Auswahl der wissenschaftlichen Literatur zum Thema „Connectivity of the median set“

The Global Connectivity Report 2022 takes stock of the progress in digital connectivity over the past three decades. It provides a detailed assessment of the current state of connectivity and how close the world is to achieving universal and meaningful connectivity, using a unique analytical framework. It goes on to showcase solutions and good practices to accelerate progress. The second part of the report consists of seven thematic deep dives on infrastructure, affordability, financing, the pandemic, regulation, youth, and data. Chapter 2 relies on the framework for universal and meaningful connectivity and the associated targets for 2030, developed by ITU and the Office of the Secretary-General’s Envoy on Technology, to analyse the current state of digital connectivity globally and progress towards reaching the targets by 2030. The framework considers usage by various stakeholders (universal dimension of connectivity) and the five enablers of connectivity (meaningful dimension of connectivity): infrastructure, device, affordability, skills, and safety and security. The assessment reveals that the world is still far from universal and meaningful connectivity. Infrastructure needs to be rolled out or improved to bridge the coverage gap. There are still significant differences between and within countries in network availability and quality. Fixed broadband is a costly investment and is not available or is unaffordable for many. Mobile broadband offers greater flexibility and is less expensive, and most rely on this technology to go online. But in many rural areas of developing countries, only 3G is available, when meaningful connectivity requires 4G. The coverage gap, currently at 5%, is dwarfed by the usage gap: 32% of people who are within range of a mobile broadband network and could therefore connect, remain offline. Data compiled by ITU make it possible to classify the offline population based on who they are and where they live. The main reasons cited by people for not using the Internet are the lack of affordability, of awareness about the Internet, of need, as well as the inability to use the Internet. Globally, connectivity became more expensive in 2021 due to the global economic downturn triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. After years of steady decline, the share of income spent on telecommunication and Internet services increased in 2021. The global median price of an entry-level broadband plan in the majority of countries amounts to more than 2% of the gross national income per capita, which is the affordability threshold set by the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development. People should not be forced to use the Internet. However, evidence suggests that introducing people to the Internet usually entices them to stay online. Based on activities people reported, use of the Internet leads to an improved social life, with the use of social networks, making Internet calls and streaming video the most common activities.

Many brain disorders – such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia and autism – are heterogeneous, that is, they may have several subtypes. Traditionally, clinicians have identified subtypes, such as subtypes of psychosis, using clinical criteria. Neuroimaging has the potential to detect subtypes based on objective biomarker-based criteria; however, there are no studies that evaluate the application of combining unsupervised machine learning and anatomical connectivity analysis to accomplish this goal. We propose a computational framework to detect subtypes based on anatomical connectivity computed from diffusion tensor imaging data, in a data-driven and fully automated way. The proposed method exhibits excellent performance on simulated data. We also applied this approach to a real-world dataset: the Nathan Kline Institute data set. The Nathan Kline Institute study consists of 137 normal adult subjects (mean age 41 years (standard deviation 18), male/female 85/52). We examined the association between detected subtypes and the impulsive behavior scale. We found that a subtype characterized by lower connectivity scores was associated with a higher positive urgency score; positive urgency is a vulnerability marker for drug addiction. The top-ranked connections characterizing subtypes involve several brain regions, including the anterior cingulate gyrus, median cingulate gyrus, thalamus, superior frontal gyrus (medial), middle frontal gyrus (orbital part), inferior frontal gyrus (triangular part), superior frontal gyrus, precuneus and putamen. The proposed framework is extendable, and can be used to detect subtypes from other features, including clinical and genomic biomarkers.

Motivated by the need to solve large hub location problems efficiently and accurately, we discover an important characteristic of optimal solutions to p-hub median problems that we call spatial separability. It refers to the partitioning of the network into allocation clusters with nonoverlapping convex hulls. We illustrate numerically that the property persists over a wide range of randomly generated instances and propose a data-driven approach based on an insight from the property to tackle very large problem sizes. Computational experiments corroborate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in generating high-quality solutions within reasonable computational times. We then explore a new application area of hub location problems in brain connectivity networks and introduce the largest and the first set of three-dimensional instances in the literature. Computational results demonstrate the capability of hub location models in successfully depicting the hub organization of the human brain, as validated by the medical literature, thus revealing that hub location models can play an important role in investigating the intricate connectivity of the human brain.

Background Directional connectivity measures, such as partial directed coherence (PDC), give us means to explore effective connectivity in the human brain. By utilizing independent component analysis (ICA), the original data-set reduction was performed for further PDC analysis. Purpose To test this cascaded ICA-PDC approach in causality studies of human functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data. Material and Methods Resting state group data was imaged from 55 subjects using a 1.5 T scanner (TR 1800 ms, 250 volumes). Temporal concatenation group ICA in a probabilistic ICA and further repeatability runs ( n = 200) were overtaken. The reduced data-set included the time series presentation of the following nine ICA components: secondary somatosensory cortex, inferior temporal gyrus, intracalcarine cortex, primary auditory cortex, amygdala, putamen and the frontal medial cortex, posterior cingulate cortex and precuneus, comprising the default mode network components. Re-normalized PDC (rPDC) values were computed to determine directional connectivity at the group level at each frequency. Results The integrative role was suggested for precuneus while the role of major divergence region may be proposed to primary auditory cortex and amygdala. Conclusion This study demonstrates the potential of the cascaded ICA-PDC approach in directional connectivity studies of human fMRI.

Objective. To explore acupuncture effects on brain functional connectivity in patients with functional dyspepsia (FD).Methods. Eight patients in an acupuncture treatment group and ten healthy adults in the control group participated in the study. Acupuncture effectiveness was evaluated based on changes of the gastrointestinal symptoms, gastric motility measurements, and gastrin levels and comparisons with the control group when appropriate. To investigate functional connectivity changes related to FD and potential modulation after acupuncture, a set of regions of interest (ROIs) were selected according to previous fMRI reports of acupuncture.Results. Patients showed significant improvements of FD signs and symptoms after acupuncture treatments. For all of the ROIs, we identified subportions of the networks showing reduced connectivity in patients with FD. Connectivity between the ROIs and corresponding disease targets showed significant improvement after acupuncture treatment (P<0.05) in all ROIs except for right medial temporal lobe-hippocampus and right inferior parietal lobule.Conclusion. Functional connectivity of the brain is changed in patients with FD but approximates that in healthy control after acupuncture treatment. The relief of gastrointestinal signs and symptoms by acupuncture is likely due to the normalization of brain-gut axis associated with FD.

Behavioral evidence has shown that humans automatically develop internal representations adapted to the temporal and spatial statistics of the environment. Building on prior fMRI studies that have focused on statistical learning of temporal sequences, we investigated the neural substrates and mechanisms underlying statistical learning from scenes with a structured spatial layout. Our goals were twofold: (1) to determine discrete brain regions in which degree of learning (i.e., behavioral performance) was a significant predictor of neural activity during acquisition of spatial regularities and (2) to examine how connectivity between this set of areas and the rest of the brain changed over the course of learning. Univariate activity analyses indicated a diffuse set of dorsal striatal and occipitoparietal activations correlated with individual differences in participants' ability to acquire the underlying spatial structure of the scenes. In addition, bilateral medial-temporal activation was linked to participants' behavioral performance, suggesting that spatial statistical learning recruits additional resources from the limbic system. Connectivity analyses examined, across the time course of learning, psychophysiological interactions with peak regions defined by the initial univariate analysis. Generally, we find that task-based connectivity with these regions was significantly greater in early relative to later periods of learning. Moreover, in certain cases, decreased task-based connectivity between time points was predicted by overall posttest performance. Results suggest a narrowing mechanism whereby the brain, confronted with a novel structured environment, initially boosts overall functional integration and then reduces interregional coupling over time.

Abstract Empathy is thought to engage mental simulation, which in turn is known to rely on hippocampal-neocortical processing. Here, we tested how hippocampal-neocortical pattern similarity and connectivity contributed to pain empathy. Using this approach, we analyzed a data set of 102 human participants who underwent functional MRI while painful and non-painful electrical stimulation was delivered to themselves or to a confederate. As hypothesized, results revealed increased pattern similarity between first-hand pain and pain empathy (compared to non-painful control conditions) within the hippocampus, retrosplenial cortex, the temporo-parietal junction and anterior insula. While representations in these regions were unaffected by confederate similarity, pattern similarity in the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex was increased the more dissimilar the other individual was perceived. Hippocampal-neocortical connectivity during first-hand pain and pain empathy engaged largely distinct but neighboring primary motor regions, and empathy-related hippocampal coupling with the fusiform gyrus positively scaled with trait measures of perspective taking. These findings suggest that shared representations and mental simulation might contribute to pain empathy via hippocampal-neocortical pattern similarity and connectivity, partially affected by personality traits and the similarity of the observed individual.

