1,720,956 research outputs found
On Entropy Measures for Code Obfuscation
No full textThe purpose of this paper is to introduce a further measurement for software obfuscation, in particular observing that many
important obfuscation transformations increase the uncertainty an attacker has about the program behaviour, uncertainty modeled
by the entropy of the program traces or the nodes under execution. The transformations considered in this paper are unknown
opaque predicates insertions or unknown dispatcher insertions, where the latter are an extension of the if-else statements of
unknown opaque predicates to switch-case statements. Consequences of modeling obfuscation as an increase of entropy can be
simple guidelines to obtain potent transformations at low cost and the explanation of existing transformations effectiveness.
We present a program transformation algorithm based on the latter observations
Controlling the quality of multiple choice tests
No full textIn Italian Universities, multiple choice tests, an examination methodology particularly popular in the United States, is becoming not only an admission or vocational guidance tool, but also a form of examination within the course itself.
The University of Verona has for long been developing and utilizing complex methodologies, like item randomization and optical scanning providing automatic score conversion to process multiple choice tests . Aim of this article is to verify similar performances on the same Business Management multiple choice test, taken by three groups of students from different faculties: law, training science, and computer science. The comparison methodology is based on inductive statistics (Chi Squared tests and One-Way Anova).
This work has been one of our efforts to control the quality of the assessment services offered to the students by the Docimological Center.
No significant performance differences between the groups have been noticed: it can mean either that the students coming from the three different faculties can be considered equivalent regarding aspects of learning such as intelligence and motivation, or that the employed performance assessment test is not able to evidence any performance difference. We are aware of the current early stage status of this research, so we plan to continue it in order to keep making sure that the multiple choice tests being developed are eligible to be considered reliable ones. The long term outcomes likely to be pursued are specific reliability measurements and improved test quality.
The number of relevant performance-related variables is potentially huge. However, that has not discouraged us and has lead us to collect further variables (i.e. personal data) on dedicated questionnaires, which will probably enlighten us for future results that will be preferably obtained by mean of a multivariate statistics approach
Tre aree di studio. Confronto tra performance di un medesimo test d'esame di profitto somministrato a studenti provenienti da diverse aree di studio
No full textL'articolo riporta il confronto di prestazione al medesimo test di profitto di studenti provenienti da tre aree di studio diverse: giuridica, umanistica e scientific
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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