Zeitschriftenartikel zum Thema „Union Society for the Detection of Thieves“

To address the Fuel Theft situation currently faced by society, a project has been designed to create a Fuel Theft and Monitoring system. Fuel theft is an illegal act that involves stealing fuel from vehicles or storage facilities. With the rising fuel prices, this issue has become a growing problem. There are various methods employed by fuel thieves, including siphoning, drilling, burglary, and tampering with fuel gauges. Among these, siphoning is the most frequently used method, where thieves use a hose to extract fuel from the vehicle’s tank. They may suck on the hose or use a pump to facilitate the process, which can be done quickly and easily in a matter of minutes. Burglary is a more destructive method where thieves break into a vehicle to directly access and steal fuel from the tank, potentially causing damage to the vehicle. Tampering with fuel gauges is another method used by fuel thieves, whereby they manipulate the gauges to make it appear as if the tank is empty when it is actually full. This allows them to fill up the tank without paying for the fuel. Fuel theft has significant financial implications for businesses and individuals alike. In the United States, it is estimated to cost businesses billions of dollars annually. Furthermore, fuel theft can also result in environmental pollution, as thieves may dispose of the stolen fuel on the ground or in waterways. Additionally, fuel theft during transit is a common occurrence, with reports suggesting that around 16% of diesel filled in trucks is stolen. This alone amounts to a theft of significant value each year. Addressing fuel theft requires proactive measures to protect oneself and prevent such crimes. One solution involves leveraging IoT technology, specifically using modules like GSM, GPS, and cloud computing. By implementing these technologies, we can work towards eradicating the problem of fuel theft and a sustainable environment.

This paper analyzes the GULAG as a social phenomenon of the Soviet society and as a specific type of the Soviet unfree space. In particular, it considers social constructs and the relation between the camp administration, prisoners, hired workers and the local population. Paying close attention to the analysis of the social groups which a camp population was comprised of, their gender and social structure, this paper explores the living conditions, mode of life, customs and mores of the social environment in a camp. Based on the large database of various historical sources, such as governmental acts, statistical evidence, archival documents, publications in the camp press and memoirs, this paper also relies on the video interviews of former prisoners collected by the GULAG History Museum. Without denying the authoritarian nature of the corrective-labor camp system, the author came to the conclusion that the established organizational model of camp complexes determined the lack of distinct borders between the camp social space and the public space of the free world. Such blurred structure of corrective-labor camps leads to the fact that the camp culture with its archaic social principles dominated by the thieves culture extended its considerable influence over the whole society of the Soviet Union.

Crowd analysis has become an extremely famous research point in the territory of computer vision. Computerized examination of group exercises utilizing reconnaissance recordings is a significant issue for public security since it permits the identification of hazardous groups and where they’re going. We all see how many problems are faced because of the crowd. In our country, many terrorists are there. They plant a bomb in a crowded area which causes a lot of injuries. Thieves are mostly found or always leave in crowded areas so they can easily get an advantage of the crowd. In that situation, crowd analysis is very important. This paper presents the design of the deep learning architecture that provides control over the crowd behavior that will help to avoid violence or any other act which occurs because of the crowd which causes harmful effects to the society. So we are proposing a system that detects abnormal behavior of crowds using deep learning techniques.

The advancement and popularity of computer games make game scene analysis one of the most interesting research topics in the computer vision society. Among the various computer vision techniques, we employ object detection algorithms for the analysis, since they can both recognize and localize objects in a scene. However, applying the existing object detection algorithms for analyzing game scenes does not guarantee a desired performance, since the algorithms are trained using datasets collected from the real world. In order to achieve a desired performance for analyzing game scenes, we built a dataset by collecting game scenes and retrained the object detection algorithms pre-trained with the datasets from the real world. We selected five object detection algorithms, namely YOLOv3, Faster R-CNN, SSD, FPN and EfficientDet, and eight games from various game genres including first-person shooting, role-playing, sports, and driving. PascalVOC and MS COCO were employed for the pre-training of the object detection algorithms. We proved the improvement in the performance that comes from our strategy in two aspects: recognition and localization. The improvement in recognition performance was measured using mean average precision (mAP) and the improvement in localization using intersection over union (IoU).

Floods represent a significant natural hazard with the potential to inflict substantial damage on human society. The swift and precise delineation of flood extents is of paramount importance for effectively supporting flood response and disaster relief efforts. In comparison to optical sensors, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) sensor data acquisition exhibits superior capabilities, finding extensive application in flood detection research. Nonetheless, current methodologies exhibit limited accuracy in flood boundary detection, leading to elevated instances of both false positives and false negatives, particularly in the detection of smaller-scale features. In this study, we proposed an advanced flood detection method called FWSARNet, which leveraged a deformable convolutional visual model with Sentinel-1 SAR images as its primary data source. This model centered around deformable convolutions as its fundamental operation and took inspiration from the structural merits of the Vision Transformer. Through the introduction of a modest number of supplementary parameters, it significantly extended the effective receptive field, enabling the comprehensive capture of intricate local details and spatial fluctuations within flood boundaries. Moreover, our model employed a multi-level feature map fusion strategy that amalgamated feature information from diverse hierarchical levels. This enhancement substantially augmented the model’s capability to encompass various scales and boost its discriminative power. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed model, experiments were conducted using the ETCI2021 dataset. The results demonstrated that the Intersection over Union (IoU) and mean Intersection over Union (mIoU) metrics for flood detection achieved impressive values of 80.10% and 88.47%, respectively. These results surpassed the performance of state-of-the-art (SOTA) models. Notably, in comparison to the best results documented on the official ETCI2021 dataset competition website, our proposed model in this paper exhibited a remarkable 3.29% improvement in flood prediction IoU. The experimental outcomes underscore the capability of the FWSARNet method outlined in this paper for flood detection using Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data. This method notably enhances the accuracy of flood detection, providing essential technical and data support for real-world flood monitoring, prevention, and response efforts.

