Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB): Open Journal Systems
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Investigating the quality of learner texts in diachronic and digital change: pilot study on the Ludwigsburg Essay Corpus 2.0
Get PDFIn einer Pilotstudie wurde untersucht, wie sich die Textproduktionsleistungen von Schüler/-innen achter Klassen beim Schreiben zu einem Bildimpuls zwischen 1998 und 2023 verändert haben. Ferner wurde der Einfluss des Schreibmediums (handschriftlich vs. digital) und die Eignung von KI zur Textqualitätsbewertung überprüft. Die Ergebnisse, die sich ausschließlich auf narrative Texte beziehen, zeigen, dass handschriftliche Texte aus 2023 im Vergleich zu 1998 schlechter bewertet wurden, während digitale Texte qualitativ vergleichbar und sogar länger waren. Die Studie legt nahe, dass eine Verschlechterung der Schreibfähigkeiten bei narrativen Texten aus diachroner Perspektive nicht pauschal zutrifft, vielmehr scheinen Schreibfähigkeiten in Abhängigkeit zum Schreibmedium zu stehen. Limitierend sind die geringe Stichprobengröße und mögliche bildungsbezogene Unterschiede. In der geplanten Hauptstudie sind diese Faktoren zu kontrollieren. Der Einbezug von ChatGPT-Textqualitätsurteilen, ergänzend zu den Urteilen menschlicher Raterinnen, führte zu vergleichbar guten Reliabilitätsschätzungen, wenngleich die paarweisen Übereinstimmungen zwischen menschlichen Raterinnen höher ausfielen als zwischen Mensch und KI. A pilot study examined changes in the text production performance of eighth-grade students when writing in response to a visual prompt, depending on the time of data collection (1998 and 2023), as well as the influence of the writing medium (handwritten vs. digital) and the suitability of AI for text quality assessment. The results, which pertain exclusively to narrative texts, show that handwritten texts from 2023 were rated lower compared to those from 1998, while digital texts were qualitatively comparable and even longer. The study suggests that a deterioration in writing skills for narrative texts from a diachronic perspective is not universally applicable; rather, writing skills seem to depend on the writing medium. Limitations include the small sample size and potential educational disparities. These factors are to be controlled in the planned main study. The inclusion of ChatGPT text quality assessments, alongside those of human raters, yielded comparably good reliability estimates, although the pairwise agreements among human raters were higher than those between humans and AI
Cognitive control and semantic thought variability across sleep and wakefulness
Get PDFThe flow of thought is persistent, and at times merciless. Mental content is generated throughout the day and into the night, moving forward predictably at times but surprisingly at others. Understanding what influences the trajectory of thought—how thoughts continuously unfold over time—has important implications for the diagnosis and treatment of thought disorders like schizophrenia and recurrent nightmares. Here, we examine whether cognitive control restricts moment-to-moment content shifts across sleep and wakefulness, thus acting as a fundamental constraint on thought variability. Thought variability was measured as the semantic incoherence between sequential thought phrases and was applied to independent datasets of dreaming and waking reports. Our results show that within both sleeping and waking reports, conditions typically marked by higher levels of cognitive control were associated with decreased thought variability (i.e., semantic incoherence). During wakefulness, on-task conditions were associated with reduced levels of thought variability compared to off-task conditions, and thought variability was greater when thoughts wandered around more freely. During sleep, lucid dreams, marked by higher levels of cognitive control, were associated with reduced levels of thought variability compared to non-lucid dreams. Together, these results suggest that cognitive control may limit thought variability across the 24-hour cycle of thought generation. Such findings are consistent with the Dynamic Framework of Thought, where mental states are expected to vary on a continuum of deliberate constraints, with lower cognitive control leading to a categorical cluster of spontaneous thought processes that includes both mind-wandering during wakefulness and non-lucid dreams during sleep. This observation has broad implications for models of cognition, specifically highlighting the continuity of cognitive processes throughout the circadian cycle and the importance of considering varying levels of thought constraint in both waking and dreaming states
How much nuance is too much?
