Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Mapping The End Of Coal: How Policy Strength, Ownership, Finance Shape Global Plant Retirements, Jiwon Kim, Theodor Florian Cojoianu, Theodor F. Cojoianu, Maretno Agus Harjoto, Dariusz Wojcik

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

This study examines how national environmental performance, institutional investor divestment from fossil fuels, investment in renewable energy, and ownership type influence the global phase-out of coal power plants, and whether these effects are constrained by geographical boundaries. Using data on coal plant retirements across 90 countries, we test whether domestic and cross-border factors shape the timing and likelihood of asset closure. We find that companies headquartered in countries with stronger environmental performance are more likely to retire domestic but not foreign plants. While institutional investors divestment is often assumed to exert cross-border influence, our findings show that divestment pressure by …

The Climate-Biodiversity-Pollution Nexus: The Pricing Of Environmental Credit Risks For European Industrial Polluters, Dominik Hirschbühl, Andrej Ceglar, Theodor Cojoianu, Tina Emambakhsh, Yifan Qi, Caterina Rho, Elsie Hu, Marco Petracco, Fabrizio Biganzoli, Alfred De Jager, Laura Garcia Herrero, Andrea Mandrici, Carlo Pasqua

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

This study examines how euro area banks factor pollution-induced biodiversity risks into lending decisions, using data from 832 banks and 5,000 major polluters. Our results show that banks are increasingly pricing these risks by adjusting loan-to-value ratios and interest rates. Banks adjust lending conditions in line with EU pollution and biodiversity protection legislation, particularly for companies with large pollution footprints near biodiversity-protected areas or those contributing to Environmental Quality Standards failures of downstream surface waters. The former is driven primarily by banks’ adoption of biodiversity policies and public commitments to the Equator Principles, while the latter is a result of …

Meteorology, Weather And War In South East Asia: Malaya C. 1940-1960, Fiona Williamson

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

This article interrogates the positioning of British colonial meteorology in Malaysia and Singapore from the 1940s to 1960. This period spanned a global conflict and an internecine war, effecting profound sociopolitical changes from which neither Malaysia nor Singapore would emerge the same. The meteorological services were essential to Britain's armed conflicts, providing vital weather information to the army, navy and, especially, the air forces, as well as supporting the aviation and shipping industry often in difficult and dangerous circumstances. This article argues that British military policy in South East Asia and the specific concerns of the colonial government in Malaya …

Flowing Together Or Alone: Impact Of Collaboration In The Metaverse, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, Brenda Eschenbrenner, Langtao Chen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The metaverse is the next-generation Internet (Web3) that facilitates social connections and collaborations in a virtual world environment. Given the potential of the metaverse to provide more satisfying and effective means of remote collaborations, exploring the possibility of leveraging the metaverse for these endeavors is warranted. Therefore, an important question to address is whether greater engagement occurs when tasks are completed collaboratively versus individually in the metaverse. We address this question by drawing on flow and transportation theories to hypothesize the effect of carrying out a creative task in the metaverse collaboratively versus alone on one's cognitive absorption, a contextually …

Your Cursor Reveals: On Analyzing Workers’ Browsing Behavior And Annotation Quality In Crowdsourcing Tasks, Pei-Chi Lo, Ee-Peng Lim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this work, we investigate the connection between browsing behavior and task quality of crowdsourcing workers performing annotation tasks that require information judgements. Such information judgements are often required to derive ground truth answers to information retrieval queries. We explore the use of workers’ browsing behavior to directly determine their annotation result quality. We hypothesize user attention to be the main factor contributing to a worker’s annotation quality. To predict annotation quality at the task level, we model two aspects of task-specific user attention, also known as general and semantic user attentions . Both aspects of user attention can be …

The Gender Wage Gap In An Online Labor Market: The Cost Of Interruptions, Abi Adams, Kotaro Hara, Kristy Milland, Chris Callison-Burch

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper analyses gender differences in working patterns and wages on Amazon Mechanical Turk, a popular online labour platform. Using information on 2 million tasks, we find no gender differences in task selection nor experience. Nonetheless, women earn 20% less per hour on average. Gender differences in working patterns are a significant driver of this wage gap. Women are more likely to interrupt their working time on the platform with consequences for their task completion speed. A follow-up survey shows that the gender differences in working patterns and hourly wages are concentrated amongst workers with children.

