@article{GrafLambsdorffGiamatteiWerneretal.2018, author = {Graf Lambsdorff, Johann and Giamattei, Marcus and Werner, Katharina and Schubert, Manuel}, title = {Team reasoning - Experimental evidence on cooperation from centipede games}, series = {PloS ONE}, volume = {13}, journal = {PloS ONE}, number = {11}, publisher = {PLOS}, address = {San Francisco}, issn = {1932-6203}, doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0206666}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-5913}, year = {2018}, abstract = {Previous laboratory studies on the centipede game have found that subjects exhibit surprisingly high levels of cooperation. Across disciplines, it has recently been highlighted that these high levels of cooperation might be explained by "team reasoning", the willingness to think as a team rather than as an individual. We run an experiment with a standard centipede game as a baseline. In two treatments, we seek to induce team reasoning by making a joint goal salient. First, we implement a probabilistic variant of the centipede game that makes it easy to identify a joint goal. Second, we frame the game as a situation where a team of two soccer players attempts to score a goal. This frame increases the salience even more. Compared to the baseline, our treatments induce higher levels of cooperation. In a second experiment, we obtain similar evidence in a more natural environment-a beer garden during the 2014 FIFA Soccer World Cup. Our study contributes to understanding how a salient goal can support cooperation.}, subject = {Spieltheorie}, language = {en} } @misc{OPUS4-1404, title = {Negotiating Chinese infrastructures of modern mobilities : insights from Southeast Asia}, number = {16(2) 2023}, editor = {Rowedder, Simon and Wilcox, Phill and Brandtst{\"a}dter, Susanne}, publisher = {SEAS - Society fo South-East Asian Studies}, address = {Wien}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-14049}, pages = {175 -- 314}, year = {2023}, abstract = {From transportation to urbanization, energy and digitalization, China-backed projects of infrastructural development are increasingly common throughout Southeast Asia and the global South as both a means and outcome of development. This trend has accelerated since China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013. Against this backdrop, the present ASEAS issue invites to rethink the roles infrastructure plays in forms of development that place connectivity at the center. Contents: Simon Rowedder, Phill Wilcox \& Susanne Brandtst{\"a}dter Negotiating Chinese Infrastructures of Modern Mobilities: Insights from Southeast Asia Current Research on Southeast Asia Panitda Saiyarod The Deviated Route: Navigating the Logistical Power Landscape of the Mekong Border Trade Franziska S. Nicolaisen The Politicization of Mobility Infrastructures in Vietnam — The Hanoi Metro Project at the Nexus of Urban Development, Fragmented Mobilities, and National Security Arratee Ayuttacorn Chinese Investor Networks and the Politics of Infrastructure Projects in the Eastern Economic Corridor in Thailand Karin Dean Belt and Road Initiative in Northern Myanmar: The Local World of China's Global Investments Mira K{\"a}k{\"o}nen Entangled Enclaves: Dams, Volatile Rivers, and Chinese Infrastructural Engagement in Cambodia Research Workshop Tim Oakes Infrastructure Power, Circulation and Suspension Susanne Brandtst{\"a}dter Infrastructural Fragility, Infra-Politics and Jianghu Book Reviews Michael Kleinod-Freudenberg Book Review: Tappe, O., \& Rowedder, S. (Eds.). (2022). Extracting Development: Contested Resource Frontiers in Mainland Southeast Asia}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Le2022, author = {Le, Mirjam}, title = {The Peri-urban City: Cargo Cult Urbanism, Porosity and an Emerging Urban Citizenship in Vietnamese Secondary Cities}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-14097}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Passau}, pages = {xiii, 241 Seiten}, year = {2022}, abstract = {The impact of urban development on local residents in the urban periphery oscillates between processes of empowerment and processes of marginalization as well as between state-controlled order and decentralized self-organization. Consequently local authorities, including urban planners and local residents need to negotiate their respective roles in the production and usage of urban space defined by transition, transformation and ambiguity. Therefore, this work examines the underlying patterns, interactions and structures which define the negotiation of state-society relations in the framework of a porous peri-urban landscape in Vietnam's secondary cities. In Chapter 1, peri-urban areas are defined as space of transformation where pattern of rural land use are intertwined with pattern of urban land use to create an urban-rural interface with blurred boundaries. The main characteristic of the spatial pattern in Tam Kỳ and Bu{\^o}n Ma Thuột is rooted urban porosity leading to the spatial intertwining of rural, peri-urban and urban spaces. The emerging urban landscape can be defined as peri-urban city. Three main themes define this peri-urban city beyond porosity: (1) processes of transformation creating the peri-urban city, (2) networks of power and control as means to adapt to these transformations and (3) mobility as prerequisite for ability to benefit from the changing landscape in peri-urban cities. Chapter 2 describes how state authorities, urban planners and private investors at the local level in Tam Kỳ and Bu{\^o}n Ma Thuột use porous space to reproduce the city based on their aspirations. This leads to a cargo cult urbanism, where urban planning is rooted in future aspirations for the city. Plans and construction efforts reference the image of a modern urban future and produce the image of a city, which does not exists in the real urban space of Tam Kỳ and Bu{\^o}n Ma Thuột. In the meantime, practices based in peri-urban space are often contradictory