Abstract Introduction The authors conducted this preliminary study to discover the brain signal features for subjective depressive mood by the method that combines a machine learning approach and a graph theory analysis. Methods The authors retrospectively investigated the records of 13 subjects who had undertaken polysomnography (PSG) and patient health questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9). We divided the data to a training set (10 subjects) and a test set (2 subjects). The predictive modeling was conducted by 3 steps: 1) estimation of the small world coefficient (sigma, omega) of each frequency bands (delta: 0.5-4.0 Hz, theta: 4.0-8.0 Hz, alpha: 8.0-12.0 Hz, sigma: 12.0-16.0 Hz, beta: 16.0-30.0 Hz, gamma: 30.0-100.0 Hz) of electroencephalography (EEG) channel for N1 and N2 sleep, 2) training predictive models, and 3) evaluation of final performance of model by using test set. The authors used mean absolute error (MAE) and mean squared error (MSE) as evaluation metrics. The training was conducted using Python 3.8, and its libraries (MNE-Python, MNE-connectivity, NetworkX, xgboost scikit-learn). Results Median value of PHQ-9 score was 6.0 (interquartile range: 5, 8). Lasso regression model showed good performance (MAE 0.6, MSE 0.4). XGBoost model also showed good performance (MAE 0.8, MSE 1.3). Conclusion Lasso regression model using small world coefficient of EEG in overnight PSG showed good predictive value for PHQ-9. The further research using a sufficient sample is needed. Support (if any)

Abstract Area 10, located in the frontal pole, is a unique specialization of the primate cortex. We studied the cortical connections of area 10 in the New World Cebus monkey, using injections of retrograde tracers in different parts of this area. We found that injections throughout area 10 labeled neurons in a consistent set of areas in the dorsolateral, ventrolateral, orbital, and medial parts of the frontal cortex, superior temporal association cortex, and posterior cingulate/retrosplenial region. However, sites on the midline surface of area 10 received more substantial projections from the temporal lobe, including clear auditory connections, whereas those in more lateral parts received >90% of their afferents from other frontal areas. This difference in anatomical connectivity reflects functional connectivity findings in the human brain. The pattern of connections in Cebus is very similar to that observed in the Old World macaque monkey, despite >40 million years of evolutionary separation, but lacks some of the connections reported in the more closely related but smaller marmoset monkey. These findings suggest that the clearer segregation observed in the human frontal pole reflects regional differences already present in early simian primates, and that overall brain mass influences the pattern of cortico-cortical connectivity.

Le problème du médian est un des problèmes les plus étudiés en théorie des espaces métriques. Nous l'étudions dans les graphes médians d'un point de vue algorithmique. Nous présentons un algorithme linéaire basé sur un calcul rapide des classes de parallélisme des arêtes (les Thêta-classes) via un parcours en largeur particulier (LexBFS). Nous donnons également un algorithme linéaire pour le problème du médian dans les l1-complexes cubiques des graphes médians et dans les structures d'évènements.Ensuite, nous présentons une caractérisation des graphes aux médians connexes dans la p-ième puissance Gp du graphe et donnons une méthode polynomiale pour vérifier si un graphe est un graphe aux médians Gp-connexes, étendant un résultat de Bandelt et Chepoi (cas p=1). Nous utilisons cette caractérisation pour montrer que certaines classes de graphes sont G2-connexes, comme les graphes de Helly bipartis et les graphes pontés. Nous travaillons également sur l'aspect axiomatique en étudiant l'ABC-problème, qui consiste à déterminer les graphes (nommés ABC-graphes) dans lesquels la fonction médian est l'unique fonction consensus respectant trois axiomes simples (A) Anonymat, (B) Intervalle (Betweeness) et (C) Cohérence. Nous montrons que les graphes modulaires aux médians G2-connexes sont des ABC-graphes et définissons de nouveaux axiomes pour caractériser la fonction médian dans d'autres classes de graphes, comme les graphes aux médians connexes. Nous prouvons également que les graphes respectant la propriété d'appariement (qui sont des ABC-graphes) est une sous-classe propre des graphes de Helly bipartis et étudions la complexité de la reconnaissance de ces graphes<br>The median problem is one of the most investigated problem in metric graph theory. We will start by studying this problem in median graphs. We present a linear time algorithm based on the majority rule which characterize the median in median graphs and on a fast computation of the parallelism classes of the edges (the \Theta-classes) via LexBFS which is a particular breadth first search algorithm.We also provide linear time algorithms to compute the median set in the l_1-cube complexes of median graphs and in event structures. Then, we provide a characterization of the graphs with connected medians in the pth power of the graph and provide a polynomial method to check if a graph is a G^p-connected median graph, extending a result of Bandelt and Chepoi (case p=1). We use this characterization to prove that some important graph classes in metric graph theory have G2-connected medians, such as bipartite Helly graphs and bridged graphs. We will also studied the axiomatic aspect of the median function by investigating the ABC-problem, which determine the graphs (named ABC-graphs) in which the median function is the only consensus function verifying three simples axioms (A) Anonymat, (B) Betweeness and (C) Consistency. We show that modular graphs with G2-connected medians are ABC-graphs and define new axioms allowing us to characterize the median function on some graph classes. For example the graphs with connected medians (including Helly graphs). We also show that a known class of ABC-graphs (graphs satisfying the pairing property) is a proper subclass of bipartite Helly graphs and we investigate their recognition

Newton's method associated to a complex holomorphic function f is defined by the dynamical system Nf(z) = z – f(z) / f'(z). As a root-finding algorithm, a natural question is to understand the dynamics of Nf about its fixed points, as they correspond to the roots of the function f. In other words, we would like to understand the basins of attraction of Nf, i.e., the sets of points that converge to a root of f under the iteration of Nf. Basins of attraction are actually just one type of stable component or component of the Fatou set, defined as the set of points for which the family of iterates is defined and normal locally. The Julia set or set of chaos is its complement (taken on the Riemann sphere). The study of the topology of these two sets is key in Holomorphic Dynamics. In 1990, Mitsuhiro Shishikura proved that, for any non-constant polynomial P, the Julia set of NP is connected. In fact, he obtained this result as a consequence of a much more general theorem for rational functions: If the Julia set of a rational function R is disconnected, then R has at least two weakly repelling fixed points. With the final goal of proving the transcendental version of this theorem, in this Thesis we see that: If a transcendental meromorphic function f has either a multiply-connected attractive basin, or a multiply-connected parabolic basin, or a multiply-connected Fatou component with simply-connected image, then f has at least one weakly repelling fixed point. Our proof for this result is mainly based in two techniques: quasiconformal surgery and the study of the existence of virtually repelling fixed points. We conclude the Thesis with an idea of the strategy for the proof of the case of Herman rings, as well as some ideas for the case of Baker domains, which is left as a subject for a future project.

Effective connectivity in functional neuroimaging studies is defined as the time dependent causal influence that a certain brain region of interest (ROI) exerts on another. Structural equation modeling (SEM) is regularly employed to analyze effective connectivity. In recent years, various SEM methods have been proposed to model effective connectivity. However, there has been little attempt to develop SEM methods for analyzing common patterns of effective connectivity across subjects despite the prevalence of multiple-subject research in effective connectivity. This dissertation proposes a method that fills this gap. This method is called dynamic generalized (multiple-set) structured canonical correlation analysis (dynamic GCANO). It combines generalized (multiple-set) canonical correlation analysis (GCANO) with a multivariate autoregressive time series model in a unified framework. This dissertation begins with a brief review of existing SEM techniques, and points out their limitations in analyzing multiple-subject effective connectivity data, which serves as a motivation to develop dynamic GCANO. The technical underpinnings of the proposed method are then stated, including specifications of a modeling framework and an optimization criterion for parameter estimation, which is minimized by an alternating least squares algorithm. The effectiveness of dynamic GCANO is demonstrated by analyzing both synthetic and real data sets. The former reveals reasonably good parameter recoveries by the proposed method, while the latter shows the usefulness of the method in empirical research. Several features of dynamic GCANO are highlighted through these examples. The dissertation concludes with possible extensions of the proposed method.<br>Suivant les méthodes d'imagerie fonctionnelle cérébrale, une connectivité efficace est définie comme influence dépendant de causalité temporelle qu'une certaine région d'intérêt du cerveau (ROI) exerce sur une autre. La modélisation par équation structurelle (SEM) est régulièrement utilisée pour analyser la connectivité efficace. Ces dernières années, diverses méthodes de SEM ont été proposées pour la modélisation de la connectivité efficace. Cependant, il y a eu peu de tentative pour développer des méthodes de SEM pour analyser les modèles communs de connectivité efficace sur-sujets, malgré la prédominance de recherche sur des sujets multiples pour analyser la connectivité efficace. Cette thèse propose une méthode qui comble cette lacune. Cette méthode est appelée dynamique généralisée (multiples ensemble) structuré l'analyse de corrélation canonique (dynamique GCANO). Elle combine généralisée (multiples ensemble) structuré l'analyse de corrélation canonique (GCANO) avec multivariée des séries chronologiques autorégressif dans un cadre unifié. Cette thèse commence par un bref sommaire sur les techniques existantes de SEM et souligne leurs limites pour analyser les données de plusieurs sous réserve pour la connectivité efficace, ce qui a mené à développer la dynamique GCANO. Les techniques de base de la méthode proposée sont ensuite énumérées, y compris les spécifications du cadre de modélisation et un critère d'optimisation pour l'estimation de paramètres, qui est réduit par alternant algorithme des moindres carrés. L'efficacité du dynamique GCANO est démontrée par l'analyse des ensembles de données synthétiques et réels. Les données synthétiques montrent une récupération raisonnable de paramètre par la méthode proposée, alors que les données réelles montrent l'utilité de la méthode dans les recherches empiriques. Plusieurs fonctionnalités du dynamique sont mises en évidence par le biais de ces exemples. En conclusion, la thèse propose des extensions possibles de la méthode proposée.

