COMPLEXIS 2021 Abstracts

Area 1 - Complexity in Biology and Biomedical Engineering

Short Papers

Paper Nr:	2
Title:	ECGraph: A Complex Networks Tool to Classify Critical Points of Ecological Corridors
Authors:	Gianni Fenu and Enrico Podda
Abstract:	The analysis of large amounts of information and its representation in a simple model has always been one of the main purposes of computer science. The field of territorial study is an excellent example to observe the complexity of the process, from the basic search for information through simple but expensive geometric calculations to the connection that the information itself has concerning the rest of the territory. The study of the natural areas identified by the European project Natura 2000 and their interconnection through the use of ecological corridors is an example of how difficult it can be to define, study and represent a complex problem. In order to simplify the mentioned tasks, allowing specialists to consult valuable data, the paper exposes how ECGraph works. This open source software allows extracting important information from any corridor related to areas of the Natura 2000 project, and can potentially be generalized to any similar case.
Download

Paper Nr:	10
Title:	Critical Overview of the Use of Contact Tracing Apps in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic
Authors:	Arturo González, Christian von Lücken, Julio Paciello, Tito Ocampos and Juan Pane
Abstract:	Contact tracing determines the chain of contacts of an infected person to isolate them. Implementing contact tracing requires an enormous effort that generally falls on the different governments and their respective health authorities. Emerging technologies can be quite useful in supporting contact tracing. The most relevant advantages of using mobile applications based on digital technologies to perform contact tracing are the fast collection of reliable data and the rapid detection of possible contacts at risk. However, despite these advantages, many countries have not reported a high penetration of these tools. As a relevant and actual research area, this paper presents a critical overview of the current literature regarding contact tracing applications to answer the following research questions: What is the most used technology to develop contact tracing apps? What were the main lessons on using contact tracing applications so far?, How are ethics, privacy, and security issues handled?, What is the use that is given to the data collected by the applications, and what happens to them? Who applies these types of tools, and what implications did they have?
Download

Paper Nr:	11
Title:	Social Complex Systems as Multiscale Phenomena: From the Genome to Animal Societies
Authors:	Ilvanna Salas and Sebastián Abades
Abstract:	For decades, researchers have studied animal social phenomena and aimed to answer: What is social complexity? Are some animals more socially complex than others? However, social complexity concepts are far from agreed and the field is still open to new research approaches. In this position paper, we propose to frame social complexity as a problem of organized complexity (whereby multiple scales and interactions across components produce patterns and organization). To improve our understanding of sociality, we encourage building a “social complexity theory” at the intersection of complex systems, behavioral ecology, and social systems concepts. This manuscript highlights the importance of considering social complexity as a multiscale phenomenon and raise the presence of trade-offs between scales. We illustrate the relationship between complexity and scales with examples from genomic to population scale in animal societies. Moreover, we suggest giving special attention to genome-scale studies to provide a common ground for comparing complexity among animal species and put forward comparative genomics as an approximation to drive the understanding of the evolution of social complexity.
Download

Area 2 - Complexity in Social Sciences

Full Papers

Paper Nr:	1
Title:	Complexity Measures for the Analysis of SDG Interlinkages: A Methodological Approach
Authors:	Gabriel Pereira, Arturo González and Gerardo Blanco
Abstract:	The 2030 Agenda, with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), 169 targets and 232 indicators, has set an ambitious “plan of action for people, planet and prosperity”1 that must be achieved within 15 years (2015-2030). These first years of implementation of the SDGs by the 193 member states of the United Nations (UN) have served the international community to realize the complexity of the network of interactions (synergies and trade-off) between goals, targets and indicators, within a context where each country has set its priorities of development and those are not always aligned with the main objective of the 2030 Agenda (lack of policy coherence; policy vs politics). As a result of this situation, one of the main difficulties that the countries will need to overcome is to comprehend the nature and complexity of the intricate network of interlinkages between the SDGs, considering their universal and integrated nature. The purpose of this study is to improve the understanding of the level of sustainability complexity of each member state of the UN in the process of the implementation of the SDGs based on the Product-Space Theory and the Economic Complexity. Thus, we present a SDG priority-setting tool applied to the challenging and ambitious task of accomplishment of the 2030 Agenda, through the understanding of the SDG interlinkages network and its complexity. Our findings are significant for the on-going debate of policy coherence and alignment of national policies with the SDGs and the sustainability path countries should follow to progress towards an integral achievement of the 2030 Agenda.
Download

