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Context: The retraction of research papers, for whatever reason, is a growing phenomenon. However, although retracted paper information is publicly available via publishers, it is somewhat distributed and inconsistent. Objective: The aim is to assess: (i) the extent and nature of retracted research in Computer Science (CS) (ii) the post-retraction citation behaviour of retracted works and (iii) the potential impact upon systematic reviews and mapping studies. Method: We analyse the Retraction Watch database and take citation information from the Web of Science and Google scholar. Results: We find that of the 33,955 entries in the Retraction watch database (16 May 2022), 2,816 are classified as CS, i.e., ≈ 8%. For CS, 56% of retracted papers provide little or no information as to the reasons. This contrasts with 26% for other disciplines. There is also some disparity between different publishers, a tendency for multiple versions of a retracted paper to be available beyond the Version of Record (VoR), and for new citations long after a paper is officially retracted (median = 3; maximum = 18). Systematic reviews are also impacted with ≈ 30% of the retracted papers having one or more citations from a review. Conclusions: Unfortunately, retraction seems to be a sufficiently common outcome for a scientific paper that we as a research community need to take it more seriously, e.g., standardising procedures and taxonomies across publishers and the provision of appropriate research tools. Finally, we recommend particular caution when undertaking secondary analyses and meta-analyses which are at risk of becoming contaminated by these problem primary studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 33rd International Workshop On Combinatorial Algorithms (IWOCA 2022) was held at the University of Trier in Germany. This workshop covers a wide range of topics related to combinatorial algorithms. The special issue of the journal Algorithmica contains extended versions of selected papers from IWOCA 2022, which were nominated by the Program Committee and underwent a rigorous reviewing process. The special issue includes nine papers on various topics such as perfect matchings, algorithmic questions, and winner determination algorithms. One paper was chosen as the Best Paper of IWOCA 2022 and another as the Best Student Paper. The special issue is recommended for readers interested in exploring more papers from IWOCA 2022. [Extracted from the article]

The 26th International Conference on Developments in Language Theory (DLT 2022) took place in Tampa, Florida, USA in May 2022. The conference, organized by the Department of Mathematics and Statistics of the University of South Florida, focused on formal languages and automata. This special issue of Theory of Computing Systems contains extended versions of selected papers presented at DLT 2022, as well as papers based on invited talks. The papers cover a range of topics in the field of formal languages and automata, and underwent a rigorous review process. The preface expresses gratitude to the authors and reviewers involved in the publication. [Extracted from the article]

Asking questions and making comments in conference Q&A sessions can be challenging for novice academics. Discussants not only try to seek answers or exchange ideas with the presenter but also endeavour to project a positive image of themselves by asking the 'right' questions in the 'right' way. However, many novice academics fear looking foolish because of unfocused and convoluted questions. Surprisingly, little guidance is available for how to formulate Q&A questions. This study attempts to address the gap by investigating the forms, functions and generic moves of 268 turns taken by discussants in 80 computer science conference Q&A sessions. Certain forms (i.e., question and comment) were found to be associated with certain pragmatic functions. This study reveals that different types of question/comment have major moves in common. The study also shows that the more evaluative and face-threatening the question is, the more important it is for the discussant to make the moves of building rapport with the presenter, and contextualising and justifying the main question/statement. The importance of justifying the main question/statement also resonates with the persuasive nature of scientific argumentative discourse. The findings can offer novice academics detailed explanations of the communicative purposes and strategies for this important conference interaction. • The two forms (question & comment) are associated with different functions. • All types of questions/comments were found to share the major generic moves. • Evaluative/critical questions entail building rapport as a move. • Evaluative/critical questions entail justifying the question as a move. • The importance of justification resonates with scientific argumentative discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The number of citations has been widely used to measure the significance of a paper. However, there is a need in introducing another index to determine superiority or inferiority of papers with the same number of citations. We determine superiority or inferiority of papers by using the ranking based on the number of citations and PageRank. Design/methodology/approach: We show the positive linear correlation between Citation Rank (the ranking of the number of citation) and PageRank. On this basis, we identify high-quality, prestige, emerging, and popular papers. Findings: We found that the high-quality papers belong to the subjects of biochemistry and molecular biology, chemistry, and multidisciplinary sciences. The prestige papers correspond to the subjects of computer science, engineering, and information science. The emerging papers are related to biochemistry and molecular biology, as well as those published in the journal "Cell." The popular papers belong to the subject of multidisciplinary sciences. Research limitations: We analyze the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) from 1981 to 2015 to calculate Citation Rank and PageRank within a citation network consisting of 34,666,719 papers and 591,321,826 citations. Practical implications: Our method is applicable to forecast emerging fields of research subjects in science and helps policymakers to consider science policy. Originality/value: We calculated PageRank for a giant citation network which is extremely larger than the citation networks investigated by previous researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The current article presents the results of a case study dealing with the historical roots of Eastern European researchers in computer science. Design/methodology/approach: The study is based on an analysis of cited references stemming from a collection of around 80,000 computer science papers by Eastern European researchers published from 1989 to 2014. By using a method called "reference publication year spectroscopy" (RPYS) for historical analyses based on bibliometric data, we analyze around 800,000 references cited in those papers. The study identifies the peak years, including most frequently cited publications (from 1952, 1965 and 1975), and focuses on these outstanding works for the field. The research shows how these influential papers were cited in Eastern Europe and in general, and on which scientific fields they have the most impact. Findings: A noteworthy publication that seems to have a tremendous effect on Eastern European computer science is Zadeh's "Fuzzy sets" article which appeared in Information and Control in 1965. The study demonstrates that computer scientists from Eastern Europe are more conservative in their citation behaviour and tend to refer to older and more established research than their counterparts from the West. Originality/value: Which are the historical roots of researchers working in a particular field or on a specific topic? Are there certain publications – landmark papers – which are important for their research? We guess that these are questions bothering researchers in many fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to investigate the differences