Dans cette thèse, nous étudions les aspects structurels et algorithmiques de différents problèmes de théorie des graphes. Rappelons qu’un graphe est un ensemble de sommets éventuellement reliés par des arêtes. Deux sommets sont adjacents s’ils sont reliés par une arête.<p>Tout d’abord, nous considérons les deux problèmes suivants :le problème de vertex cover et celui de dominating set, deux cas particuliers du problème de hitting set. Un vertex cover est un ensemble de sommets qui rencontrent toutes les arêtes alors qu’un dominating set est un ensemble X de sommets tel que chaque sommet n’appartenant pas à X est adjacent à un sommet de X. La version connexe de ces problèmes demande que les sommets choisis forment un sous-graphe connexe. Pour les deux problèmes précédents, nous examinons le prix de la connexité, défini comme étant le rapport entre la taille minimum d’un ensemble répondant à la version connexe du problème et celle d’un ensemble du problème originel. Nous prouvons la difficulté du calcul du prix de la connexité d’un graphe. Cependant, lorsqu’on exige que le prix de la connexité d’un graphe ainsi que de tous ses sous-graphes induits soit borné par une constante fixée, la situation change complètement. En effet, pour les problèmes de vertex cover et de dominating set, nous avons pu caractériser ces classes de graphes pour de petites constantes.<p>Ensuite, nous caractérisons en termes de dominating sets connexes les graphes Pk- free, graphes n’ayant pas de sous-graphes induits isomorphes à un chemin sur k sommets. Beaucoup de problèmes sur les graphes sont étudiés lorsqu’ils sont restreints à cette classe de graphes. De plus, nous appliquons cette caractérisation à la 2-coloration dans les hypergraphes. Pour certains hypergraphes, nous prouvons que ce problème peut être résolu en temps polynomial.<p>Finalement, nous travaillons sur le problème de Pk-hitting set. Un Pk-hitting set est un ensemble de sommets qui rencontrent tous les chemins sur k sommets. Nous développons un algorithme d’approximation avec un facteur de performance de 3. Notre algorithme, basé sur la méthode primal-dual, fournit un Pk-hitting set dont la taille est au plus 3 fois la taille minimum d’un Pk-hitting set.<br>Doctorat en Sciences<br>info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

A evolução da computação móvel melhora a capacidade de comunicação e colaboração das pessoas. Os principais pilares desta transformação são: o desenvolvimento e produção de dispositivos móveis com capacidade multimídia e equipados com duas ou mais interfaces de rede, a disponibilidade de conectividade sem fio ubíqua e a popularização de aplicações sociais online. As redes sociais online merecem destaque pelas funcionalidades que permitem a criação e compartilhamento de conteúdo digital dentro de círculos sociais, também chamado de mídia social. Serviços na web anexam a localização geográfica do dispositivo ao conteúdo digital, criando as chamadas mídias sociais baseadas em localização. Equipadas com seus telefones e tablets, as pessoas estão criando e consumindo mídias sociais em qualquer lugar. Entretanto, é um desafio manter tais dispositivos móveis conectados nos ambientes de rede sem fio atuais e de próxima geração e.g., múltiplos provedores de acesso e múltiplas tecnologias de comunicação. Pesquisas recentes propõem componentes para o gerenciamento de conectividade sem fio que fazem uso simultâneo do contexto de conectividade atual e de um conjunto destes dados coletados no passado. Tais componentes são preditores de mobilidade, mecanismos de handover ou gerenciadores de mobilidade que utilizam dados de contexto de conectividade de forma particular para atingir seus propósitos. Na presente investigação, propomos uma metodologia que orquestra os principais componentes de gerenciamento de conectividade em um laço retro alimentado. Argumentamos que a coleta de dados de contexto de conectividade pode ser projetada como um sistema de sensoreamento, cujo sensores são as interfaces de rede sem fio. Como parte deste sistema de sensoriamento, os círculos sociais podem assistir o gerenciamento de conectividade compartilhando dados de contexto de conectividade. A ideia central é utilizar serviços baseados em localização para compartilhar dados de contexto de conectividade dentro dos círculos sociais. Desta forma, as redes sociais online adicionam escala para o sistema e permite colaboração em volta de dados de contexto recentes, locais, personalizados e sociais. O objetivo é melhorar experiências de conectividade sem fio e.g., métricas de QoS (Quality of Service) como: vazão, latência e qualidade do sinal. Relatamos como os dados de contexto de conectividade são manipulados com um modelo baseado em grafos e métricas como: intensidade do vértice e grau centralidade. Com isso, identificamos áreas com alta densidade de handovers, definimos a reputação dos usuários e revelamos a cobertura das redes. Resultados de experimentos mostram que a colaboração pode melhorar métricas de QoS de ~18 a ~30% se comparado ao uso de um preditor de mobilidade ou um sistema operacional moderno, respectivamente. Esta discussão se desdobra com foco na viabilidade da solução em termos de sobrecarga de armazenamento e consumo de energia. Os promissores resultados experimentais indicam que nossa solução pode melhorar experiências de conectividade sem fio de usuários móveis<br>The evolution of mobile computing improves communication and collaboration among people. The main pillars of this transformation are: the development and production of mobile devices with multimedia capabilities and equipped with two or more network interfaces, the availability of ubiquitous wireless connectivity and the popularity of online social applications. Online social networks noteworthy features that allow for the creation and sharing of digital content within social circles, also called textit Social Media. Web Services attach the geographic location of the device to the digital content, creating the so-called textit location-based social media. Equipped with their phones and tablets, people are creating and consuming social media anywhere. However, it is a challenge to keep such mobile devices connected in current and next generation wireless network environments textit e.g., multiple ISPs (Internet Service Provider) and multiple communication technologies. Recent researches proposes components for managing wireless connectivity that make simultaneous use of the current and past connectivity context data. Such components are mobility predictors, handovers mechanisms or mobility managers that use connectivity context data in a particular way to achieve its purposes. In this research, we propose feasiable a methodology that orchestrates the main components of the connectivity management in a feedback loop. We argue that the process of gathering connectivity context data can be designed as a sensing system, whose sensors are wireless network interfaces. As part of this sensing system, the social circles may assist the management of connectivity by sharing connectivity context data. The main idea is to use location-based services to share connectivity context data within social circles. Thus, online social networks add scale to the system and enables collaboration around recent, local, and social context data. The goal is to enhance wireless connectivity experiences in terms of QoS ( textit Quality of Service) metrics textit e.g., throughput, latency and signal quality. We report how this data is handled using complex networks metrics e.g., vertexs strength and centrality degree, to identify high density handover areas, define the mobile users reputation and to reveal the networks coverage. Real experiments showed that collaboration can improve QoS metrics from ~18 to ~30% if compared to just use a mobility predictor or a modern operational system, respectively. The discussion unfolds with focus on the collaborations efficiency as function of time, number of users, discovered area size and mobility patterns. The promising experimental results indicate that our solution can enhance mobile users wireless connectivity experiences

Doutoramento em Matemática Aplicada à Economia e Gestão<br>Dado um grafo bipartido com classes de bipartição V e U, uma cobertura é um subconjunto C Ç V em que cada vértice de U é adjacente a pelo menos um vértice de C. 0 problema da cobertura procura uma cobertura de cardinalidade mínima. No contexto da selecção de reservas para a con¬servação de espécies, V é o conjunto de povoamentos passíveis de serem seleccionados para integrar a reserva, U o conjunto de espécies a proteger e as arestas descrevem as ocorrências das espécies nos povoamentos. Algumas coberturas apresentam, no entanto, configurações espaciais que não são ade¬quadas do ponto de vista conservacionista. Por razões de sustentabilidade a fragmentação é considerada um atributo indesejável. Assim, a conexidade tem um papel importante na protecção da biodiversidade e vários autores têm recentemente proposto algoritmos que incorporam a conexidade. Nesta dissertação considera-se a introdução explícita da conexidade no problema da cobertura, de forma a dar resposta a questões relevantes em biologia da conservação.<br>Given a bipartite graph with bipartition V and U, a cover is a subset C C V such that each node of U is adjacent to at least one node in C. The set cov¬ering problem seeks a minimum cardinality cover. In the context of reserve selection for conservation of species, V is a set of candidate sites from a re¬serve network, U is the set of species to be protected, and the edges describe which species are represented in each site. Some covers however may assume spatial configurations which are not adequate for conservational purposes. For sustainability reasons the fragmentation of existing natural habitats should be avoided. Thus, connectivity appears to be an important issue for persistence of biodiversity, and several authors have recently proposed algorithms which incorporate connectivity. We address the issue of explic¬itly introducing connectivity in the set covering problem, with relevance for conservation biology.

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) offer a flexible low-cost solution to the problem of event monitoring, especially in places with limited accessibility or that represent danger to humans. WSNs are made of resource-constrained wireless devices, which require energy efficient mechanisms, algorithms and protocols. One of these mechanisms is Topology Control (TC) composed of two mechanisms, Topology Construction and Topology Maintenance. This dissertation expands the knowledge of TC in many ways. First, it introduces a comprehensive taxonomy for topology construction and maintenance algorithms for the first time. Second, it includes four new topology construction protocols: A3, A3Lite, A3Cov and A3LiteCov. These protocols reduce the number of active nodes by building a Connected Dominating Set (CDS) and then turning off unnecessary nodes. The A3 and A3-Lite protocols guarantee a connected reduced structure in a very energy efficient manner. The A3Cov and A3LiteCov protocols are extensions of their predecessors that increase the sensing coverage of the network. All these protocols are distributed -they do not require localization information, and present low message and computational complexity. Third, this dissertation also includes and evaluates the performance of four topology maintenance protocols: Recreation (DGTRec), Rotation (SGTRot), Rotation and Recreation (HGTRotRec), and Dynamic Local-DSR (DLDSR). Finally, an event-driven simulation tool named Atarraya was developed for teaching, researching and evaluating topology control protocols, which fills a need in the area of topology control that other simulators cannot. Atarraya was used to implement all the topology construction and maintenance cited, and to evaluate their performance. The results show that A3Lite produces a similar number of active nodes when compared to A3, while spending less energy due to its lower message complexity. A3Cov and A3CovLite show better or similar coverage than the other distributed protocols discussed here, while preserving the connectivity and energy efficiency from A3 and A3Lite. In terms of network lifetime, depending on the scenarios, it is shown that there can be a substantial increase in the network lifetime of 450% when a topology construction method is applied, and of 3200% when both topology construction and maintenance are applied, compared to the case where no topology control is used.