to the official aspirations of local state authorities Chapter 3 explores this emerging divergence between the aspired urban space by the state and the reality of urban space rooted in material and social porosity. Traditional, newly accessible and environmental porosity provide an array of accessible space which transforms the peri-urban city into a social arena of encounters and interaction. Consequently, porosity enables local residents to maintain urban space as commons. This counters the push towards the privatization of urban space by state and private actors and creates multiple aspirations for the urban future. Rooted in urban space as commons, porosity enables the usage of peri-urban space as spaces of resistance as discussed in Chapter 4. Mobility and interaction are means of reproduction in the porous ambiguity of urban materiality but also become means of everyday resistance. The emerging spatialities of emancipation provide opportunities for an emerging urban citizenship. Urban materiality and urban citizenship have a mutually constitutive relationship.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Bermeitinger2024, author = {Bermeitinger, Bernhard}, title = {Investigating a Second-Order Optimization Strategy for Neural Networks}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-14087}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Passau}, pages = {xv, 59 Seiten}, year = {2024}, abstract = {In summary, this cumulative dissertation investigates the application of the conjugate gradient method CG for the optimization of artificial neural networks (NNs) and compares this method with common first-order optimization methods, especially the stochastic gradient descent (SGD). The presented research results show that CG can effectively optimize both small and very large networks. However, the default machine precision of 32 bits can lead to problems. The best results are only achieved in 64-bits computations. The research also emphasizes the importance of the initialization of the NNs' trainable parameters and shows that an initialization using singular value decomposition (SVD) leads to drastically lower error values. Surprisingly, shallow but wide NNs, both in Transformer and CNN architectures, often perform better than their deeper counterparts. Overall, the research results recommend a re-evaluation of the previous preference for extremely deep NNs and emphasize the potential of CG as an optimization method.}, language = {en} } @article{NarhWehnerUngruheetal., author = {Narh, John and Wehner, Stefanie and Ungruhe, Christian and Eberth, Andreas}, title = {The role of translocal practices in a natural climate solution in Ghana}, series = {Climate}, volume = {2023}, journal = {Climate}, number = {11}, publisher = {MDPI}, address = {Basel}, doi = {10.3390/cli11110216}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-14138}, pages = {16 Seiten}, abstract = {People-centred reforestation is one of the ways to achieve natural climate solutions. Ghana has established a people-centred reforestation programme known as the Modified Taunya System (MTS) where local people are assigned degraded forest reserves to practice agroforestry. Given that the MTS is a people-centred initiative, socioeconomic factors are likely to have impact on the reforestation drive. This study aims to understand the role of translocal practices of remittances and visits by migrants on the MTS. Using multi-sited, sequential explanatory mixed methods and the lens of socioecological systems, the study shows that social capital and socioeconomic obligations of cash remittances from, as well as visits by migrants to their communities of origin play positive roles on reforestation under the MTS. Specifically, translocal households have access to, and use remittances to engage relatively better in the MTS than households that do not receive remittances. This shows that translocal practices can have a positive impact on the environment at the area of origin of migrants where there are people-centred environmental policies in place.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Klaus2019, author = {Klaus, Tina}, title = {Complexity Analysis of Quantizations of Multidimensional Stochastic Differential Equations}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-7665}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Passau}, pages = {iv, 166 Seiten}, year = {2019}, abstract = {The dissertation is located in the field of quantizations of certain stochastic processes, namely a solution X of a multidimensional stochastic differential equation (SDE). The quantization problem for X consists in approximating X by a a random element which takes only finitely many values. Our main interest lies in the investigation of the asymptotic behavior of the Nth minimal quantization error of X as N tends to infinity, which incorporates the determination of both the sharp rate of convergence and explicit asymptotic constants. Especially explicit asymptotic constants have been so far unknown in the context of multidimensional SDEs. Furthermore, as part of our analysis, we provide a method which yields a strongly asymptotically optimal sequence of N-quantization of X. In certain special cases our method is fully constructive and the algorithm is easy to implement.