Get PDFJoshua May’s Neuroethics: Agency in the Age of Brain Science gives a clear, engaging, and philosophically rich introduction to the subject. It is a sustained and powerful defense of a bold position within the field of neuroethics, and a demonstration of what makes that field philosophically important and genuinely exciting. Despite the book\u27s overall excellence, I have some concerns about May\u27s call for more nuance in thinking about the connections between mental disorders and responsibility. More nuance in this regard is unquestionably welcome given the status quo, and May\u27s thesis of cognitive continuity is both well-supported and morally urgent; however, I worry that May\u27s "nuanced view" overshoots the mark and incurs some significant practical and conceptual costs, which we can avoid by accepting a little less nuance than May recommends
“Just Run Over Them” - Experiences, Perceptions and Evaluations of Violence Among Activists of Letzte Generation
Get PDFIn the last years, Letzte Generation has been a prominent and controversial group of climate activists in Germany. In 2021, the group began protesting across Germany, inspired by strategies of civil disobedience throughout Germany. Since then, a broad debate has erupted about Letzte Generation, their strategies, goals and legitimacy. Videos of attacks, threats and verbal abuse of activists by bystanders appeared. To get an understanding of the activists’ experiences and the violence they face on a regular basis, we conducted narrative interviews and a group discussion with activists from Letzte Generation in different cities. Through an analysis guided by the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), we sought to answer the following questions: What forms of violence manifest in the activists’ stories and experiences? How do activists perceive and process violence in the context of their activism? What role do group dynamics within the Letzte Generation play in the perception and processing of violence? Our findings reveal a range of violent experiences (verbal, physical, state repression, media violence). Activists perceive violence against themselves as normal while violence against other activists is perceived as more serious. They use emotional suppression, collective structures and rules, and conjunctive knowledge to navigate these experiences. In addition, the group uses utilitarian logic to justify the risks they take. Members of the group found themselves in conflicts between group needs and individual priorities, in some cases causing psychological distress, in others motivation for further engagement
Teaching Hypotheses with Émilie du Châtelet
Get PDFThe philosopher Émilie du Châtelet (1706-1749) was one of the most successful authors of her time in the fields of philosophy and science. Her texts were translated into several languages during her lifetime, which demonstrates the international appeal of her work. Many aspects contribute to her reputation as one of the most outstanding and famous philosophers of the 18th century. Among them is her emphasis on hypotheses as the basis of scientific research. The ideas she developed had an impact well into the 20th century, although her name had been forgotten. Her achievements can be discussed in a classroom setting by interpreting the chapter On Hypotheses, taken from her main work, the Foundations of Physics. The material has lost none of its significance and can, therefore, be a meaningful contribution to explaining the great ideas of the history of philosophy and addressing fundamental questions such as the discernment of what is true and false
Key recovery on static Kyber based on transient execution attacks
Get PDFTransient execution attacks on modern processors continue to threaten security by stealing sensitive data from other processes running on the same CPU. A recent example is Downfall, which demonstrated how microarchitecture leakage could reveal short AES keys. We explore the possibility of leaking much longer keys from post-quantum cryptography by combining Gather Data Sampling from Downfall with Flush+Reload to mount a key recovery attack against static Kyber. We reassemble private keys from fragments scattered within random noise by exploiting patterns observed across multiple consecutive loads. The whole attack runs in under 40 minutes with success rate between 60% and 70%, no matter the Kyber security level used by the victim. This underscores the implicit reliance of cryptographic algorithms on the underlying microarchitecture for security
Preface
Get PDFOn behalf of the Program Committee, we are delighted to present the Proceedings of the 1st Microarchitectural Security Conference (µASC 2025). The µASC conference fills a gap in the security research landscape, focusing on the advancement our understanding of the security of microarchitectures of all kinds and on all layers. Our goal this year was to attract high-quality research from academia and industry through various formats accommodating the different needs of the researchers. For this reason, we accepted three types of submissions: papers, posters, and talks.
Although it was µASC’s first year, we received 22 valid submissions. We assigned 3 reviewers to each submission, resulting in 66 reviews overall. Papers reviews were conducted as double-blind reviews, for posters and talks, the authors were able to choose between single-blind and double-blind peer review. We received 7 paper submissions, out of which the program committee accepted 6 papers, resulting in an acceptance rate of 86%. We received 9 talk submissions, out of which the program committee accepted 8 talks, resulting in an acceptance rate of 89%. We accepted all 6 poster submissions.
We thank all members of the µASC Steering Committee for their hard work on laying the foundation for this new conference. We would also like to express our deep gratitude to them for volunteering as the first Program Committee as well, for their reviewing effort, for discussions (more than 80 comments for 22 submissions), and for reviewing revisions of shepherded submissions. We appreciate the support from our sponsor Google as well as our host institutions.
Finally, we thank the authors who submitted their work and presented their contributions, as well as the attendees who participated in the conference. µASC was held on campus at Ruhr University Bochum in Germany. With about 80 participants, the conference’s first year was already much larger than we anticipated and it created a unique opportunity to network, discuss, engage, and socialize with other researchers and practitioners interested in all kinds of microarchitectures. We look forward to future years and future contributions
Constructive approach to bidirectional influence between qualia structure and language emergence
No full textThis perspective paper explores the bidirectional influence between language emergence and the relational structure of subjective experiences, termed qualia structure, and lays out a constructive approach to the intricate dependency between the two. We hypothesize that the emergence of languages with distributional semantics (e.g., syntactic-semantic structures) is linked to the coordination of internal representations shaped by experience, potentially facilitating more structured language through reciprocal influence. This hypothesized mutual dependency connects to recent advancements in AI and symbol emergence robotics, and is explored within this paper through theoretical frameworks such as the collective predictive coding. Computational studies show that neural network-based language models form systematically structured internal representations, and multimodal language models can share representations between language and perceptual information. This perspective suggests that language emergence serves not only as a mechanism for creating a communication tool but also as a mechanism for allowing people to realize shared understanding of qualitative experiences. The paper discusses the implications of this bidirectional influence in the context of consciousness studies, linguistics, and cognitive science, and outlines future constructive research directions to further explore this dynamic relationship between language emergence and qualia structure
Interpretative Philosophy through Constellative Thinking and Writing: Didactical Implications of Adorno\u27s Critical Theory
Get PDFThis article aims to show an alternative approach to the concept of philosophizing in teaching-and-learning-processes by reference to core ideas of the philosophical works of Theodor W. Adorno. Firstly, it seeks to promote Adorno’s idea of philosophy as interpretation (‘Deutung’), which is characterized by thinking and writing in constellations. Its overarching intention is an explanation of this idea in order to establish its relevance as an alternative approach that goes beyond current didactical orientations, which are limited to analytical or pragmatic variants of argumentation. Secondly, the article focuses on a different reception and application of Adorno’s ideas than those within the pedagogical debates, which almost exclusively address and discuss his popular radio contributions on ‘education for maturity’. Instead, the didactical potential of his philosophy as such will be worked out here, which also built the fundamental framework for a deeper understanding of his pedagogical statements. Furthermore, the article provides practical hints for implementing constellative thinking and writing in the philosophy classroom