Durant ces dernières décennies, d'importants efforts et beaucoup de café ont été dépensés en vue de caractériser les instances faciles des problèmes NP-difficiles. Dans ce domaine de recherche, une approche s'avère être redoutablement efficace : la théorie de la complexité paramétrée introduite par Downey et Fellows dans les années 90.Dans cette théorie, la complexité d'un problème n'est plus mesurée uniquement en fonction de la taille de l'instance, mais aussi en fonction d'un paramètre .Dans cette boite à outils, la largeur arborescente est sans nul doute un des paramètres de graphe les plus étudiés.Ce paramètre mesure à quel point un graphe est proche de la structure topologique d'un arbre.La largeur arborescente a de nombreuses propriétés algorithmiques et structurelles.Néanmoins, malgré l'immense intérêt suscité par la largeur arborescente, seules les classes de graphes peu denses peuvent avoir une largeur arborescente bornée.Mais, de nombreux problèmes NP-difficiles s'avèrent faciles dans des classes de graphes denses.La plupart du temps, cela peut s'expliquer par l'aptitude de ces graphes à se décomposer récursivement en bipartitions de sommets $(A,B)$ où le voisinage entre $A$ et $B$ possède une structure simple.De nombreux paramètres -- appelés largeurs -- ont été introduits pour caractériser cette aptitude, les plus remarquables sont certainement la largeur de clique , la largeur de rang , la largeur booléenne et la largeur de couplage induit .Dans cette thèse, nous étudions les propriétés algorithmiques de ces largeurs.Nous proposons une méthode qui généralise et simplifie les outils développés pour la largeur arborescente et les problèmes admettant une contrainte d'acyclicité ou de connexité tel que Couverture Connexe , Dominant Connexe , Coupe Cycle , etc.Pour tous ces problèmes, nous obtenons des algorithmes s'exécutant en temps $2^{O(k)}\cdot n^{O(1)}$, $2^{O(k \log(k))}\cdot n^{O(1)}$, $2^{O(k^2)}\cdot n^{O(1)}$ et $n^{O(k)}$ avec $k$ étant, respectivement, la largeur de clique, la largeur de Q-rang, la larguer de rang et la largueur de couplage induit.On prouve aussi qu'il existe un algorithme pour Cycle Hamiltonien s'exécutant en temps $n^{O(k)}$ quand une décomposition de largeur de clique $k$ est donné en entrée.Finalement, nous prouvons qu'on peut compter en temps polynomial le nombre de transversaux minimaux d'hypergraphes $\beta$-acyclique ainsi que le nombre de dominants minimaux de graphes fortement triangulés.Tous ces résultats offrent des pistes prometteuses en vue d'une généralisation des largeurs et de leurs applications algorithmiques<br>In the last decades, considerable efforts have been spent to characterize what makes NP-hard problems tractable. A successful approach in this line of research is the theory of parameterized complexity introduced by Downey and Fellows in the nineties.In this framework, the complexity of a problem is not measured only in terms of the input size, but also in terms of a parameter on the input.One of the most well-studied parameters is tree-width, a graph parameter which measures how close a graph is to the topological structure of a tree.It appears that tree-width has numerous structural properties and algorithmic applications.However, only sparse graph classes can have bounded tree-width.But, many NP-hard problems are tractable on dense graph classes.Most of the time, this tractability can be explained by the ability of these graphs to be recursively decomposable along vertex bipartitions $(A,B)$ where the adjacency between $A$ and $B$ is simple to describe.A lot of graph parameters -- called width measures -- have been defined to characterize this ability, the most remarkable ones are certainly clique-width, rank-width, and mim-width.In this thesis, we study the algorithmic properties of these width measures.We provide a framework that generalizes and simplifies the tools developed for tree-width and for problems with a constraint of acyclicity or connectivity such as Connected Vertex Cover, Connected Dominating Set, Feedback Vertex Set, etc.For all these problems, we obtain $2^{O(k)}\cdot n^{O(1)}$, $2^{O(k \log(k))}\cdot n^{O(1)}$, $2^{O(k^2)}\cdot n^{O(1)}$ and $n^{O(k)}$ time algorithms parameterized respectively by clique-width, Q-rank-width, rank-width and mim-width.We also prove that there exists an algorithm solving Hamiltonian Cycle in time $n^{O(k)}$, when a clique-width decomposition of width $k$ is given.Finally, we prove that we can count in polynomial time the minimal transversals of $\beta$-acyclic hypergraphs and the minimal dominating sets of strongly chordal graphs.All these results offer promising perspectives towards a generalization of width measures and their algorithmic applications

博士<br>國立清華大學<br>資訊工程學系<br>103<br>In this thesis, we investigate the wireless network deployment problem, which seeks the best deployment of a given limited number of wireless routers. We find that many goals for network deployment, such as maximizing the number of covered users, the size of the coverage area, or the total throughput of the network, can be modelled with a submodular set function. Specifically, given a set of routers, the goal is to find a set of locations S, each of which is equipped with a router, such that S maximizes a predefined submodular set function. However, this deployment problem is more difficult than the traditional maximum submodular set function problem, e.g., the maximum coverage problem, because it requires all the deployed routers to form a connected network. In addition, deploying a router in different locations might consume different costs. To address these challenges, this thesis introduces two approximation algorithms, one for homogeneous deployment cost scenarios and the other for heterogeneous deployment cost scenarios. Our simulations, using synthetic data and real traces of census in Taipei, show that the proposed algorithms not only have theoretical performance guarantee but also achieve better performances than other heuristics in practice.

Advances in online technology and news systems, such as automated reasoning across digital resources and connectivity to cloud servers for storage and software, have changed digital journalism production and publishing methods. Integrated media systems used by editors are also conduits to search systems and social media, but the lure of big data and rise in fake news have fragmented some layers of journalism, alongside investments in analytics and a shift in the loci for verification. Data has generated new roles to exploit data insights and machine learning methods, but access to big data and data lakes is so significant it has spawned newsworthy partnerships between media moguls and social media entrepreneurs. However, digital journalism does not even have its own semantic systems that could protect the values of journalism, but relies on the affordances of other systems. Amidst indexing and classification systems for well-defined vocabulary and concepts in news, data leaks and metadata present challenges for journalism. By contrast data visualisations and real-time field reporting with short-form mobile media and civilian drones set new standards during the European asylum seeker crisis. Aerial filming with drones also adds to the ontological base of journalism. An ontology for journalism and intersecting ontologies can inform the design of new semantic learning systems. The Semantic CAT Method, which draws on participatory design and game design, also assists the conceptual design of synthetic players with emotion attributes, towards a meta-model for learning. The design of context-aware sensor systems to protect journalists in conflict zones is also discussed.

Authored by a sex therapist who regularly works with clients wanting to improve their relationships, this book explains how technology can create conflict or additional anxiety and discloses techniques to help individuals gain confidence or strengthen their personal relationships. The statistics are telling: 85 percent of all adults use the Internet; 88 percent use email; 91 percent own cell phones; 56 percent own smartphones; 73 percent send and receive text messages; and 67 percent use social networking sites. The advent of personal communication devices and ubiquitous connectivity has dramatically shifted the way we communicate, and as a result, the way we date and pursue relationships has changed. The share of 18- to 24-year-olds who use online dating has roughly tripled from 10 percent in 2013 to 27 percent today. Modern dating techniques and technology-enabled interpersonal communication have resulted in very distinct emotional side effects. Dating and Mating in a Techno-Driven World explores dating in our 21st-century world with a unique approach, providing understandable information for anyone who is dating or seeking a long-term relationship while also serving as a clinical guide for therapists who want to learn how to treat individuals and especially couples presenting with some sort of issue related to technology. Instead of simply offering an analysis of the trends that are occurring, author Rachel Hoffman addresses the interpersonal problems and conflicts that result from digital or remote communication and "courting" and explains how to treat them. The topics addressed include utilizing dating apps, the effects of social media on relationships, and how technology can be distracting in relationships. Each chapter of the book supplies a case study or vignette, an analysis of the situation, research findings related to the topic, and clinical information that identifies the implications for therapists working with individuals or couples with a similar experience.

The Great Recession (GR) was the most dramatic economic downturn the USA has experienced in more than six decades. But against this backdrop, the USA actually made some limited progress against child poverty over the Great Recession when one considers the new US Supplemental Poverty Measure which lies at about 40 per cent of median income. The main reason was the growth of a well-targeted near cash safety net, combined with earnings enhancements in the form of refundable tax credits. These enhancements helped the working poor, but not many parents of children who could not find jobs. However these improvements had little if any effect on relative poverty counted at a European or cross-national relative poverty standard set at 60 per cent of median income. Greater progress against child poverty in the US requires a continued strong job market coupled with a child allowance.

Chapter 5 investigates Dibao’s anti-poverty effectiveness. The chapter shows that, based on various poverty lines and across urban and rural areas, Dibao’s anti-poverty effectiveness is limited and at best modest, largely due to its targeting errors and gaps in benefit delivery. Dibao is more effective in reducing the depth and severity of poverty than it is the rate of poverty, and its anti-poverty effectiveness is greater among recipients than in the general population. Dibao’s influence on reducing poverty is larger when a lower poverty line is used and smaller when a higher poverty line is used. Because relative poverty lines are often set relative to the median income in society and tend to be much higher than the more widely used absolute poverty lines, Dibao’s effects on reducing relative poverty are particularly limited. Dibao has had minimal effect on narrowing the income inequality gap in society.

Mediterranean-type climate (MTC) regions are highlighted in several global analyses of conservation risk and priorities. These regions have undergone high levels of habitat conversion and yet of all terrestrial biomes they have the second lowest level of land protection. With transformation pressures set to continue (Chapter 8), planning for a sustainable conservation future in MTC regions is therefore essential. Conservation activities are represented by a variety of philosophies and motives, partially driven by the underlying differences in transformation drivers and sociopolitical contexts across MTC regions. These activities include investment in, and best-practice management of, protected areas (land sparing), an interdisciplinary focus on integrated management of production landscapes (land sharing; stewardship), as well as ecological restoration to increase habitat, improve connectivity, and provide a hedge against the impacts of future climate change. These responses need to be applied in a strategic, synergistic manner to minimize future biodiversity loss.

