Anna Siczek, Jan Cieciuch, Pathological personality traits from ICD-11 and attachment – Comparison of 10 models of attachment dimensions, Psychiatria Polska (319), 2023. (Journal Article)
Aim. The aim of the study was to analyze the relationship between personality disorders according to the new ICD-11 dimensional approach and attachment. To do so, we examined ten models of attachment and employed seven questionnaires. Method. The study was conducted online and involved a non-clinical group of N = 391 (68% women, 30% men, and 2% – people who marked the “gender – other” category, aged 16–65 yeas; M = 24.91; SD = 7.8). Attachment was measured using seven questionnaires, and the Polish adaptation of the PiCD Questionnaire was used to measure personality disorders according to ICD-11. Results. The regression analysis revealed a consistent picture of the relationship between insecure attachment (regardless of model) and personality disorders. “Negative Affectivity” and “Disinhibition” are associated with Anxious attachment, while “Detachment” and “Dissociality” with Avoidant attachment. “Anankastia” showed only a sporadic association with attachment. Conclusions. Attachment (according to theoretical models formed in childhood) is significantly related to personality disorders in adults. In the conducted study, a coherent picture of this relationship was obtained thanks to the use of many conceptualizations and operationalizations of attachment. |
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Luca Rossetto, Oana Inel, Svenja Lange, Florian Ruosch, Ruijie Wang, Abraham Bernstein, Multi-Mode Clustering for Graph-Based Lifelog Retrieval, In: ICMR '23: International Conference on Multimedia Retrieval, ACM Digital library, New York, NY, USA, 2023-07-12. (Conference or Workshop Paper published in Proceedings)
As part of the 6th Lifelog Search Challenge, this paper presents an approach to arrange Lifelog data in a multi-modal knowledge graph based on cluster hierarchies. We use multiple sequence clustering approaches to address the multi-modal nature of Lifelogs in relation to temporal, spatial, and visual factors. The resulting clusters, along with semantic metadata captions and augmentations based on OpenCLIP, provide for the semantic structure of a graph including all Lifelogs as entries. Textual queries on this hierarchical graph can be expressed to retrieve individual Lifelogs, as well as clusters of Lifelogs. |
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Florian Spiess, Ralph Gasser, Heiko Schuldt, Luca Rossetto, The Best of Both Worlds: Lifelog Retrieval with a Desktop-Virtual Reality Hybrid System, In: ICMR '23: International Conference on Multimedia Retrieval, ACM Digital library, New York, NY, USA, 2023-07-12. (Conference or Workshop Paper published in Proceedings)
Personal lifelog data collections are becoming more common as a memory aid, as well as for analytical tasks, such as health and fitness analysis. Due to the multimodal and personal nature of lifelog data, interactive multimedia retrieval approaches are required to facilitate flexible and iterative query formulation and result exploration for retrieval and analysis. In recent years, novel user interface modalities have emerged, that allow new ways for users to interact with a retrieval system. Virtual reality, one such new modality, provides advantages as well as challenges for interactive multimedia retrieval in comparison to conventional desktop-based interfaces.
