ethicalabs/Research-Intent-Collab huggingface dataset:
Spatial Models in the Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases

We shall concentrate in this review on the population dynamics of infectious diseases, with special emphasis on the explicit handling of spatial components. Even the simplest nonspatial infectious disease models are moderately complex. The Law of Mass Action is used to describe the rate at which new infections occur in a community, i.e. making it proportional to the product of the numbers of both susceptible and infectious persons existing at any particular time. This makes the process nonlinear.
Understanding Risk of Suicide among perpetrators who view child sexual abuse material (CSAM)

Attempts to address the threat of harm posed by perpetrators of child sexual abuse (CSA) have rightly increased in recent years, with well-known efforts such as operation NOTARISE resulting in 750 arrests; however, the cost of such operations is also high. Operation NOTARISE resulted in 24 suicides; the estimated economic and social cost of which has been estimated to be £34.8 million.[1] Perpetrators who view child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) are not only at higher risk of suicide than the general population, individuals diagnosed with a mental health disorder, and perpetrators of other violent and sexual crimes,[2-5] but they also appear to be at higher risk of suicide than perpetrators of CSA who engage directly in sexual acts with a child .[6-8] An in-depth understanding of the experiences of CSAM offenders is missing in the literature, but is required to understand how to mitigate the risk of suicide amongst this high risk group. This qualitative study investigates the experiences of CSAM perpetrators from the perspectives of law enforcement officers (n = 16), CSAM perpetrators themselves (n = 5), and help-line operators who have provided support to CSAM perpetrators through the Lucy Faithfull Foundation "Stop it now!" helpline (n = 6). Analysis was conducted separately for each dataset and in accordance with guidelines set out by Braun and Clark .[9] The focus of this paper is the six over-arching themes that were common across all datasets: (i) offender demographics; (ii) psychological impact of arrest; (iii) coping with the investigation; (iv) cognitive distortion; (v) shame and stigma; and (vi) professional support. Findings are discussed in the context of the challenges faced by law enforcement and healthcare professions when providing support to this high risk group, and eight key recommendations are made to reduce the risk of suicide.
"Deconstructing Postmodernism and the Mainstream Developmental Discourse of Women's Empowerment in the (South) Asian Context"

This paper starts with an initial gesture accepting the validity of many of the criticisms of modernity by some leading postmodern thinkers. From this initial position, it then evaluates the postmodernist positions themselves with regards to democracy, women's empowerment and justice by paying careful attention to the arguments of these leading postmodernists. It then develops a theory of deep democracy and radical subjectivity which can be used to deconstruct the rhetoric of international organizations on women's empowerment. However, shallow and self-serving as this rhetoric is, it nevertheless can lead to a limited improvement in women's status contrary to the claims of the conservatives. Furthermore, the theory can also be used to de/reconstruct the liberal and social democratic positions on women's empowerment. Such a deep democratic perspective in South Asia focuses attention on enhancing social capabilities through all means, but most importantly through the political self-activities of the multitude---- particularly the radical subjectivities and actions of the most oppressed women who can and will increasingly take leading roles in overcoming the rule of global capital.
Uncertainties and the precautionary principle in cost–benefit environmental policies

Abstract   The new European Union-wide regulation of chemicals, the REACH system, assesses, evaluates and authorizes potentially hazardous chemicals and therefore provides crucial information about chemicals to decision-makers, producers and consumers. While some chemical regulations have already been standardized at European level (such as the labelling of chemicals), procedures for assessing the characteristics of chemical substances, for instance, are regulated by national law. The REACH system builds up a standardized framework for assessing and authorizing chemicals and shifts the burden-of-proof from government authorities to producers and importers of chemicals who now have to verify the safety of chemicals. Implementing the REACH regulations in Europe may lead to substantial assessment and adaptation costs particularly in the chemical industries. However, the benefits of REACH, such as improvements in the work place, public health and safety, environmental health, and innovation effects, may significantly outweigh the costs. The current study presents the results of a cost–benefit analysis (CBA) of this environmental policy program taking the Austrian economy as a case study. Particular emphasis is laid on discussing the fundamental uncertainties and lack of knowledge (ignorance) for quantifying and monetizing (valuing) costs and benefits. It turns out that even in the case of such fundamental uncertainties, CBA results – complemented with the qualification of results and sensitivity analyses also in the sense of a ‘post-normal science’ – suggest that the REACH system leads to net benefits for the Austrian economy, and that policy-makers are advised to decide on a broader approach including key principles of environmental policy such as the precautionary principle to which European Union policy-makers have committed themselves.
The importance of science communication and public engagement to professional associations