between conference papers and journal papers in the field of computer science based on Bayesian network. This paper investigated the differences between conference papers and journal papers in the field of computer science based on Bayesian network, a knowledge-representative framework that can model relationships among all variables in the network. We defined the variables required for Bayesian networks modeling, calculated the values of each variable based Aminer dataset (a literature data set in the field of computer science), learned the Bayesian network and derived some findings based on network inference. The study found that conferences are more attractive to senior scholars, the academic impact of conference papers is slightly higher than journal papers, and it is uncertain whether conference papers are more innovative than journal papers. The study was limited to the field of computer science and employed Aminer dataset as the sample. Further studies involving more diverse datasets and different fields could provide a more complete picture of the matter. By demonstrating that Bayesian networks can effectively analyze issues in Scientometrics, the study offers valuable insights that may enhance researchers' understanding of the differences between journal and conference in computer science. Academic conferences play a crucial role in facilitating scholarly exchange and knowledge dissemination within the field of computer science. Several studies have been conducted to examine the distinctions between conference papers and journal papers in terms of various factors, such as authors, citations, h-index and others. Those studies were carried out from different (independent) perspectives, lacking a systematic examination of the connections and interactions between multiple perspectives. This paper supplements this deficiency based on Bayesian network modeling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study aims to measure the contributions of Prof. Anurag Kumar, who served as the Director at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru between August 2014 to July 2020. He has contributed 181 publications during his 36 years of career. He has published his majority of publications 171 (94.48%) in collaboration; most active collaborators with Prof. Anurag Kumar are Altman E. with (17) publications, Kuri Joy (15), Anand (14), and Singh (12). His highest Collaboration Coefficient found is 0.73 in 2013, and the highest Modified Collaboration Coefficient is 1.33 in the year 2018. The highest degree of collaboration observed for Prof. Anurag Kumar was 1.00. The highest Collaborative Index of Prof. Anurag found is 4.75 in the year 2016. His publications received 2595 citations so far, with 14.3 citations for each publication and an average citation of 72.08 per year. He has produced most of his publications in the field of computer science (45.9%). He preferred conference papers as his communication channel, where he published 100 (55.24%) papers out of 181. Prof. Anurag Kumar has contributed the highest (62) publication between 2005-2010, and he has published his first publication at the age of 30. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Buildings are complex structures composed of heterogeneous elements; these require building management systems (BMSs) to dynamically adapt them to occupants' needs and leverage building resources. The fast growth of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has transformed the BMS field into a multidisciplinary one. Consequently, this has caused several research papers on data-driven solutions to require examination and classification. This paper provides a broad overview of BMS by conducting a systematic literature review (SLR) summarizing current trends in this field. Unlike similar reviews, this SLR provides a rigorous methodology to review current research from a computer science perspective. Therefore, our goal is four-fold: (i) Identify the main topics in the field of building; (ii) Identify the recent data-driven methods; (iii) Understand the BMS's underlying computing architecture (iv) Understand the features of BMS that contribute to the smartization of buildings. The result synthesizes our findings and provides research directions for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The action required to stem the environmental and social implications of climate change depends crucially on how humankind shapes technology, economy, lifestyle and policy. With transport CO2 emissions accounting for about a quarter of the total, we examine the contribution of CO2 output by scientific travel. Thankfully for the reputation of the scientific community, CO2 emissions associated with the trips required to present a paper at a scientific conference account for just 0.003% of the yearly total. However, with CO2 emissions for a single conference trip amounting to 7% of an average individual’s total CO2 emissions, scientists should lead by example by demonstrating leadership in addressing the issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recognition that different aspects of the urban environment can affect individuals' mental health is growing, as they are responsible for facilitating or inhibiting behaviors and lifestyles that affect sentiment. The increasing availability of user-generated data on social media provides information about users and their surroundings, enabling sentiment analysis. This study investigates the global production of documents on sentiment analysis and the built environment, urban or city, published between 2009 and 2023. Bibliometric indicators on trends, most cited articles, authors, institutions, countries, funding agencies, and thematic research areas were analyzed. The bibliometrix library of R software was used for the performance analysis and the VOSviewer software for mapping scientific connections. A total of 728 eligible papers were identified from 2009 to June 2023. Most publications were computer science papers (n=487). This type of analysis provides researchers with guidance on the possible critical points that can be found in this field of research, as well as informs about the multiplicity of scientific research conducted globally so far by authors, countries, sources, allocated funding, and active institutions, allowing improving the production of documents on sentiment analysis concerning the urban environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we study the classical problem of throughput maximization. In this problem we have a collection J of n jobs, each having a release time r j , deadline d j , and processing time p j . They have to be scheduled non-preemptively on m identical parallel machines. The goal is to find a schedule which maximizes the number of jobs scheduled entirely in their [ r j , d j ] window. This problem has been studied extensively (even for the case of m = 1 ). Several special cases of the problem remain open. Bar-Noy et al. (Proceedings of the Thirty-First Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, May 1–4, 1999, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, pp. 622–631. ACM, 1999, https://doi.org/10.1145/301250.301420) presented an algorithm with ratio 1 - 1 / (1 + 1 / m) m for m machines, which approaches 1 - 1 / e as m increases. For m = 1 , Chuzhoy et al. (42nd Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS) 2001, 14–17 October 2001, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, pp. 348–356. IEEE Computer Society, 2001) presented an algorithm with approximation with ratio 1 - 1 e - ε (for any ε > 0 ). Recently Im et al. (SIAM J Discrete Math 34(3):1649–1669, 2020) presented an algorithm with ratio 1 - 1 / e + ε 0 for some absolute constant ε 0 > 0 for any fixed m. They also presented an algorithm with ratio 1 - O (log m / m) - ε for general m which approaches 1 as m grows. The approximability of the problem for m = O (1) remains a major open question. Even for the case of m = 1 and c = O (1) distinct processing times the problem is open (Sgall in: Algorithms - ESA 2012 - 20th Annual European Symposium, Ljubljana, Slovenia, September 10–12, 2012. Proceedings, pp 2–11, 2012). In this paper we study the case of m = O (1) and show that if there are c distinct processing times, i.e. p j 's come from a set of size c, then there is a randomized (1 - ε) -approximation that runs in time O (n m c 7 ε - 6 log T) , where T is the largest deadline. Therefore, for constant m and constant c this yields a PTAS. Our algorithm is based on proving structural properties for a near optimum solution that allows one to use a dynamic programming with pruning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metaphors that compare the computer to a human brain are common in computer science and can be traced back to a fertile period of research that unfolded after the Second World War. To conceptualize the emerging "intelligent" properties of computing machines, researchers of the era created a series of virtual objects that served as interpretive devices for representing the immaterial functions of the computer. This paper analyses the use of the terms "artificial" and "virtual" in scientific papers, textbooks, and popular articles of the time, and examines how, together, they shaped models in computer science used to conceptualize computer processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The problem of finding a maximum size matching in a graph (known as the maximum matching problem) is one of the most classical problems in computer science. Despite a significant body of work dedicated to the study of this problem in the data stream model, the state-of-the-art single-pass semi-streaming algorithm for it is still a simple greedy algorithm that computes a maximal matching, and this way obtains 1 / 2 -approximation. Some previous works described two/three-pass algorithms that improve over this approximation ratio by using their second and third passes to improve the above mentioned maximal matching. One contribution of this paper continues this line of work by presenting new three-pass semi-streaming algorithms that work along these lines and obtain improved approximation ratios of 0.6111 and 0.5694 for triangle-free and general graphs, respectively. Unfortunately, a recent work Konrad and Naidu (Approximation, randomization, and combinatorial optimization. Algorithms and techniques, APPROX/RANDOM 2021, August 16–18, 2021. LIPIcs, vol 207, pp 19:1–19:18, 2021. https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.APPROX/RANDOM.2021.19) shows that the strategy of constructing a maximal matching in the first pass and then improving it in further passes has limitations. Additionally, this technique is unlikely to get us closer to single-pass semi-streaming algorithms obtaining a better than 1 / 2 -approximation. Therefore, it is interesting to come up with algorithms that do something else with their first pass (we term such algorithms non-maximal-matching-first algorithms). No such algorithms were previously known, and the main contribution of this paper is describing such algorithms that obtain approximation ratios of 0.5384 and 0.5555 in two and three passes, respectively, for general graphs. The main significance of our results is not in the numerical improvements, but in demonstrating the potential of non-maximal-matching-first algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ChatGPT, a recently developed product by openAI, is successfully leaving its mark as a multi-purpose natural language based chatbot. In this paper, we are more interested in analyzing its potential in the field of computational biology. A major share of work done by computational biologists these days involve coding up bioinformatics algorithms, analyzing data, creating pipelining scripts and even machine learning modeling and feature extraction. This paper focuses on the potential influence (both positive and negative) of ChatGPT in the mentioned aspects with illustrative examples from different perspectives. Compared to other fields of computer science, computational biology has (1) less coding resources, (2) more sensitivity and bias issues (deals with medical data), and (3) more necessity of coding assistance (people from diverse background come to this field). Keeping such issues in mind, we cover use cases such as code writing, reviewing, debugging, converting, refactoring, and pipelining using ChatGPT from the perspective of computational biologists in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as an innovative technology with the potential to revolutionize various industries including libraries and information science. Academic libraries are increasingly adopting artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance services, improve efficiency, and enhance user experience. This study utilizes a bibliometric approach to comprehensively analyze current research on AI in academic libraries (AI in ALs). This study employed bibliometric indicators to identify key trends, patterns, and research gaps in the existing literature. A comprehensive dataset of 373 research papers on AI in ALs published between 2002 and 2022 was collected and analyzed using the Scopus database. Various bibliometric tools, such as Biblioshiny, VOSviewer, and BibExcel, have enhanced this analysis. The findings of this study provide important insights. By 2022, there were 64 publications, constituting 17.16% of the total corpus, accompanied by 65 citations. In contrast, 2019 witnessed only 33 publications yet accumulated a substantial number of citations, amounting to 294, representing 8.85% of the overall citations. Conference papers exhibited the highest frequency among different publication types, with 165 publications, whereas journal articles had the highest citation count, accumulating 217 citations. Geographically, China emerged as the leading contributor with 119 publications, and Wuhan University stood out as the most prominent affiliation. Notably, the "Lecture Notes in Computer Science" series emerged as the most prolific source title, publishing 15 articles, of which eight were cited. The authors Wang J., Wang C., and Wang X. from China demonstrated significant contributions, consistently publishing four papers annually from 2010 to 2022. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The approximate uniform sampling of graph realizations with a given degree sequence is an everyday task in several social science, computer science, engineering etc. projects. One approach is using Markov chains. The best available current result about the well-studied switch Markov chain is that it is rapidly mixing on P-stable degree sequences (see DOI:10.1016/j.ejc.2021.103421). The switch Markov chain does not change any degree sequence. However, there are cases where degree intervals are specified rather than a single degree sequence. (A natural scenario where this problem arises is in hypothesis testing on social networks that are only partially observed.) Rechner, Strowick, and Müller–Hannemann introduced in 2018 the notion of degree interval Markov chain which uses three (separately well studied) local operations (switch, hinge-flip and toggle), and employing on degree sequence realizations where any two sequences under scrutiny have very small coordinate-wise distance. Recently, Amanatidis and Kleer published a beautiful paper (DOI:10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2023.7), showing that the degree interval Markov chain is rapidly mixing if the sequences are coming from a system of very thin intervals which are centered not far from a regular degree sequence. In this paper, we substantially extend their result, showing that the degree interval Markov chain is rapidly mixing if the intervals are centered at P-stable degree sequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deep neural networks are extensively used in text mining and Natural Language Processing is to enable computers to understand, analyze, and generate natural language data, such as text or speech, but semantic resources, such as taxonomies and ontologies, are not fully included in deep learning. In this paper, we use Deep Convolutional Neural Network (Deep CNN) to classify research papers using the Computer Science Ontology, an ontology of research areas in the field of computer science. It takes as input the abstract and keywords of a particular research paper and returns the relevant research topic. To evaluate our ontology, we used a gold standard dataset that includes research articles. To further improve text classification results, we propose to design a Deep CNN model. We then used ontology matching to reduce the classes and get better results. Experimental results show that the proposed approach outperforms the one with the highest precision, recall, and F1-score. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, there has been a rapidly increasing number of scientific submissions in multiple research domains. A large number of journals have various acceptance rates, impact factors, and rankings in different publishers. It becomes time-consuming for many researchers to select the most suitable journal to submit their work with the highest acceptance rate. A paper submission recommendation system is more critical for the research community and publishers as it gives scientists another support to complete their submission conveniently. This paper investigates the submission recommendation system for two main research topics: computer science and applied mathematics. Unlike the previous works (Wang et al., 2018; Son et al., 2020) that extract TF–IDF and statistical features as well as utilize numerous machine learning algorithms (logistics regression and multiple perceptrons) for building the recommendation engine, we present an efficient paper submission recommendation algorithm by using different bidirectional transformer encoders and the Mixture of Transformer Encoders technique. We compare the performance between our methodology and other approaches by one dataset from Wang et al. (2018) with 14012 papers in computer science and another dataset collected by us with 223,782 articles in 178 Springer applied mathematics journals in terms of top K accuracy (K = 1 , 3 , 5 , 10). The experimental results show that our proposed method extensively outperforms other state-of-the-art techniques with a significant margin in all top K accuracy for both two datasets. We publish all datasets collected and our implementation codes for further references. 1 1 https://github.com/BinhMisfit/PSRMTE. • Bidirectional transformer encoders can improve the performance of the paper submission recommendation system. • The Mixture of Transformer Encoders framework shows the efficiency in the paper submission recommendation problem. • Proposed techniques can surpass other recent techniques on two datasets related. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sparse literature on the use of imperatives in research papers suggests that they are relatively common in a small number of disciplines, but rare, if used at all, in others. The present study addresses the use of imperatives in a corpus of upper-level A-graded student papers from 16 disciplines. A total of 822 papers collected within the past 5 years were analyzed for imperative use, with particular emphasis placed on the main text of papers from the five disciplines with the highest proportion of imperatives. In each of these disciplines, text-based interviews were conducted with faculty members to establish disciplinary contexts. Results show that imperatives are used frequently in physics, philosophy, economics, mechanical engineering, and linguistics, though in quite varying ways. The interview data suggest that successful and experienced student writers adopt the potentially 'high risk strategy' (Hyland 2012) of initiating a sentence with an imperative for various strategic purposes that are discipline-specific. Such insights have implications for writing instructors and materials designers in both L1 and L2 contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Orthogonal array and a large set of orthogonal arrays are important research objects in combinatorial design theory, and they are widely applied to statistics, computer science, coding theory, and cryptography. In this paper, some new series of large sets of orthogonal arrays are given by direct construction, juxtaposition construction, Hadamard construction, finite field construction, and difference matrix construction. Subsequently, many new infinite classes of orthogonal arrays are obtained by using these large sets of orthogonal arrays and Kronecker product. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computer system resilience refers to the ability of a computer system to continue functioning even in the face of unexpected events or disruptions. These disruptions can be caused by a variety of factors, such as hardware failures, software glitches, cyber attacks, or even natural disasters. Modern computational environments need applications that can recover quickly from major disruptions while also being environmentally sustainable. Balancing system resilience with energy efficiency is challenging, as efforts to improve one can harm the other. This paper presents a method to enhance disaster survivability in microservice architectures, particularly those using Kubernetes in cloud-based environments, focusing on optimizing electrical energy use. Aiming to save energy, our work adopt the consolidation strategy that means grouping multiple microservices on a single host. Our aproach uses a widely adopted analytical model, the Generalized Stochastic Petri Net (GSPN). GSPN are a powerful modeling technique that is widely used in various fields, including engineering, computer science, and operations research. One of the primary advantages of GSPN is its ability to model complex systems with a high degree of accuracy. Additionally, GSPN allows for the modeling of both logical and stochastic behavior, making it ideal for systems that involve a combination of both. Our GSPN models compute a number of metrics such as: recovery time, system availability, reliability, Mean Time to Failure, and the configuration of cloud-based microservices. We compared our approach against others focusing on survivability or efficiency. Our approach aligns with Recovery Time Objectives during sudden disasters and offers the fastest recovery, requiring 9% less warning time to fully recover in cases of disaster with alert when compared to strategies with similar electrical consumption. It also saves about 27% energy compared to low consolidation strategies and 5% against high consolidation under static conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Popular discourses of computing and computer science can often frame the sector and the people within it as highly intelligent yet socially challenged, contributing to stereotypes that can potentially exclude those perceived to lack these skills or characteristics. For young people, such stereotypes can influence their educational and career aspirations, especially if there are discrepancies between their own identity and perceptions of what is desirable for computer science students. Drawing on open-ended questionnaire data from 3235 young people in England (aged 11–16), we collected 9442 keywords that students used to describe their “ideal student” in computer science education. An understanding of these perceptions allows us to recognise the prevailing stereotypes that may be shaping young people’s views and aspirations. In this paper, we employ an innovative large-scale descriptive analysis of the most common words that students use to describe the ideal computer science student, including its differences, if any, by students’ demographic background (e.g. gender, ethnicity, free school meal) and responses to the questionnaire (e.g. aspirations to be a computer scientist). We tentatively identified eight clusters of popular ideal student characteristics, namely being Smart & Clever; Knowledgeable & Interested; Determined & Hardworking; Kind & Helpful; Creative; Independent; Confident; and Collaborative. By examining how students imagine the ideal student in computer science, we gain better understanding of their educational aspirations and choice of study and provide educators with valuable insights to potentially challenge and reshape these perceptions. These insights can inform educational interventions to foster a more inclusive computing education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the structure of semantic