This paper describes a novel desktop-virtual reality hybrid system participating in the Lifelog Search Challenge 2023. The system, which is based on the components of the vitrivr stack, is described with a focus on query formulation in the web-based desktop user interface vitrivr-ng, and result exploration in the virtual reality-based vitrivr-VR. |
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Kilian Sprenkamp, Liudmila Zavolokina, Mario Angst, Mateusz Dolata, Data-Driven Governance in Crises: Topic Modelling for the Identification of Refugee Needs, In: 24th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research, ACM Digital library, New York, NY, USA, 2023-07-11. (Conference or Workshop Paper published in Proceedings)
The war in Ukraine and the following refugee crisis have recently again highlighted the need for effective refugee management across European countries. Refugee management contemporarily mostly relies on top-down management approaches by governments. These often lead to suboptimal policies for refugees and highlight a need to better identify and integrate refugee needs into management. Here, we show that modern applications of Natural Language Processing (NLP) allow for the effective analysis of large text corpora linked to refugee needs, making it possible to complement top-down approaches with bottom-up knowledge centered around the current needs of the refugee population. By following a Design Science Research Methodology, we utilize 58 semi-structured stakeholder interviews within Switzerland to develop design requirements for NLP applications for refugee management. Based on the design requirements, we developed R2G – “Refugees to Government”, an application based on state-of-the-art topic modeling to identify refugee needs bottom-up through Telegram data. We evaluate R2G with a dedicated workshop held with stakeholders from the public sector and civil society. Thus, we contribute to the ongoing discourse on how to design refugee management applications and showcase how topic modeling can be utilized for data-driven governance during refugee crises. |
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Giovanni Cioffi, Leonard Bauersfeld, Davide Scaramuzza, HDVIO: Improving Localization and Disturbance Estimation with Hybrid Dynamics VIO, In: Robotics: Science and Systems 2023, 2023-07-10. (Conference or Workshop Paper published in Proceedings)
Visual-inertial odometry (VIO) is the most common approach for estimating the state of autonomous micro aerial vehicles using only onboard sensors. Existing methods improve VIO performance by including a dynamics model in the estimation pipeline. However, such methods degrade in the presence of
low-fidelity vehicle models and continuous external disturbances, such as wind. Our proposed method, HDVIO, overcomes these limitations by using a hybrid dynamics model that combines a point-mass vehicle model with a learning-based componentthat captures complex aerodynamic effects. HDVIO estimates the external force and the full robot state by leveraging the discrepancy between the actual motion and the predicted motion of the hybrid dynamics model. Our hybrid dynamics model uses a history of thrust and IMU measurements to predict the vehicle dynamics. To demonstrate the performance of our method, we present results on both public and novel drone dynamics datasets and show real-world experiments of a quadrotor flying in strong winds up to 25 km/h. The results show that our approach improves the motion and external force estimation compared to the state-of-the-art by up to 33% and 40%, respectively. Furthermore, differently from existing methods, we show that it is possible to predict the vehicle dynamics accurately while having no explicit knowledge of its full state. |
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Markus Leippold, Jingwei Ni, Zhijing Jin, Qian Wang, Mrinmaya Sachan, When does aggregating multiple skills with multi-task learning work? A case study in financial NLP, In: 61st Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL’23), Association for Computational Linguistics, Toronto, Canada, 2023-07-09. (Conference or Workshop Paper published in Proceedings)
Multi-task learning (MTL) aims at achieving a better model by leveraging data and knowledge from multiple tasks. However, MTL does not always work – sometimes negative transfer occurs between tasks, especially when aggregating loosely related skills, leaving it an open question when MTL works. Previous studies show that MTL performance can be improved by algorithmic tricks. However, what tasks and skills should be included is less well explored. In this work, we conduct a case study in Financial NLP where multiple datasets exist for skills relevant to the domain, such as numeric reasoning and sentiment analysis. Due to the task difficulty and data scarcity in the Financial NLP domain, we explore when aggregating such diverse skills from multiple datasets with MTL can work. Our findings suggest that the key to MTL success lies in skill diversity, relatedness between tasks, and choice of aggregation size and shared capacity. Specifically, MTL works well when tasks are diverse but related, and when the size of the task aggregation and the shared capacity of the model are balanced to avoid overwhelming certain tasks. |
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Markus Leippold, Dominik Stammbach, Nicolas Webersinke, Julia Anna Bingler, Mathias Kraus, A dataset for detecting real-world environmental claims, In: 61st Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL’23), arxiv.org, Toronto, Canada, 2023-07-09. (Conference or Workshop Paper published in Proceedings)
