Context: Blockchain and AI are increasingly explored to enhance trustworthiness in software engineering (SE), particularly in supporting software evolution tasks. Method: We conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) using a predefined protocol with clear eligibility criteria to ensure transparency, reproducibility, and minimized bias, synthesizing research on blockchain-enabled trust in AI-driven SE tools and processes. Results: Most studies focus on integrating AI in SE, with only 31% explicitly addressing trustworthiness. Our review highlights six recent studies exploring blockchain-based approaches to reinforce reliability, transparency, and accountability in AI-assisted SE tasks. Conclusion: Blockchain enhances trust by ensuring data immutability, model transparency, and lifecycle accountability, including federated learning with blockchain consensus and private data verification. However, inconsistent definitions of trust and limited real-world testing remain major challenges. Future work must develop measurable, reproducible trust frameworks to enable reliable, secure, and compliant AI-driven SE ecosystems, including applications involving large language models.
Christian Jaumann, Andreas Wiedholz, Annemarie Friedrich
The scientific literature is growing rapidly, making it hard to keep track of the state-of-the-art. Systematic literature reviews (SLRs) aim to identify and evaluate all relevant papers on a topic. After retrieving a set of candidate papers, the abstract screening phase determines initial relevance. To date, abstract screening methods using large language models (LLMs) focus on binary classification settings; existing question answering (QA) based ranking approaches suffer from error propagation. LLMs offer a unique opportunity to evaluate the SLR's inclusion and exclusion criteria, yet, existing benchmarks do not provide them exhaustively. We manually extract these criteria as well as research questions for 57 SLRs, mostly in the medical domain, enabling principled comparisons between approaches. Moreover, we propose LGAR, a zero-shot LLM Guided Abstract Ranker composed of an LLM based graded relevance scorer and a dense re-ranker. Our extensive experiments show that LGAR outperforms existing QA-based methods by 5-10 pp. in mean average precision. Our code and data is publicly available.
Marta Baratto, Ivan Casanovas, Ivan Decostanzi
et al.
In this study we investigate how hierarchical structures within the Roman Catholic Church shape the ideological orientation of its leadership. The full episcopal genealogy dataset comprises over 35,000 bishops, each typically consecrated by one principal consecrator and two co-consecrators, forming a dense and historically continuous directed network of episcopal lineage. Within this broader structure, we focus on a dataset of 245 living cardinals to examine whether genealogical proximity correlates with doctrinal alignment on a broad set of theological and sociopolitical issues. We identify motifs that capture recurring patterns of lineage, such as shared consecrators or co-consecrators. In parallel, we apply natural language processing techniques to extract each cardinal's publicly stated positions on ten salient topics, including LGBTQIA+ rights, women's roles in the Church, liturgy, bioethics, priestly celibacy, and migration. Our results show that cardinals linked by specific genealogical motifs, particularly those who share the same principal consecrator, are significantly more likely to exhibit ideological similarity. We find that the influence of pope John Paul II persists through the bishops he consecrated, who demonstrate systematically more conservative views than their peers. These findings underscore the role of hierarchical mentorship in shaping ideological coherence within large-scale religious institutions. Our contribution offers quantitative evidence that institutional lineages, beyond individual background factors, may have an impact on the transmission and consolidation of doctrinal positions over time.
Industrial production processes, especially in the pharmaceutical industry, are complex systems that require continuous monitoring to ensure efficiency, product quality, and safety. This paper presents a hybrid unsupervised learning strategy (HULS) for monitoring complex industrial processes. Addressing the limitations of traditional Self-Organizing Maps (SOMs), especially in scenarios with unbalanced data sets and highly correlated process variables, HULS combines existing unsupervised learning techniques to address these challenges. To evaluate the performance of the HULS concept, comparative experiments are performed based on a laboratory batch
The inspiration behind this paper came from both authors' long-term collaboration with our friend and colleague, Professor Ralph Kenna. This connection emerged initially through his interest in Rathcroghan and in our paper, `Exploring the Nature of the Fráoch Saga', which we concluded with the statement that we believed it `presents a case that will hopefully ignite conversation between disciplines'. This led us to consider the potential value for researchers of compiling a template list of useful and reliable sources and resources to consult, in other words a type of starter toolkit or guide for any individual from an alternative discipline or background, who might possess, or, in time, develop a personal or professional interest in Early Ireland and Early Irish literature. In doing this, we decided for ease of illustration, to take the example of the location name Rathcroghan/Cruachan Aí, (the prehistoric Royal Site of Connacht in the west of Ireland and the place that we both work in and interact with on a daily basis), as a case study in order to demonstrate an initial methodological approach to not only the types of resources and information available, but also to highlight some potential pitfalls that may arise in the course of an investigation.