Nationalism: Past as Prologue began as a single volume being compiled by Ad Akande, a scholar from South Africa, who proposed it to me as co-author about two years ago. The original idea was to examine how the damaging roots of nationalism have been corroding political systems around the world, and creating dangerous obstacles for necessary international cooperation. Since I (Bruce E. Johansen) has written profusely about climate change (global warming, a.k.a. infrared forcing), I suggested a concerted effort in that direction. This is a worldwide existential threat that affects every living thing on Earth. It often compounds upon itself, so delays in reducing emissions of fossil fuels are shortening the amount of time remaining to eliminate the use of fossil fuels to preserve a livable planet. Nationalism often impedes solutions to this problem (among many others), as nations place their singular needs above the common good. Our initial proposal got around, and abstracts on many subjects arrived. Within a few weeks, we had enough good material for a 100,000-word book. The book then fattened to two moderate volumes and then to four two very hefty tomes. We tried several different titles as good submissions swelled. We also discovered that our best contributors were experts in their fields, which ranged the world. We settled on three stand-alone books:” 1/ nationalism and racial justice. Our first volume grew as the growth of Black Lives Matter following the brutal killing of George Floyd ignited protests over police brutality and other issues during 2020, following the police assassination of Floyd in Minneapolis. It is estimated that more people took part in protests of police brutality during the summer of 2020 than any other series of marches in United States history. This includes upheavals during the 1960s over racial issues and against the war in Southeast Asia (notably Vietnam). We choose a volume on racism because it is one of nationalism’s main motive forces. This volume provides a worldwide array of work on nationalism’s growth in various countries, usually by authors residing in them, or in the United States with ethnic ties to the nation being examined, often recent immigrants to the United States from them. Our roster of contributors comprises a small United Nations of insightful, well-written research and commentary from Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, China, India, South Africa, France, Portugal, Estonia, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and the United States. Volume 2 (this one) describes and analyzes nationalism, by country, around the world, except for the United States; and 3/material directly related to President Donald Trump, and the United States. The first volume is under consideration at the Texas A &amp; M University Press. The other two are under contract to Nova Science Publishers (which includes social sciences). These three volumes may be used individually or as a set. Environmental material is taken up in appropriate places in each of the three books. * * * * * What became the United States of America has been strongly nationalist since the English of present-day Massachusetts and Jamestown first hit North America’s eastern shores. The country propelled itself across North America with the self-serving ideology of “manifest destiny” for four centuries before Donald Trump came along. Anyone who believes that a Trumpian affection for deportation of “illegals” is a new thing ought to take a look at immigration and deportation statistics in Adam Goodman’s The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Deporting Immigrants (Princeton University Press, 2020). Between 1920 and 2018, the United States deported 56.3 million people, compared with 51.7 million who were granted legal immigration status during the same dates. Nearly nine of ten deportees were Mexican (Nolan, 2020, 83). This kind of nationalism, has become an assassin of democracy as well as an impediment to solving global problems. Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times (2019:A-25): that “In their 2018 book, How Democracies Die, the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt documented how this process has played out in many countries, from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, to Recep Erdogan’s Turkey, to Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Add to these India’s Narendra Modi, China’s Xi Jinping, and the United States’ Donald Trump, among others. Bit by bit, the guardrails of democracy have been torn down, as institutions meant to serve the public became tools of ruling parties and self-serving ideologies, weaponized to punish and intimidate opposition parties’ opponents. On paper, these countries are still democracies; in practice, they have become one-party regimes….And it’s happening here [the United States] as we speak. If you are not worried about the future of American democracy, you aren’t paying attention” (Krugmam, 2019, A-25). We are reminded continuously that the late Carl Sagan, one of our most insightful scientific public intellectuals, had an interesting theory about highly developed civilizations. Given the number of stars and planets that must exist in the vast reaches of the universe, he said, there must be other highly developed and organized forms of life. Distance may keep us from making physical contact, but Sagan said that another reason we may never be on speaking terms with another intelligent race is (judging from our own example) could be their penchant for destroying themselves in relatively short order after reaching technological complexity. This book’s chapters, introduction, and conclusion examine the worldwide rise of partisan nationalism and the damage it has wrought on the worldwide pursuit of solutions for issues requiring worldwide scope, such scientific co-operation public health and others, mixing analysis of both. We use both historical description and analysis. This analysis concludes with a description of why we must avoid the isolating nature of nationalism that isolates people and encourages separation if we are to deal with issues of world-wide concern, and to maintain a sustainable, survivable Earth, placing the dominant political movement of our time against the Earth’s existential crises. Our contributors, all experts in their fields, each have assumed responsibility for a country, or two if they are related. This work entwines themes of worldwide concern with the political growth of nationalism because leaders with such a worldview are disinclined to co-operate internationally at a time when nations must find ways to solve common problems, such as the climate crisis. Inability to cooperate at this stage may doom everyone, eventually, to an overheated, stormy future plagued by droughts and deluges portending shortages of food and other essential commodities, meanwhile destroying large coastal urban areas because of rising sea levels. Future historians may look back at our time and wonder why as well as how our world succumbed to isolating nationalism at a time when time was so short for cooperative intervention which is crucial for survival of a sustainable earth. Pride in language and culture is salubrious to individuals’ sense of history and identity. Excess nationalism that prevents international co-operation on harmful worldwide maladies is quite another. As Pope Francis has pointed out: For all of our connectivity due to expansion of social media, ability to communicate can breed contempt as well as mutual trust. “For all our hyper-connectivity,” said Francis, “We witnessed a fragmentation that made it more difficult to resolve problems that affect us all” (Horowitz, 2020, A-12). The pope’s encyclical, titled “Brothers All,” also said: “The forces of myopic, extremist, resentful, and aggressive nationalism are on the rise.” The pope’s document also advocates support for migrants, as well as resistance to nationalist and tribal populism. Francis broadened his critique to the role of market capitalism, as well as nationalism has failed the peoples of the world when they need co-operation and solidarity in the face of the world-wide corona virus pandemic. Humankind needs to unite into “a new sense of the human family [Fratelli Tutti, “Brothers All”], that rejects war at all costs” (Pope, 2020, 6-A). Our journey takes us first to Russia, with the able eye and honed expertise of Richard D. Anderson, Jr. who teaches as UCLA and publishes on the subject of his chapter: “Putin, Russian identity, and Russia’s conduct at home and abroad.” Readers should find Dr. Anderson’s analysis fascinating because Vladimir Putin, the singular leader of Russian foreign and domestic policy these days (and perhaps for the rest of his life, given how malleable Russia’s Constitution has become) may be a short man physically, but has high ambitions. One of these involves restoring the old Russian (and Soviet) empire, which would involve re-subjugating a number of nations that broke off as the old order dissolved about 30 years ago. President (shall we say czar?) Putin also has international ambitions, notably by destabilizing the United States, where election meddling has become a specialty. The sight of Putin and U.S. president Donald Trump, two very rich men (Putin $70-$200 billion; Trump $2.5 billion), nuzzling in friendship would probably set Thomas Jefferson and Vladimir Lenin spinning in their graves. The road of history can take some unanticipated twists and turns. Consider Poland, from which we have an expert native analysis in chapter 2, Bartosz Hlebowicz, who is a Polish anthropologist and journalist. His piece is titled “Lawless and Unjust: How to Quickly Make Your Own Country a Puppet State Run by a Group of Hoodlums – the Hopeless Case of Poland (2015–2020).” When I visited Poland to teach and lecture twice between 2006 and 2008, most people seemed to be walking on air induced by freedom to conduct their own affairs to an unusual degree for a state usually squeezed between nationalists in Germany and Russia. What did the Poles then do in a couple of decades? Read Hlebowicz’ chapter and decide. It certainly isn’t soft-bellied liberalism. In Chapter 3, with Bruce E. Johansen, we visit China’s western provinces, the lands of Tibet as well as the Uighurs and other Muslims in the Xinjiang region, who would most assuredly resent being characterized as being possessed by the Chinese of the Han to the east. As a student of Native American history, I had never before thought of the Tibetans and Uighurs as Native peoples struggling against the Independence-minded peoples of a land that is called an adjunct of China on most of our maps. The random act of sitting next to a young woman on an Air India flight out of Hyderabad, bound for New Delhi taught me that the Tibetans had something to share with the Lakota, the Iroquois, and hundreds of other Native American states and nations in North America. Active resistance to Chinese rule lasted into the mid-nineteenth century, and continues today in a subversive manner, even in song, as I learned in 2018 when I acted as a foreign adjudicator on a Ph.D. dissertation by a Tibetan student at the University of Madras (in what is now in a city called Chennai), in southwestern India on resistance in song during Tibet’s recent history. Tibet is one of very few places on Earth where a young dissident can get shot to death for singing a song that troubles China’s Quest for Lebensraum. The situation in Xinjiang region, where close to a million Muslims have been interned in “reeducation” camps surrounded with brick walls and barbed wire. They sing, too. Come with us and hear the music. Back to Europe now, in Chapter 4, to Portugal and Spain, we find a break in the general pattern of nationalism. Portugal has been more progressive governmentally than most. Spain varies from a liberal majority to military coups, a pattern which has been exported to Latin America. A situation such as this can make use of the term “populism” problematic, because general usage in our time usually ties the word into a right-wing connotative straightjacket. “Populism” can be used to describe progressive (left-wing) insurgencies as well. José Pinto, who is native to Portugal and also researches and writes in Spanish as well as English, in “Populism in Portugal and Spain: a Real Neighbourhood?” provides insight into these historical paradoxes. Hungary shares some historical inclinations with Poland (above). Both emerged from Soviet dominance in an air of developing freedom and multicultural diversity after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed. Then, gradually at first, right wing-forces began to tighten up, stripping structures supporting popular freedom, from the courts, mass media, and other institutions. In Chapter 5, Bernard Tamas, in “From Youth Movement to Right-Liberal Wing Authoritarianism: The Rise of Fidesz and the Decline of Hungarian Democracy” puts the renewed growth of political and social repression into a context of worldwide nationalism. Tamas, an associate professor of political science at Valdosta State University, has been a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and a Fulbright scholar at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. His books include From Dissident to Party Politics: The Struggle for Democracy in Post-Communist Hungary (2007). Bear in mind that not everyone shares Orbán’s vision of what will make this nation great, again. On graffiti-covered walls in Budapest, Runes (traditional Hungarian script) has been found that read “Orbán is a motherfucker” (Mikanowski, 2019, 58). Also in Europe, in Chapter 6, Professor Ronan Le Coadic, of the University of Rennes, Rennes, France, in “Is There a Revival of French Nationalism?” Stating this title in the form of a question is quite appropriate because France’s nationalistic shift has built and ebbed several times during the last few decades. For a time after 2000, it came close to assuming the role of a substantial minority, only to ebb after that. In 2017, the candidate of the National Front reached the second round of the French presidential election. This was the second time this nationalist party reached the second round of the presidential election in the history of the Fifth Republic. In 2002, however, Jean-Marie Le Pen had only obtained 17.79% of the votes, while fifteen years later his daughter, Marine Le Pen, almost doubled her father's record, reaching 33.90% of the votes cast. Moreover, in the 2019 European elections, re-named Rassemblement National obtained the largest number of votes of all French political formations and can therefore boast of being "the leading party in France.” The brutality of oppressive nationalism may be expressed in personal relationships, such as child abuse. While Indonesia and Aotearoa [the Maoris’ name for New Zealand] hold very different ranks in the United Nations Human Development Programme assessments, where Indonesia is classified as a medium development country and Aotearoa New Zealand as a very high development country. In Chapter 7, “Domestic Violence Against Women in Indonesia and Aotearoa New Zealand: Making Sense of Differences and Similarities” co-authors, in Chapter 8, Mandy Morgan and Dr. Elli N. Hayati, from New Zealand and Indonesia respectively, found that despite their socio-economic differences, one in three women in each country experience physical or sexual intimate partner violence over their lifetime. In this chapter ther authors aim to deepen understandings of domestic violence through discussion of the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of theit countries to address domestic violence alongside studies of women’s attitudes to gender norms and experiences of intimate partner violence. One of the most surprising and upsetting scholarly journeys that a North American student may take involves Adolf Hitler’s comments on oppression of American Indians and Blacks as he imagined the construction of the Nazi state, a genesis of nationalism that is all but unknown in the United States of America, traced in this volume (Chapter 8) by co-editor Johansen. Beginning in Mein Kampf, during the 1920s, Hitler explicitly used the westward expansion of the United States across North America as a model and justification for Nazi conquest and anticipated colonization by Germans of what the Nazis called the “wild East” – the Slavic nations of Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Russia, most of which were under control of the Soviet Union. The Volga River (in Russia) was styled by Hitler as the Germans’ Mississippi, and covered wagons were readied for the German “manifest destiny” of imprisoning, eradicating, and replacing peoples the Nazis deemed inferior, all with direct references to events in North America during the previous century. At the same time, with no sense of contradiction, the Nazis partook of a long-standing German romanticism of Native Americans. One of Goebbels’ less propitious schemes was to confer honorary Aryan status on Native American tribes, in the hope that they would rise up against their oppressors. U.S. racial attitudes were “evidence [to the Nazis] that America was evolving in the right direction, despite its specious rhetoric about equality.” Ming Xie, originally from Beijing, in the People’s Republic of China, in Chapter 9, “News Coverage and Public Perceptions of the Social Credit System in China,” writes that The State Council of China in 2014 announced “that a nationwide social credit system would be established” in China. “Under this system, individuals, private companies, social organizations, and governmental agencies are assigned a score which will be calculated based on their trustworthiness and daily actions such as transaction history, professional conduct, obedience to law, corruption, tax evasion, and academic plagiarism.” The “nationalism” in this case is that of the state over the individual. China has 1.4 billion people; this system takes their measure for the purpose of state control. Once fully operational, control will be more subtle. People who are subject to it, through modern technology (most often smart phones) will prompt many people to self-censor. Orwell, modernized, might write: “Your smart phone is watching you.” Ming Xie holds two Ph.Ds, one in Public Administration from University of Nebraska at Omaha and another in Cultural Anthropology from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, where she also worked for more than 10 years at a national think tank in the same institution. While there she summarized news from non-Chinese sources for senior members of the Chinese Communist Party. Ming is presently an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice, West Texas A&amp;M University. In Chapter 10, analyzing native peoples and nationhood, Barbara Alice Mann, Professor of Honours at the University of Toledo, in “Divide, et Impera: The Self-Genocide Game” details ways in which European-American invaders deprive the conquered of their sense of nationhood as part of a subjugation system that amounts to genocide, rubbing out their languages and cultures -- and ultimately forcing the native peoples to assimilate on their own, for survival in a culture that is foreign to them. Mann is one of Native American Studies’ most acute critics of conquests’ contradictions, and an author who retrieves Native history with a powerful sense of voice and purpose, having authored roughly a dozen books and numerous book chapters, among many other works, who has traveled around the world lecturing and publishing on many subjects. Nalanda Roy and S. Mae Pedron in Chapter 11, “Understanding the Face of Humanity: The Rohingya Genocide.” describe one of the largest forced migrations in the history of the human race, the removal of 700,000 to 800,000 Muslims from Buddhist Myanmar to Bangladesh, which itself is already one of the most crowded and impoverished nations on Earth. With about 150 million people packed into an area the size of Nebraska and Iowa (population less than a tenth that of Bangladesh, a country that is losing land steadily to rising sea levels and erosion of the Ganges river delta. The Rohingyas’ refugee camp has been squeezed onto a gigantic, eroding, muddy slope that contains nearly no vegetation. However, Bangladesh is majority Muslim, so while the Rohingya may starve, they won’t be shot to death by marauding armies. Both authors of this exquisite (and excruciating) account teach at Georgia Southern University in Savannah, Georgia, Roy as an associate professor of International Studies and Asian politics, and Pedron as a graduate student; Roy originally hails from very eastern India, close to both Myanmar and Bangladesh, so he has special insight into the context of one of the most brutal genocides of our time, or any other. This is our case describing the problems that nationalism has and will pose for the sustainability of the Earth as our little blue-and-green orb becomes more crowded over time. The old ways, in which national arguments often end in devastating wars, are obsolete, given that the Earth and all the people, plants, and other animals that it sustains are faced with the existential threat of a climate crisis that within two centuries, more or less, will flood large parts of coastal cities, and endanger many species of plants and animals. To survive, we must listen to the Earth, and observe her travails, because they are increasingly our own.