In this paper, we introduce an expert-annotated dataset for detecting real-world environmental claims made by listed companies. We train and release baseline models for detecting environmental claims using this new dataset. We further preview potential applications of our dataset: We use our fine-tuned model to detect environmental claims made in answer sections of quarterly earning calls between 2012 and 2020 - and we find that the amount of environmental claims steadily increased since the Paris Agreement in 2015. |
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Markus Leippold, Dominik Stammbach, Nicolas Webersinke, Julia Anna Bingler, Mathias Kraus, Environmental Claim Detection, In: 61st Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL’23), Association for Computational Linguistics, 2023-07-09. (Conference or Workshop Paper published in Proceedings)
To transition to a green economy, environmental claims made by companies must be reliable, comparable, and verifiable. To analyze such claims at scale, automated methods are needed to detect them in the first place. However, there exist no datasets or models for this. Thus, this paper introduces the task of environmental claim detection. To accompany the task, we release an expert-annotated dataset and models trained on this dataset. We preview one potential application of such models: We detect environmental claims made in quarterly earning calls and find that the number of environmental claims has steadily increased since the Paris Agreement in 2015. |
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Markus Leippold, Sentiment spin: Attacking financial sentiment with GPT-3, Finance Research Letters, Vol. 55 (B), 2023. (Journal Article)
In this study, we explore the susceptibility of financial sentiment analysis to adversarial attacks that manipulate financial texts. With the rise of AI readership in the financial sector, companies are adapting their language and disclosures to fit AI processing better, leading to concerns about the potential for manipulation. In the finance literature, keyword-based methods, such as dictionaries, are still widely used for financial sentiment analysis due to their perceived transparency. However, our research demonstrates the vulnerability of keyword-based approaches by successfully generating adversarial attacks using the sophisticated transformer model, GPT-3. With a success rate of nearly 99% for negative sentences in the Financial Phrase Bank, a widely used database for financial sentiment analysis, we highlight the importance of incorporating robust methods, such as context-aware approaches such as BERT, in financial sentiment analysis. |
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Andrew Jack, Zacharias Sautner, Business school sustainability research: What is read most?, In: Financial Times, 6 July 2023. (Media Coverage)
Research papers on ESG themes - positive and sceptical - dominate recent downloads from the Social Science Research Network website. |
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Francis Bignell, Thomas Puschmann, Green Fintech Network Propels Switzerland’s Standing as a Leader in Green Digital Finance, In: The Fintech Times, 5 July 2023. (Media Coverage)
Switzerland has become the latest country to put words into action working towards more sustainable finance. During the Point Zero Forum in Zurich, the three-day event connecting policy with technology, the new Swiss Green Fintech Network (GFN) was launched, aiming to boost the green digital finance ecosystem. |
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Leonardo Bursztyn, Aakaash Rao, Christopher Roth, David Yanagizawa-Drott, Opinions as facts, Review of Economic Studies, Vol. 90 (4), 2023. (Journal Article)
The rise of opinion programs has transformed television news. Because they present anchors’ subjective commentary and analysis, opinion programs often convey conflicting narratives about reality. We experimentally document that people across the ideological spectrum turn to opinion programs over “straight news”, even when provided large incentives to learn objective facts. We then examine the consequences of diverging narratives between opinion programs in a high-stakes setting: the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US. We find stark differences in the adoption of preventative behaviours among viewers of the two most popular opinion programs, both on the same network, which adopted opposing narratives about the threat posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. We then show that areas with greater relative viewership of the program downplaying the threat experienced a greater number of COVID-19 cases and deaths. Our evidence suggests that opinion programs may distort important beliefs and behaviours. |
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Francesca Casalini, Liudmila Zavolokina, Do collaborative platforms create public value in public services? An explorative analysis of privately-owned public service platforms in Italy, In: 39th EGOS Colloquium, 39th EGOS Colloquium, 2023. (Conference or Workshop Paper published in Proceedings)
This paper explores the public value outcomes generated by collaborative platforms in public services through a comparative case study of 25 privately-owned digital platforms across various public service areas in Italy. The study confirms that collaborative digitally-enabled endeavors can have both positive and negative effects on public value, highlighting the challenges associated with multi-actor dynamics and the delicate balance between public interest and private gain in public services. The findings reveal implications related to user-centric platforms, including concerns about inclusivity, autonomy, decision-making abilities, and privacy infringement. Additionally, the study suggests that collaborative platforms alone do not enhance collaboration in public services unless accompanied by strong public governance that promotes interoperability through standardized frameworks, common templates, and data reuse. |
