Social Bots: Human-Like by Means of Human Control?

Social bots are currently regarded an influential but also somewhat mysterious factor in public discourse and opinion making. They are considered to be capable of massively distributing propaganda in social and online media and their application is even suspected to be partly responsible for recent election results. Astonishingly, the term `Social Bot' is not well defined and different scientific disciplines use divergent definitions. This work starts with a balanced definition attempt, before providing an overview of how social bots actually work (taking the example of Twitter) and what their current technical limitations are. Despite recent research progress in Deep Learning and Big Data, there are many activities bots cannot handle well. We then discuss how bot capabilities can be extended and controlled by integrating humans into the process and reason that this is currently the most promising way to go in order to realize effective interactions with other humans.Comment: 36 pages, 13 figure

A general algorithm to build mixed real and virtual antenna functions for higher-order calculations

The antenna-subtraction technique has demonstrated remarkable effectiveness in providing next-to-next-to-leading order in αs (NNLO) predictions for a wide range of processes relevant for the Large Hadron Collider. In a previous paper [1], we demonstrated how to build real-radiation antenna functions for any number of real emissions directly from a specified list of unresolved limits. Here, we extend this procedure to the mixed case of real and virtual radiation, for any number of real and virtual emissions. A novel feature of the algorithm is the requirement to match the antenna constructed with the correct unresolved limits to the other elements of the subtraction scheme. We discuss how this can be achieved and provide a full set of real-virtual NNLO antenna functions (together with their integration over the final-final unresolved phase space). We demonstrate that these antennae can be combined with the real-radiation antennae of ref. [1] to form a consistent NNLO subtraction scheme that cancels all explicit and implicit singularities at NNLO. We anticipate that the improved antenna functions should be more amenable to automation, thereby making the construction of subtraction terms for more complicated processes simpler at NNLO

A general algorithm to build real-radiation antenna functions for higher-order calculations

The antenna subtraction method has been successfully applied to a wide range of processes relevant for the Large Hadron Collider at next-to-next-to-leading order in αs (NNLO). We propose an algorithm for building antenna functions for any number of real emissions from an identified pair of hard radiator partons directly from a specified list of unresolved limits. We use the algorithm to explicitly build all single- and double-real QCD antenna functions and compare them to the previous antenna functions, which were extracted from matrix elements. The improved antenna functions should be more easily applicable to NNLO subtraction terms. Finally, we match the integration of the antenna functions over the final-final unresolved phase space to the previous incarnation, serving as an independent check on our results

The advantage of a toxicokinetic model of the honey bee colony in the context of the risk assessment of plant protection products

Within the current discussions about risk assessment of plant protection products regarding honey bees, one of the most important aspects is how to link pesticide exposure on field and landscape scale to potential effects within the colony. A dynamic toxicokinetic model may help to improve the evaluation of dose rates individuals are exposed to through various compartments of the colony, which may result from the application of plant protection products in the field. In addition, it may help to interpret the significance of ecotoxicological test results, especially from lower-tier studies, in the risk assessment and help to refine the exposure assessment and risk evaluation. Linking it to a realistic population model and a landscape-based foraging model would give an improved insight into the dynamics in a honey bee colony under exposure of plant protection productsKeywords: modelling, toxicokinetics, risk assessment, exposur