278177 research outputs found
Sort by
EU-Entgelttransparenz-Richtlinie und das englische Arbeitsrecht nach dem Brexit - was bringt Europa?
No full text[No abstract
Behind the "Game Changer" Spectacle:The Consequences of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) Gwadar Port Development on Gwadar's Fishermen and Fishing Industry
No full textExisting research has predominantly focused on the macroeconomic and macro-political aspects of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), leaving its consequences for micro-level development and the local political economy in Pakistan understudied. Scholars have stressed the need to explore how Chinese investments under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) intersect with recipient countries' local political economies. Therefore, this paper examines the micro-level consequences of CPEC – a flagship project of BRI – through a case study of the Gwadar Port development in Pakistan. Drawing from 20 semi-structured interviews with local fishermen and community leaders affected by the Gwadar port's development, our findings reveal that despite being heralded as a "Game-Changer" for Pakistan, the Chinese investments in Gwadar under CPEC lead to exclusion, livelihood loss, and dispossession, disproportionately affecting Gwadar's sizable fisherman and local industry. Beneath CPEC's symbolic veneer created by the government, we identify exclusionary consequences, jeopardizing local fishermen's livelihoods and leaving them in a state of vulnerability and uncertainty. This incongruity between CPEC's ambitious vision and the challenging local realities underscores an 'economy of appearances,' whereby narratives and symbols obscure a project's actual implications. Our research contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of CPEC's nuanced effects for sustainable and inclusive policies for development
An Object-Level Entropy-Based Adversarial Attack for Image Privacy
No full textCloud-based tools have enabled users to expand their device storage while benefiting from integrated machine learning capabilities. However, this advancement has raised significant concerns regarding user privacy, particularly in the context of image data. Traditional privacy-preserving techniques such as encryption, watermarking, and steganography, though effective in earlier scenarios, are increasingly being undermined by the growing sophistication of deep learning (DL) models in image classification. These models can accurately classify complex and noisy data, rendering many conventional privacy-preserving methods insufficient. Moreover, traditional techniques often compromise usability by producing images that are difficult for humans to interpret. Many users, however, prefer to store and view their images in a human-understandable form, while preventing neural networks from accurately classifying their content. To address this challenge, we propose a privacy-preserving method that applies adversarial attacks targeted at specific objects within an image. By leveraging the seam carving technique, our method introduces perturbations that degrade classification model performance while preserving visual interpretability for human viewers. Our experiments show that the proposed method significantly reduces image classification accuracy without compromising image readability. Even at a moderate perturbation level of just 15\%, our approach reduces classification accuracy by 75.29\%, 75\%, and 50.40\% for three state-of-the-art models (ResNet50, VGG16, and EfficientNetB5) while maintaining human readability of the images. We further demonstrate that, for varying perturbations, the approach significantly degrades classification accuracy, offering a practical solution for preserving privacy in cloud-based image storage platforms
triMorph:Bridging Shape-Change and Cross-Sensory Correspondences for Haptic Interaction
No full textCross-sensory correspondences provide opportunities for designing rich sensory HCI, with prior work showing that features such as roundness and sharpness are systematically linked to language, color, sound, and emotion. Yet two challenges remain: few technologies can dynamically transition between these features, and little is known about the thresholds at which a form is judged as sufficiently rounded or spiky to realize these cross-sensory effects. We present triMorph, a pneumatic shape-changing interface capable of smoothly morphing between spiky, flat, and rounded configurations. In a psychophysical study with 30 participants, we quantified perceptual accuracy and precision in mapping triMorph shapes to visual-linguistic categories and examined shape–color and shape–emotion correspondences. Results reveal threshold values for reliable categorization, with rounded shapes linked to pleasant emotions and lighter colors, and spiky shapes to arousal and darker tones. Our findings provide empirical foundations and design guidelines for grounding shape-changing artifacts more firmly in cross-sensory cognition
Compassion, Empathy, and Altruism in the Context of Borderline Personality Disorder:A Conceptual Narrative Review