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Francesco Sovrano, Kevin Ashley, Alberto Bacchelli, Toward Eliminating Hallucinations: GPT-based Explanatory AI for Intelligent Textbooks and Documentation, In: Tokyo’23: Fifth Workshop on Intelligent Textbooks (iTextbooks) at the 24th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED’2023),, CEUR-WS, 2023-07-03. (Conference or Workshop Paper published in Proceedings)
Traditional explanatory resources, such as user manuals and textbooks, often contain content that may not cater to the diverse backgrounds and information needs of users. Yet, developing intuitive, user-centered methods to effectively explain complex or large amounts of information is still an open research challenge. In this paper we present ExplanatoryGPT, an approach we devised and implemented to transform textual documents into interactive, intelligent resources, capable of offering dynamic, personalized explanations. Our approach uses state-of-the-art question-answering technology to generate on-demand, expandable explanations, with the aim of allowing readers to efficiently navigate and comprehend static materials. ExplanatoryGPT integrates ChatGPT, a state-of-the-art language model, with Achinstein’s philosophical theory of explanations. By combining question generation and answer retrieval algorithms with ChatGPT, our method generates interactive, user-centered explanations, while mitigating common issues associated with ChatGPT, such as hallucinations and memory shortcomings. To showcase the effectiveness of our Explanatory AI, we conducted tests using a variety of sources, including a legal textbook and documentation of some health and financial software. Specifically, we provide several examples that illustrate how ExplanatoryGPT excels over ChatGPT in generating more precise explanations, accomplished through thoughtful macro-planning of explanation content. Notably, our approach also avoids the need to provide the entire context of the explanation as a prompt to ChatGPT, a process that is often not feasible due to common memory constraints. |
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Guido Schätti, Christoph Basten, Alle Macht der Nationalbank?, In: NZZ am Sonntag, 2 July 2023. (Media Coverage)
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Wenqing Chang, End-to-End lmplementation of Pair-Wise Correlation Computation in a Streaming System, University of Zurich, Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics, 2023. (Master's Thesis)
This thesis aims to address a key challenge in time-series data analysis - efficiently identifying correlations between various data streams. As the prominence of sensor networks rises, the analysis of time-series data has become increasingly crucial. The insights derived from these data streams hold significant intelligence, but extracting them efficiently remains a complex task.
This thesis brings into focus the dimensionality-reduction filter-and-refine techniques, designed to expedite the process of identifying correlations. Despite their utility, these techniques lack a comprehensive comparative analysis over streaming systems, and this thesis seeks to fill this gap.
The core objective is to implement these techniques within a streaming platform, enabling benchmarking under realistic conditions. The thesis is divided into several chapters that provide a comprehensive overview of the problem, delve into the dimensionality reduction algorithms, and discuss their implementation within a streaming system.
Particular emphasis is placed on the Filter-and-Refine Algorithm on the Kafka Streaming Platform. Two distinct design approaches, one based on Kafka Streams and another simpler Producer-Consumer design, are implemented, compared, and evaluated.
The thesis culminates with an exhaustive series of experiments assessing the performance of the implemented algorithms. The ultimate goal is to provide a framework that not only implements the techniques but also evaluates their performance, aiming to contribute to the field of time-series data analysis. |
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Adrian Zermin, Building a Data Analysis Platform for the EARDREAM Project, University of Zurich, Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics, 2023. (Master's Thesis)
With an aging population across the world, dementia and neurological diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease (AD), are on the rise. The disproportionate rise in AD cases in developing countries gives rise to a low-cost, robust way to diagnose early-onset AD. The EARDREAM project takes up the fight against AD in these countries using low-density electroencephalography (EEG) device, with the goal of developing a digital biomarker of early-onset AD.
To make the collected health data accessible and enable large-scale analysis, there is a need for accessible, scaleable, secure solutions for EEG data analysis.
This thesis presents the design and implementation of the Wondernap platform, a novel, cloud-based system dedicated to enhancing the current process of interacting with the data generated using the EARDREAM EEG device.
The evolution of the platform through two iterative prototypes is described, highlighting the transition from an initial prototype to a scaleable, secure, cloud-based solution.
The initial prototype laid the groundwork for a scaleable, modular, and transferable architecture capable of accounting for the unique requirements of the EARDREAM project, employing state-of-the-art technologies for EEG data analysis architectures.
Deploying a Flask backend and Apache HBase for EEG data storage, with MongoDB for patient data, the first iteration validated its usability through a user evaluation, scoring 84/100 on the System Usability Scale.