}, subject = {Stochastische Differentialgleichung}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Awwad2018, author = {Awwad, Tarek}, title = {Context-Aware Worker Selection For Efficient Quality Control In Crowdsourcing}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-7409}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Passau}, pages = {106 Seiten}, year = {2018}, abstract = {In the last decade, crowdsourcing has proved its ability to address large scale data collection tasks, such as labeling large data sets, at a low cost and in a short time. However, the performance and behavior variability between workers as well as the variability in task designs and contents, induce an unevenness in the quality of the produced contributions and, thus, in the final output quality. In order to maintain the effectiveness of crowdsourcing, it is crucial to control the quality of the contributions. Furthermore, maintaining the efficiency of crowdsourcing requires the time and cost overhead related to the quality control to be at its lowest. While effective, current quality control techniques such as contribution aggregation, worker selection, context-specific reputation systems, and multi-step workflows, suffer from fairly high time and budget overheads and from their dependency on prior knowledge about individual workers. In this thesis, we address this challenge by leveraging the similarity between completed and incoming tasks as well as the correlation between the worker declarative profiles and their performance in previous tasks in order to perform an efficient task-aware worker selection. To this end, we propose CAWS (Context AwareWorker Selection) method which operates in two phases; in an offline phase, completed tasks are clustered into homogeneous groups for each of which the correlation with the workers declarative profile is learned. Then, in the online phase, incoming tasks are matched to one of the existing clusters and the correspondent, previously inferred profile model is used to select the most reliable online workers for the given task. Using declarative profiles helps eliminate any probing process, which reduces the time and the budget while maintaining the crowdsourcing quality. Furthermore, the set of completed tasks, when compared to a probing task split, provides a larger corpus from which a more precise profile model can be learned. This translates to a better selection quality, especially for harder tasks. In order to evaluate CAWS, we introduce CrowdED (Crowdsourcing Evaluation Dataset), a rich dataset to evaluate quality control methods and quality-driven task vectorization and clustering. The generation of CrowdED relies on a constrained sampling approach that allows to produce a task corpus which respects both, the budget and type constraints. Beside helping in evaluating CAWS, and through its generality and richness, CrowdED helps in plugging the benchmarking gap present in the crowdsourcing quality control community. Using CrowdED, we evaluate the performance of CAWS in terms of the quality of the worker selection and in terms of the achieved time and budget reduction. Results shows the following: first, automatic grouping is able to achieve a learning quality similar to job-based grouping. And second, CAWS is able to outperform the state-of-the-art profile-based worker selection when it comes to quality. This is especially true when strong budget and time constraints are present on the requester side. Finally, we complement our work by a software contribution consisting of an open source framework called CREX (CReate Enrich eXtend). CREX allows the creation, the extension and the enrichment of crowdsourcing datasets. It provides the tools to vectorize, cluster and sample a task corpus to produce constrained task sets and to automatically generate custom crowdsourcing campaign sites.}, subject = {Qualit{\"a}tssicherung}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Wahl2019, author = {Wahl, Florian}, title = {Methods for monitoring the human circadian rhythm in free-living}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-7607}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Passau}, pages = {vi, 123 Seiten}, year = {2019}, abstract = {Our internal clock, the circadian clock, determines at which time we have our best cognitive abilities, are physically strongest, and when we are tired. Circadian clock phase is influenced primarily through exposure to light. A direct pathway from the eyes to the suprachiasmatic nucleus, where the circadian clock resides, is used to synchronise the circadian clock to external light-dark cycles. In modern society, with the ability to work anywhere at anytime and a full social agenda, many struggle to keep internal and external clocks synchronised. Living against our circadian clock makes us less efficient and poses serious health impact, especially when exercised over a long period of time, e.g. in shift workers. Assessing circadian clock phase is a cumbersome and uncomfortable task. A common method, dim light melatonin onset testing, requires a series of eight saliva samples taken in hourly intervals while the subject stays in dim light condition from 5 hours before until 2 hours past their habitual bedtime. At the same time, sensor-rich smartphones have become widely available and wearable computing is on the rise. The hypothesis of this thesis is that smartphones and wearables can be used to record sensor data to monitor human circadian rhythms in free-living. To test this hypothesis, we conducted research on specialised wearable hardware and smartphones to record relevant data, and developed algorithms to monitor circadian clock phase in free-living. We first introduce our smart eyeglasses concept, which can be personalised to the wearers head and 3D-printed. Furthermore, hardware was integrated into the eyewear to recognise typical activities of daily living (ADLs). A light sensor integrated into the eyeglasses bridge was used to detect screen use. In addition to wearables, we also investigate if sleep-wake patterns can be revealed from smartphone context information. We introduce novel methods to detect sleep opportunity, which incorporate expert knowledge to filter and fuse classifier outputs. Furthermore, we estimate light exposure from smartphone sensor and weather in- formation. We applied the Kronauer model to compare the phase shift resulting from head light measurements, wrist measurements, and smartphone estimations. We found it was possible to monitor circadian phase shift from light estimation based on smartphone sensor and weather information with a weekly error of 32±17min, which outperformed wrist measurements in 11 out of 12 participants. Sleep could be detected from smartphone use with an onset error of 40±48 min and wake error of 42±57 min. Screen use could be detected smart eyeglasses with 0.9 ROC AUC for ambient light intensities below 200lux. Nine clusters of ADLs were distinguished using Gaussian mixture models with an average accuracy of 77\%. In conclusion, a combination of the proposed smartphones and smart eyeglasses applications could support users in synchronising their circadian clock to the external clocks, thus living a healthier lifestyle.