Abstract                   Scientific associations exist to serve their members and advance their science. They also provide a platform for scientists to communicate their science and engage with the public, such as hosting free resources on their web pages and organizing outreach activities with local communities. Historically, scientific associations were often internally focused. Despite the common stereotype of exclusive clubs of gentleman naturalists, there are numerous examples since the 17th century of scientific associations encouraging public engagement. This became increasingly common, and throughout the last several decades, scientific associations like the American Association for Anatomy (AAA) have been working to make changes in how science, scientists, and the public work together to produce the best scientific outcomes. This viewpoint defines different levels of relationships between the scientist and the public and how they affect outcomes related to the public's trust in science and scientists. It then provides a historical perspective on how associations have contributed to the communication of science. Lastly, it discusses the role of associations in science communication and public engagement and whether it is important for associations and why. It concludes with examples of the strategic programs of AAA that demonstrate how scientific associations can support public engagement, resulting in benefits to the public, scientists, and the anatomical sciences.
Unpacking conservation easements' assessed land use designations and their implications for realizing biodiversity protection

Abstract                   Native ecosystem and biodiversity loss from land use conversion into human‐modified landscapes are evident in the United States and globally. In addition to public land conservation, there is an increase in private land conservation through conservation easements (CEs) across exurban landscapes. Not every CE was established strictly for biodiversity protection and permitted land uses can increase human modification. No research of which we are aware has examined the actual tax assessor's land use designations (LUDs) through time. We constructed granular CE datasets (GCED) of CEs and their parcels' tax assessment LUDs for 1997–2008/2009, based on original data from 12 counties in six US states. Using the GCED, we examined patterns in the LUDs, with implications for land uses that could impact CE biological outcomes. We show that LUDs on exurban private conservation lands were predominately residential and agricultural, with increased residential over time. Critically, the LUDs lack a biological conservation exempt designation/category. There is no consistent trend in association between the primary CE reason and its parcel's LUD, suggesting that they coincide in some circumstances but in others, the CE may be a response to contravene the LUD. The majority of the first CE reasons are focused on open space preservation, except in some counties where agricultural land uses and agricultural CEs are associated. The economically and human‐focused LUD is one of many social factors that should be considered in a classification system for private land conservation and CEs more specifically. These results prompt the land conservation, conservation biology, and environmental planning communities to explore assessed land uses' impact on biodiversity conservation objectives.
Human considerations in the use of marine protected areas for biodiversity conservation

ABSTRACT                   Marine protected areas (MPAs) are one approach, amongst many, for the protection of marine biodiversity. Although proven to be effective at protecting biodiversity and to be supported by local and wider communities, the implementation of some MPAs has been very contentious especially with fishing stakeholders. We researched the causes of these issues by examining the experience of implementation of the Batemans Marine Park in New South Wales, Australia. While MPA selection and management need to be based on rigorous science, a commensurate level of attention needs to be applied to understanding the social systems that also play a role in determining the protection measures and approaches. The most pressing issue that needs to be resolved early on in a planning process is the MPA's objectives, and whether these objectives are well understood and accepted by the local community. Building community support for MPAs also involves taking into account the different systems of knowledge and views of the natural world that exist within the community. Science alone is not sufficient to convince communities of the need for MPAs or their value in achieving conservation outcomes. Incorporating ‘bottom–up’ approaches into communication and engagement strategies will allow for a greater diversity of voices to be heard and acknowledged, protecting the planning processes against polarisation. Engaging local communities needs to go beyond large–scale consultation processes to include more rigorous, integrated social, economic and ecological assessment exercises, involving a collaborative participatory approach. Context is important and planning processes need to recognise the individual and unique needs of each affected community. Rigid ideas around the best means of achieving biodiversity protection combined with ‘a one size fits all’ approach to planning and community engagement are likely to exacerbate conflict and division and stimulate opposition.
Data Lakes for Digital Humanities

Traditional data in Digital Humanities projects bear various formats (structured, semi-structured, textual) and need substantial transformations (encoding and tagging, stemming, lemmatization, etc.) to be managed and analyzed. To fully master this process, we propose the use of data lakes as a solution to data siloing and big data variety problems. We describe data lake projects we currently run in close collaboration with researchers in humanities and social sciences and discuss the lessons learned running these projects.
Synth-by-Reg (SbR): Contrastive learning for synthesis-based registration of paired images