Development And Construction Of New Scanning Antennas With High Remote Sensing Capability For Wireless Communication Systems In The Millimeter Wavelength Range, Nagham Habeeb Shakir, Sarah R. Hashim, Ahmed Sileh Gifal, Ahmed Dheyaa Radhi, Alaa G.K. Alshami, Rusul Mansoor Alamri, Hussein Mohammed Ali

Mesopotamian Journal of Computer Science

In this paper, geometric methods and wave optics were used to calculate the basic profiles and characteristics of the lens antennas.  The planar reflector arrays were assembled using an iterative method with multiple forward and inverse Fourier transform calculations.  Three-dimensional electromagnetic modeling was performed in CST Microwave Studio software to evaluate the technical parameters of the designed antennas. Measurements of the characteristics of fabricated prototypes of far-field scanning antennas were performed using a custom-designed experimental setup. This study focuses on the analysis and development of scanning antennas for use in millimeter-wave wireless communication systems. The researchers aim to develop a …

Ai Characterisations And Their Legal Implications, Jerrold Tsin Howe Soh

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This chapter examines the difficult legal characterisation problems that artificially intelligent systems raise and explores how different characterisations of artificial intelligence (AI) shape practical legal outcomes. Three reasons are offered for the legal difficulty with characterising AI. First, answers to characterisation problems are inherently subjective and perspective-driven, particularly when the subject is an intangible technological system. Second, AI technology is especially difficult to define since the field typically proceeds on inexact anthropomorphic metaphors. Third, AI characterisation problems raise difficult sub-problems, particularly in determining how autonomous an AI system is. The chapter thus argues that a range of plausible AI characterisations …

A Survey Of Multilingual Large Language Models, Libo Qin, Qiguang Chen, Yuhang Zhou, Zhi Chen, Yinghui Li, Lizi Liao, Min Li, Wanxiang Che, Philip S. Yu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Multilingual large language models (MLLMs) leverage advanced large language models to process and respond to queries across multiple languages, achieving significant success in polyglot tasks. Despite these breakthroughs, a comprehensive survey summarizing existing approaches and recent developments remains absent. To this end, this paper presents a unified and thorough review of the field, highlighting recent progress and emerging trends in MLLM research. The contributions of this paper are as follows. (1) Extensive survey: to our knowledge, this is the pioneering thorough review of multilingual alignment in MLLMs. (2) Unified taxonomy: we provide a unified framework to summarize the current progress …

Empowering Crisis Information Extraction Through Actionability Event Schemata And Domain-Adaptive Pre-Training, Yuhao Zhang, Siaw Ling Lo, Phyo Yi Win Myint

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

One of the persistent challenges in crisis detection is inferring actionable information to support emergency response. Existing methods focus on situational awareness but often lack actionable insights. This study proposes a holistic approach to implementing an actionability extraction system on social media, including requirement gathering, selection of machine learning tasks, data preparation, and integration with existing resources, providing guidance for governments, civil services, emergency workers, and researchers on supplementing existing channels with actionable information from social media. Our solution leverages an actionability schema and domain-adaptive pre-training, improving upon the state-of-the-art model by 5.5% and 10.1% in micro and macro F1 …

The Effectiveness Of Local Updates For Decentralized Learning Under Data Heterogeneity, Tongle Wu, Zhize Li, Ying Sun

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We revisit two fundamental decentralized optimization methods, Decentralized Gradient Tracking (DGT) and Decentralized Gradient Descent (DGD), with multiple local updates. We consider two settings and demonstrate that incorporating local update steps can reduce communication complexity. Specifically, for  $\mu$-strongly convex and $L$-smooth loss functions, we proved that local DGT  achieves communication complexity {}{$\tilde{\mathcal{O}} \Big(\frac{L}{\mu(K+1)} + \frac{\delta + {}{\mu}}{\mu (1 - \rho)} + \frac{\rho }{(1 - \rho)^2} \cdot \frac{L+ \delta}{\mu}\Big)$}, where $K$ is the number of additional local update}, $\rho$ measures the network connectivity and $\delta$ measures the second-order heterogeneity of the local losses. Our results reveal the tradeoff between communication and …

Risk Spillover Effect Of China-Asean Supply Chains: Insights Of Industrial Transfer, Zeyang Bian, Yuning Zhang, Keng Siau, Yaqian Zhang, Jianjia He

