Nicolaie Popescu-Bodorin

Nicolaie Popescu-Bodorin, Madeleine Togher

We introduce the Neuro-Bayesian-Symbolic Residual Attention Shallow Network (NBS-RASN), a hybrid neural architecture for explainable cybersecurity risk assessment in open-source ecosystems. Unlike deep models that trade interpretability for accuracy, our shallow network encodes domain knowledge, causal reasoning, and expert judgment as differentiable components. It uses 80 interpretable neurons across 12 layers, including a gatekeeper that enforces five epistemological axioms - precision, causality, falsifiability, transparency, and completeness - as hard constraints before propagation. Despite limited depth, the network exhibits deep-learning traits via residual attention and feedback loops, learning complex risk patterns without becoming a black box. It produces fully decomposable scores: a deterministic weighted component plus an expert adjustment, with each adjustment traceable to named amplifiers (blast radius, propagation speed, structural nature, default exposure, exploitation pattern, institutional criticality). We validate on 20 open-source projects covering all OWASP Top 10:2025 categories and language risk classes, achieving confidence scores of 0.79-0.97, and show that explainability is guaranteed by design, not by a training algorithm. This challenges the assumption that deep learning requires deep networks, proving that shallow networks with deep reasoning can outperform opaque models in high-stakes cybersecurity, where interpretability is essential.

Nicolaie Popescu-Bodorin

This paper describes the Direct Fourier Permuation Algorithm, an efficient method of computing Bit Reversal of natural indices [1, 2, 3, ..., 2^k] in a vectorial manner (k iterations) and also proposes the Vectorial Digit Reversal Algorithm, a natural generalization of Direct Fourier Permutation Algorithm that is enabled to compute the r-digit reversal of natural indices [1, 2, 3, ..., r^k] where r is an arbitrary radix. Matlab functions implementing these two algo- rithms and various test and comparative results are presented in this paper to support the idea of inclusion of these two algorithms in the next Matlab Signal Processing Toolbox official distribution package as much faster alternatives to current Matlab functions bitrevorder and digitrevorder.

Nicolaie Popescu-Bodorin, Lucian Stefanita Grigore, Valentina Emilia Balas et al.

Cross-sensor comparison experimental results reported here show that the procedure defined and simulated during the Cross-Sensor Comparison Competition 2013 by our team for migrating / upgrading LG2200 based to LG4000 based biometric systems leads to better LG4000-to-LG2200 cross-sensor iris recognition results than previously reported, both in terms of user comfort and in terms of system safety. On the other hand, LG2200-to-LG400 migration/upgrade procedure defined and implemented by us is applicable to solve interoperability issues between LG2200 based and LG4000 based systems, but also to other pairs of systems having the same shift in the quality of acquired images.

Cristina M. Noaica, Robert Badea, Iulia M. Motoc et al.

This paper assumes the hypothesis that human learning is perception based, and consequently, the learning process and perceptions should not be represented and investigated independently or modeled in different simulation spaces. In order to keep the analogy between the artificial and human learning, the former is assumed here as being based on the artificial perception. Hence, instead of choosing to apply or develop a Computational Theory of (human) Perceptions, we choose to mirror the human perceptions in a numeric (computational) space as artificial perceptions and to analyze the interdependence between artificial learning and artificial perception in the same numeric space, using one of the simplest tools of Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing, namely the perceptrons. As practical applications, we choose to work around two examples: Optical Character Recognition and Iris Recognition. In both cases a simple Turing test shows that artificial perceptions of the difference between two characters and between two irides are fuzzy, whereas the corresponding human perceptions are, in fact, crisp.

Nicolaie Popescu-Bodorin, Valentina E. Balas, Iulia M. Motoc

This paper proves that in iris recognition, the concepts of sheep, goats, lambs and wolves - as proposed by Doddington and Yager in the so-called Biometric Menagerie, are at most fuzzy and at least not quite well defined. They depend not only on the users or on their biometric templates, but also on the parameters that calibrate the iris recognition system. This paper shows that, in the case of iris recognition, the extensions of these concepts have very unsharp and unstable (non-stationary) boundaries. The membership of a user to these categories is more often expressed as a degree (as a fuzzy value) rather than as a crisp value. Moreover, they are defined by fuzzy Sugeno rules instead of classical (crisp) definitions. For these reasons, we said that the Biometric Menagerie proposed by Doddington and Yager could be at most a fuzzy concept of biometry, but even this status is conditioned by improving its definition. All of these facts are confirmed experimentally in a series of 12 exhaustive iris recognition tests undertaken for University of Bath Iris Image Database while using three different iris code dimensions (256x16, 128x8 and 64x4), two different iris texture encoders (Log-Gabor and Haar-Hilbert) and two different types of safety models.