Only ten years ago, there were more internet users in countries like France or Germany than in all of Africa put together. But much has changed in a decade. The year 2018 marks the first year in human history in which a majority of the world’s population are now connected to the internet. This mass connectivity means that we have an internet that no longer connects only the world’s wealthy. Workers from Lagos to Johannesburg to Nairobi and everywhere in between can now apply for and carry out jobs coming from clients who themselves can be located anywhere in the world. Digital outsourcing firms can now also set up operations in the most unlikely of places in order to tap into hitherto disconnected labour forces. With CEOs in the Global North proclaiming that ‘location is a thing of the past’ (Upwork, 2018), and governments and civil society in Africa promising to create millions of jobs on the continent, the book asks what this ‘new world of digital work’ means to the lives of African workers. It draws from a year-long fieldwork in South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, and Uganda, with over 200 interviews with participants including gig workers, call and contact centre workers, self-employed freelancers, small-business owners, government officials, labour union officials, and industry experts. Focusing on both platform-based remote work and call and contact centre work, the book examines the job quality implications of digital work for the lives and livelihoods of African workers.

In the “Great Game” of the 21st century—gaining leadership and influence in Asia—the United States is rapidly being outflanked by China, which is investing in infrastructure, connectivity, and supply chains on an unprecedented global scale. In this first book to use China’s Belt and Road Initiative, previously known as China’s New Silk Road, as a point of departure to explain why and how China is about to supersede America with regard to influence in Asia, Sarwar Kashmeri argues that the United States has a narrow window of opportunity to find a way to fit into a world in which the rules of the game are increasingly set by China. U.S. opposition to the Belt and Road Initiative is doomed to failure, so America must find creative ways to engage China strategically, and he warns that the window to do so is closing fast. The Belt and Road Initiative is China’s ambitious project to connect itself to more than 70 countries in Central Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East through new roads, rails, ports, sea lanes, and air links. This cornerstone of Chinese foreign policy under President Xi Jinping is positioning China at the center of over half of world trade, and the loss of American influence and power could well lead to the end of the postwar liberal world order. Far more than merely an infrastructure investment, the Belt and Road Initiative is a masterful grand strategy to create nothing less than a new world order based on the Chinese model of government and its financial institutions. Yet, as the passing of the baton of world leadership takes place, the United States seems curiously incapable or uninterested in devising a counterstrategy. Even though the United States will no longer have the largest economy in the world, it will still be a powerful and rich country with global alliances.

AbstractSocial media has evolved from being a set of rudimentary tools to a complex instrument that has had both positive and negative consequences, often leading to widespread circulation of misinformation impacting societies and institutions. The COVID-19 pandemic, significantly, is the first health crisis, witnessed globally in the age of social media and amidst unprecedented connectivity. Throughout the pandemic, the world has witnessed a widespread use of social media. The medium has not only enabled isolated people to remain connected with their friends and families but also to communicate with medical experts. At the same time, myths about COVID-19, its treatment, and effects have circulated on the same platforms leading governments to issue guidelines in several countries including India. While social media has enabled a regular flow of information, it has also led to unverified content circulating on platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, fueling panic in people about the virus and the vaccines. This chapter explores the role social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and others) have played in enhancing and delivering evidence, connecting communities and also in circulating myths and unverified content during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through quantitative analysis, it encapsulates trends being witnessed in different geographies. It will conclude with learnings that we have gathered on leveraging this medium which can be used going forward in instances of future health crises.