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

As labour costs in China increase, labour-intensive industries are migrating to ASEAN countries, attracted by lower labour costs and market potential. This shift not only affects the economies of China and ASEAN but also reshapes the global manufacturing landscape. This paper investigates the correlation and spillover of supply chain risks using production exposure indicators derived from inter-country input-output data and the R-Vine Copula model. We assess the risk spillover of each country within the global supply chain. Our findings indicate that industrial relocation can significantly alter supply chain structures, thereby affecting the concentration and direction of risks. While China's role …

More Effective Javascript Breaking Change Detection Via Dynamic Object Relation Graph, Dezhen Kong, Jiakun Liu, Chao Ni, David Lo, Lingfeng Bao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

JavaScript libraries are characterized by their widespread use, frequent code changes, and a high tolerance for backward incompatible changes. Awareness of such breaking changes can help developers adapt to version updates and avoid negative impacts. Several tools have been targeted to or can be used to detect breaking change detection in the JavaScript community. However, these tools detect breaking changes using different ways, and there are currently no systematic reviews of these approaches. From a preliminary study on popular JavaScript libraries, we find that existing approaches, including simple regression testing, model-based testing and type differencing cannot detect many breaking changes …

Defending Federated Recommender Systems Against Untargeted Attacks: A Contribution-Aware Robust Aggregation Scheme, Ruicheng Liang, Yuanchun Jiang, Feida Zhu, Ling Cheng, Huiwen Liu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Federated recommender systems (FedRSs) effectively tackle the tradeoff between recommendation accuracy and privacy preservation. However, recent studies have revealed severe vulnerabilities in FedRSs, particularly against untargeted attacks seeking to undermine their overall performance. Defense methods employed in traditional recommender systems are not applicable to FedRSs, and existing robust aggregation schemes for other federated learning-based applications have proven ineffective in FedRSs. Building on the observation that malicious clients contribute negatively to the training process, we design a novel contribution-aware robust aggregation scheme to defend FedRSs against untargeted attacks, named contribution-aware Bayesian knowledge distillation aggregation (ConDA), comprising two key components for the …

Label Correlated Contrastive Learning For Medical Report Generation, Xinyao Liu, Junchang Xin, Bing Tian Dai, Qi Shen, Zhihong Huang, Zhiqiong Wang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Background and Objective: Automatic generation of medical reports reduces both the burden on radiologists and the possibility of errors due to the inexperience of radiologists. The model that utilizes attention mechanism and contrastive learning can generate medical reports by capturing both general and specific semantics. However, existing contrastive learning methods ignore the specificity of medical data, that is, a patient may suffer from multiple diseases at the same time. This means that the lack of fine-grained relationships for contrastive learning will lead to the problem of insufficient specificity. Methods: To address the above problem, a label correlated contrastive learning method …

Automated Program Refinement: Guide And Verify Code Large Language Model With Refinement Calculus, Yufan Cai, Zhe Hou, David Sanan, Xiaokun Luan, Yun Lin, Jun Sun, Jin Song Dong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Recently, the rise of code-centric large language models (LLMs) appears to have reshaped the software engineering world with low-barrier tools like Copilot that can generate code easily. However, there is no correctness guarantee for the code generated by LLMs, which suffer from the hallucination problem, and their output is fraught with risks. Besides, the end-to-end process from specification to code through LLMs is a non-transparent and uncontrolled black box. This opacity makes it difficult for users to understand and trust the generated code. Addressing these challenges is both necessary and critical. In contrast, program refinement transforms high-level specification statements into …

Adversarial Generative Flow Network For Solving Vehicle Routing Problems, Ni Zhang, Jingfeng Yang, Zhiguang Cao, Xu Chi

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Recent research into solving vehicle routing problems (VRPs) has gained significant traction, particularly through the application of deep (reinforcement) learning for end-to-end solution construction. However, many current construction-based neural solvers predominantly utilize Transformer architectures, which can face scalability challenges and struggle to produce diverse solutions. To address these limitations, we introduce a novel framework beyond Transformer-based approaches, i.e., Adversarial Generative Flow Networks (AGFN). This framework integrates the generative flow network (GFlowNet)-a probabilistic model inherently adept at generating diverse solutions (routes)-with a complementary model for discriminating (or evaluating) the solutions. These models are trained alternately in an adversarial manner to improve …

