Verification Challenges Research Articles

A Systematic Review and Multifaceted Analysis of the Integration of Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain: Shaping the Future of Australian Higher Education

This study explores the applications and implications of blockchain technology in the Australian higher education system, focusing on its integration with artificial intelligence (AI). By addressing critical challenges in credential verification, administrative efficiency, and academic integrity, this integration aims to enhance the global competitiveness of Australian higher education institutions. A comprehensive review of 25 recent research papers quantifies the benefits, challenges, and prospects of blockchain adoption in educational settings. Our findings reveal that 52% of the reviewed papers focus on systematic reviews, 28% focus on application-based studies, and 20% combine both approaches. The keyword analysis identified 287 total words, with “blockchain” and “education” as the most prominent themes. This study highlights blockchain’s potential to improve credential management, academic integrity, administrative efficiency, and funding mechanisms in education. However, challenges such as technical implementation (24%), regulatory compliance (32%), environmental concerns (28%), and data security risks (40%) must be addressed to achieve widespread adoption. This study also discusses critical prerequisites for successful blockchain integration, including infrastructure development, staff training, regulatory harmonisation, and the incorporation of AI for personalised learning. Our research concludes that blockchain, when strategically implemented and combined with AI, has the potential to transform the Australian higher education system, significantly enhancing its integrity, efficiency, and global competitiveness.

Challenges and Solutions in Working with Green Suppliers: Perspective from a Manufacturing Industry

This study explores the challenges and solutions faced by manufacturing companies in one industry when integrating green suppliers into their supply chains. The FGD transcripts were analyzed using NVivo 12 Pro for coding and thematic analysis, which helped identify key challenges and solutions. The key challenges identified included higher procurement costs, limited availability of green materials, quality assurance issues, and difficulties in verifying green practices. Strategic solutions involve establishing partnership strategies, conducting supply chain audits, and developing clear evaluation criteria. The content analysis shows that higher procurement costs can be mitigated through strategic partnerships offering better terms and pricing stability. Diversifying the supplier base and investing in supplier development programs address the limited availability of green materials. Quality assurance is maintained through stringent controls and regular audits, while verification challenges are managed with third-party certifications and robust audits to prevent greenwashing. The SWOT analysis highlights strengths such as strategic partnerships and regular audits, opportunities like developing evaluation criteria and technological advancements, and acknowledges weaknesses and threats. This comprehensive analysis provides a nuanced understanding of the practical challenges and solutions in green supply chain management, offering a strategic framework for manufacturing companies to enhance sustainability and achieve competitive advantage.

A-358 Extended linearity studies for pO2, pCO2, K+ Cl- on GEM 5000 blood gas analyzers using a combination of verification materials

Abstract Background Blood gas analyzers (BGA) measure blood gases pO2,pCO2,O2Hb,COHb,MetHb, and several analytes in the workup and management of acid-base disorders. GEM 5000 BGA (Instrumentation Laboratory, a Werfen Company) have very broad reportable ranges for the measured analytes. However, manufacturer’s current linearity materials do not cover the entire reportable ranges claims. This poses challenge to clinical laboratories, especially for pO2 and pCO2 to comply with College of American Pathologists (CAP) requirements to verify instruments performance every six months through the entire reportable range. We evaluated secondary materials in combination with manufacturer’s primary linearity materials for pO2, pCO2, K+ and Cl- for an extended linearity verification. Methods Routine linearity studies was performed with PVP (5-levels), a primary material provided by the GEM 5000 analyzer manufacturer. Hypoxic (pO2: 5-25mmHg) and hyperbaric (pO2: 600-670mmHg) materials obtained from Eurotrol Inc. and VK-R5 linearity material (Radiometer America Inc.) for pCO2, K+ and Cl- were processed on GEM 5000. All materials at all levels were assayed in duplicate. Results from PVP, Eurotrol and VK-R5 were combined from low to high levels to assess linearity verification. Results Linearity range of 15-630mmHg with r2=0.99 was verified for pO2. Using a combination of VK-R5 with PVP, a linearity range of 14-127 mmHg (r2=0.99) for pCO2, 1.1-14.1 mmol/L (r2=1.00) for K+, and 51-153 mmol/L (r2=1.00) for Cl-were verified. See table for details. Conclusions A combination of BGA manufacturer’s primary linearity material with secondary vendors material was useful in addressing linearity verification for blood gases pO2, pCO2, and electrolytes K+Cl- over an extended range close to the manufacturer’s claims. We recommend other laboratories that experience similar BGA linearity verification challenges to consider this approach for verification of the manufacturer’s claims. It would have been very helpful if manufacturer can provide materials that cover both the lower and upper limits of their claims.