}, subject = {Tagesrhythmus}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Kronawitter2019, author = {Kronawitter, Stefan}, title = {Automatic Performance Optimization of Stencil Codes}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-7618}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Passau}, pages = {xiii, 130 Seiten}, year = {2019}, abstract = {A widely used class of codes are stencil codes. Their general structure is very simple: data points in a large grid are repeatedly recomputed from neighboring values. This predefined neighborhood is the so-called stencil. Despite their very simple structure, stencil codes are hard to optimize since only few computations are performed while a comparatively large number of values have to be accessed, i.e., stencil codes usually have a very low computational intensity. Moreover, the set of optimizations and their parameters also depend on the hardware on which the code is executed. To cut a long story short, current production compilers are not able to fully optimize this class of codes and optimizing each application by hand is not practical. As a remedy, we propose a set of optimizations and describe how they can be applied automatically by a code generator for the domain of stencil codes. A combination of a space and time tiling is able to increase the data locality, which significantly reduces the memory-bandwidth requirements: a standard three-dimensional 7-point Jacobi stencil can be accelerated by a factor of 3. This optimization can target basically any stencil code, while others are more specialized. E.g., support for arbitrary linear data layout transformations is especially beneficial for colored kernels, such as a Red-Black Gauss-Seidel smoother. On the one hand, an optimized data layout for such kernels reduces the bandwidth requirements while, on the other hand, it simplifies an explicit vectorization. Other noticeable optimizations described in detail are redundancy elimination techniques to eliminate common subexpressions both in a sequence of statements and across loop boundaries, arithmetic simplifications and normalizations, and the vectorization mentioned previously. In combination, these optimizations are able to increase the performance not only of the model problem given by Poisson's equation, but also of real-world applications: an optical flow simulation and the simulation of a non-isothermal and non-Newtonian fluid flow.}, subject = {Optimierung}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Bidler2019, author = {Bidler, Margarita}, title = {Consumers' Privacy-Related Decision-Making in the Digital Landscape}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-7996}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Passau}, pages = {XV, 169 Seiten}, year = {2019}, abstract = {Nowadays, consumers are often required to disclose private data in various contexts such as while surfing the internet, downloading a mobile application, or engaging in a business relationship with a firm. Privacy-related decision-making research has so far mainly investigated data disclosure as a cognitive risk-benefit trade-off analysis. While this cognitive approach might be appropriate for situations where consumers have the opportunity for cognitive evaluations, there are many situations in the modern landscape where consumers cannot or do not want to engage in cognitive processing. Decision-making under stress or data disclosure to a business network of collaborating firms, for example, constitute challenges to purely cognitive decision-making approaches, calling for an extension of the established paradigm of cognitive privacy-related decision making. This dissertation advocates for the crucial role of affective processing in many modern data disclosure situations, where consumers do not engage in purely cognitive processing due to external hindrances or a lack of personal involvement in the data disclosure situation.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Stoffer2019, author = {Stoffer, Torben}, title = {Service Provisions and Business Relationships in the Digital Era - Four Essays in the B2B Context}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-7558}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Passau}, pages = {v, 99 Seiten}, year = {2019}, abstract = {Digitalization has fundamentally changed how services are provided and how service providers and their customers interact with each other in the business-to-business (B2B) context. Against the backdrop of these developments, this thesis considers - in four essays - the changes brought about by both service and sales digitalization. Each essay investigates for one research topic the aspects of existing knowledge regarding non-digital services and/or sales which can be transferred to digital services and sales and which aspects must be adjusted. The aim is to support B2B firms that offer or receive services or plan to do so in the future which cope with the challenges of service and sales digitalization. In doing so, the first and second essay investigate the contingency effect of service digitalization on service characteristics from the provider and customer views, respectively. Both essays aim at explaining service value as an endogenous variable. In the first essay, service modularity and service flexibility are considered as predecessors that help explain service value. The second essay investigates the effect of