For the first time in detail the influence of Orthodox Christianity on the development of cosmological ideas in Ukraine. The evolution of existing models of the birth and structure of the universe at that time was investigated. The connection between Orthodox ideas and cosmological notions in Ukraine is shown. The little-known works of the first teachers of Ukrainian academies on the studied topics are analyzed. It was established that all the models of the universe were known in Ukraine, but the texts of Orthodox theologians had great authority and influence on the development of cosmological ideas.
Yousef Alhwaiti, Muhammad Ishaq, Muhammad Hameed Siddiqi
et al.
The tomato is one of the most important fruits on earth. It plays an important and useful role in the agricultural production of any country. This research propose a novel smart technique for early detection of late blight diseases in tomatoes. This work improve the dataset with an increase in images from the field (the Plant Village dataset) and proposed a hybrid algorithm composed of support vector machines (SVM) and histogram-oriented gradients (HOG) for real-time detection of late blight tomato disease. To propose a HOG-based SVM model for early detection of late blight tomato leaf disease. To check the performance of the proposed model in terms of MSE, accuracy, precision, and recall as compared to Decision Tree and KNN. The integration of advanced technology in agriculture has the potential to revolutionize the industry, making it more efficient, sustainable, and profitable. This research work on the early detection of tomato diseases contributes to the growing importance of smart farming, the need for climate-smart agriculture, the rising need to more efficiently utilize natural resources, and the demand for higher crop yields. The proposed hybrid algorithm of SVM and HOG has significant potential for the early detection of late blight disease in tomato plants. The performance of the proposed model against decision tree and KNN algorithms and the results may assist in selecting the best algorithm for future applications. The research work can help farmers make data-driven decisions to optimize crop yield and quality while also reducing the environmental impact of farming practices.
Simo Linkola, Christian Guckelsberger, Tomi Männistö
et al.
Which factors influence the human assessment of creativity exhibited by a computational system is a core question of computational creativity (CC) research. Recently, the system's embodiment has been put forward as such a factor, but empirical studies of its effect are lacking. To this end, we propose an experimental framework which isolates the effect of embodiment on the perception of creativity from its effect on creativity per se. We not only manipulate the system's embodiment, but also the perceptual evidence as the basis for the human creativity assessment. We motivate the core framework with embodiment and perceptual evidence as independent and the creative process as controlled variable, and we provide recommendations on measuring the assessment of creativity as dependent variable. We hope the framework will inspire others to study the human perception of embodied CC in a principled manner.
The Big Bang singularity in standard model cosmology suggests a program of study in 'early universe' quantum gravity phenomenology. Inflation is usually thought to undermine this program's prospects by means of a dynamical diluting argument, but such a view has recently been disputed within inflationary cosmology, in the form of a 'trans-Planckian censorship' conjecture. Meanwhile, trans-Planckian censorship has been used outside of inflationary cosmology to motivate alternative early universe scenarios that are tightly linked to ongoing theorizing in quantum gravity. Against the resulting trend toward early universe quantum gravity phenomenology within and without inflation, Ijjas and Steindhardt suggest a further alternative: a 'generalized cosmic censorship' principle. I contrast the generalized cosmic censorship principle with the logic of its namesake, the cosmic censorship conjectures. I also remark on foundational concerns in the effective field theory approach to cosmology beyond the standard model, which would be based on that principle.