Paper Nr:	3
Title:	Structural Similarities of Emotion-exchange Networks: Evidence from 18 Crisis Events
Authors:	Ema Kušen and Mark Strembeck
Abstract:	Online social networks (OSNs) play a significant role during crisis events by offering a convenient channel for information seeking, social bonding, and opinion sharing. In this context, people express their fear, panic, shock, as well as gratitude, well-wishing, and empathy as a crisis event evolves over time. Though emotional responses during crisis events have been studied both in offline and online settings, it is yet unclear which communication structures are representative for the exchange of specific types of emotions. In this paper, we report on new findings which indicate that not all negative emotions are exchanged in the same way. In particular, we used emotion-exchange motifs to compare the structure of emotion-annotated communication networks that resulted from 18 crisis events. Our findings clearly indicate that 1) exchanges of sadness on the one hand, and joy/love on the other show more structural similarity than any other pair of emotions, 2) emotion-exchange networks can be clustered into two families, each of which includes different types of emotions, 3) membership in the two families of emotion-exchange networks fluctuates over time. A related data-set is available for download from IEEE DataPort, DOI: 10.21227/yajb-6y77.
Download

Short Papers

Paper Nr:	6
Title:	Complex Skills Development through Digital Qualification Assessment: Survey Study for European and Oriental Languages Programs
Authors:	Rusudan Makhachashvili, Ivan Semenist and Anna Bakhtina
Abstract:	The workflow of the university summative assessment process was significantly disrupted in the year 2020 by the global pandemic and quarantine measures. Qualification assessment for university Foreign Languages programs, as a complex framework procedure (exams, final project presentation, review, appeal), was fully transformed into the digital format. The study discloses the context and models of the transformation of complex skillsets, necessary for the COVID-19 emergency education measures. The study is based on the identification of various complex competency principles, derivative of 21st-century skills for university education stakeholders, and projected digital literacy requirements. Correspondence between the 21st-century skills framework, Competences 2020 framework, and Global Skills 2025 framework is estimated through the revised Bloom’s taxonomy of educational goals. The study objective is to analyse the case of complex skills application for Digital Final Qualification Assessment at Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University, Ukraine (European and Oriental Languages programs), conducted in the timeframe of the first-wave 2020 quarantine. The inquiry results disclose and measure the efficiency of complex soft skills and corresponding digital skills, necessary for a successful Final qualification assessment procedure.
Download

Paper Nr:	12
Title:	Complex Framework of Digital Learning Quality Assessment in Covid-19 Context: Survey Study for European and Oriental Languages Programs
Authors:	Rusudan Makhachashvili and Ivan Semenist
Abstract:	The global pandemic and subsequent quarantine measures have posed an array of challenges to the complex comprehensive structures and procedures of higher education workflow, which influenced significantly the scope of individual experiences, projected outcomes, and estimated quality of higher education in countries across the world. This study focus is the in-depth assessment of individual perceptions and experiences of complex models of digital distance and blended learning by students of different tiers (Bachelor’s level, Master’s level, Graduate school level) in European and Oriental Languages university programs in regions of Ukraine through the span of educational activities in the time-frame of COVID-19 quarantine measures of March 2020 to January 2021. The survey is used to assess the parameters and challenges of individual quality and efficiency of translation of the complex system of real-life Foreign Languages Acquisition practices into the digital format, involving activation of interdisciplinary skills and cross-sectorial activities, implemented by ICT tools. The online survey of 14 universities in regional centres of Ukraine provides for disclosure of student comprehensive assessment of the complex framework of digitalized foreign languages education, systematized individual experiences, and quality estimation of e-learning and hybrid learning in the framework of COVID-19 lockdown.
Download

Paper Nr:	14
Title:	Food Recommendation in a Worksite Canteen
Authors:	Vincenza Carchiolo, Marco Grassia, Alessandro Longheu, Michele Malgeri and Giuseppe Mangioni
Abstract:	Recommendation systems tackle with information overload to assist people in finding their best choice according to their preferences and past behaviour. This occurred in many contexts, including the food sector where culinary inspiration, sales increase or healthy advice motivate the adoption of such a system. In this paper we propose a canteen food recommendation system for workers operating at an innovation hub including more than 20 companies. The system leverages a 30 months data set of past choices, and adopts a content based and a collaborative filtering approach for canteen users, suggesting them with dishes chosen by other similar users. First results for frequent as well as occasional canteen visitors are encouraging to validate the proposed approach.
Download