customer cocreation on service value. Whereas the first and second essay focus on service characteristics, the third and fourth essay focus on business relationships. Both essays explain relational conflict, one important facet of business relationships, as the endogenous variable and consider the perspectives of both providers and customers. The third essay elaborates on the diverging effect of service digitalization on relational conflict from these two perspectives. The fourth essay incorporates both service and sales digitalization and investigates the contingency effects of the two forms of digitalization on the relationship between coercive power use and relational conflict. In conclusion, this thesis provides a more fine-grained view on the construct digitalization by differentiating explicitly between service digitalization and sales digitalization and introduces a new conceptualization of service (see all four essays) and sales digitalization (see the fourth essay) by treating digitalization as a continuum. Furthermore, this thesis investigates the opportunities and challenges brought about by digitalization. In particular, the first and second essays show the opportunities service digitalization creates for providers, who could benefit from service modularity, and customers, who could benefit from the integration of their own resources into service provisions. In addition, the third essay shows that for providers service digitalization has a positive and for customers contrarily a negative effect on relation conflict. The fourth essay shows that sales and service digitalization positively moderate the effect of coercive power use on relational conflict for weaker parties in business relationships (except for weaker providers) but not for stronger parties. In sum, this thesis contributes to a better understanding of the consequences of service and sales digitalization and provides recommendations for companies facing challenges and decisions related to this development.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Luzsa2019, author = {Luzsa, Robert}, title = {A Psychological and Empirical Investigation of the Online Echo Chamber Phenomenon}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-7419}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Passau}, pages = {147 Seiten}, year = {2019}, abstract = {In the public debate it is often assumed that communication in so-called "Echo Chambers" - online structures in which like-minded people share mostly messages that confirm their mutual, shared attitudes - can lead to negative outcomes such as increased societal polarization between groups holding opposing beliefs. This thesis aimed to examine this assumption from a psychological perspective and substantiate it empirically. First, based on existing research and psychological theories, a working definition of Echo Chambers was formulated, that highlights two key factors: Selective Exposure to attitudinally congruent messages and communication in homogeneous networks. Then, three studies were conducted to test links between these factors and two individual-level outcomes that are associated to subjects' actual behavior: Their False Consensus, that is, how strongly subjects perceive the public in agreement with their own attitudes, and their Intergroup Bias, which reflects to which degree subjects' identify as members of an in-group that is in conflict with negatively perceived out-groups. The studies employed questionnaire-based, experimental, as well as real-word data driven approaches. Overall, they confirm that exposure to Echo Chamber-like online structures can indeed lead to a more favorably distorted perception of public opinions and to more signs of Intergroup Bias in subjects' communicational style. Thus, the thesis provides first psychologically founded empirical evidence for effects of online Echo Chamber exposure on behavior-related individual-level outcomes. The results can serve as a basis for further research as well as for the discussion of possible strategies to counter negative effects of online Echo Chambers.}, subject = {Falscher Konsensus-Effekt}, language = {en} } @inproceedings{BergerReiserSousaetal.2019, author = {Berger, Christian and Reiser, Hans P. and Sousa, Jo{\~a}o and Bessani, Alysson}, title = {Resilient Wide-Area Byzantine Consensus Using Adaptive Weighted Replication}, series = {38th IEEE International Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems (SRDS 2019)}, booktitle = {38th IEEE International Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems (SRDS 2019)}, publisher = {IEEE Xplore}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-7537}, pages = {10 Seiten}, year = {2019}, abstract = {In geo-replicated systems, the heterogeneous latencies of connections between replicas limit the system's ability to achieve fast consensus. State machine replication (SMR) protocols can be refined for their deployment in wide-area networks by using a weighting scheme for active replication that employs additional replicas and assigns higher voting power to faster replicas. Utilizing more variability in quorum formation allows replicas to swifter proceed to subsequent protocol stages, thus decreasing consensus latency. However, if network conditions vary during the system's lifespan or faults occur, the system needs a solution to autonomously adjust to new conditions. We incorporate the idea of self-optimization into geographically distributed, weighted replication by introducing AWARE, an automated and dynamic voting weight tuning and leader positioning scheme. AWARE measures replica-replica latencies and uses a prediction model, thriving to minimize the system's consensus latency. In experiments using different Amazon EC2 regions, AWARE dynamically optimizes consensus latency by self-reliantly finding a fast weight configuration yielding latency gains observed by clients located across the globe.}, language = {en} } @inproceedings{BergerReiser2018, author = {Berger, Christian and Reiser, Hans P.