The Gradient Puppeteer: Adversarial Domination In Gradient Leakage Attacks Through Model Poisoning, Kunlan Xiang, Haomiao Yang, Meng Hao, Shaofeng Li, Haoxin Wang, Zikang Ding, Wenbo Jiang, Tianwei Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In Federated Learning (FL), clients share gradients with a central server while keeping their data local. However, malicious servers could deliberately manipulate the models to reconstruct clients' data from shared gradients, posing significant privacy risks. Although such Active Gradient Leakage Attacks (AGLAs) have been widely studied, they suffer from two severe limitations: 1) coverage: no existing AGLAs can reconstruct all samples in a batch from the shared gradients; 2) stealthiness: no existing AGLAs can evade principled checks of clients. In this paper, we address these limitations with two core contributions. First, we introduce a new theoretical analysis approach, which uniformly …

Gnnsynergy: A Multi-View Graph Neural Network For Predicting Anti-Cancer Drug Synergy, Zhifeng Hao, Jianming Zhan, Yuan Fang, Min Wu, Ruichu Cai

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Drug combinations play very important roles in cancer therapy, as they can enhance curative efficacy and overcome drug resistance. Due to the increasing size of combinatorial space, experimental screening for all the drug combinations becomes infeasible in practice. Therefore, there is a great need to develop accurate computational approaches that can predict potential drug combinations to direct the experimental screening. In this paper, we propose a novel method called GNNSynergy to learn drug embeddings for drug synergy prediction. Given a specific cancer cell line, we propose a multi-view graph neural network framework which considers the current cell line as main …

Review Of Digital Degrowth: Technology In The Age Of Survival, Michael Kirby

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

The Limits Of Technocratic Degrowth: A Review Of The End Of Capitalism: Why Growth And Climate Protection Are Incompatible—And How We Will Live In The Future, Michael Kirby

Publications and Research

This book review discusses Ulrike Herrmann’s The End of Capitalism: Why Growth and Climate Protection Are Incompatible—and How We Will Live in the Future, situating it within contemporary climate debates. Herrmann’s central claim—that capitalism’s dependence on perpetual growth renders meaningful climate protection impossible—is presented as a clear, accessible synthesis of degrowth arguments. The book is particularly notable for its rejection of techno-utopian solutions such as carbon capture and its skepticism vis-à-vis large-scale renewable transitions under market conditions. However, the review ultimately questions the feasibility of Herrmann's proposed alternative (the “survival economy”), demonstrating that it overlooks political power, class interests, and …

Understanding The Influence Of Image Enhancement On Underwater Object Detection: A Quantitative And Qualitative Study, Ashraf Saleem, Ali Awad, Sidike Paheding, Evan Lucas, Timothy C. Havens, Peter C. Esselman

Michigan Tech Publications

Underwater image enhancement is often perceived as a disadvantageous process to object detection. We propose a novel analysis of the interactions between enhancement and detection, elaborating on the potential of enhancement to improve detection. In particular, we evaluate object detection performance for each individual image rather than across the entire set to allow a direct performance comparison of each image before and after enhancement. This approach enables the generation of unique queries to identify the outperforming and underperforming enhanced images compared to the original images. To accomplish this, we first produce enhanced image sets of the original images using recent …

Seeds In A Pluriverse: Visakha Society For The Protection And Care Of Animals Inclusive Praxis Toward Self-Determined Just Socio-Ecological Territories, Priya Tallam

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

My dissertation focuses on my thesis question: How might an NGO’s grassroots efforts in urban Visakhapatnam, India, propagate living justly with animals we encounter and severely Othered humans, beyond attitudes of guardianship, mitigating universalized harms to nature and society? In a transdisciplinary approach examining grassroots programs, my phenomenological study breaks down an animal advocate’s assertive practices of—inclusivity and decolonialized lived norms, which persistently transcend cultural antagonisms of caste, ability, gender, sex, class, and form/species—toward creating just pluriversal multispecies communities in Visakhapatnam. Universalized urbanization across the planet has driven irreversible socio-ecological transformation marked by record ecosystem decline. Sustaining the urban via …

Behavioral Response Of Wild Greater Caribbean Manatees (Trichechus Manatus Manatus) To Playbacks Of Conspecifics In Maya Beach, Belize, Phoebe Sonia Hodson

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

The behavioral response of the wild Greater Caribbean manatee (Trichechus manatus manatus) to the acoustic vocalizations of their closely related subspecies, the Florida manatee (Trichechus manatus latirostris), was examined for the first time in Placencia Lagoon, Maya Beach, Belize. The main goal of this study was to determine how vocalizations from conspecifics influence the behavior of the wild Greater Caribbean manatee and how this behavioral change may give insight into the functionality of manatee vocalizations. Three call types (squeak, squeal and high squeak) and chewing sounds were played to varying size aggregations of manatees. Broad behavioral …