The development of international trade and the growing influence of visual images on the consciousness of modern society have led to a steadily growing demand for art objects. However, the art market is a gold mine for professional thieves. Every month, more than a thousand works of art are stolen in the world. The criminal art business ranks third after drug trafficking and the arms trade. The level of detection of crimes related to the theft of art objects is still negligibly low (only 1.5 % of court cases end in favor of the owners), the amount of money is colossal (according to general estimates, the global value of stolen works is 3.7 billion pounds), and the interest of the internal authorities of different countries in training specialized search personnel is scanty. The relevance of the presented topic lies in the fact that the globalization of international trade in cultural values and the high corruption component require improving customs administration and improving the quality of customs activities. Today, innovative technologies are able to automate the process of control over cultural values, speed up and simplify the process of interaction between foreign trade participants and customs authorities, as well as ensure complete safety of transportation of cultural heritage objects. Objective: to develop proposals for improving customs control over the movement of cultural property, in particular, by creating an information interdepartmental system for monitoring the movement of cultural property using blockchain technologies and the Internet of Things, which can provide greater transparency in the movement of art objects. Object of research: ensuring customs control over the movement of cultural heritage objects. Subject of research: cutting-edge technologies as a means of improving the effectiveness of customs control over the movement of cultural property.

Over a decade ago, the United States Preventive Services Taskforce (USPSTF) recommended against prostate-specific antigen (PSA)-based screening for prostate cancer in all men, which considerably influenced prostate cancer screening policies worldwide after that. Consequently, the world has seen increasing numbers of advanced stages and prostate cancer deaths, which later led the USPSTF to withdraw its initial statement. Meanwhile, the European Union has elaborated a directive to address the problem of implementing prostate cancer screening in “Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan”. In Switzerland, concerned urologists formed an open Swiss Prostate Cancer Screening Group to improve the early detection of prostate cancer. On the 20th of September 2023, during the annual general assembly of the Swiss Society of Urology (SGU/SSU) in Lausanne, members positively voted for a stepwise approach to evaluate the feasibility of implementing organised prostate cancer screening programs in Switzerland. The following article will summarise the events and scientific advances in the last decade during which evidence and promising additional modalities to complement PSA-based prostate cancer screening have emerged. It also aims to provide an overview of contemporary strategies and their potential harms and benefits.

COVID-19 is a serious epidemic that not only endangers human health, but also wreaks havoc on the development of society. Recently, there has been research on using artificial intelligence (AI) techniques for COVID-19 detection. As AI has entered the era of big models, deep learning methods based on pre-trained models (PTMs) have become a focus of industrial applications. Federated learning (FL) enables the union of geographically isolated data, which can address the demands of big data for PTMs. However, the incompleteness of the healthcare system and the untrusted distribution of medical data make FL participants unreliable, and medical data also has strong privacy protection requirements. Our research aims to improve training efficiency and global model accuracy using PTMs for training in FL, reducing computation and communication. Meanwhile, we provide a secure aggregation rule using differential privacy and fully homomorphic encryption to achieve a privacy-preserving Byzantine robust federal learning scheme. In addition, we use blockchain to record the training process and we integrate a Byzantine fault tolerance consensus to further improve robustness. Finally, we conduct experiments on a publicly available dataset, and the experimental results show that our scheme is effective with privacy-preserving and robustness. The final trained models achieve better performance on the positive prediction and severe prediction tasks, with an accuracy of 85.00% and 85.06%, respectively. Thus, this indicates that our study is able to provide reliable results for COVID-19 detection.

Opening ParagraphFrom the earliest years of colonial government in Kenya, cattle raiding by Africans against their neighbours, and in particular livestock thefts from European farmers, presented the administration with their most persistent policing problem in the rural areas of the colony. As the period of colonial rule in Kenya was drawing to a close, reported cases of stock theft were once again showing a sharp increase, climbing from 1578 cases in 1955 to 4243 in 1962 (Kenya Police Dept, 1955 and 1962). In a pattern by then familiar to the Kenya administration, this prompted the renewal of demands from the European settler community for more extensive and concerted government action to deal with the activities of the thieves. Settler opinion held that the continuing prevalence of stock theft had much to do with the ‘social prestige’ attached to the crime in many African communities. The unwillingness of the African public to assist in the prevention and detection of stock theft had long been interpreted as a tacit sanctioning of such theft, leading to the conclusion that, within the ‘moral economy’ of many African communities, stock theft was not thought of as a crime at all. ‘After all,’ commented the Provincial Commissioner of the Rift Valley Province in 1959, ‘stock theft is the traditional sport of the young men of many tribes, and the elders cannot be expected to act as kill-joys and stamp it out unless they themselves are liable to suffer.’ This view was applied most readily to the pastoralists of the Rift Valley and western Kenya, the Maasai and Kalenjin, who were commonly involved in crimes of this sort. The belief that stock theft was an acceptable form of accumulation within Kalenjin and Maasai society determined the nature of the legislation put forward by the colonial administration to deal with the crime. Policing and punishment were accordingly based upon the notion of collective responsibility for acts of stock theft, with wide powers to extend collective punishments to families, villages and even entire locations found to be implicated in thefts.