Św. Hieronim znany jest jako wybitny znawca literatury antycznej i naśladowca jej znakomitych autorów, jak również klasycznego języka łacińskiego. Stosunkowo niewielkie obecnie zainteresowanie jego twórczością w gronie młodszych filologów i patrologów skłoniło Autora artykułu do ukazania walorów jego języka i stylu naśladującego znakomitych pisarzy i poetów łacińskich, przede wszystkim Cycerona. Już ukazaniem w wąskim zakresie jego wykształcenia i oczytania, pragnie Autor artykułu pobudzić chęć do poważniejszych studiów jego wcale niemałej, a często wybitnej, nie tylko pod pod względem teologicznym, ale i literackim, twórczości. Przytoczone przykłady niektórych elementów języka łacińskiego, jakim posługiwał się Św. Hieronim, budzi uznanie dla jego zdolności i wiedzy.
Early Christian literature. Fathers of the Church, etc., Philosophy of religion. Psychology of religion. Religion in relation to other subjects
W połowie III wieku biskupem Kartaginy w Afryce prokonsularnej został wybrany Thascius Caecilius Cyprianus, człowiek zamożny i wykształcony. W czasie prześladowań zarządzonych przez cesarza Decjusza wiara wielu osób została poddana ciężkiej próbie. We wspólnocie chrześcijan powstały podziały na tle dyscyplinarnym i administracyjnym. Św. Cyprian odwołał się do starej tradycji pielęgnowanej nie tylko w Kościele Afryki prokonsularnej, lecz także w innych prowincjach Kościoła powszechnego, którym było zwoływanie synodów w celu wspólnego rozwiązywania powstałych problemów duszpasterskich. W czasach zasiadania na stolicy biskupiej w Kartaginie w sumie zostało zwołanych 7 synodów, których uczestnicy zajęli swoje stanowisko wobec schizm Felicissimusa i Nowacjana oraz w sprawie powrotu do wspólnoty kościelnej osób, które uległy nakazom edyktu Decjusza dokonując ofiar bałwochwalczych, ważności chrztu udzielanego przez heretyków oraz chrztu dzieci. Niniejsze opracowanie jest próbą ukazania ważnej roli synodów kształtowaniu kolegialności biskupów w Afryce prokonsularnej w połowie III wieku w kontekście troski o jedność Kościoła. Lecz z drugiej strony ukazuje prawdę, że nie wszystkie uchwały synodów w Kartaginie współtworzyły doktrynę Kościoła.
Early Christian literature. Fathers of the Church, etc., Philosophy of religion. Psychology of religion. Religion in relation to other subjects
Systematic literature reviews (SLRs) are one of the most common and useful form of scientific research and publication. Tens of thousands of SLRs are published each year, and this rate is growing across all fields of science. Performing an accurate, complete and unbiased SLR is however a difficult and expensive endeavor. This is true in general for all phases of a literature review, and in particular for the paper screening phase, where authors lter a set of potentially in-scope papers based on a number of exclusion criteria. To address the problem, in recent years the research community has began to explore the use of the crowd to allow for a faster, accurate, cheaper and unbiased screening of papers. Initial results show that crowdsourcing can be effective, even for relatively complex reviews. In this paper we derive and analyze a set of strategies for crowd-based screening, and show that an adaptive strategy, that continuously re-assesses the statistical properties of the problem to minimize the number of votes needed to take decisions for each paper, significantly outperforms a number of non-adaptive approaches in terms of cost and accuracy. We validate both applicability and results of the approach through a set of crowdsourcing experiments, and discuss properties of the problem and algorithms that we believe to be generally of interest for classification problems where items are classified via a series of successive tests (as it often happens in medicine).
Christian Reul, Uwe Springmann, Christoph Wick
et al.
