intrinsically depends on that said mobilization. The authors conclude with a “roadmap” for improvements in the contextualization of Agenda 2030 by focusing on fiscal and financial reform and on the curbing of illicit financial flows on one hand, and de-escalation and institutional peacebuilding on the other