Introduction. Awareness is characterized by intraoperative presence of consciousness and recollecting of the events occurring during general anaesthesia. The study was aimed at detecting awareness during general anaesthesia in otorhino-maxillofacial procedure. Methods. The study is a part of a prospective, phase IV, academic study carried out at the Department for Otorhinolaringology, Clinical Centre of Serbia, and Maxillofacial Surgery. The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Clinical Centre of Serbia and performed in accordance with European Union Clinical Trials Directive. The evaluation included 40 patients (T-propofol and Esevofluran group) subjected to different surgical procedures (American Society of Anesthesiologists I-III). Depth of anaesthesia was monitored during surgical procedures according to the hemodynamic parameters (blood pressure, pulse, oxygen saturation, electrocardiography, capnometry). Bispectral index monitoring was applied; however, the insight into the obtained bispectral index values was possible only after the completion of the surgery when the comparison with hemodynamic values was performed. Modified Brice interview was postoperatively applied to the patients in whom awareness was suspected. Results. Based on the hemodynamic parameter values obtained in 40 anesthetized patients, no cases of awareness were expected. After the completion of the surgical procedures, the recorded graphic and numeric bispectral index values obtained in the course of anaesthesia were analyzed. Higher bispectral index values (BIS > 60) were recorded in 1 T-group patient. Conclusion. It is possible to miss an awareness episode without using bispectral index technology monitoring during general anaesthesia in otorhinolaryngology and maxillofacial surgery. Bispectral index monitoring should be the clinical standard in general anaesthesia.

This paper presents analyses of participation in cultural activities by Poles. The analyses are carried out on the base of metric and non-metric data retrieved from the Eurobarometer survey. The study includes two main aspects: the comparison of the involvement in Poland with the situation in other European Union countries and the detection of similarities among various form of the engagement. The socio-economic background of the respondents is also taken into account, namely age, gender, place of residence and level in the society. Chosen multivariate methods are applied to identify regularities in the participation. The results of the analyses are presented graphically to facilitate the interpretation. A two-step procedure is used for a better understanding of the participation schemes. The first step includes the partition of qualitative variables into relatively homogenous groups leading to the reduction of the multidimensionality. The second step is focused on evaluating the participation with respect to the variables forming the identified clusters.

The agricultural sector plays a fundamental role in our society, where it is increasingly important to automate processes, which can generate beneficial impacts in the productivity and quality of products. Perception and computer vision approaches can be fundamental in the implementation of robotics in agriculture. In particular, deep learning can be used for image classification or object detection, endowing machines with the capability to perform operations in the agriculture context. In this work, deep learning was used for the detection of grape bunches in vineyards considering different growth stages: the early stage just after the bloom and the medium stage where the grape bunches present an intermediate development. Two state-of-the-art single-shot multibox models were trained, quantized, and deployed in a low-cost and low-power hardware device, a Tensor Processing Unit. The training input was a novel and publicly available dataset proposed in this work. This dataset contains 1929 images and respective annotations of grape bunches at two different growth stages, captured by different cameras in several illumination conditions. The models were benchmarked and characterized considering the variation of two different parameters: the confidence score and the intersection over union threshold. The results showed that the deployed models could detect grape bunches in images with a medium average precision up to 66.96%. Since this approach uses low resources, a low-cost and low-power hardware device that requires simplified models with 8 bit quantization, the obtained performance was satisfactory. Experiments also demonstrated that the models performed better in identifying grape bunches at the medium growth stage, in comparison with grape bunches present in the vineyard after the bloom, since the second class represents smaller grape bunches, with a color and texture more similar to the surrounding foliage, which complicates their detection.

In 2004, the European Commission approved the specific support action 'Integration of Mycotoxin and Toxigenic Fungi Research for Food Safety in the Global System' (MycoGlobe, contract FOOD-CT-2004-007174) within the Sixth Framework Programme, Food Quality and Safety. The aim of the MycoGlobe project (http://mycoglobe.ispa.cnr.it) was to implement the outcomes of a wide range of European research projects in the area of mycotoxins and toxigenic fungi by supporting, stimulating and facilitating cooperation between countries in the European Union and other countries that have bilateral scientific and technological cooperation agreement with the European Union (such as USA, Australia and South America). Through a series of conferences and interactions between scientists worldwide, MycoGlobe was a very successful project. The scientific significance of the MycoGlobe project consisted in the spread of knowledge of advanced research tools in genomics and sophisticated and rapid detection systems for mycotoxins and toxigenic fungi; and evaluation of research policy and procedures to achieve best practice for enhancement of food quality and safety by elimination of mycotoxins and toxigenic fungi from commodities. The socio-economic significance of the project was the setting up of a global collaborative network for research and technology transfer in the field of mycotoxins and toxigenic fungi, particularly for the benefit of the developing countries. A relevant outcome of the project was also the launching of the International Society for Mycotoxicology (http://www.mycotoxsociety. org) to promote research on mycotoxins and toxigenic fungi, thereby leading to prevention and reduction in exposure to mycotoxins, enhanced food safety and a greater public awareness of this area.