}, title = {Scaling Byzantine Consensus: A Broad Analysis}, series = {SERIAL'18 Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Scalable and Resilient Infrastructures for Distributed Ledgers}, booktitle = {SERIAL'18 Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Scalable and Resilient Infrastructures for Distributed Ledgers}, publisher = {ACM}, address = {New York, NY, USA}, isbn = {978-1-4503-6110-1}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-7526}, pages = {6 Seiten}, year = {2018}, abstract = {Blockchains and distributed ledger technology (DLT) that rely on Proof-of-Work (PoW) typically show limited performance. Several recent approaches incorporate Byzantine fault-tolerant (BFT) consensus protocols in their DLT design as Byzantine consensus allows for increased performance and energy efficiency, as well as it offers proven liveness and safety properties. While there has been a broad variety of research on BFT consensus protocols over the last decades, those protocols were originally not intended to scale for a large number of nodes. Thus, the quest for scalable BFT consensus was initiated with the emerging research interest in DLT. In this paper, we first provide a broad analysis of various optimization techniques and approaches used in recent protocols to scale Byzantine consensus for large environments such as BFT blockchain infrastructures. We then present an overview of both efforts and assumptions made by existing protocols and compare their solutions.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Lachat2024, author = {Lachat, Paul}, title = {Detecting Inference Attacks Involving Sensor Data}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-14149}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Passau}, pages = {xiii, 141 Seiten}, year = {2024}, abstract = {The collection of personal information by organizations has become increasingly essential for social interactions. Nevertheless, according to the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), the organizations have to protect collected data. Access Control (AC) mechanisms are traditionally used to secure information systems against unauthorized access to sensitive data. The increased availability of personal sensor data, thanks to IoT-oriented applications, motivates new services to offer insights about individuals. Consequently, data mining algorithms have been proposed to infer personal insights from collected sensor data. Although they can be used for genuine purposes, attackers can leverage those outcomes, combining them with other type of data, and further breaching individuals' privacy. Thus, bypassing AC mechanisms thanks to such insights is a concrete problem. We propose an inference detection system based on the analysis of queries issued on a sensor database. The knowledge obtained through these queries, and the inference channels corresponding to the use of data mining algorithms on sensor data to infer individual information, are described using Raw sensor data based Inference ChannEl Model (RICE-M). The detection is carried out by RICE-M based inference detection System (RICE-Sy). RICE-Sy considers at the time of the query, the knowledge that a user obtains via a new query and has obtained via his query history, and determines whether this is sufficient to allow that user to operate a channel. Thus, privacy protection systems can take advantage of the inferences detected by RICE-Sy, taking into account individuals' information obtained by the attackers via a database of sensors, to further protect these individuals.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Poehls2018, author = {P{\"o}hls, Henrich C.}, title = {Increasing the Legal Probative Value of Cryptographically Private Malleable Signatures}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-5823}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Passau}, pages = {540, LXXVIII Seiten}, year = {2018}, abstract = {Die Arbeit befasst sich mit der Erarbeitung von technischen Vorgaben und deren Umsetzung in kryptographisch sichere Verfahren von datenschutzfreundlichen, veränderbaren digitalen Signaturverfahren (private malleable signature schemes oder MSS) zur Erlangung möglichst hoher rechtlicher Evidenz. Im Recht werden bestimmte kryptographische Algorithmen, Schl{\"u}ssellängen und deren korrekte organisatorische Anwendungen zur Erzeugung elektronisch signierter Dokumente als rechtssicher eingestuft. Dies kann zu einer Beweiserleichterung mithilfe signierter Dokumente f{\"u}hren. So gelten nach Verordnung (EU) Nr. 910/2014 (eIDAS) qualifiziert signierte elektronische Dokumente entweder als Anscheinsbeweis der Echtheit oder ihnen wird gar eine gesetzliche Vermutung der Echtheit zuteil. Gesetzlich anerkannte technische Verfahren, die einen solch erhöhten Beweiswert erreichen, erf{\"u}llen mithilfe von Kryptographie im wesentlichen zwei Eigenschaften: Integritätsschutz (integrity), also die Erkennung der Abwesenheit von unerw{\"u}nschten Änderungen und die Zurechenbarkeit des unveränderten Dokumentes zum Signaturersteller (accountability). Hingegen ist der größte Vorteil veränderbarer digitaler Signaturverfahren (MSS) die „privacy" genannte Eigenschaft: Eine autorisierte Änderung verbirgt den vorherigen Inhalt. Des Weiteren bleibt die Signatur solange valide wie ausschliesslich autorisierte Änderungen vorgenommen werden. Wird diese Eigenschaft kryptographisch nachweislich sicher erf{\"u}llt, so spricht man von einem private malleable signature scheme. In der Arbeit werden zwei verbreitete Formen, die sogenannten redactable signature schemes (RSS) und die sanitizable signature schemes (SSS), eingehend betrachtet. Diese erlauben vielfältige Einsatzmöglichkeiten, zum Beispiel eine autorisierte spätere Veränderung zur Wahrung von Geschäftsgeheimnissen oder zum Datenschutz: Der Unterzeichner delegiert so beispielsweise {\"u}ber ein private redactable signature scheme nur das nachträgliche Schwärzen (redaction). Dies