theories over modular computational systems and applies the algebraic Theory of Institutions to provide a logical representation of such theories. A modular semantic theory is here defined by a cluster of semantic theories, each for a single program's module, and by a set of relations connecting models of different semantic theories. A semantic theory of a single module is provided in terms of the set of ∑‐models mapped from the category Th of ∑‐theories and generating a hierarchy of structures from an abstract model to a concrete model of data. The collection of abstract models representing different modules of a program is formalised as the category of institutions INS, where theory morphisms express refinements, integrations, and compositions between couples of modules. Finally, it is required that a morphism in INS at any level occurs iff the same morphism occurs at the lower level alongside the Th hierarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider the weighted k-set packing problem, where, given a collection S of sets, each of cardinality at most k, and a positive weight function w : S → Q > 0 , the task is to find a sub-collection of S consisting of pairwise disjoint sets of maximum total weight. As this problem does not permit a polynomial-time o (k log k) -approximation unless P = N P (Hazan et al. in Comput Complex 15:20–39, 2006. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00037-006-0205-6), most previous approaches rely on local search. For twenty years, Berman's algorithm SquareImp (Berman, in: Scandinavian workshop on algorithm theory, Springer, 2000. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-44985-X%5f19), which yields a polynomial-time k + 1 2 + ϵ -approximation for any fixed ϵ > 0 , has remained unchallenged. Only recently, it could be improved to k + 1 2 - 1 63 , 700 , 993 by Neuwohner (38th International symposium on theoretical aspects of computer science (STACS 2021), Leibniz international proceedings in informatics (LIPIcs), 2021. https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2021.53). In her paper, she showed that instances for which the analysis of SquareImp is almost tight are "close to unweighted" in a certain sense. But for the unit weight variant, the best known approximation guarantee is k + 1 3 + ϵ (Fürer and Yu in International symposium on combinatorial optimization, Springer, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09174-7%5f35). Using this observation as a starting point, we conduct a more in-depth analysis of close-to-tight instances of SquareImp. This finally allows us to generalize techniques used in the unweighted case to the weighted setting. In doing so, we obtain approximation guarantees of k + ϵ k 2 , where lim k → ∞ ϵ k = 0 . On the other hand, we prove that this is asymptotically best possible in that local improvements of logarithmically bounded size cannot produce an approximation ratio below k 2 . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The superiority of BWM over other weighting methods for obtaining the weight values of the attributes is that it achieves high-confidence results with a reasonable number of pairwise comparisons. Although the best-worst method (BWM) is a well-known multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) method that has been successfully utilized in almost all scientific areas to solve challenging real-life problems, no research has comprehensively examined the state-of-the-art in this regard. The present study depicts a detailed overview of publications concerned with BWM during the period 2015–2022. Based on the information obtained from the Scopus database, this work presents a big picture of current research on BWM. In other words, this paper analyzes the existing literature about BWM and identifies thematic contexts, application areas, emerging trends, and remaining research gaps to shed light on future research agendas aligning with those gaps. Further, the most recent BWM research is analyzed in the top ten scientific areas, from engineering to materials science. “Engineering”, “computer science”, and “business, management, and accounting” are the hottest fields of BWM research. China is the most active country regarding “engineering” and “computer science”, whereas India is the leader in “business, management, and accounting”. The study also reveals that there are still many research gaps in BWM research. The big picture taken in this study will not only showcase the current situation of BWM research but will also positively impact the direction and quality of new research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computer science is often integrated within early childhood education (ECE) through the use of educational robots. This requires adequate preparation of ECE teachers to program and debug, which can be done with scaffolding. In this paper, we use a QUANT + qual mixed method approach incorporating lag sequential analysis, ICAP framework coding, sentiment analysis, and supplementary qualitative analysis. Students tended to engage more with tasks in the revision and evaluation phases than in the exploration phase, and became less dependent on scaffolding prompts and more competent in debugging, as debugging task complexity increased. This study addresses a key gap in the scaffolding literature in that it examined learners' interactions with scaffolding for evidence of decreased reliance on scaffolding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the computational challenges of clique transversal problems in d-degenerate graphs, which are commonly encountered across theoretical computer science and various network applications. We examine d-degenerate graphs to highlight their utility in representing sparse structures and assess several variations of clique transversal problems, including the b-fold and { b } -clique transversal problems, focusing on their computational complexities for different graph categories. Our analysis identifies that certain instances of these problems are polynomial-time solvable in specific graph classes, such as 1-degenerate or 2-degenerate graphs. However, for d-degenerate graphs where d ≥ 2 , these problems generally escalate to NP-completeness. We also explore the parameterized complexity, pinpointing specific conditions that render these problems fixed-parameter tractable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the tremendous increase in human population the demand of milk and meat is also increasing. This necessitates the centralization of animal husbandry sector both in developed and developing countries. More production has to be taken from fewer animals which seem to be possible only with the usage of advanced technologies. Earlier this seems to be impractical due to non-availability of such technologies to the farmers. Nowadays, computational power is very cheap and easily available. Artificial intelligence is one such field of computer science devoted to creating computing machines and systems that perform operations analogous to human learning and decision-making. Artificial intelligence includes the machine learning, deep learning and predictive analytics. With the implementation of various software and algorithms, the production has been increased from the farm animals along with better management and welfare. This paper illustrates the application domains and maneuvering of artificial intelligence in the animal husbandry sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing demand for mobility in our society poses various challenges to traffic engineering, computer science in general, and artificial intelligence in particular. Increasing the capacity of road networks is not always possible, thus a more efficient use of the available transportation infrastructure is required. Another issue is that many problems in traffic management and control are inherently decentralized and/or require adaptation to the traffic situation. Hence, there is a close relationship to multiagent reinforcement learning. However, using reinforcement learning poses the challenge that the state space is normally large and continuous, thus it is necessary to find appropriate schemes to deal with discretization of