Domain-specific queries and Web search personalization: some investigations

Major search engines deploy personalized Web results to enhance users' experience, by showing them data supposed to be relevant to their interests. Even if this process may bring benefits to users while browsing, it also raises concerns on the selection of the search results. In particular, users may be unknowingly trapped by search engines in protective information bubbles, called "filter bubbles", which can have the undesired effect of separating users from information that does not fit their preferences. This paper moves from early results on quantification of personalization over Google search query results. Inspired by previous works, we have carried out some experiments consisting of search queries performed by a battery of Google accounts with differently prepared profiles. Matching query results, we quantify the level of personalization, according to topics of the queries and the profile of the accounts. This work reports initial results and it is a first step a for more extensive investigation to measure Web search personalization.Comment: In Proceedings WWV 2015, arXiv:1508.0338

The Impacts of Internal Audit Practices on the Quality of Internal Control in Vietnamese Smes

Purpose: This study examines the impacts of internal audit practices on internal control in Vietnamese SMEs.   Theoretical framework: This paper employs the three lines of defense model framework to study the impact of internal audit practices on internal control in Vietnamese SMEs. Internal auditing practices were measured by the items listed in the attribute standards and performance standards of the International Professional Practices Framework (IPPF). Internal control quality includes control environment, risk assessment, control activities, information and communication, and monitoring which are provided by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO) Framework.   Design/methodology/approach: We collect primary data using questionnaire. Data collected from the questionnaire is divided into two groups (1) the measurement of the internal auditing practices and (2) the measurement of the quality of internal control system. We then use the Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) to test for the hypotheses related to the relationship between internal audit practices and internal control.   Findings: Our results suggest that both attribute standards and performance standards have positive impacts on the control environment, risk assessment, control activities, and monitoring aspects of internal control. Meanwhile, internal audit seems to not influence the information and communication.   Research, Practical & Social implications: The study contributes to the literature by shedding light on the impacts of internal audit practices on the quality of internal control in Vietnamese SMEs.   Originality/value: This study examines the unique context of Vietnamese SMEs. Ultimately, the framework aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of how internal audit practices impact internal control quality in this specific context

Distributionally Robust Safety Filter for Learning-Based Control in Active Distribution Systems

Operational constraint violations may occur when deep reinforcement learning (DRL) agents interact with real-world active distribution systems to learn their optimal policies during training. This letter presents a universal distributionally robust safety filter (DRSF) using which any DRL agent can reduce the constraint violations of distribution systems significantly during training while maintaining near-optimal solutions. The DRSF is formulated as a distributionally robust optimization problem with chance constraints of operational limits. This problem aims to compute near-optimal actions that are minimally modified from the optimal actions of DRL-based Volt/VAr control by leveraging the distribution system model, thereby providing constraint satisfaction guarantee with a probability level under the model uncertainty. The performance of the proposed DRSF is verified using the IEEE 33-bus and 123-bus systems