Nowadays, the issues related to the goals that the tourism organization should set and the new policy to which it needs to focus is especially relevant. In order to achieve them, it is necessary to develop and conduct various events that are within the competence not only of marketing managers, but also of those of PR specialists in companies and tourism destinations. The tasks set in the current report are related to external information, which is used by the media to create a story, which must fully reflect the credibility of the situation in a particular problem environment. Good practices have been identified in order to promote the opportunities for providing a healthy tourism product in a global health crisis in tourism destinations. In such global conditions, in which markets are shrinking and the rules for tourist services related to the provision of a healthy environment are changing, health tourism finds an increasingly sustainable place among the product offerings of destinations, which in turn leads to the need for its professional promotion and competent communication with different audiences.

Abstract The evaluation of fluid flow through fractured media is essential for many applications. In hard rocks, fluid flow depends on fracture aperture and connectivity, as fractures are the preferential flow paths within the rock mass. Previous research studied fluid flow, using Discrete Fracture Networks (DFN) and numerical modelling methods, with fewer lab-scale experiments. Advancements in 3D printing technology allows for generating valuable lab-scale physical models representing fractured media. In this work, a DFN model is built using the DFN software MoFrac and a 3D physical model is generated with a 3D printer. The 3D printed DFN model is fixed in an experimental set-up, which functions as a differential pressure meter by restricting airflow through a transition duct. The objectives of the experiment are to establish the behavior of the changing pressure to fluid flow through fractures. This laboratory experiment is part of an ongoing research project investigating the constructability of a Natural Heat Exchange Engineering Technology system. This system uses natural means to provide economically significant thermal regeneration capacity through a volume of rocks for ventilating mine workings. The major contribution of the lab-scale experiment is to verify whether the secondary permeability of a rockmass can admit sufficient flow.

E-commerce contributes to the improvement of communications between the company, producers, distributors and customers. However, it should be noted that success in e-commerce depends upon determining effective factors in e-commerce. There is a set of effective inside organisational and outside organizational factors in e-commerce which should be taken into consideration during the development of e-commerce. According to the recent results of DESI Index, Latvia lags behind the EU average on integration of digital technology by businesses. Despite excellent connectivity and good digital public services, Latvian SMEs do not use effectively online selling, social media, cloud computing and big data possibilities. At the same time, it is recognised nationally that e-commerce provides good opportunities to develop business, including in the regions. Taking into account the before-mentioned, the aim of the paper is to analyse the factors contribution to the development of e-commerce in the regions in Latvia. Main results of the research: in general, factor groups “Technological development” and “Social factors (human skills)” were assessed the highest among Latvian entrepreneurs. Such individual factors as desire to develop, employee knowledge, and managerial attitude, technological development in the world, and managerial knowledge and existence of financial resources in the company were evaluated the highest in terms of effect on usage of e-commerce in the business. In case of regional cross-cut, in Kurzeme, Riga and Latgale regions entrepreneurs are rather in favour of technological development factors affecting the usage of e-commerce, while entrepreneurs in Zemgale and Vidzeme regions think that social factors affect the development of e-commerce the most.

As electronics keeps on its trend towards miniaturization, increased functionality and connectivity, the need for improved reliability capacitors is growing rapidly in several industrial compartments, such as automotive, medical, aerospace and military. Particularly, recent developments of the automotive compartment, mostly due to changes in standards and regulations, are challenging the capabilities of capacitors in general, and especially film capacitors. Among the required features for a modern capacitor are the following: (i) high reliability under mechanical shock, (ii) wide working temperature range, (iii) high insulation resistance, (iv) small dimensions, (v) long expected life time and (vi) high peak withstanding voltage. This work aims at analyzing the key features that characterize the mechanical response of the capacitor towards temperature changes. Firstly, all the key components of the capacitor have been characterized, in terms of strength and stiffness, as a function of temperature. These objectives have been accomplished by means of several strain analysis methods, such as strain gauges, digital image correlation (DIC) or dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA). All the materials used to manufacture the capacitor, have been characterized, at least, with respect to their Young’s modulus and Poisson’s ratio. Then, a three-dimensional finite element model of the whole capacitor has been set up using the ANSYS code. Based on all the previously collected rehological data, the numerical model allowed to simulate the response in terms of stress and strain of each of the capacitor components when a steady state thermal load is applied. Due to noticeable differences between the thermal expansion coefficients of the capacitor components, stresses and strains build up, especially at the interface between different components, when thermal loads are applied to the assembly. Therefore, the final aim of these numerical analyses is to allow the design engineer to define structural optimization strategies, aimed at reducing the mechanical stresses on the capacitor components when thermal loads are applied.

Median filters (MFs) (or the more general rankorder filters) have proved very powerful in image processing. However, rank-order filters are generally considered to be more time-consuming than linear, e.g., averaging, filters. Several fast algorithms were devised for on-line or off-line filtering. Some of them are based on histogram calculation, whereas others are based on bit-by-bit calculation of the median. The vector median filter (VMF), introduced earlier by the authors, is a two-parameter family of median-type filters that outputs at each position a set of elements, i.e., a median vector. The VMF has the same fundamental properties of the MF; i.e., it preserves edges while filtering out narrow impulses. The main advantage of the VMF is that it is computationally more efficient than the MF with a performance comparable to the MF. Furthermore, since the VMF is a two-parameter filter, it offers a wider range of filtering possibilities. Here, based on a histogram calculation, a fast VMF algorithm is described. Computer run times are presented for both fast MFs and fast VMFs.

Since the end of the great crisis of 2007-10, the financial services industry began a process of accelerating change. New business models based on convergent technological developments are challenging the status quo of a long-established and traditional industry. The purpose of this document is to consider the latest developments in the financial services industry and to discuss how they might affect the ability for firms--particularly small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)--and individuals to access financing. It concludes that the transformative developments in the financial services industry will most likely improve and expand access of firms and individuals to finance, as well as increase formalization and financial inclusion. Some hurdles and risks that may hamper and/or delay the process are identified: the reaction of the industry incumbents, the lack of appropriate and timely regulation, the lack of access to good-quality and affordable digital connectivity (broadband access), and the unforeseen and seriously disruptive changes that might come from the payments space. To confront these risks, the public sector must define a set of proper and timely responses. The strategy for public interventions must be defined based on a deep understanding of the forces that are driving the change.

The purpose of this report is to provide a set of ground motion models (GMMs) to be considered by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) for their National Seismic Hazard Maps (NSHMs) for the Central and Eastern U.S. (CEUS). These interim GMMs are adjusted and modified from a set of preliminary models developed as part of the Next Generation Attenuation for Central and Eastern North-America (CENA) project (NGA-East). The NGA-East objective was to develop a new ground-motion characterization (GMC) model for the CENA region. The GMC model consists of a set of GMMs for median and standard deviation of ground motions and their associated weights in the logic-tree for use in probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA). NGA-East is a large multidisciplinary project coordinated by the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER), at the University of California, Berkeley. The project has two components: (1) a set of scientific research tasks, and (2) a model-building component following the framework of the “Seismic Senior Hazard Analysis Committee (SSHAC) Level 3” [Budnitz et al. 1997; NRC 2012]. Component (2) is built on the scientific results of component (1) of the NGA-East Project. This report does not document the final NGA-East model under (2), but instead presents interim GMMs for use in the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Seismic Hazard Maps. Under component (1) of NGA-East, several scientific issues were addressed, including: (a) development of a new database of empirical data recorded in CENA; (b) development of a regionalized ground-motion map for CENA, (c) definition of the reference site condition; (d) simulations of ground motions based on different methodologies, (e) development of numerous GMMs for CENA, and (f) the development of the current report. The scientific tasks of NGA- East were all documented as a series of PEER reports. This report documents the GMMs recommended by the authors for consideration by the USGS for their NSHM. The report documents the key elements involved in the development of the proposed GMMs and summarizes the median and aleatory models for ground motions along with their recommended weights. The models presented here build on the work from the authors and aim to globally represent the epistemic uncertainty in ground motions for CENA. The NGA-East models for the USGS NSHMs includes a set of 13 GMMs defined for 25 ground-motion intensity measures, applicable to CENA in the moment magnitude range of 4.0 to 8.2 and covering distances up to 1500 km. Standard deviation models are also provided for general PSHA applications (ergodic standard deviation). Adjustment factors are provided for hazard computations involving the Gulf Coast region.

This issue of the Journal is devoted to physical integration in Latin America. The Editorial Committee set about designing the contents, with a call for papers, which suggested topics and questions that focused on the subject while covering a broad spectrum. Regional physical integration is supported by a wide range of instruments; such as infrastructure works to reduce transportation costs and enhance connectivity, and financial structuring of technically, highly complex large scale capital investments. But no less relevant are government cooperation mechanisms that provide the necessary coordination for trade facilitation policies and measures, or the local impacts associated with enterprises, especially those located in border areas.

The Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) is tasked with the stewardship of billions of dollars’ worth of public invested highway infrastructure. Not only does INDOT continually seek design and operational policies that foster cost effective project delivery and procurement, they also seek opportunities for revenue generation. Due to population growth and the increased demand for online connectivity and global information transmission, the fiber-optic cable industry has experienced rapid growth over the past few years. Information and communication technology (ICT) companies have long sought to achieve higher economic productivity by installing fiber-optic cables in the right of way (ROW) of access-controlled highways. Based on these developments, an experiment was conducted to measure the economic impact in Indiana. To determine this impact, a database was developed by compartmentalizing the analysis into (1) GDP per county per industry type, (2) the natural growth of GDP as a factor, and (3) the extent of contribution of broadband in the growth of GDP. A general formula was developed to incorporate the adjusted median income on both the industry and county levels, along with a broadband contribution factor. This formula was employed to determine policies that can produce optimum economic outcome by leveraging the Pareto method.