the state space. To address these issues, a multiagent system with agents learning independently via a learning algorithm was proposed, which is based on estimating Q-values from k-nearest neighbors. In the present paper, we extend this approach and include transfer of experiences among the agents, especially when an agent does not have a good set of k experiences. We deal with traffic signal control, running experiments on a traffic network in which we vary the traffic situation along time, and compare our approach to two baselines (one involving reinforcement learning and one based on fixed times). Our results show that the extended method pays off when an agent returns to an already experienced traffic situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present paper, we propose a new approach on 'distributed systems': the processes are represented through total orders and the communications are characterized by means of biorders. The resulting distributed systems capture situations met in various fields (such as computer science, economics and decision theory). We investigate questions associated to the numerical representability of order structures, relating concepts of economics and computing to each other. The concept of 'quasi-finite partial orders' is introduced as a finite family of chains with a communication between them. The representability of this kind of structure is studied, achieving a construction method for a finite (continuous) Richter–Peleg multi-utility representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An augmented reality browser is an alternative of a web browser in augmented spaces, which aimed at navigating and publishing overlaid interactive contents. This enabled end users to explore digital information on existing points of interests (POIs) and the application developers to publish overlaid information in the form of layers and channels, etc. These browsing interfaces were vital for publishing and locating contents to unfold the potential of augmented spaces. This paper contributed an analytical review on the recent emergence of mobile augmented reality browsers from the perspective of technological information publishing and usage scenarios. This comparative analysis of the augmented reality browsers would help researchers and industrial scientists to identify the most relevant augmented reality browser for specific applications like object tracking, content overlaying, and ensuring realism up to major extent. This study would also provide guidelines for next generation enriched, seamless and adaptive augmented reality browsers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most widely referenced Swarm Intelligence (SI) algorithms is the Grey Wolf Optimizer (GWO), which is based on the pack hunting and natural leadership organization of grey wolves. The GWO algorithm offers several significant benefits, including simple implementation, rapid convergence, and superior convergence outcomes, leading to its effective application in diverse fields for solving optimization issues. Consequently, the GWO has rapidly garnered substantial research interest and a broad audience across numerous areas. To better understand the literature on this algorithm, this review paper aims to consolidate and summarize research publications that utilized the GWO. The paper begins with a concise introduction to the GWO, providing insight into its natural establishment and conceptual framework for optimization. It then lays out the theoretical foundation and key procedures involved in the GWO, following which it comprehensively examines the most recent iterations of the algorithm and categorizes them into parallel, modified, and hybridized variations. Subsequently, the primary applications of the GWO are thoroughly explored, spanning various fields such as computer science, engineering, energy, physics and astronomy, materials science, environmental science, and chemical engineering, among others. This review paper concludes by summarizing the key arguments in favour of GWO and outlining potential lines of inquiry in the future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document is an editorial summarizing the Applied Geometric Algebras in Computer Science and Engineering (AGACSE) conference held in Brno, Czech Republic in September 2021. The conference aimed to promote the use of geometric algebra in fields such as image processing, robotics, and quantum computing. The conference proceedings were published in the journal Mathematical Methods in the Applied Sciences. The editorial provides a list of accepted papers, covering topics such as applied geometry, technological applications, algebra, and quantum phenomena. One specific paper explores the use of geometric algebra in teaching rotations through neural networks. The document is a compilation of research papers showcasing the applications of geometric algebra in various fields, including robotics, control systems, image processing, cryptography, and physics. Each paper presents a specific problem or application and proposes a unique approach or solution using geometric algebra. The authors compare their methods with existing techniques and provide mathematical analysis to support their claims. Overall, the papers demonstrate the versatility and effectiveness of geometric algebra in different domains. [Extracted from the article]

With the spreading of Industry 4.0, cyber-physical systems, and tools for augmented and virtual reality, Digital Twin (DT) is gaining momentum in several areas of Computer Science and Engineering. This paper presents a systematic literature review that investigates the way DTs are described in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) scientific literature. The study includes 23 papers selected through a systematic search on the 21 most ranked journals and conferences in the HCI area. As a result of this work, it appears clear that the way humans interact with DTs is a topic still far from being widely studied. A set of hints for future research about the relationship between HCI and DT constitute the main outcome of this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) is a globally recognised publication outlet for the field of Computer Science, including in South Africa. In this study, spanning from 1973 to 2022, we investigated the research participation of South African based authors in LNCS. The publication output and citation impact of these authors were compared to the global Computer Science and LNCS output. The authorship patterns and collaborative behaviour of South African LNCS papers were explored, and a keyword or topic analysis also conducted. Of the total of 518 662 LNCS papers published globally between 1973 and 2022, South African based researchers contributed 1150 papers (0.22%). The LNCS papers from South Africa exhibit a strong collaborative publication culture, with 1043 (91%) co-authored and 107 (9%) singleauthored works. Local LNCS researchers prefer institutional collaboration (43%), followed by international (37%) and national collaboration (11%). Europe emerged as the most significant collaboration partner for LNCS researchers in South Africa. Of the 1150 papers, 836 (73%) had received citations, while 314 (27%) had not. On average, papers published by South African based authors received 6.05 citations, compared to the global LNCS average of 9.49 citations per paper. A keyword analysis revealed that the majority of papers by South African authors focus on artificial intelligence. The results indicate that, although LNCS serves as a reputable dissemination platform for Computer Science research output both globally and locally, South African authors should consider publishing more journal articles to build and improve their researcher profiles. Significance: * The study shows that LNCS is the most frequent publication outlet for Computer Science researchers, globally and in South Africa. * The study offers insight into the publication output, authorship patterns, collaborative behaviour and citation impact of South African based Computer Science researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Portfolio optimization has been studied extensively by