Nonlinear inter-modality registration is often challenging due to the lack of objective functions that are good proxies for alignment. Here we propose a synthesis-by-registration method to convert this problem into an easier intra-modality task. We introduce a registration loss for weakly supervised image translation between domains that does not require perfectly aligned training data. This loss capitalises on a registration U-Net with frozen weights, to drive a synthesis CNN towards the desired translation. We complement this loss with a structure preserving constraint based on contrastive learning, which prevents blurring and content shifts due to overfitting. We apply this method to the registration of histological sections to MRI slices, a key step in 3D histology reconstruction. Results on two different public datasets show improvements over registration based on mutual information (13% reduction in landmark error) and synthesis-based algorithms such as CycleGAN (11% reduction), and are comparable to a registration CNN with label supervision. Code and data are publicly available at \url{https://github.com/acasamitjana/SynthByReg}
New Insights on the Microstructure-electrochemistry Correlations in Nickel Hydroxide Battery Materials

Abstract not Available.
Decolonizing Self-Determination

Abstract                I reconstruct the framework for a new critical practice formulated as a repudiation/refutation of not just the “authority of dogmatism” but also the normativity in Eurocentric thought. I delink the critical practice from its anticipatory progression into the inevitable reification of Eurocentric normative considerations. Thus, an antinormative and logical critique of self-determination are developed that refute the presupposed meaning of normative colonial discourse from which self-determination is conceptualized as its antithesis. This chapter challenges the meaning and conceptual occupations of colonialism by critiquing the hegemonic formulation of the concept that forecloses accounts of colonialism’s persistent postcolonial political iterations. For instance, I engage the logical and legal presupposition upon which Chapter XI, Resolutions 1541 and 1514 of the UN Charter on decolonization established self-governance as coterminous to decolonization. The fallacious and legally duplicitous argument reduced the complex colonial form to settler colonialism when, in fact, settler colonial arrangements were only specific to places like the US, Canada, South Africa, and Australia. At the same time, Resolutions 2625 and 2105 occluded these classic cases of settler colonialism from their consideration/thinking of how self-governance should be enforced, as the question of sovereignty in the context of settler colonialism could only have been resolved through the removal of colonial settlers in these countries. And yet self-governance, which does not apply to the kind of colonialism in Ghana/Africa (more broadly), was framed as central to African liberation in places where colonialism was designed to outlive physical European presence/territorial aggrandizement.
Agroforestry for Climate Change Adaptation, Resilience Enhancement and Vulnerability Attenuation in Smallholder Farming Systems in Cameroon

The adverse impacts of climate variability and change are felt mostly by smallholder farmers and smallholder farming systems where rainfed agriculture is predominant. Continuous dependence on rain-fed agriculture has led to declining crop productivity and crop failure in most cases as weather patterns shift which is very problematic for crop growth. Agroforestry which is one of the climate-smart, environmentally benign and agroecological practices has been found to mitigate climate change adversities while fostering adaptation, enhancing resilience and attenuating vulnerability especially in smallholder farming systems. However, in Cameroon, limited empirical research has been done to ascertain the role played by agroforestry in climate change adaptation, resilience enhancement and vulnerability attenuation. This paper which is based on an in-depth review of literature was undertaken to uncover what has been done so far in terms of empirical studies tackling the role played by agroforestry in climate change adaptation, resilience and vulnerability attenuation in Cameroon. It was found that most of the empirical studies have been carried out in one agroecological zone – the western highlands of Cameroon, showing that smallholder farmers adopt different agroforestry practices in the face of climate change with the most common being home gardens with livestock, home gardens without livestock, scattered trees on croplands, improved fallows, live fences/hedges and windbreaks, coffeebased agroforestry, cocoa-based agroforestry, apiculture-based agroforestry, fodder banks, and plantation crop-based agroforestry practices. These agroforestry practices provide a plethora of ecosystem services categorized into provisioning, supporting, regulating and cultural which play an important role towards fostering climate change adaptation, enhancing resilience and attenuating vulnerability in smallholder farming systems. From the findings uncovered by this study, it is imperative for more empirical studies to be carried out in the other four agroecological zones of Cameroon where there is a paucity of information regarding the role played by agroforestry towards fostering climate change adaptation, enhancing resilience and attenuating vulnerability in smallholder farming systems.
An Empirical Investigation of a New Measure to Assess Abrasive Personality Disorder Traits

The psychometric properties of a new measure, the 33-item Abrasive Personality Traits scale, were investigated. College students (N = 84) completed the scale about someone they perceived as abrasive and an additional 75 college students completed it about someone who they did not consider abrasive. The scale had good internal reliability and acceptable test-retest reliability. Abrasive people were rated significantly higher on the scale than non-abrasive people (large effect size). The scale was also strongly and significantly correlated with the Narcissistic, Paranoid, Sadistic, Antisocial, and Passive-Aggressive personality disorders on the Coolidge Axis II Inventory. The results preliminarily demonstrate that abrasiveness may constitute a psychometrically reliable personality cluster, warranting further investigation.
Functionizer - A Cloud Agnostic Platform for Serverless Computing