Area 3 - Complexity in AI/Edge/Fog/High-Performance Computing

Short Papers

Paper Nr:	4
Title:	Integrating Distributed Tracing into the Narayana Transaction Manager
Authors:	Miloslav Žežulka, Ondřej Chaloupka and Bruno Rossi
Abstract:	ACID transactions have proven to be a very useful mechanism of ensuring reliability of applications. Guaranteeing transactional properties effectively and correctly is a challenging task by itself. Furthermore, investigating transaction issues in a distributed environment is at least equally complex and requires systematic data collection and analysis. In this paper, we present mechanisms and concepts of distributed tracing with focus on the OpenTracing API and showcase our integration of tracing capabilities into the Narayana transaction manager. We show that the performance impact of tracing does not drastically decrease user application performance while providing useful information for the analysis of running transactions.
Download

Area 4 - Complexity in Informatics and Networking

Full Papers

Paper Nr:	7
Title:	Artificial Neural Networks Jamming on the Beat
Authors:	Alexey Tikhonov and Ivan P. Yamshchikov
Abstract:	This paper addresses the issue of long-scale correlations that is characteristic for symbolic music and is a challenge for modern generative algorithms. It suggests a very simple workaround for this challenge, namely, generation of a drum pattern that could be further used as a foundation for melody generation. The paper presents a large dataset of drum patterns alongside with corresponding melodies. It explores two possible methods for drum pattern generation. Exploring a latent space of drum patterns one could generate new drum patterns with a given music style. Finally, the paper demonstrates that a simple artificial neural network could be trained to generate melodies corresponding with these drum patters used as inputs. Resulting system could be used for end-to-end generation of symbolic music with song-like structure and higher long-scale correlations between the notes.
Download

Short Papers

Paper Nr:	5
Title:	Co-simulation of Smart Grids: Dynamically Changing Topologies in Failure Scenarios
Authors:	Lukáš Gryga and Bruno Rossi
Abstract:	Smart Grids represent an important instance of cyberphysical systems for the energy sector. Due to the many layers involved and the complexities of interrelations, co-simulations have emerged as a way to integrate results from different simulators. In this paper, we propose a study of the possibilities of simulating node failure scenarios with a modification of the Mosaik co-simulation platform to allow for dynamic topologies changes. We show how co-simulations can help in determining the impact of different failure patterns using a sample scenario of households and PV units.
Download

Paper Nr:	8
Title:	Distributed Strategies and Managements based on State Constraint Logic with Predicate for Communication
Authors:	Susumu Yamasaki and Mariko Sasakura
Abstract:	From the views on cognitive management, this paper deals with state constraint and distributed systems, where communication between states is a key function of complexity. The primary purpose is concerned with logical analysis of complex, distributed system structure which contains strategies (procedures) designed in states. Between states, strategies may be communicative and transferrable, where the transferrability is supposed to be given by predicates for communication between states. The strategy as a procedure is assumed to be inductively constructed by other distributed strategies. The structure to represent the designed way of strategies takes an inductively defined form, on which some logical relation is characterized with respect to the compound construction of strategies (procedures). The logical relation is in accordance with possibly infinite set of propositional formulas constrained by states. As regards procedural executions, implementation, the undefined (implementation), and non-implementation may be considered for the remarked strategy. Based on the discussions of implementability for strategic constructions, a structural analysis of distributed strategies may be settled as 3-valued model theory of logical expressions. It is related to 3-valued model theory, where some fixed point theory is now examined, with respect to the mapping (which is in general monotonic) associated with a logical expression. The logical expression of this paper can be denoted as a propositional logic formula with default negation. As an application to logical system, logical formulas with both strong and default negations may be analyzed with 3-valued domain. This paper thus abstracts application of logical expressions to structural analysis of distributed strategies. Structure of strategies is complex owing to distribution of state constraint strategies, but effectiveness may be endowed with logical approach and abstraction of communication facility.
Download

Paper Nr:	9
Title:	Entropy Map Might Be Chaotic
Authors:	Junping Hong and Wai V. Chan
Abstract:	Chaos is a phenomenon observable in many areas. Chaotic behaviours can be visualized in chaotic maps, which are deterministic iterative functions and sensitive to initial conditions. As a result, they are wildly adopted in random number generator, image encryption, etc. In this paper, two new chaotic maps inspired by information entropy are proposed. Through bifurcation diagram and Lyapunov exponent analysis, period doubling bifurcations are observed and chaos is suggested. Furthermore, these maps lead to a special case of the Frobenius-Perron operator in their distributions and are extended to the complex plane to obtain the Julia set.
Download