Recent studies show that the elderly population has increased considerably in European society in recent years. This fact has led the European Union and many countries to propose new policies for caring services directed to this group. The current trend is to promote the care of the elderly in their own homes, thus avoiding inverting resources on residences. With this in mind, there are now new solutions in this direction, which try to make use of the continuous advances in computer science. This paper tries to advance in this area by proposing the use of a personal assistant to help older people at home while carrying out their daily activities. The proposed personal assistant is called ME3CA, and can be described as a cognitive assistant that offers users a personalised exercise plan for their rehabilitation. The system consists of a sensorisation platform along with decision-making algorithms paired with emotion detection models. ME3CA detects the users’ emotions, which are used in the decision-making process allowing for more precise suggestions and an accurate (and unbiased) knowledge about the users’ opinion towards each exercise.

With a substantial rise in life expectancy throughout the last century, society faces the imperative of seeking inventive approaches to foster active aging and provide adequate aging care. The e-VITA initiative, jointly funded by the European Union and Japan, centers on an advanced virtual coaching methodology designed to target essential aspects of promoting active and healthy aging. This paper describes the technical framework underlying the e-VITA virtual coaching system platform and presents preliminary feedback on its use. At its core is the e-VITA Manager, a pivotal component responsible for harmonizing the seamless integration of various specialized devices and modules. These modules include the Dialogue Manager, Data Fusion, and Emotional Detection, each making distinct contributions to enhance the platform’s functionalities. The platform’s design incorporates a multitude of devices and software components from Europe and Japan, each built upon diverse technologies and standards. This versatile platform facilitates communication and seamless integration among smart devices such as sensors and robots while efficiently managing data to provide comprehensive coaching functionalities.

In 2022, the European Commission updated its recommendation on cancer screening, inviting the Member States (MSs) to explore the feasibility of stepwise implementation of population-based screening for prostate cancer (PCa). In line with this recommendation, the PRAISE-U (Prostate Cancer Awareness and Initiative for Screening in the European Union (EU)) project was initiated. As part of the PRAISE-U, we aim to understand the current practice towards early detection in the EU MSs, the barriers to implementing or planning population-based screening programmes, and potential solutions to overcome these barriers. Methods: We adapted the Barriers to Effective Screening Tool (BEST) survey to the PCa context. However, it has not been validated in this context. We translated it into all spoken languages in the EU27 and disseminated it to different stakeholders across the EU using a snowballing approach. Results: We received 410 responses from 55 countries, of which 301 (73%) were from the 27 EU MSs. The most represented stakeholder group was urologists (218 (54%)), followed by general practitioners (GPs) (83 (21%)), patient representatives (35 (9%)), policy stakeholders (27 (7%)), researchers (23 (6%)), oncologists, pathologists, radiologists, nurses, and others (16 (4%)) and one industry representative. Among all respondents, 286 (69%) reported the absence of a population-based screening programme, mainly attributed to resource limitations and a lack of political and medical society support. Out of these 286 respondents, 196 (69%) indicated that opportunistic screening is being applied in their country, and 199 (70%) expressed their support for population-based screening programmes (which was highest amongst patient representatives and urologists and lowest amongst GPs and policy stakeholders). The highest scored barriers were lack of political support, insufficient operational resources, and inadequate participation. Suggested solutions to overcome these included awareness campaigns, consensus meetings, political lobbying and European guidelines (to overcome political support barriers), compatible IT systems (to overcome operational barriers), and easy access (to overcome participation barriers). Conclusions: Participants have noted the presence of opportunistic screening, and particularly urologists and patient representatives expressed their support for the establishment of a population-based PCa screening programme. Nevertheless, successful implementation of population-based screening programmes is complex; it requires political and medical society support, operational resources and capacity, awareness campaigns, as well as the development of protocols, guidelines, and legal frameworks.

Forest fires pose significant hazards to ecological environments and economic society. The detection of forest fire smoke can provide crucial information for the suppression of early fires. Previous detection models based on deep learning have been limited in detecting small smoke and smoke with smoke-like interference. In this paper, we propose a lightweight model for forest fire smoke detection that is suitable for UAVs. Firstly, a smoke dataset is created from a combination of forest smoke photos obtained through web crawling and enhanced photos generated by using the method of synthesizing smoke. Secondly, the GSELAN and GSSPPFCSPC modules are built based on Ghost Shuffle Convolution (GSConv), which efficiently reduces the number of parameters in the model and accelerates its convergence speed. Next, to address the problem of indistinguishable feature boundaries between clouds and smoke, we integrate coordinate attention (CA) into the YOLO feature extraction network to strengthen the extraction of smoke features and attenuate the background information. Additionally, we use Content-Aware Reassembly of FEatures (CARAFE) upsampling to expand the receptive field in the feature fusion network and fully exploit the semantic information. Finally, we adopt SCYLLA-Intersection over Union (SIoU) loss as a replacement for the original loss function in the prediction phase. This substitution leads to improved convergence efficiency and faster convergence. The experimental results demonstrate that the LMDFS model proposed for smoke detection achieves an accuracy of 80.2% with a 5.9% improvement compared to the baseline and a high number of Frames Per Second (FPS)—63.4. The model also reduces the parameter count by 14% and Giga FLoating-point Operations Per second (GFLOPs) by 6%. These results suggest that the proposed model can achieve a high accuracy while requiring fewer computational resources, making it a promising approach for practical deployment in applications for detecting smoke.