Hydro-mechanical behaviour of reinforced concrete linings in hydraulic tunnels: steady state

Existing literature covers the behaviour of reinforced concrete (RC) tunnel linings in hydraulic tunnels during filling and steady-state conditions. However, certain aspects remain insufficiently addressed, risking the under-dimensioning of structures, particularly concerning transient behaviour. This paper introduces a comprehensive analytical framework for the design of RC linings in hydraulic tunnels, clarifying conditions that lead to a water-filled gap between the lining and rock mass, significantly impacting system behaviour. The presence or absence of this gap notably affects the number of cracks in the lining, with a substantial increase in cracks when the gap is absent. Contrary to prior assumptions, the paper highlights that the cracking process of the lining is progressive and can stabilize before reaching a fully cracked state, resulting in fewer cracks. Understanding these phases is crucial for setting realistic initial conditions for transient events, particularly concerning lining stiffness. Accurate stiffness determination is essential for evaluating the lining’s response during transients and its fatigue performance. This becomes increasingly significant with the rise of pumped storage schemes for grid stabilization, posing challenges in resistance and fatigue verification of hydraulic tunnel RC linings.

On the application of RHT model and SPG algorithm for the analysis of rock cutting process

The linear cutting process in rock poses challenges for verification in field experiments, laboratory investigations, or numerical simulations. This study aims to analyze the rock cutting process and disc cutter force estimation when using linear cutting mode. Three-dimensional numerical simulations using the explicit dynamic finite element method (LS-DYNA software) are conducted to characterize the cutting process. In this regard, two computational algorithms (Lagrangian and Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH)) and two material models (Johnson-Holmquist Concrete (JHC) and Riedel-Hiermaier-Thoma (RHT)) are compared, with SPH and RHT identified as more suitable for rock cutting simulation. The results of comparative analyses show that the Lagrangian computational algorithm is highly dependent on the erosion value, hence this method is not suitable for the simulation of the rock-cutting process. Comparing to the RHT material constitutive model, the Johnson-Holmquist model does not well model the post-failure softening strain behavior, which leads to a reduction in the width of the failure area. The comparative analyses also show that the normal and rolling forces predicted by the JHC model are well over 30% higher than the actual experimental results, while the RHT model shows a good agreement between the predictions and the actual results. Overall, the RHT material model with the use of the SPH computational algorithm shows a very good combination in rock cutting process simulation.

Host Gut-Derived Probiotic, Exiguobacterium acetylicum G1-33, Improves Growth, Immunity, and Resistance to Vibrio harveyi in Hybrid Grouper (Epinephelus fuscoguttatus ♀ × Epinephelus lanceolatus ♂).

Several exogenous probiotics are applicable in fish culture; however, challenges in isolation and verification have hindered the full utilization of numerous host probiotics. Therefore, this study aimed to apply the host probiotic Exiguobacterium acetylicum G1-33 to hybrid grouper (Epinephelus fuscoguttatus ♀ × Epinephelus lanceolatus ♂) cultures and explore its mechanism of action. In total, 360 hybrid grouper were divided into four groups, which were fed the following for 60 days: three received commercial feed with varying concentrations of E. acetylicum G1-33 (106, 108, and 1010 CFU/g), while a control group received commercial feed. The results showed that supplementation with 106 and 108 CFU/g of E. acetylicum G1-33 enhanced gut morphology, upregulated growth-related genes (ghr1, igf-2, s6k1, tor), and promoted growth, with supplementation with 108 CFU/g resulting in the most notable enhancement. However, supplementation with 1010 CFU/g inhibited growth, possibly because of changes in intestinal morphology. Additionally, supplementation with E. acetylicum G1-33 upregulated the expression of immune-related genes (c3, myd88, Cu/Zn-sod, tlr3, and tnf2) in the liver and head kidney but led to an increase in malondialdehyde content, as well as a decrease in alkaline phosphatase and acid phosphatase activities, in the liver and serum, indicating increased oxidative stress. Moreover, supplementation with 106 and 108 CFU/g E. acetylicum G1-33 enhanced the widespread expression of immune-related genes in the head kidney and liver, respectively, and improved resistance to Vibrio harveyi, whereas supplementation with 1010 CFU/g weakened this resistance. In conclusion, E. acetylicum G1-33, particularly at 108 CFU/g, emerged as an effective probiotic, optimizing growth performance and immunity in hybrid grouper. This research is pioneering in its application of E. acetylicum in mariculture, potentially broadening the range of probiotic strategies in aquaculture.

