Explainable Patterns: Going from Findings to Insights to Support Data Analytics Democratization

In the past decades, massive efforts involving companies, non-profit organizations, governments, and others have been put into supporting the concept of data democratization, promoting initiatives to educate people to confront information with data. Although this represents one of the most critical advances in our free world, access to data without concrete facts to check or the lack of an expert to help on understanding the existing patterns hampers its intrinsic value and lessens its democratization. So the benefits of giving full access to data will only be impactful if we go a step further and support the Data Analytics Democratization, assisting users in transforming findings into insights without the need of domain experts to promote unconstrained access to data interpretation and verification. In this paper, we present Explainable Patterns (ExPatt), a new framework to support lay users in exploring and creating data storytellings, automatically generating plausible explanations for observed or selected findings using an external (textual) source of information, avoiding or reducing the need for domain experts. ExPatt applicability is confirmed via different use-cases involving world demographics indicators and Wikipedia as an external source of explanations, showing how it can be used in practice towards the data analytics democratization.Comment: 8 Figures, 10 pages, submitted to VIS 202

Killing Range: Explaining Lethality Variance Within a Terrorist Organization

This paper presents an analysis of the Provisional Irish Republican Army's (PIRA) brigade level behavior during the Northern Ireland Conflict (1970-1998) and identifies the organizational factors that impact a brigade's lethality as measured via terrorist attacks. Key independent variables include levels of technical expertise, cadre age, counter-terrorism policies experienced, brigade size, and IED components and delivery methods. We find that technical expertise within a brigade allows for careful IED usage, which significantly minimizes civilian casualties (a specific strategic goal of PIRA) while increasing the ability to kill more high value targets with IEDs. Lethal counter-terrorism events also significantly affect a brigade's likelihood of killing both civilians and high-value targets but in different ways. Killing PIRA members significantly decreases IED fatalities but also significantly decreases the possibility of zero civilian IED-related deaths in a given year. Killing innocent Catholics in a Brigade's county significantly increases total and civilian IED fatalities. Together the results suggest the necessity to analyze dynamic situational variables that impact terrorist group behavior at the sub-unit level

Improving positive and negative bias illumination stress stability in parylene passivated IGZO transistors

The impact of a parylene top-coating layer on the illumination and bias stress instabilities of indium-gallium-zinc oxide thin-film transistors (TFTs) is presented and discussed. The parylene coating substantially reduces the threshold voltage shift caused by continuous application of a gate bias and light exposure. The operational stability improves by 75%, and the light induced instability is reduced by 35%. The operational stability is quantified by fitting the threshold voltage shift with a stretched exponential model. Storage time as long as 7 months does not cause any measurable degradation on the electrical performance. It is proposed that parylene plays not only the role of an encapsulation layer but also of a defect passivation on the top semiconductor surface. It is also reported that depletion-mode TFTs are less sensitive to light induced instabilities. This is attributed to a defect neutralization process in the presence of free electrons. Published by AIP Publishing

Lethal Connections: The Determinants of Network Connections in the Provisional Irish Republican Army, 1970-1998

Using stochastic methods we illustrate that the Provisional Irish Republican Army's (PIRA) network is clustered along three primary dimensions: (a) brigade affiliation, (b) whether the member participated in violent activities, and (c) task/role within PIRA. While most brigades tended to foster connections within the brigade (that is, “closure”), the tendency to do so varied across the organization. Members who engaged with violent activities were far more likely to connect with each other; in later periods there is polarization into those who engage in violent activities and those who do not. Across brigades, those who engage in a particular task and role (improvised explosive device [IED] constructor, IED planter, gunman, robber/kidnapper/drug smuggler/hijacker) are more likely to connect with others who do the same task or play the same role than with other members who fulfill other roles. Standard forms of homophily (that is, the tendency to make connections with people who are similar in terms of demography or status) play a very weak role in explaining which members interact with one another. Finally, our analysis illustrates clear patterns of relational change that correspond to changes in the formal structures that PIRA's leadership promoted

Ta2O5/SiO2 Multicomponent Dielectrics for Amorphous Oxide TFTs

Co-sputtering of SiO2 and high-κ Ta2O5 was used to make multicomponent gate dielectric stacks for In-Ga-Zn-O thin-film transistors (IGZO TFTs) under an overall low thermal budget (T = 150 °C). Characterization of the multicomponent layers and of the TFTs working characteristics (employing them) was performed in terms of static performance, reliability, and stability to understand the role of the incorporation of the high-κ material in the gate dielectric stack. It is shown that inherent disadvantages of the high-κ material, such as poorer interface properties and poor gate insulation, can be counterbalanced by inclusion of SiO2 both mixed with Ta2O5 and as thin interfacial layers. A stack comprising a (Ta2O5)x(SiO2)100 − x film with x = 69 and a thin SiO2 film at the interface with IGZO resulted in the best performing TFTs, with field-effect mobility (µFE) ≈ 16 cm2·V−1·s−1, subthreshold slope (SS) ≈ 0.15 V/dec and on/off ratio exceeding 107. Anomalous Vth shifts were observed during positive gate bias stress (PGBS), followed by very slow recoveries (time constant exceeding 8 × 105 s), and analysis of the stress and recovery processes for the different gate dielectric stacks showed that the relevant mechanism is not dominated by the interfaces but seems to be related to the migration of charged species in the dielectric. The incorporation of additional SiO2 layers into the gate dielectric stack is shown to effectively counterbalance this anomalous shift. This multilayered gate dielectric stack approach is in line with both the large area and the flexible electronics needs, yielding reliable devices with performance suitable for successful integration on new electronic applications.publishersversionpublishe