In this article, we review our study of 13 493 bot-like Twitter accounts that tweeted during the UK European Union membership referendum debate and disappeared from the platform after the ballot. We discuss the methodological challenges and lessons learned from a study that emerged in a period of increasing weaponization of social media and mounting concerns about information warfare. We address the challenges and shortcomings involved in bot detection, the extent to which disinformation campaigns on social media are effective, valid metrics for user exposure, activation and engagement in the context of disinformation campaigns, unsupervised and supervised posting protocols, along with infrastructure and ethical issues associated with social sciences research based on large-scale social media data. We argue for improving researchers' access to data associated with contentious issues and suggest that social media platforms should offer public application programming interfaces to allow researchers access to content generated on their networks. We conclude with reflections on the relevance of this research agenda to public policy. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘The growing ubiquity of algorithms in society: implications, impacts and innovations'.

Most object detection, recognition, and classification are performed using optical imagery. Images are unable to fully represent the real-world due to the limited range of the visible light spectrum reflected light from the surfaces of the objects. In this regard, physical and geometrical information from other data sources would compensate for the limitation of the optical imagery and bring a synergistic effect for training deep learning (DL) models. In this paper, we propose to classify terrain features using convolutional neural network (CNN) based SegNet model by utilizing 3D geospatial data including infrared (IR) orthoimages, digital surface model (DSM), and derived information. The slope, aspect, and shaded relief images (SRIs) were derived from the DSM and were used as training data for the DL model. The experiments were carried out using the Vaihingen and Potsdam dataset provided by the German Society for Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Geoinformation (DGPF) through the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS). The dataset includes IR orthoimages, DSM, airborne LiDAR data, and label data. The motivation of utilizing 3D data and derived information for training the DL model is that real-world objects are 3D features. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach of utilizing and integrating various informative feature data could improve the performance of the DL for semantic segmentation. In particular, the accuracy of building classification is higher compared with other natural objects because derived information could provide geometric characteristics. Intersection-of-union (IoU) of the buildings for the test data and the new unseen data with combining all derived data were 84.90% and 52.45%, respectively.

Forest change detection is essential to prevent the secondary damage occurring by landslides causing profound results to the environment, ecosystem, and human society. The remote sensing technique is a solid candidate for identifying the spatial distribution of the forest. Even though the acquiring and processing of remote sensing images are costly and time- and labor-consuming, the development of open source data platforms relieved these burdens by providing free imagery. The open source images also accelerate the generation of algorithms with large datasets. Thus, this study evaluated the generalizability of forest change detection by using open source airborne images and the U-Net model. U-Net model is convolutional deep learning architecture to effectively extract the image features for semantic segmentation tasks. The airborne and tree annotation images of the capital area in South Korea were processed for building U-Net input, while the pre-trained U-Net structure was adopted and fine-tuned for model training. The U-Net model provided robust results of the segmentation that classified forest and non-forest regions, having pixel accuracies, F1 score, and intersection of union (IoU) of 0.99, 0.97, and 0.95, respectively. The optimal epoch and excluded ambiguous label contributed to maintaining virtuous segmentation of the forest region. In addition, this model could correct the false label images because of showing exact classification results when the training labels were incorrect. After that, by using the open map service, the well-trained U-Net model classified forest change regions of Chungcheong from 2009 to 2016, Gangwon from 2010 to 2019, Jeolla from 2008 to 2013, Gyeongsang from 2017 to 2019, and Jeju Island from 2008 to 2013. That is, the U-Net was capable of forest change detection in various regions of South Korea at different times, despite the training on the model with only the images of the capital area. Overall, this study demonstrated the generalizability of a deep learning model for accurate forest change detection.

Lung segmentation plays an important role in computer-aided detection and diagnosis using chest radiographs (CRs). Currently, the U-Net and DeepLabv3+ convolutional neural network architectures are widely used to perform CR lung segmentation. To boost performance, ensemble methods are often used, whereby probability map outputs from several networks operating on the same input image are averaged. However, not all networks perform adequately for any specific patient image, even if the average network performance is good. To address this, we present a novel multi-network ensemble method that employs a selector network. The selector network evaluates the segmentation outputs from several networks; on a case-by-case basis, it selects which outputs are fused to form the final segmentation for that patient. Our candidate lung segmentation networks include U-Net, with five different encoder depths, and DeepLabv3+, with two different backbone networks (ResNet50 and ResNet18). Our selector network is a ResNet18 image classifier. We perform all training using the publicly available Shenzhen CR dataset. Performance testing is carried out with two independent publicly available CR datasets, namely, Montgomery County (MC) and Japanese Society of Radiological Technology (JSRT). Intersection-over-Union scores for the proposed approach are 13% higher than the standard averaging ensemble method on MC and 5% better on JSRT.