researchers in computer science and finance, with new and novel work frequently published. Traditional methods, such as quadratic programming, are not computationally effective for solving complex portfolio models. For example, portfolio models with constraints that introduce nonlinearity and non-convexity (such as boundary constraints and cardinality constraints) are NP-Hard. As a result, researchers often use meta-heuristic approaches to approximate optimal solutions in an efficient manner. This paper conducts a comprehensive review of over 140 papers that have applied evolutionary and swarm intelligence algorithms to the portfolio optimization problem. These papers are categorized by the type of portfolio optimization problem considered, i.e., unconstrained or constrained, and are further categorized by single-objective and multi-objective approaches. Furthermore, the various portfolio models used, as well as the constraints, objectives, and properties in which they differ, are also discussed in a detailed analysis. Based on the findings of the reviewed work, guidance for future research in portfolio optimization is given. Possible areas for future work include dynamic portfolio optimization, predictive pricing, the further investigation of multi-objective approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Open peer review is a growing trend in academic publications. Public access to peer review data can benefit both the academic and publishing communities. It also serves as a great support to studies on review comment generation and further to the realization of automated scholarly paper review. However, most of the existing peer review datasets do not provide data that cover the whole peer review process. Apart from this, their data are not diversified enough as the data are mainly collected from the field of computer science. These two drawbacks of the currently available peer review datasets need to be addressed to unlock more opportunities for related studies. In response, we construct MOPRD, a multidisciplinary open peer review dataset. This dataset consists of paper metadata, multiple version manuscripts, review comments, meta-reviews, author's rebuttal letters, and editorial decisions. Moreover, we propose a modular guided review comment generation method based on MOPRD. Experiments show that our method delivers better performance as indicated by both automatic metrics and human evaluation. We also explore other potential applications of MOPRD, including meta-review generation, editorial decision prediction, author rebuttal generation, and scientometric analysis. MOPRD is a strong endorsement for further studies in peer review-related research and other applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The security that resides in the public-key cryptosystems relies on the presumed computational hardness of mathematical problems behind the systems themselves (e.g. the semiprime factorization problem in the RSA cryptosystem), that is because there is not known any polynomial time (classical) algorithm to solve them. The paper focuses on the computing paradigm of virus machines within the area of Unconventional Computing and Natural Computing. Virus machines, which incorporate concepts of virology and computer science, are considered as number computing devices with the environment. The paper designs a virus machine that solves a generalization of the semiprime factorization problem and verifies it formally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – Informally computer scientists reported they could access free copies of research papers they needed via tools such as Google Scholar. To ascertain whether this perception came from widespread free access or from unnoticed employer-paid access, the purpose of this paper was to locate computer science papers and determine what proportion was freely available using Google Scholar. Design/methodology/approach – A sample of 1,967 conference papers and periodical papers from 2003 to 2010, indexed in the ACM Guide to Computing Literature, was searched for manually in Google Scholar, using the paper or article title and the first author's surname and supplementary searches as needed. Findings – Free full-text versions were found for 52 per cent of the conference papers and 55 per cent of the periodical papers. Documents with older publication dates were more likely to be freely accessible than newer documents, with free versions found for 71 per cent of items published in 2003 and 43 per cent of items published in 2010. Research limitations/implications – Results were limited to the retrieval of known computer science publications via Google Scholar. Future research could examine whether the decline found in this study is specific to Google Scholar or reflects a decrease in the free sharing of research by computer scientists. Originality/value – Previous research for computer science found lower levels of free access than this research determined, but the decline found in this study runs contrary to increases that have been found. This research confirms many computer science papers are available for free but also that subscription holdings are necessary for complete coverage of papers in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Peer evaluation is the cornerstone of science evaluation. In this paper, we analyze whether or not a form of peer evaluation, the pre-publication selection of the best papers in Computer Science (CS) conferences, is better than random, when considering future citations received by the papers. Methods: Considering 12 conferences (for several years), we collected the citation counts from Scopus for both the best papers and the non-best papers. For a different set of 17 conferences, we collected the data from Google Scholar. For each data set, we computed the proportion of cases whereby the best paper has more citations. We also compare this proportion for years before 2010 and after to evaluate if there is a propaganda effect. Finally, we count the proportion of best papers that are in the top 10% and 20% most cited for each conference instance. Results: The probability that a best paper will receive more citations than a non best paper is 0.72 (95% CI = 0.66, 0.77) for the Scopus data, and 0.78 (95% CI = 0.74, 0.81) for the Scholar data. There are no significant changes in the probabilities for different years. Also, 51% of the best papers are among the top 10% most cited papers in each conference/year, and 64% of them are among the top 20% most cited. Discussion: There is strong evidence that the selection of best papers in Computer Science conferences is better than a random selection, and that a significant number of the best papers are among the top cited papers in the conference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An automatic computer vision algorithm that detects individual paper fibres from an image, assesses the possibility of grasping the detected fibres with microgrippers and detects the suitable grasping points is presented. The goal of the algorithm is to enable automatic fibre manipulation for mechanical characterisation, which has traditionally been slow manual work. The algorithm classifies the objects in images based on their morphology, and detects the proper grasp points from the individual fibres by applying given geometrical constraints. The authors test the ability of the algorithm to detect the individual fibres with 35 images containing more than 500 fibres in total, and also compare the graspability analysis and the calculated grasp points with the results of an experienced human operator with 15 images that contain a total of almost 200 fibres. The detection results are outstanding, with fewer than 1% of fibres missed. The graspability analysis gives sensitivity of 0.83 and specificity of 0.92, and the average distance between the grasp points of the human and the algorithm is 220 µm. Also, the choices made by the algorithm are much more consistent than the human choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document is a guest editorial for the special section on SEFM 2020 and 2021 in the journal Software & Systems Modeling. The International Conference on Software Engineering and Formal Methods (SEFM) aims to bring together practitioners and researchers to advance the state of the art in formal methods and their application in the software industry. This special section includes selected papers from SEFM 2020 and 2021, which were held virtually during the COVID pandemic. Each article in this section has undergone rigorous peer review and has been revised and extended compared to its conference version. The selected papers cover topics such as embedded software portability and verification, nontermination inference, quantitative modeling and analysis of BDI agents, lazy model checking for recursive state machines, P-stable abstractions of hybrid systems, fairness and guarantees for extended bounded response LTL+P synthesis, counterexample classification, analyzing the impact of human errors on interactive service robotic scenarios, and active model learning of stochastic reactive systems. [Extracted from the article]