No full textThis narrative review examines compassion, empathy, and altruism in the context of borderline personality disorder (BPD), arguing that difficulties in these domains, often described in clinical literature as empathic or relational ‘deficits’, are better understood as psychosocial responses to trauma, invalidation, and relational adversity. Drawing from personality psychology, clinical research, and lived-experience scholarship, the review explores how prosocial capacities are shaped by emotional dysregulation, relational trauma, and systemic invalidation within social contexts. Rather than framing impairments in compassion, empathy, or altruism as fixed intrapsychic traits, the review reconceptualises them as context-dependent adaptations to adversity. Particular attention is given to fear of compassion, disruptions in cognitive and affective empathy, and altruistic behaviours motivated by insecurity. Examining how these constructs interact and contribute to relational functioning and recovery, this review builds a conceptual foundation for more person-centred, trauma-informed care. By situating empathy and compassion within lived social contexts rather than within presumed personality deficits, the paper reframes BPD as a psychosocial condition shaped by relational experience
From Earth to Orbit:A Quantum-Secure Authentication Key-Establishment Mechanism to Defend Satellite Communications in the Quantum Age
No full textThe inherent broadcast characteristics of satellite communication systems make them vulnerable to interception and manipulation threats. Stringent Authentication and KeyEstablishment (AKE) mechanisms play a vital role in securing satellite communication links by verifying legitimate participants and establishing a secret session for protected communication. Nevertheless, the existing AKE mechanisms based on classical cryptographic methods are not sufficient to guarantee the security of these systems in the forthcoming post-quantum era. Recognizing these flaws, we propose a quantum-secure robust AKE mechanism that fortifies these communications systems against emerging cyber and quantum threats. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to integrate NIST-approved quantum-safe cryptography primitives, coupled with a hardware fingerprinting-based key generation mechanism
Art and Mediterranean Migration:Images of Women and Aesthetics of the Interface
No full textImages of migration to Europe in the media since the revolutions and protests in diverse North African and Middle Eastern countries that began in 2010 have often tended to focus on “landings,” which reduce people to victims or criminals and obscure the reasons behind their journeys. Such iconic images encourage binary perceptions of “us” and “them,” “citizen,” and “migrant.” Some images are intended to trigger compassion and identification, but they only reinforce such binaries. Yet, art, I argue, can move beyond such images to embody and activate its spectators by creating what I call a “multilayered interface.” I develop this concept in relation to installation art by Bissane Al Charif and by Hela Ammar, who combine innovative uses of oral narratives and alternative modes of imaging in indoor or outdoor spaces
New Control Functionalities for Launcher Load Relief in Ascent and Descent Flight
Full text linkThe development of effective load relief strategies is key to the improvement of launcher flight performance as it enables a joint increase of wind resilience and decrease of mass. This is particularly relevant for reusable launchers, which are aimed at maximising their operational availability and payload capacity. Yet, despite various advances in aeronautics and wind energy load relief, classical feedback-only techniques remain the state-of-practice for launchers. In this article, an improved load relief functionality is proposed by augmenting a conventional control design with a disturbance observer for on-board wind anticipation. Without requiring any change in the feedback loop,this approach also paves the way for the use of forward looking wind estimation in the launcher domain. The disturbance observer is designed and analysed using robust control techniques for a lightweight, non-winged reusable launch vehicle, which relies on the use of planar fins for unpropelled descent attitude control. While the use of fins for launch is not a common practice, the article also exemplifies how their use can further improve launcher performance
Limits to behavioural plasticity in tropical paper wasps
No full textCooperative breeders are defined by a division of reproductive labour among group members who can respond flexibly to changing conditions via phenotypic plasticity. But such plasticity can be costly and is likely influenced by previous experience. Polistes paper wasps live in small societies where non-reproductive (worker) and reproductive (queen) individuals can switch roles throughout adulthood. Such plasticity in reproductive roles positions them as important models for social evolution. However, the limits of their individual-level plasticity have not been fully tested. We experimentally forced queens and workers of Polistes canadensis to nest alone, requiring them to express reproductive and non-reproductive characteristics simultaneously. At the behavioural level, although all isolated wasps laid eggs and foraged, ex-queens were less good than ex-workers at brood rearing. We attribute this to subtle differences in neuroplasticity. Whilst brain transcription of both ex-queens and ex-workers changed in response to the manipulation, converging on a state intermediate to that of control queens and workers, ex-queens did not up-regulate some key molecular processes required for expression of an effective worker phenotype. Our findings demonstrate that both Polistes queens and workers can exhibit behavioural, physiological and molecular plasticity, but reveal how previous life-history can impose limits to that plasticity