Introduction. The draft Technical Regulation of the Eurasian Economic Union “On the Safety of Paint and Varnish Materials” establishes the lead content in paint and varnish materials for interior and exterior surfaces of residential and (or) public premises, furniture products, playgrounds, products for children and adolescents, attractions, products in contact with food, and used for water treatment equipment at a level not exceeding 0,009% of the total weight of non-volatile chemicals with a transition period of 60 months. Current GOST R 50279.10-92 (ISO 6503-84) (GOST R 50279.10-92 (ISO 6503-84). Paints and varnishes. Methods for determination of metal content. Determination of total lead content. Flame atomic absorption spectrometry method) and GOST R 50279.3-92 (ISO 3856/1-84) (GOST R 50279.3-92 (ISO 3856/1-84). Paints and varnishes. Methods for determination of metal content. Determination of “dissolved” lead content. Flame atomic absorption spectrometry and dithizone spectrophotometric method) with detection limits of lead at 0,01% (by weight) do not provide the required sensitivity, and therefore it becomes necessary to develop and approve in accordance with the established procedure an analytical method for lead determination in paint and varnish materials at the level of 0,0045% of the total weight of non-volatile chemicals (1/2 of the established standard). Materials and methods. Documents, guidelines and webinars of the Eurasian Economic Union, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Environment Program, the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM International), the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), manufacturers of analytical equipment (26 sources in total) were used in the preparation of the review. Results and discussions. The review presents the most common methods for lead determination in paints and varnishes, indicating their characteristics, advantages and limitations: flame atomic absorption spectrometry; atomic absorption spectrometry with electrothermal atomization; atomic emission spectrometry with inductively coupled plasma; X-ray fluorescence spectrometry. Conclusion. A systematic analysis of the methods for lead determination in paints and varnishes existing in domestic and foreign practice, taking into account the lower detection limit, as well as the costs of consumables and equipment maintenance, allows to identify three methods that are of interest in terms of developing guidelines: atomic absorption spectrometry with electrothermal atomization; atomic emission spectrometry with inductively coupled plasma; high-resolution X-ray fluorescence spectrometry.

Background: UICC provides international fellowships to cancer professionals, with over 6000 to date, allowing them to learn new skills they can implement at home. It is crucial to monitor and evaluate the fellowship program so it remains in tune with the cancer community's needs and has a long term impact. Aim: To monitor and evaluate UICC fellowships to ensure they serve to reinforce the cancer care workforce worldwide. Methods: An online survey was performed in December 2017 as part of a larger mixed methods study to evaluate long term impact. 154 UICC fellows who had completed a fellowship between 2013 and 2016 were invited to take part. Participants were asked questions on their fellowship experience and more in depth interviews will be performed to further investigate impact. Results: The survey response rate was 75%, with 117 respondents. The vast majority of fellows work in hospitals, treatment centers and research institutes; 67% are academic cancer professionals and 35% clinicians, with most working in the fields of cancer detection, diagnosis and cancer treatment. Over 57% of respondents rated the training received as “extremely effective”, and 95% were still in contact with their host supervisors one year after their fellowship, with 28% copublishing with them. Over 80% estimated that their skills in cancer control had improved “a lot” or “a great deal” thanks to the fellowship training, with 12% saying “a moderate amount” and 1% “a little” or “none at all”. Initiatives taken by fellows upon returning home include the launching of a new cervical cancer screening program, the founding of a national cancer society and the organization of a conference with the host supervisor as an invited speaker. Challenges included the perceived short duration of one month to achieve all the objectives and the language barrier. 28% of respondents were able to apply the skills they learned on their fellowship “extremely effectively”, 44% “very effectively”, 28% “effectively” and 9% “slightly effectively”, with most giving a presentation to members of the home organization, or organizing a workshop or by personal demonstration. Over 43% were able to establish new collaborations in their country, 45% experienced professional growth and 27% increased their supervision of students “a great deal”. Over 90% of respondents would apply for another fellowship and would recommend it to their colleagues. Further results from in depth interviews with fellows will be presented. Conclusion: The majority of respondents were satisfied with their fellowship experience, and have been able to apply the knowledge gained and disseminated it to colleagues at their institutions. Fellowships have resulted in long term collaborations and have allowed fellows professional growth. Overall, the UICC fellowship program is successful in providing successful knowledge transfer to cancer professionals. Long term impact will be assessed in the next steps of the study.

Introduction: Proximal tibia stress fractures with knee osteoarthritis pose a challenging situation. We evaluated the radiological and functional outcome of one-stage total knee arthroplasty (TKA) and long stem for patients with varied grades of knee arthritis and proximal tibia stress fractures. Methods: We analysed 20 patients from April 2012 to March 2017 with proximal tibia stress fractures associated with knee osteoarthritis of varied grades. Out of 20 patients, five were acute fresh fractures. The mean age was 64 years (range, 52–78) which includes three men and 17 women. Previous surgery in the same limb, rheumatoid arthritis, valgus deformity were excluded. All patients were treated with posterior stabilised TKA with long stem, of which, four patients had screw augmentation for medial tibial bone defect and two patients with malunited fracture at stress fracture site required osteotomy, plating and bone grafting. Two patients had two level stress fracture of tibia in the same leg. Results: The mean follow-up period was 28 (range, 6–60) months. The mean tibiofemoral angle improved from 18.27° varus to 1.8° valgus. The mean knee society score improved from 21.9 (range, −10 to 45) to 82.8 (range, 15–99) [p < 0.05]. The mean Knee Society functional score improved from 15.5 (range, −10 to 40) to 76.8 (range, 10–100) [p < 0.05]. All fractures got united at the last follow-up. One patient had infection and wound dehiscence at six months for which debridement done and had poor functional outcome. Conclusion: TKA with long stem gives excellent outcome, irrespective of severity of arthritis associated with stress fracture. By restoring limb alignment and bypassing the fracture site, it facilitates fracture healing. Early detection and prompt intervention is necessary to prevent the progression to recalcitrant non-union or malunion.