Technological Development Of In-Cell Nmr: Microfluidic, Metabolomic, And Fluxomic Approaches, Nicholas Sciolino

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

In the fields of structural biology, metabolomics, and fluxomics, there is a driving, technique-based concern when it comes to high-resolution spectrometry and its marriage to biological and physiological relevance. Sample preparation often involves cellular perturbation, lysate separation schemes, combinations with non-biological reagents, and timeline slack. Conceptually, the farther we get from the cell, the greater the potential disparity between what exists in vivo and our in vitro manipulations. This is particularly true when seeking to collect data on transfected targets of interest, and on sensitive metabolic equilibria that occur on the order of minutes. The question remains: if we are …

Stratospheric Variability And Its Relationship To Cold Air Outbreaks In The United States, Paul T. Panhans

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Only since the early 2000s, has there been a growing body of work linking extreme winter temperature anomalies to the variability of the Northern Hemisphere stratospheric polar vortex (SPV). However, the understanding behind stratosphere-troposphere coupling and cold air outbreaks (CAOs) remain occasionally contradictory in the literature, making it difficult to properly articulate societal risks. Studies often focused on broad stratospheric influences, but this research directly compared stratospheric variability according to their respective tropospheric impacts. This dissertation filled a knowledge gap, as there has yet to be a comprehensive analysis to quantify the differences in stratospheric variability with and without CAOs …

Influence Of Cloud-Radiative Forcing On Tropical Cyclone Development In Moderate Vertical Wind Shear, Jannetta C. Richardson

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

This research seeks to better understand how cloud–radiative forcing (CRF) influences the structural evolution and intensity change of tropical cyclones (TCs) during the organizaional stage, with a particular focus on environments characterized by moderate vertical wind shear. While CRF has been shown to impact TC development during genesis and mature stages, its role during the transitional post-genesis phase—when TCs exhibit disorganized convection and are highly sensitive to environmental influences—remains poorly understood. Moreover, forecasting TC intensity in moderate shear environments continues to present substantial challenges, underscoring the need for focused investigation of TC development in the moderate-shear regime.

The Weather Research …

Issues And Challenges In Silicon Based Quantum Computing, Rafia Ayub

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Silicon-based quantum computing has emerged as a promising platform for scalable and fault-tolerant quantum information processing. This thesis investigates the use of silicon quantum dots as qubits, addressing a key limitation in their implementation—charge noise and decoherence. We explore the physical and electronic properties of silicon quantum dots, focusing on their coherence times, tunability, and compatibility with existing semiconductor fabrication technologies. Through theoretical analysis and numerical simulations, we examine the impact of material imperfections and propose strategies to mitigate decoherence effects, thereby enhancing qubit stability. Additionally, we discuss potential pathways for integrating silicon quantum dots into large-scale quantum architectures. Our …

Dynamics Of Mesoscale Offshore Wind Flows From An Observational And Modeling Perspective: Implications For Offshore Wind Energy, Elizabeth J. Mccabe

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Mid-latitude coastal regions of the United States, such as the New York Bight (NYB), are playing a major role in the development of offshore wind energy. However, mesoscale dynamics of local and regional circulations in these offshore waters are poorly understood. The sea breeze, especially in the NYB, will play a key role in the development of offshore wind energy, given the favorable wind speeds and high capacity factors during periods of peak demand. With limited vertical wind profile observations available offshore, the ability to accurately forecast and understand the spatiotemporal extent of the sea breeze and often associated low-level …

Development Of Group Iii-V Quantum Confinement-Enabled Detectors: Bias-Tunable Quantum Well Infrared Photodetector (Qwip) And Quantum Dot Scintillation Detector (Qdsd), Gyana R. Biswal

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

This dissertation discloses the physics, fabrication, characterization, and analysis of two novel types of group III-V semiconductor detectors relying on quantum confinement of carriers, namely voltage-tunable quantum well infrared photodetectors (QWIP) and a high-yield ultrafast quantum dot scintillation detector (QDSD). Both QWIP and QDSD heterostructures presented here were grown on 3” GaAs (001) substrates using molecular beam epitaxy (MBE).

A major part of the dissertation focuses on development of the voltage-tunable QWIPs targeting detection in the mid-wave infrared region (MWIR) (3μm -5μm) and long-wave infrared region (LWIR) (8μm -12μm) with control of sensitivity by the applied bias. The QWIPs utilize …