Abstract: Combining the techniques of paper prototyping and card sorting into a single session has the benefits of helping users to understand a new technology on the one hand, and of gaining insight into the users’ mental models of that technology on the other hand. However, acquainting users with a new technology via a paper prototype might affect their mental models, as assessed with the card sorting technique. The aim of this paper was to explore the possibility of combining the two techniques in a single research session. Thirty-seven users participated in a study concerning a payment system based on Near Field Communication (NFC). Eight group sessions were organized, including both a paper prototyping exercise and a card sorting exercise. The order of the exercises was alternated. The findings of this case study seem to suggest that the paper prototyping exercise resulted into deeper insights into the participants’ mental models resulting from the card sorting exercise. At the same time, paper prototyping seemed to prevent participants to come up with new names for their card sorting categories. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Boolean functions used in symmetric-key encryption should have high higher-order nonlinearity to resist several known cryptographic attacks, such as algebraic attacks and low-degree approximation attacks. The higher-order nonlinearity also plays an important role in coding theory and theoretical computer science, since it relates to the covering radius of Reed–Muller codes and the Gowers norm, respectively. It is well-known that bent functions have the highest nonlinearity in an even number of variables and thus they possess the best ability to withstand fast correlation attacks and best affine approximation attacks. However, there is currently limited knowledge regarding the higher-order nonlinearity of bent functions because computing the higher-order nonlinearity, or even providing tight lower bounds, is an extremely hard task. In 1974, Dillon proposed two well-known classes of bent functions based on partial spread (in brief, PS), called PS − and PS + , respectively. He also exhibited a subclass of bent functions in PS − , known as partial spread affine plane(PS a p for short). In this paper, we provide a lower bound on the third-order nonlinearity of the simplest PS a p bent functions in n variables, where n ≥ 6 is even, by calculating the nonlinearities of all second-order derivatives of this kind of bent functions. Compared to the two known lower bounds on the third-order nonlinearity given by Carlet and Tang et al. respectively, our lower bound is much better than these two ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A drug molecule is a substance that changes an organism's mental or physical state. Every approved drug has an indication, which refers to the therapeutic use of that drug for treating a particular medical condition. While the Large Language Model (LLM), a generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) technique, has recently demonstrated effectiveness in translating between molecules and their textual descriptions, there remains a gap in research regarding their application in facilitating the translation between drug molecules and indications (which describes the disease, condition or symptoms for which the drug is used), or vice versa. Addressing this challenge could greatly benefit the drug discovery process. The capability of generating a drug from a given indication would allow for the discovery of drugs targeting specific diseases or targets and ultimately provide patients with better treatments. In this paper, we first propose a new task, the translation between drug molecules and corresponding indications, and then test existing LLMs on this new task. Specifically, we consider nine variations of the T5 LLM and evaluate them on two public datasets obtained from ChEMBL and DrugBank. Our experiments show the early results of using LLMs for this task and provide a perspective on the state-of-the-art. We also emphasize the current limitations and discuss future work that has the potential to improve the performance on this task. The creation of molecules from indications, or vice versa, will allow for more efficient targeting of diseases and significantly reduce the cost of drug discovery, with the potential to revolutionize the field of drug discovery in the era of generative AI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of the computer and what is now known as artificial intelligence (AI) has evolved over more than two centuries in a long series of steps. The date of the invention of the first computer is estimated at 1822, when Charles Babbage (1791-1871) developed his first design of a working computer on paper, based mainly on a Jacquard loom. He worked on his project together with Augusta Ada King, Countess Lovelace (née Byron) (Ada Lovelace) (1815-1852), whom he called the "Sorceress of Numbers." This work will present the profile and achievements of Charles Babbage, Augusta Ada King, Countess Lovelace, and Alan Mathison Turing (1912 - 1954), who is considered the father of computer science and artificial intelligence, and then provide an outline of the tumultuous events affecting AI up to the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the implementation of a STEM scholarship program which utilized a holistic approach to providing a multi-dimensional student support system. The program has been successful in encouraging and supporting women in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science by offering a diverse suite of extracurricular opportunities, actively engaging them in organized events, research projects, and participation in STEM communities, and helping them achieve higher GPAs and shorter times to graduation. The supported women also benefitted from close mentoring relationships with the faculty mentors. The program emphasized the development of empowering settings for women's engagement and achievement, which act to sustain and expand interest in mathematics and computing, and thereby help them to see themselves as future professionals in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of book embedding, originating in computer science, has found extensive applications in various problem domains. A book embedding of a graph G involves arranging the vertices of G in an order along a line and assigning the edges to one or more half-planes. The page number of a graph is the smallest possible number of half-planes for any book embedding of the graph. Determining the page number is a key aspect of book embedding and carries significant importance. This paper aims to investigate the non-trivial lower bound of the page number for both a graph G and a random graph G ∈ G (n , p) by incorporating two seemingly unrelated concepts: edge-arboricity and Euler's Formula. Our analysis reveals that for a graph G, which is not a path, p n (G) ≥ ⌈ 1 3 a 1 (G) ⌉ , where a 1 (G) denotes the edge-arboricity of G, and for an outerplanar graph, the lower bound is optimal. For G ∈ G (n , p) , p n (G) ≥ ⌈ 1 6 n p (1 - o (1)) ⌉ with high probability, as long as c n ≤ p ≤ 3 (n - 1) 2 n log n . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]