Objective: The research objective is to indicate current priorities of the European Commission in funding modern technologies that enhance situational awareness and preparedness for CBRN events in urban areas. Methods: We analysed strategic documents of the European Union informing CBRN safety and security Horizon 2020 program priorities and the proposal which won the call HORIZON-CL3-2022-DRS-01-08. This process allowed us to indicate patterns reflecting European Union’s priorities in funding development of modern technologies to enhance both the awareness and the preparedness. Results: Investigation of 7 fundamental documents gave strategic background for applying modern technologies that enhance situational awareness and preparedness for CBRN events in urban areas. Relevant directions were reflected in the call for proposals named Disaster-Resilient Society 2022. Only one proposal was selected for funding and it now forms the basis for CHIMERA project (the full project title is: Comprehensive Hazard Identification, and Monitoring systEm for uRban Areas). The project’s mission is to provide a technological improvement in the CBRN domain complying with European legislation and boosting the capabilities of end-users with novel detection, identification, and monitoring functionalities at relatively high TRL. Discussion: As CHIMERA project describes directly many of issues addressed in the call for proposals, the current directions reflect strategic assumptions for ensuring safety and security in Europe. The project also uniquely concerns CBRN response capability gaps identified by International Forum to Advance First Responder Innovation. Success story of CHIMERA proposal may serve as a reference in developing new technologies in a project formula in the future.

Background: Lateral hinge fracture (LHF) after medial open wedge high tibial osteotomy (MOWHTO) may not be recognized on perioperative plain radiographs. Such cases may be identified at follow-up and misdiagnosed as delayed LHF. Purpose: This study aimed to investigate the extent of LHF misdiagnosis and to determine whether patients with LHFs have inferior clinical outcomes after MOWHTO. Study Design: Case series; Level of evidence, 4. Methods: Fifty-one knees in 50 patients (36 women, 14 men; mean age, 51.8 years; range, 24-64 years) who had undergone MOWHTO with locking plate fixation between October 2013 and April 2016 were retrospectively reviewed. LHFs identified on intraoperative fluoroscopy and immediate postoperative radiographs were compared with the actual incidence based on computed tomography (CT) scans performed within 2 days of surgery. Delayed LHFs, not visible on the CT scans but found on later follow-up radiographs, were also assessed. More frequent radiographic check-ups were recommended in patients with LHFs, and weightbearing was delayed until evident callus formation was seen on follow-up radiographs for type 2 or 3 fractures. The loss of correction, the time of union, and complication rate were compared between the knees with LHF and those without LHF. Clinical outcome was measured according to the Knee Society (KS) scores. Results: Overall, 14 early LHFs (27.5%) were identified on CT scans. Of these, 7 LHFs (13.7%) were observed on perioperative radiographs, and the remaining 7 LHFs were identified on later radiographs. Delayed LHFs occurred in 2 cases (3.9%). In the 16 knees with LHF, minimal loss of correction was observed 1 month to 1 year postoperatively without statistical significance. No alignment changes were seen in the 35 knees without LHFs. In the LHF versus no LHF groups, no significant differences were seen regarding time of union (5.3 ± 1.7 months vs 5.4 ± 1.8 months, respectively; P = .898) and postoperative KS scores (knee score, 96.6 ± 2.5 vs 95.3 ± 6.4, P = .435; functional score, 94.4 ± 9.6 vs 89.1 ± 10.9, P = .107). No other complications occurred in either group. Conclusion: Most LHFs after MOWHTO occurred intraoperatively, but half (7/14) were not identified on postoperative radiographs. CT scans would enable detection of early LHFs that would otherwise have been mistaken for delayed LHF. However, clinical outcomes did not differ between patients with and without LHF.

As the two largest landlocked countries, Kazakhstan and Mongolia have similar biophysical conditions and socioeconomic roots in the former Soviet Union. Our objective is to investigate the direction, extent, and spatial variation of land cover change at three administrative levels over three decades (1990–2020). We selected three provinces from each country (Aktobe, Akmola, and Almaty province in Kazakhstan, and Arkhangai, Tov, and Dornod in Mongolia) to classify the land cover into forest, grassland, cropland, barren, and water. Altogether, 6964 Landsat images were used in pixel-based classification method with random forest model for image processing. Six thousand training data points (300 training points × 5 classes × 4 periods) for each province were collected for classification and change detection. Land cover changes at decadal and over the entire study period for five land cover classes were quantified at the country, provincial, and county level. High classification accuracy indicates localized land cover classification have an edge over the latest global land cover product and reveal fine differences in landscape composition. The vast steppe landscapes in these two countries are dominated by grasslands of 91.5% for Dornod in Mongolia and 74.7% for Aktobe in Kazakhstan during the 30-year study period. The most common land cover conversion was grassland to cropland. The cyclic land cover conversions between grassland and cropland reflect the impacts of the Soviet Union’s largest reclamation campaign of the 20th century in Kazakhstan and the Atar-3 agriculture re-development in Mongolia. Kazakhstan experienced a higher rate of land cover change over a larger extent of land area than Mongolia. The spatial distribution of land use intensity indicates that land use hotspots are largely influenced by policy and its shifts. Future research based on these large-scale land use and land cover changes should be focused the corresponding ecosystem and society functions.