schränkt die Veränderbarkeit auf das Entfernen von Informationen ein, erlaubt aber wirksam die Wahrung des Datenschutzes oder den Schutz von (Geschäfts)geheimnissen indem diese Informationen irreversibel f{\"u}r Angreifer entfernt werden. Die kryptographische privacy Eigenschaft besagt, dass es nun nicht mehr effizient möglich ist, aus dem geschwärzten Dokument Wissen {\"u}ber die geschwärzten Informationen zu erlangen, auch und gerade nicht f{\"u}r den Signaturpr{\"u}fer. Die Arbeit geht im Kern der Frage nach, ob ein MSS sowohl die kryptographische Eigenschaft „privacy" als auch gleichzeitig die Eigenschaften „integrity" und „accountability" mit ausreichend hohen Sicherheitsniveaus erf{\"u}llen kann. Das Ziel ist es, dass ein MSS gleichzeitig ein solch ausreichend hohen Grad an Sicherheit erf{\"u}llt, dass (1) die autorisierten nachträglichen Änderungen zum Schutze von Geschäftsgeheimnissen oder personenbezogenen Daten eingesetzt werden können, und dass (2) dem Dokument, welches mit dem speziellen Signaturverfahren signiert wurde, ein erhöhter Beweiswert beigemessen werden kann. In Bezug auf letzteres stellt die Arbeit sowohl die technischen Vorgaben, welche f{\"u}r qualifizierte elektronische Signaturen (nach Verordnung (EU) Nr. 910/2014) gelten, in Bezug auf die nachträgliche Änderbarkeit dar, als auch konkrete kryptographische Eigenschaften und Verfahren um diese Vorgaben kryptographisch beweisbar zu erreichen. Insbesondere weisen veränderbare Signaturen (MSS) einen anderen Integritätsschutz als traditionelle digitale Signaturen auf: Eine signierte Nachricht darf nachträglich durch eine definierte dritte Partei in einer definierten Art modifiziert werden. Diese sogenannte autorisierte Änderung (authorized modification) kann auch ohne Kenntnis des geheimen Signaturschl{\"u}ssels des Unterzeichners durchgef{\"u}hrt werden. Bei der Verifikation der digitalen Signatur durch den Signaturpr{\"u}fer bleibt der urspr{\"u}ngliche Signierende und dessen Einwilligung zur autorisierten Änderung kryptographisch verifizierbar, auch wenn autorisierte Änderungen vorgenommen wurden. Die Arbeit umfasst folgende Bereiche: 1. Analyse der Rechtsvorgaben zur Ermittlung der rechtlich relevanten technischen Anforderungen hinsichtlich des geforderten Integritätsschutzes (integrity protection) und hinsichtlich des Schutzes von personenbezogenen Daten und (Geschäfts)geheimnissen (privacy protection), 2. Definition eines geeigneten Integritäts-Begriffes zur Beschreibung der Schutzfunktion von existierenden malleable signatures und bereits rechtlich anerkannten Signaturverfahren, 3. Harmonisierung und Analyse der kryptographischen Eigenschaften existierender malleable signature Verfahren in Hinblick auf die rechtlichen Anforderungen, 4. Entwicklung neuer und beweisbar sicherer kryptographischer Verfahren, 5. abschließende Bewertung des rechtlichen Beweiswertes (probative value) und des Datenschutzniveaus anhand der technischen Umsetzung der rechtlichen Anforderungen. Die Arbeit kommt zu dem Ergebnis, dass zunächst einmal jedwede (autorisierte wie auch unautorisierte) Änderung von einem kryptographisch sicheren malleable signature Verfahren (MSS) ebenfalls erkannt werden muss um Konformität mit Verordnung (EU) Nr. 910/2014 (eIDAS) zu erlangen. Eine solche Änderungserkennung durch die der Signaturpr{\"u}fer, ohne Zuhilfe weiterer Parteien oder Geheimnisse, die Abwesenheit von autorisierten und unautorisierten Änderungen erkennt wurde im Rahmen der Arbeit entwickelt (non-interactive public accountability (PUB)). Diese neue kryptographische Eigenschaft wurde veröffentlicht und bereits von Arbeiten Anderer aufgegriffen. Des Weiteren werden neue kryptographische Eigenschaften und redactable signature und sanitizable signature Verfahren vorgestellt, welche zusätzlich zu dieser Änderungerkennung einen starken Schutz gegen die Aufdeckung des Orginals ermöglichen. Werden geeignete Eigenschaften erf{\"u}llt so wird f{\"u}r bestimmte Fälle ein technisches Schutzniveau erzielt, welches mit klassischen Signaturen vergleichbar ist. Damit lässt sich die Kernfrage positiv beantworten: Private MSS können ein Integritätsschutzniveau erreichen, welches dem rechtlich anerkannter digitaler Signaturen technisch entspricht, aber dennoch nachträgliche Änderungen autorisieren kann, welche einen starken Schutz gegen die Wiederherstellung des Orginals ermöglichen.}, subject = {Integrit{\"a}t}, language = {en} } @article{MaletzkydeGarcia2021, author = {Maletzky de Garc{\´i}a, Martina}, title = {Bridging the state and market logics of refugee labour market inclusion - a comparative study on the inclusion activities of German professional chambers}, series = {Comparative Migration Studies}, journal = {Comparative Migration Studies}, doi = {10.1186/s40878-021-00232-6}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:101:1-2021100821553693088701}, pages = {20 Seiten}, year = {2021}, abstract = {Due to their high numbers, refugees' labour market inclusion has become an important topic for Germany in recent years. Because of a lack of research on meso-level actors' influences on labour market inclusion and the transcendent role of organizations in modern societies, the article focuses on the German professional chambers' role in the process of refugee inclusion. The study shows that professional chambers are intermediaries between economic actors, the government and refugees, which all follow their own logics and ideas of labour market inclusion (the state, the market and the community logic). The measures taken by professional chambers mainly reflect a governmental logic (to reduce refugee unemployment) combined with a market logic (to provide human resources to economic actors). A community logic (altruism) only comes into play as a rather unintended consequence of measures addressing the other two logics. The measures of two types of professional chambers are compared. Close similarities between them reveal that the organization type is of theoretical relevance to explain the type of measures organizations opt for.