Building upon user feedback and stakeholder input, the second prototype accentuated the applicability of cloud computing to the current architecture, demonstrating its scalability and portability. Using infrastructure-as-code and incorporating Apache Phoenix, this prototype showcased enhancements in fault tolerance, security, and performance.
In summary, the developed platform offers a fault-tolerant, scaleable, secure cloud architecture supporting a user-friendly frontend allowing its users to gain insights into the data generated using the EARDREAM portable EEG device.
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Linda Weber, Analysing the Effects of the Wash-in Phase and Initial Consultation on Patient Empowerment in the Treatment of Obesity, University of Zurich, Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics, 2023. (Bachelor's Thesis)
The number of people suffering from chronic diseases worldwide is rapidly increasing, leading to rising costs and decreased quality of life. Lifestyle changes are an effective measure in the treatment of chronic diseases such as obesity. However, treatment adherence is consistently low. This thesis aims to analyse how the initial phases of the Digital Companion influence patient empowerment as well as self-perceived and actual adherence to the treatment plan. We analyse 18 patient interviews conducted during the field study of the Digital Companion. The results indicate that the structural empowerment provided by the Health Care Professional (HCP) together with the app have a positive effect on patients’ psychological empowerment. Patients report high levels of self-perceived empowerment and predicted adherence to the treatment plan which they planned with their HCP. The evaluation of patient-generated data recorded in the app shows a very high average actual adherence of 80%. |
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Adam Bauer, Supportive Assistant for Corporate Identity E-learning Platform, University of Zurich, Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics, 2023. (Bachelor's Thesis)
Chatbots have experienced a significant surge in popularity in recent months, which can largely be attributed to the utilization of Large Language Models (LLMs). Among these platforms, ChatGPT has shown the fastest growth, amassing one million users within a only five days. This can be attributed to the inherent contextual understanding and impressive capabilities exhibited by LLMs, which continue to be explored.
Recognizing the potential of chatbots, particularly their adaptability to custom interfaces, our aim is to develop a tailored assistant to help adults in corporate identity E-learning. Our pedagogical conversational agent serves as a supportive guide throughout the learning process. Given the current boom in chatbot usage, coupled with the dearth of prior research on chatbots in the field of corporate identity and limited exploration in the realm of adult learning, our study seeks to address the following questions: How do users interact with the assistant and what types of messages are exchanged?
The findings of this thesis will shed light on the dynamics of user-agent interaction, the frequency of exchanged messages, and the intended functions of users. As our final product relies on an LLM, which serves as the backbone of the chatbot, we encountered various challenges, such as incorporating external functions and managing the LLM's knowledge limitations. To ensure optimal performance, this thesis includes a comprehensive prompt creation manual, which we utilized to refine our assistant and deliver the most effective learning experience for trainees. |
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Charlotte Eder, Design and Evaluation of Ultra-Wideband (UWB) Architectures with a Focus on Privacy-Preserving Characteristics, University of Zurich, Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics, 2023. (Master's Thesis)
Ultra-Wideband (UWB) technology has gained significant popularity in indoor localization applications. These applications often generate vast amounts of personal information, increasing the need to ensure compliance with privacy-preserving principles to safeguard user data. In this thesis, the privacy-preserving characteristics of several UWB localization architectures were analyzed. Firstly, UWB localization architectures were examined based on their privacy-preserving characteristics. Subsequently, two versions of a time difference of arrival (tdoa) localization system were implemented, including privacy best practices provided by the IEEE 802.15.4 standard during the implementation process. Additionally, the privacy-preserving characteristics of the implemented UWB localization systems were evaluated with the help of a privacy criteria catalog based on COPri V.2 ontology.
This thesis found that the localization system employing a passively listening tag fulfills seven out of eight privacy criteria. In contrast, the system where the tag actively sends out UWB signals only fulfilled three out of eight criteria in its minimal version. However, the privacy-preserving characteristics of the active system could be greatly improved by using tools such as dynamic addressing, encrypting packages containing personal information, using a message integrity code (MIC), and using a scrambled time sequence (STS). Finally, the limitations of the current systems' implementations are addressed which provides directions for future research. |
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