Challenges of software verification: the past, the present, the future

Software verification aims to prove that a program satisfies some given properties for all its possible executions. Software evolved incredibly fast during the last century, exposing several challenges to this scientific discipline. The goal of the “Challenges of Software Verification Symposium” is to monitor the state-of-the-art in this field. In this article, we will present the evolution of software from its inception in the 1940s to today’s applications, how this exposed new challenges to software verification, and what this discipline achieved. We will then discuss how this chapter covers most of the current open challenges, the possible future software developments, and what challenges this will raise in software verification.

Numerical Calibration of the Mooring System for a Semi-Submersible Floating Wind Turbine Model

Abstract Numerical modeling of the floating offshore wind turbine (FOWT) dynamics plays a critical role at the design stage of a floating wind project. Still, there exist challenges for verification of efficient engineering models against experimental results. Recently, an experimental campaign was carried out for a 1:96 downscaled model of the OC4-DeepCWind semi-submersible platform with mooring lines made of fiber ropes and chains. Leveraging the results of this campaign, this paper focuses on the development and calibration of a numerical model for the semi-submersible platform with a focus on the dynamic responses under bichromatic waves. In the numerical model, the hydrodynamic loads are modeled based on the potential flow theory with Morison drag. The lumped mass method is applied to model the mooring system. Both free decay tests and bichromatic wave conditions are considered in the model calibration process, and key uncertain parameters (e.g., mooring line length) that affect the response have been identified and discussed. Using the proposed calibration procedure, we establish a reasonably good numerical model for prediction of the platform motion and mooring dynamics. The low-frequency responses of the platform under bichromatic waves are well-captured. These outcomes contribute to the development of efficient numerical FOWT models under experimental uncertainty.

Nomadic Virtues, Luxury, and Group Dynamics: Unveiling Complexities in Ibn Khalduns Theory Around Nomadic Population

Ibn Khalduns insights in Chapter II of Muqaddimah, explore how nomadic societies pursuit of comfort and luxury challenges traditional perceptions. While Khalduns observations shed light on the contrasting traits of sedentary and Bedouin groups, emerging archeological evidence reveals active trade engagement and incorporation of luxury among nomads. Sites like Pazyryk exemplify this, showcasing how luxury items were woven into nomadic cultures. Khalduns concept of group feeling and the interplay between environment and social organization further enrich our understanding of nomadic unity and adaptation. Despite challenges in empirical verification, Khalduns insights remain a relevant lens to examine societies, shedding light on the complex relationship between survival and luxury.

A Review on Design and Verification of Programmable UART with AXI

A Review on Design and Verification of Programmable UART with AXI

Ontology-Driven Architecture for Managing Environmental, Social, and Governance Metrics

The burgeoning significance of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics in realms such as investment decision making, corporate reporting, and risk management underscores the imperative for a robust, comprehensive solution capable of effectively capturing, representing, and analysing the multifaceted and intricate ESG data landscape. Facing the challenge of aligning with diverse standards and utilising complex datasets, organisations require robust systems for the integration of ESG metrics with traditional financial reporting. Amidst this, the evolving regulatory landscape and the demand for transparency and stakeholder engagement present significant challenges, given the lack of standardized ESG metrics in certain areas. Recently, the use of ontology-driven architectures has gained attention for their ability to encapsulate domain knowledge and facilitate integration with decision-support systems. This paper proposes a knowledge graph in the ESG metric domain to assist corporations in cataloguing and navigating ESG reporting requirements, standards, and associated data. Employing a design science methodology, we developed an ontology that serves as both a conceptual foundation and a semantic layer, fostering the creation of an interoperable ESG Metrics Knowledge Graph (ESGMKG) and its integration within operational layers. This ontology-driven approach promises seamless integration with diverse ESG data sources and reporting frameworks, while addressing the critical challenges of metric selection, alignment, and data verification, supporting the dynamic nature of ESG metrics. The utility and effectiveness of the proposed ontology were demonstrated through a case study centred on the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) framework that is widely used within the banking industry.