}, language = {en} } @article{AnagnostopoulosTeymuriSeratietal.2023, author = {Anagnostopoulos, Nikolaos Athanasios and Teymuri, Benyamin and Serati, Reza and Rasti, Mehdi}, title = {LP-MAB: Improving the Energy Efficiency of LoRaWAN Using a Reinforcement-Learning-Based Adaptive Configuration Algorithm}, series = {Sensors}, volume = {23}, journal = {Sensors}, number = {4}, editor = {Xie, Bin and Wang, Ning and Gu, Yi and Stefanidis, Angelos}, publisher = {MDPI}, address = {Basel, Switzerland}, issn = {1424-8220}, doi = {10.3390/s23042363}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-11853}, pages = {22 Seiten}, year = {2023}, abstract = {In the Internet of Things (IoT), Low-Power Wide-Area Networks (LPWANs) are designed to provide low energy consumption while maintaining a long communications' range for End Devices (EDs). LoRa is a communication protocol that can cover a wide range with low energy consumption. To evaluate the efficiency of the LoRa Wide-Area Network (LoRaWAN), three criteria can be considered, namely, the Packet Delivery Rate (PDR), Energy Consumption (EC), and coverage area. A set of transmission parameters have to be configured to establish a communication link. These parameters can affect the data rate, noise resistance, receiver sensitivity, and EC. The Adaptive Data Rate (ADR) algorithm is a mechanism to configure the transmission parameters of EDs aiming to improve the PDR. Therefore, we introduce a new algorithm using the Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) technique, to configure the EDs' transmission parameters in a centralized manner on the Network Server (NS) side, while improving the EC, too. The performance of the proposed algorithm, the Low-Power Multi-Armed Bandit (LP-MAB), is evaluated through simulation results and is compared with other approaches in different scenarios. The simulation results indicate that the LP-MAB's EC outperforms other algorithms while maintaining a relatively high PDR in various circumstances.}, language = {en} } @article{HerboldHautli‑JaniszHeueretal., author = {Herbold, Steffen and Hautli‑Janisz, Annette and Heuer, Ute and Kikteva, Zlata and Trautsch, Alexander}, title = {A large‑scale comparison of human‑written versus ChatGPT‑generated essays}, series = {Scientific Reports}, volume = {13}, journal = {Scientific Reports}, publisher = {Springer Nature}, doi = {10.1038/s41598-023-45644-9}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-13961}, pages = {11 Seiten}, abstract = {ChatGPT and similar generative AI models have attracted hundreds of millions of users and have become part of the public discourse. Many believe that such models will disrupt society and lead to significant changes in the education system and information generation. So far, this belief is based on either colloquial evidence or benchmarks from the owners of the models—both lack scientific rigor. We systematically assess the quality of AI-generated content through a large-scale study comparing human-written versus ChatGPT-generated argumentative student essays. We use essays that were rated by a large number of human experts (teachers). We augment the analysis by considering a set of linguistic characteristics of the generated essays. Our results demonstrate that ChatGPT generates essays that are rated higher regarding quality than human-written essays. The writing style of the AI models exhibits linguistic characteristics that are different from those of the human-written essays. Since the technology is readily available, we believe that educators must act immediately. We must re-invent homework and develop teaching concepts that utilize these AI models in the same way as math utilizes the calculator: teach the general concepts first and then use AI tools to free up time for other learning objectives.}, language = {en} } @article{SenglHeinke2023, author = {Sengl, Michael and Heinke, Elfi}, title = {Teaching Journalism Literacy in Schools: The Role of Media Companies as Media Educators in Germany}, series = {Media and Communication}, volume = {volume 11}, journal = {Media and Communication}, number = {issue 2}, publisher = {Cogitatio Press}, address = {Lisbon, Portugal}, doi = {10.17645/mac.v11i2.6389}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-12499}, pages = {53 -- 63}, year = {2023}, abstract = {German journalism is facing major challenges including declining circulation, funding, trust, and political allegations of spreading disinformation. Increased media literacy in the population is one way to counter these issues and their implications. This especially applies to the sub-concept of journalism literacy, focusing on the ability to consume news critically and reflectively, thus enabling democratic participation. For media companies, promoting journalism literacy seems logical for economic and altruistic reasons. However, research on German initiatives is scarce. This article presents an explorative qualitative survey of experts from seven media companies offering journalistic media education projects in German schools, focusing on the initiatives' content, structure, and motivation. Results show that initiatives primarily aim at students and teachers, offering mostly education on journalism (e.g., teaching material) and via journalism (e.g., journalistic co-production with students). While these projects mainly provide information on the respective medium and journalistic practices, dealing with disinformation is also a central goal. Most initiatives are motivated both extrinsically (e.g., reaching new audiences) and intrinsically (e.g., democratic responsibility). Despite sometimes insufficient resources and reluctant teachers, media companies see many opportunities in their initiatives: Gaining trust and creating resilience against disinformation are just two examples within the larger goal of enabling young people to be informed and opinionated members of a democratic society.}, language = {en} }