The main contribution of this paper with respect to previous work is the use of data on subjective perceptions to identify the Latin American middle classes. This paper provides a set of comparisons between objective and subjective definitions of middle-class using data from the 2007 World Gallup Poll. Seven objective income-based definitions of social class are contrasted with a self-perceived social status measure. Mismatches between the objective and the subjective classification of social class are the largest when the objective definition is based on median incomes. Mismatches result from the fact that self-perceived social status is associated not just with income, but also with personal capabilities, interpersonal relations, financial and material assets, and perceptions of economic insecurity. Objective definitions of the middle class based on absolute incomes provide the lowest mismatches and the most accurate differentiation of the middle class from other classes.

COVID-19 brought the public’s attention to the critical value of transportation and supply chain workers as lifelines to access food and other supplies. This report examines essential job skills required of the middle-skill workforce (workers with more than a high school degree, but less than a four-year college degree). Many of these middle-skill transportation and supply chain jobs are what the Federal Reserve Bank defines as “opportunity occupations” -- jobs that pay above median wages and can be accessible to those without a four-year college degree. This report lays out the complex landscape of selected technological disruptions of the supply chain to understand the new workforce needs of these middle-skill workers, followed by competencies identified by industry. With workplace social distancing policies, logistics organizations now rely heavily on data management and analysis for their operations. All rungs of employees, including warehouse workers and truck drivers, require digital skills to use mobile devices, sensors, and dashboards, among other applications. Workforce training requires a focus on data, problem solving, connectivity, and collaboration. Industry partners identified key workforce competencies required in digital literacy, data management, front/back office jobs, and in operations and maintenance. Education and training providers identified strategies to effectively develop workforce development programs. This report concludes with an exploration of the role of Institutes of Higher Education in delivering effective workforce education and training programs that reimagine how to frame programs to be customizable, easily accessible, and relevant.

This document is the final project report of the Next Generation Attenuation for Central and Eastern North America (CENA) project (NGA-East). The NGA-East objective was to develop a new ground-motion characterization (GMC) model for the CENA region. The GMC model consists of a set of new ground-motion models (GMMs) for median and standard deviation of ground motions and their associated weights to be used with logic-trees in probabilistic seismic hazard analyses (PSHA). NGA-East is a large multidisciplinary project coordinated by the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER), at the University of California. The project has two components: (1) a set of scientific research tasks, and (2) a model-building component following the framework of the “Seismic Senior Hazard Analysis Committee (SSHAC) Level 3” (Budnitz et al. 1997; NRC 2012). Component (2) is built on the scientific results of component (1) of the NGA-East project. This report documents the tasks under component (2) of the project. Under component (1) of NGA-East, several scientific issues were addressed, including: (a) development of a new database of ground motion data recorded in CENA; (b) development of a regionalized ground-motion map for CENA, (c) definition of the reference site condition; (d) simulations of ground motions based on different methodologies; and (e) development of numerous GMMs for CENA. The scientific tasks of NGA-East were all documented as a series of PEER reports. The scope of component (2) of NGA-East was to develop the complete GMC. This component was designed as a SSHAC Level 3 study with the goal of capturing the ground motions’ center, body, and range of the technically defensible interpretations in light of the available data and models. The SSHAC process involves four key tasks: evaluation, integration, formal review by the Participatory Peer Review Panel (PPRP), and documentation (this report). Key tasks documented in this report include review and evaluation of the empirical ground- motion database, the regionalization of ground motions, and screening sets of candidate GMMs. These are followed by the development of new median and standard deviation GMMs, the development of new analyses tools for quantifying the epistemic uncertainty in ground motions, and the documentation of implementation guidelines of the complete GMC for PSHA computations. Appendices include further documentation of the relevant SSHAC process and additional supporting technical documentation of numerous sensitivity analyses results. The PEER reports documenting component (1) of NGA-East are also considered “attachments” to the current report and are all available online on the PEER website (https://peer.berkeley.edu/). The final NGA-East GMC model includes a set of 17 GMMs defined for 24 ground-motion intensity measures, applicable to CENA in the moment magnitude range of 4.0 to 8.2 and covering distances up to 1500 km. Standard deviation models are also provided for site-specific analysis (single-station standard deviation) and for general PSHA applications (ergodic standard deviation). Adjustment factors are provided for consideration of source-depth effects and hanging-wall effects, as well as for hazard computations at sites in the Gulf Coast region.

This study evaluates the important sustainability determinants that affect factors’ success in meeting their sustainability goals when conducting infrastructure construction projects in California. The study implemented the online survey method to evaluate the sustainability characteristics that infrastructure industry professionals currently are aware of under the current situation in California. A data set of 25 validated survey responses is used for statistical data analysis using analysis of variables, Kruskal-Wallis tests, and two sample t-tests. The analysis results showed that the median response values for the six major sustainability categories do not show any significant difference. The results also showed that no statistically significant difference in the mean response values can be found from the six major sustainability categories considered. Based on the pairwise comparison results, only the other category showed a difference with water- and energy-related categories. However, mean ranks among the factors under each category are useful in prioritizing the importance of the factors considered, which will be useful for the successful implementation of sustainability in infrastructure construction projects in California. These results are meaningful for legislators and transportation agencies because they provide insights about the sustainability criteria relevant to infrastructure construction projects for better informed decisions about how to meet the projects’ sustainability goals.

While debates over China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) dominate the discourse over global infrastructure development, countries sceptical of the purpose or potential of the BRI have launched multiple alternative initiatives. This analysis compares two case studies: the Asia-Africa Growth Corridor (AAGC) launched by Japan and India in 2017, in part building on Japan’s Quality Infrastructure concept, and the G7’s 2021 Build Back Better World (B3W) plan, which is effectively a follow-up on the Blue Dot Network announced by the United States, Japan, and Australia in 2019. The paper concludes that the set of high financial and project quality standards of these initiatives may lead to better overall return but also prohibitive initial costs, while admirable goals like gender equity or digitised governance may not always respond adequately to the infrastructure priorities of developing countries. Furthermore, while these initiatives rely heavily on mobilising private capital, the literature clearly shows that infrastructure projects, especially in developing regions, are typically rather unattractive for private investors. Nevertheless, with a staggering USD 15 trillion gap in projected needs and actual spending on global infrastructure by 2040, there is no reason for a zero-sum competition between Chinese and Western connectivity programmes. Thus, Hungary should remain open to all and not commit exclusively to any of these initiatives.

This study is the latest in a series monitoring the evolution of poverty, based on data gathered by The ESRI in the Living in Ireland Surveys since 1994. These have allowed progress towards achieving the targets set out in the National Anti Poverty Strategy since 1997 to be assessed. The present study provides an updated picture using results from the 2000 round of the Living in Ireland survey. The numbers interviewed in the 2000 Living in Ireland survey were enhanced substantially, to compensate for attrition in the panel survey since it commenced in 1994. Individual interviews were conducted with 8,056 respondents. Relative income poverty lines do not on their own provide a satisfactory measure of exclusion due to lack of resources, but do nonetheless produce important key indicators of medium to long-term background trends. The numbers falling below relative income poverty lines were most often higher in 2000 than in 1997 or 1994. The income gap for those falling below these thresholds also increased. By contrast, the percentage of persons falling below income lines indexed only to prices (rather than average income) since 1994 or 1997 fell sharply, reflecting the pronounced real income growth throughout the distribution between then and 2000. This contrast points to the fundamental factors at work over this highly unusual period: unemployment fell very sharply and substantial real income growth was seen throughout the distribution, including social welfare payments, but these lagged behind income from work and property so social welfare recipients were more likely to fall below thresholds linked to average income. The study shows an increasing probability of falling below key relative income thresholds for single person households, those affected by illness or disability, and for those who are aged 65 or over - many of whom rely on social welfare support. Those in households where the reference person is unemployed still face a relatively high risk of falling below the income thresholds but continue to decline as a proportion of all those below the lines. Women face a higher risk of falling below those lines than men, but this gap was marked among the elderly. The study shows a marked decline in deprivation levels across different household types. As a result consistent poverty, that is the numbers both below relative income poverty lines and experiencing basic deprivation, also declined sharply. Those living in households comprising one adult with children continue to face a particularly high risk of consistent poverty, followed by those in families with two adults and four or more children. The percentage of adults in households below 70 per cent of median income and experiencing basic deprivation was seen to have fallen from 9 per cent in 1997 to about 4 per cent, while the percentage of children in such households fell from 15 per cent to 8 per cent. Women aged 65 or over faced a significantly higher risk of consistent poverty than men of that age. Up to 2000, the set of eight basic deprivation items included in the measure of consistent poverty were unchanged, so it was important to assess whether they were still capturing what would be widely seen as generalised deprivation. Factor analysis suggested that the structuring of deprivation items into the different dimensions has remained remarkably stable over time. Combining low income with the original set of basic deprivation indicators did still appear to identify a set of households experiencing generalised deprivation as a result of prolonged constraints in terms of command over resources, and distinguished from those experiencing other types of deprivation. However, on its own this does not tell the whole story - like purely relative income measures - nor does it necessarily remain the most appropriate set of indicators looking forward. Finally, it is argued that it would now be appropriate to expand the range of monitoring tools to include alternative poverty measures incorporating income and deprivation. Levels of deprivation for some of the items included in the original basic set were so low by 2000 that further progress will be difficult to capture empirically. This represents a remarkable achievement in a short space of time, but poverty is invariably reconstituted in terms of new and emerging social needs in a context of higher societal living standards and expectations. An alternative set of basic deprivation indicators and measure of consistent poverty is presented, which would be more likely to capture key trends over the next number of years. This has implications for the approach adopted in monitoring the National Anti-Poverty Strategy. Monitoring over the period to 2007 should take a broader focus than the consistent poverty measure as constructed to date, with attention also paid to both relative income and to consistent poverty with the amended set of indicators identified here.