The developmental dynamics of terrorist organizations

We identify robust statistical patterns in the frequency and severity of violent attacks by terrorist organizations as they grow and age. Using group-level static and dynamic analyses of terrorist events worldwide from 1968-2008 and a simulation model of organizational dynamics, we show that the production of violent events tends to accelerate with increasing size and experience. This coupling of frequency, experience and size arises from a fundamental positive feedback loop in which attacks lead to growth which leads to increased production of new attacks. In contrast, event severity is independent of both size and experience. Thus larger, more experienced organizations are more deadly because they attack more frequently, not because their attacks are more deadly, and large events are equally likely to come from large and small organizations. These results hold across political ideologies and time, suggesting that the frequency and severity of terrorism may be constrained by fundamental processes.Comment: 28 pages, 8 figures, 4 tables, supplementary materia

The internal brakes on violent escalation:a typology

Most groups do less violence than they are capable of. Yet while there is now an extensive literature on the escalation of or radicalisation towards violence, particularly by ‘extremist’ groups or actors, and while processes of de-escalation or de-radicalisation have also received significant attention, processes of non- or limited escalation have largely gone below the analytical radar. This article contributes to current efforts to address this limitation in our understanding of the dynamics of political aggression by developing a descriptive typology of the ‘internal brakes’ on violent escalation: the mechanisms through which members of the groups themselves contribute to establish and maintain limits upon their own violence. We identify five underlying logics on which the internal brakes operate: strategic, moral, ego maintenance, outgroup definition, and organisational. The typology is developed and tested using three very different case studies: the transnational and UK jihadi scene from 2005 to 2016; the British extreme right during the 1990s, and the animal liberation movement in the UK from the mid-1970s until the early 2000s

What explains ethnic organizational violence? Evidence from Eastern Europe and Russia

Why do some ethnopolitical organizations use violence? Research on substate violence often uses the state level of analysis, or only analyzes groups that are already violent. Using a resource mobilization framework drawn from a broad literature, we test hypotheses with new data on hundreds of violent and non-violent ethnopolitical organizations in Eastern Europe and Russia. Our study finds interorganizational competition, state repression and strong group leadership associated with organizational violence. Lack of popularity and holding territory are also associated with violence. We do not find social service provision positively related to violence, which contrasts with research on the Middle East

Fluid intake and incidence of renal cell carcinoma in UK women

Background:It has been suggested that the apparent protective effect of alcohol intake on renal cell carcinoma may be due to the diluting effect of carcinogens by a high total fluid intake. We assessed the association between intakes of total fluids and of specific beverages on the risk of renal cell carcinoma in a large prospective cohort of UK women.Methods:Information on beverage consumption was obtained from a questionnaire sent 3 years after recruitment into the Million Women Study. Cox proportional hazards models were used to estimate relative risks (RRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for renal cell carcinoma associated with beverage consumption adjusted for age, region of residence, socioeconomic status, smoking, and body mass index.Results:After an average of 5.2 years of follow-up, 588 cases of renal cell carcinoma were identified among 779 369 women. While alcohol intake was associated with a reduced risk of renal cell carcinoma (RR for 2 vs 1 drink per day: 0.76; 95% CI: 0.61-0.96; P for trend0.02), there was no association with total fluid intake (RR for 12 vs 7 drinks per day: 1.15; 95% CI: 0.91-1.45; P for trend0.3) or with intakes of specific beverages.Conclusions:The apparent protective effect of alcohol on the risk of renal cell carcinoma is unlikely to be related to a high fluid intake. © 2011 Cancer Research UK All rights reserved

do non state armed groups influence each other in attack timing and frequency generating analyzing and comparing empirical data and simulation

Non-State Armed Groups (NSAGs) operate in complex environments, commonly existing as one of the many organizations engaged in one-sided violent attacks against the state and/or the civilian population. When trying to explain the execution and timing of these attacks, most theories look at NSAGs' internal organizational features or how these groups interact with the state or civilian population. In this study, we take a different approach: we use a self-exciting temporal model to ask if the behavior of one NSAG affects the behavior of other groups operating in the same country and if the actions of groups with actual ties (i.e., groups with some recognized relationship) have a larger effect than those with environmental ties (i.e., groups simply operating in the same country). We focus on three cases where multiple NSAGs operated at the same time: Afghanistan, Iraq, and Colombia, from 2001 to 2005. We find mixed results for the notion that the actions of one NSAG influence the actions of others operating in the same conflict. In Iraq and Afghanistan, we find evidence that NSAG actions do influence the timing of attacks by other NSAGs; however, there is no discernible link between NSAG actions and the timing of attacks in Colombia. Nevertheless, we do consistently find that there is no significant difference between the effect that actual or environmental ties could have in these three cases