The article presents MELODIC/FUNCTIONIZER platform, developed to support serverless deployment. It is a complete cross-cloud, cloud-agnostic deployment platform with advanced, utility-based optimization and multi-layer and real time monitoring features. This platform exploits the modelling language CAMEL, which advances the state-of-the-art through its ability to cover all aspects relevant to the application life-cycle in a rich manner. The platform has been tested with a complex application for face recognition. These platform and the serverless architecture is stable and very scalable, and the results are very good in terms of resources and execution time.
Climate change projections for Greek viticulture as simulated by a regional climate model

Viticulture represents an important economic activity for Greek agriculture. Winegrapes are cultivated in many areas covering the whole Greek territory, due to the favorable soil and climatic conditions. Given the dependence of viticulture on climate, the vitivinicultural sector is expected to be affected by possible climatic changes. The present study is set out to investigate the impacts of climatic change in Greek viticulture, using nine bioclimatic indices for the period 1981–2100. For this purpose, reanalysis data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and data from the regional climatic model Regional Climate Model Version 3 (RegCM3) are used. It was found that the examined regional climate model estimates satisfactorily these bioclimatic indices. The results of the study show that the increasing trend of temperature and drought will affect all wine-producing regions in Greece. In vineyards in mountainous regions, the impact is positive, while in islands and coastal regions, it is negative. Overall, it should be highlighted that for the first time that Greece is classified into common climatic characteristic categories, according to the international Geoviticulture Multicriteria Climatic Classification System (MCC system). According to the proposed classification, Greek viticulture regions are estimated to have similar climatic characteristics with the warmer wine-producing regions of the world up to the end of twenty-first century. Wine growers and winemakers should take the findings of the study under consideration in order to take measures for Greek wine sector adaptation and the continuation of high-quality wine production.
The Moral Imagination: the Art and Soul of Building Peace Association of Conflict Resolution, Sacramento, September 30, 2004

It is an honor to speak with you this morning. I am humbled by the invitation. The title of this conference rings particularly appropriate for our times: 'Valuing Peace in the 21st Century: Expanding the Art and Practice of Conflict Resolution.' If we are honest we must admit it clearly sets our feet onto the pathways of a complex journey through a most difficult terrain. These are not easy times we live in. They do not value peace, nor do they value the practice of conflict resolution. In this field we live a certain irony. We perhaps have never enjoyed a wider recognition for what we do and at the same time we have never experienced such a wide gap between our fundamental propositions and values, and the driving and far too often polarizing forces of national and global politics. Clearly one of our challenges is how to make clear, accessible and relevant the growing body of knowledge and practice of conflict transformation and peacebuilding in the wider public and in particular political spheres. But that challenge is informed and pushed by a deeper quest: To find our way to the imaginative source that gives impulse to who we are and what we are about in this field. I am not sure who proposed the phrase 'expanding the art and practice' but it lends itself to what has been preoccupying my professional journey for some years now. In these next few minutes I wish to speak about this phrase, about the essence, the 'heart's core', the rhythms and pulse of what is required to build genuine constructive change, what it takes to heal deep divisions, what is vital and necessary to value peace in a polarized world. I want to explore the art and soul of this movement gathered here today. There are no easy pathways that lead to the art and soul of anything, much less mediation, conflict resolution, or the building of peace. And even greater is the complexity of that pathway when you live in places like those where I have been working for nearly three decades, Colombia, Somalia, West Africa
Enhancing patient safety and quality of care by improving the usability of electronic health record systems: recommendations from AMIA

In response to mounting evidence that use of electronic medical record systems may cause unintended consequences, and even patient harm, the AMIA Board of Directors convened a Task Force on Usability to examine evidence from the literature and make recommendations. This task force was composed of representatives from both academic settings and vendors of electronic health record (EHR) systems. After a careful review of the literature and of vendor experiences with EHR design and implementation, the task force developed 10 recommendations in four areas: (1) human factors health information technology (IT) research, (2) health IT policy, (3) industry recommendations, and (4) recommendations for the clinician end-user of EHR software. These AMIA recommendations are intended to stimulate informed debate, provide a plan to increase understanding of the impact of usability on the effective use of health IT, and lead to safer and higher quality care with the adoption of useful and usable EHR systems.