Understanding writing style in social media with a supervised contrastively pre-trained transformer

We introduce the Style Transformer for Authorship Representations (STAR) to detect and characterize writing style in social media. The model is trained on a heterogeneous large corpus derived from public sources with 4.5⋅106 authored texts from 70k authors leveraging Supervised Contrastive Loss to minimize the distance between texts authored by the same individual. This pretext pre-training task yields competitive performance at zero-shot with PAN challenges on attribution and clustering. We attain promising results on PAN verification challenges using STAR as a feature extractor. Finally, we present results from our test partition on Reddit, where using a support base of 8 documents of 512 tokens, we can discern authors from sets of up to 1616 authors with at least 80% accuracy. We share our pre-trained model at huggingface AIDA-UPM/star and our code is available at jahuerta92/star.

Challenges of Operational Weather Forecast Verification and Evaluation

Abstract Operational agencies face significant challenges related to the verification and evaluation of weather forecasts. These challenges were investigated in a series of online workshops and polls engaging operational personnel from six countries. Five key themes emerged: inadequate verification approaches for both existing and emerging products; incomplete and uncertain observations; difficulties in accurately capturing users’ real-world experiences using simplified metrics; poor communication and understanding of forecasts and complex verification information; and institutional factors such as limited resources, evolving meteorologist roles, and concerns over reputational damage. We identify nearly 50 operationally relevant scientific questions and suggest calls to action. Addressing these needs includes designing forecast systems with verification as a central consideration, enhancing the availability of observations, and developing and adopting community software systems. Additionally, we propose the establishment of an international community comprising environmental and social science researchers, statisticians, verification practitioners, and users to provide sustained support for this collective endeavor.

Statistical Methods for Detecting Recycled Electronics: From ICs to PCBs and Beyond

<italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Globalization of semiconductor industry has led to unprecedented challenges in design, verification, test, security and trustworthiness of contemporary electronics. With parts sourced from various suppliers across the globe, who are beyond the auspices of the original designers and system integrators, serious concerns arise regarding integrity and trustworthiness of electronic circuits, which can be compromised by malicious actors at any stage of the component manufacturing and system assembly process. Among the variety of such concerns, recycled electronics sold as new by malicious suppliers/vendors pose a key threat to mission-critical end applications such as military systems, financial institutions, transportation security, and poser distribution infrastructure. Recycled electronics may experience performance degradation due to aging and, more importantly, may have shorter-than-expected lifetime, thereby raising serious reliability and safety issues. To combat this problem, statistical methods have been proposed in the past decade as a time-efficient and cost-effective approach to identify recycled electronics sold as new. Initially demonstrating in the context of detecting recycled Integrated Circuits (ICs), such methods are based on using statistics and machine learning to outline the parametric signatures of known brand-new ICs and, thereby, weed out ICs that do not fit the expected profile. This article summarizes the current state of knowledge in recycled IC detection schemes and discusses how these methods have inspired, over time, the development of similar solutions in a plethora of domains, including identification of recycled Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), recycled hardware components in a network, and recycled Static Random-Access Memories (SRAMs)/Flash memories</i> .

Coupling of Heteroatom Dopants and Intrinsic Carbon Defects for High‐Efficiency Electrocatalytic Oxygen Reduction

AbstractDefective engineering of carbon, including introduction of heteroatom dopants and creation of intrinsic carbon defects, to alter the surface electronic/spin state of the carbon matrix has become a vital research area of carbon‐based catalysts toward oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). When the heteroatom dopants and carbon intrinsic defects in the carbon matrix are spatially close enough, they could couple each other and synergistically endow the active centers with special electronic structures that might greatly enhance the ORR catalytic activities of the carbon‐based catalysts. In this concept, we propose a conceptual idea of coupling sites composed of heteroatom dopants and intrinsic carbon defects, systematically summarize the types of the coupling sites and their synergistic mechanisms for catalyzing the ORR, and present feasible ideas and major challenges for efficient construction and verification of the coupling sites. This concept might be enlightening for in‐depth studies on the design, construction, and understanding the structure‐activity relationship of high‐efficiency active sites in the carbon‐based catalysts.