In this paper we introduce a method that significantly reduces the character error rates for OCR text obtained from OCRopus models trained on early printed books. The method uses a combination of cross fold training and confidence based voting. After allocating the available ground truth in different subsets several training processes are performed, each resulting in a specific OCR model. The OCR text generated by these models then gets voted to determine the final output by taking the recognized characters, their alternatives, and the confidence values assigned to each character into consideration. Experiments on seven early printed books show that the proposed method outperforms the standard approach considerably by reducing the amount of errors by up to 50% and more.
El concepto civitas es sin duda el que más valor presenta para nuestro estudio y el que ha sido más discutido. Diversas son las maneras en que distintos autores han tratado sobre el valor del concepto civitas en Agustín.Este concepto procede directamente de la tradición antigua. Como señalan Ratzinger (1992) o Van Oort (1997), el concepto presenta una multiplicidad de signifi cados. Destacan el sentido espacial, refi riéndose a la ciudad física, y otro signifi cado en el sentido jurídico, de statu singulorum civium, es decir, la ciudadanía. No podemos olvidar que el concepto continúa ligado a la idea de Ciudad-Estado, como universitas civium et quidquid ad eam pertinet (ut urbs, agri, instituta), esto es: todo lo referente a la Ciudad-Estado, con el acento sobre los ciudadanos de esa polis, incluyendo a todos los que pertenecen a la unidad jurídica de la Ciudad-Estado.
Early Christian literature. Fathers of the Church, etc.
We prove that if our calculating capability is that of a universal Turing machine with a finite tape, then Church's thesis is true. This way we accomplish Post (1936) program.
We describe the processing of data from the Low Frequency Instrument (LFI) used in production of the Planck Early Release Compact Source Catalogue (ERCSC). In particular, we discuss the steps involved in reducing the data from telemetry packets to cleaned, calibrated, time-ordered data (TOD) and frequency maps. Data are continuously calibrated using the modulation of the temperature of the cosmic microwave background radiation induced by the motion of the spacecraft. Noise properties are estimated from TOD from which the sky signal has been removed using a generalized least square map-making algorithm. Measured 1/f noise knee-frequencies range from 100mHz at 30GHz to a few tens of mHz at 70GHz. A destriping code (Madam) is employed to combine radiometric data and pointing information into sky maps, minimizing the variance of correlated noise. Noise covariance matrices required to compute statistical uncertainties on LFI and Planck products are also produced. Main beams are estimated down to the approx -10dB level using Jupiter transits, which are also used for geometrical calibration of the focal plane.
Planck Collaboration, P. A. R. Ade, N. Aghanim
et al.
We present the statistical properties of the first version of the Cold Core Catalogue of Planck Objects (C3PO), in terms of their spatial distribution, temperature, distance, mass, and morphology. We also describe the statistics of the Early Cold Core Catalogue (ECC, delivered with the Early Release Compact Source Catalogue, ERCSC) that is the subset of the 915 most reliable detections of the complete catalogue. We have used the CoCoCoDeT algorithm to extract 10783 cold sources. Temperature and dust emission spectral index β values are derived using the fluxes in the IRAS 100 \mum band and the three highest frequency Planck bands. Temperature spans from 7K to 17K, and peaks around 13K. Data are not consistent with a constant value of β over the all temperature range. β ranges from 1.4 to 2.8 with a mean value around 2.1, and several possible scenarios are possible, including β(T) and the effect of multiple T components folded into the measurements. For one third of the objects the distances are obtained. Most of the detections are within 2 kpc in the Solar neighbourhood, but a few are at distances greater than 4 kpc. The cores are distributed from the deep Galactic plane, despite the confusion, to high latitudes (>30$^{\circle}$). The associated mass estimates range from 1 to $10^5$ solar masses. Using their physical properties these cold sources are shown to be cold clumps, defined as the intermediate cold sub-structures between clouds and cores. These cold clumps are not isolated but mostly organized in filaments associated with molecular clouds. The Cold Core Catalogue of Planck Objects (C3PO) is the first unbiased all-sky catalogue of cold objects. It gives an unprecedented statistical view to the properties of these potential pre-stellar clumps and offers a unique possibility for their classification in terms of their intrinsic properties and environment.