NFTs for the Issuance and Validation of Academic Information That Complies with the GDPR

The issuance and verification of academic certificates face significant challenges in the digital era. The proliferation of counterfeit credentials and the lack of a reliable, universally accepted system for issuing and validating them pose critical issues in the educational domain. Certificates, traditionally issued by centralized educational institutions using their proprietary systems, pose challenges for straightforward verification, generating uncertainty about the credibility of academic achievements. In addition to diplomas issued by academic entities, it is now necessary in virtually all professional fields to stay updated and obtain accreditation for certain skills or experiences, which is a determining factor in securing or enhancing employment. Yet, there is no platform available to consistently demonstrate these capabilities and experiences. This article introduces a novel model for issuing and verifying academic information using non-fungible tokens (NFTs) supported by blockchain technologies, focused on compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). It describes a model that grants control to the data subject, enabling the management of information access while adhering to key GDPR principles. Simultaneously, it remains compatible with existing systems within organizations, and is flexible in certifying various types of academic information. The implications of this model are discussed, emphasizing the importance of addressing privacy in blockchain-based applications.

Keystroke Verification Challenge (KVC): Biometric and Fairness Benchmark Evaluation

Keystroke Verification Challenge (KVC): Biometric and Fairness Benchmark Evaluation

Voice Cloning Using Transfer Learning with Audio Samples

Voice cloning refers to the artificial replication of a certain human voice. Several deep learning approaches were studied for voice cloning. After studying learning approaches, a cloning system was offered that creates natural-sounding audio samples within few seconds of source speech from the target speaker. From a speaker verification challenge to text-to-speech synthesis with multi-speaker capability, the current study used a transfer learning technique. In a zero-shot mode, this system creates speech sounds in the voices of various speakers, even individuals who were not seen during the training process. The current study used latent embedding’s to encode speaker-specific information, enabling additional model parameters to be pooled across all speakers. The speaker modelling stage was separated from voice synthesis by training a discrete speaker-discriminative encoder network. This is because networks require distinct types of input, disconnection enables each to be trained using separate datasets. When employed for zero-shot adaptability to unknown speakers, an embedding-based technique for voice cloning enhances speaker resemblance. Furthermore, it reduces computational resource needs which may be advantageous for use-cases requiring minimal resource deployment.

Formula omitted]: A template to build verified thread-local interfaces with software scheduler abstractions

This paper presents ThreadAbs, an extension of the layer-based software formal verification toolkit CCAL (Gu et al., 2018). ThreadAbs is specifically designed to provide better expressiveness and proof management for thread abstraction in multithreaded libraries. Thread abstraction isolates the behavior of each thread from others when providing a top-level formal specification for software. Compared to the original CCAL, ThreadAbs offers significant improvements in this regard.CCAL is a verification framework that enables a layered approach to building certified software, as demonstrated by multiple examples (Gu et al. 2016; Li et al. 2021; Shin et al. 2019). Obviously, its main targets usually include multithread libraries, which support significant improvement in the utilization and isolation of system resources. However, it poses new challenges for formal verification. Firstly, it requires a sudden change in the granularity of concurrency during the implementation and verification of the target software. Typically, systems are associated with software schedulers that are built on top of several underlying components in the system (e.g., thread spawn, yield, sleep, and wake-up). Due to the software scheduler, these systems can be divided into low-level components consisting of modules that the software scheduler depends on (e.g., allocators for shared resources and scheduling queues) and high-level components that use software schedulers (e.g., condition variables, semaphores, and IPCs). Therefore, software formal verification on those systems has to provide proper method to deal with those distinct features, which is usually abstracting other threads’ behavior as much as possible to provide an independent thread model and its formal specification. Secondly, it requires handling side effects from other threads, such as dynamic resource allocation from parents with proper isolation of all threads from each other.CCAL has limited support for two crucial aspects of formal verification in multithreaded systems. Firstly, its previous thread abstraction method does not handle the side effects caused by a parent thread during dynamic initial state allocation properly. Secondly, the proofs produced by CCAL are tied to CertiKOS, which makes it challenging to use them for similar proofs that use CCAL as their verification toolkit. To address these issues, we introduce ThreadAbs, a new mechanized methodology that provides proper thread abstraction to reason about multithreaded programs in conjunction with CCAL. We also extend the previous CertiKOS proof with ThreadAbs to demonstrate its usability and expressiveness.

Challenges in Early Verification and Validation of System Requirements

ABSTRACTToday, requirements engineering (RE) is a key process in the development of complex systems‐(ISO/IEC/IEEE 2015). Requirements containing quality issues such as ambiguity or inconsistency can lead to late error detection in systems design, resulting in high project cost overruns. This paper presents challenges for early system requirements verification and validation associated to an executable model‐based requirements engineering (eMBRE) process proposal.