Amount raised: 1 635 652,11 Polish Zloty (PLN; about 480,000 USD) Background and context: Head and neck cancers (HNCs) (IDC10: C00-C15, C30-C33, C69; C73) are significant clinical and social problem. While the overall number of new cases is stable and almost on the same level (∼6000 new cases each year) increase of HNCs incidence among young adults (<40 y.o.) is observed. This phenomenon is mostly connected with HPV infections, because a great majority of this group has never smoke and never abuse alcohol (smoking and drinking high-percentage alcohol are well-known risk factors for HNCs). Because there is no screening program for HNCs and treatment prognosis for these cancers are unfavorable, preventive actions are basic and most effective tool in decreasing HNCs incidence and mortality. Aim: To implement in 5 Polish voivodeships pilot prophylactic program on early detection on HNCs. Strategy/Tactics: The main objective will be achieved by influencing the 5 basic causal areas of the problem of late HNCs recognition in Poland. These are: 1) awareness about HNCs risk factors in Polish society, 2) competences of medical staff in prophylaxis, health education and diagnostic of HNCs (120 doctors and nurses - especially from primary health care, 100 dentists), 3) access to preventive examinations (800 people from 5 voivodeships), 4) launching mechanisms of HNCs prophylaxis through the involvement of representatives of nongovernmental and local governments organizations who have constant contact with people in HNCs risk groups, 5) increasing the knowledge on the incidence of oncogenic HPV varieties in the oral cavity of healthy people and the frequency of HPV infection in the oral cavity from smoking and drinking alcohol. Apart from the trainings for health professionals, trainings for street workers are also provided in this program. Program process: Maria Sklodowska-Curie Institute - Oncology Center successfully applied for funds for the implementation of the created project. Program is cofinanced by European Union, from European Social Funds within the Operational Program Knowledge Education Development 2014-2020, V. Priority axis: Support for the health area, Measure 5.1: Preventive programs and is free of charge for participants. Nowadays project team conducts procedures aiming among the others recruitment of participants, cooperation with NGOs, creation of agenda of the meetings, preparation of the awareness campaign. Costs and returns: Main obstacles and costs are combined with administrative difficulties and doctor's tight schedule (lack of time for additional activities). The biggest return will be improvement of early HNCs detection and mortality decrease caused by these cancers. What was learned: Preliminary observations show that patients are very interested in participation in HNCs early detection and prevention program. Moreover, in many cases they have never participated in any actions concern HNCs education.

The digital transformation of the economy and society prompts the renewal of methods in occupational health as well. There are outlined fundamentals of the draft revision of the “Guidelines for the Assessment of Occupational Risk to Employee Health. Organizational and methodological foundations, principles and criteria for the assessment». R 2.2.1766-03. The draft contains methods of occupational risk (OR) assessment supplied with information materials and software for working on the Internet in real-time. Algorithms and models for calculating the probability of impairment of health according to data of the Special Assessment of Working Conditions (SAWC) as well as causation algorithms - work-relatedness assessment according to data of periodic medical examinations (PME) for the validity of risk assessment from the standpoint of evidence-based medicine are presented. There are set out methods for calculating the probability of the formation of occupational diseases (OD) of the main nosological forms from the exposure of noise, hand-arm and whole-body vibration, heat and cool microclimate, fibrogenic dusts, physical labor (local, regional and general loads), strenuous work, standing work with the likelihood of varicose lower veins limbs, multi-factor exposure and low-back pain. Risk assessments for the reproductive health of workers are also discussed. The models are based on the documents of the WHO, ILO, ISO, domestic and foreign literature data that meet the principles of evidence-based medicine. The problems of work-related diseases (WRD) - the concept of WHO (1987) -basics of etiology, qualitative and quantitative criteria for causation, models of consensus and evidence-based medicine, as well as projects for integrated work on the detection systems for WRD in the European Union countries are considered. Single-digit indices of working conditions and health problems, moral harm caused to an employee suffering from OD or WRD. Hygienic recommendations to employers on OR management, prevention priorities, the role of personal protection equipment, the basics of corporate health promotion programs, and ethical and economic aspects are described. The calculation methods are provided by the software of the electronic online reference book “Occupational Risk” (URL: http://medtrud.com/) in order to ensure evidence-based decisions of hygienists. In conclusion, a turning point in occupational health is noted: a decrease in the detection of traditional ODs without compensation by the number of OD and WRD from new technologies, materials and risk factors; this problem requires urgent action.

BackgroundN-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) is a valuable biomarker for diagnosis and prognosis of heart failure in adults, included into the European Society Guidelines for heart failure (2016).1 It is also considered as a diagnostic and follow-up marker in paediatric heart failure. The aetiology of paediatric heart failure is heterogeneous and maturation of the cardiac and neurohumoral system influences NT-proBNP levels. Since substantial information is mandatory to enable a long-term follow-up of children with heart failure, the aim was to collect published paediatric NT-proBNP data.MethodsIn January 2019, a literature search using PubMed was performed comprising the following keywords: NT-proBNP, heart failure/dilated cardiomyopathy/congenital heart defect/congenital heart disease/healthy and child/neonate/toddler/infant/paediatric. Eligible publications had to determine levels of NT-proBNP in plasma or serum in paediatric heart failure or healthy children (0–18 years) with the Roche NT-proBNP-immunoassay.ResultsThe search resulted in 343 records, of which 95 measured NT-proBNP in paediatric controls or heart failure. Of them, 48 studies were excluded due to the use of other immunoassays. Following, 47 studies were included into the analysis of which 27 reported NT-proBNP levels in 3435 healthy children and 38 NT-proBNP concentrations in 1885 children with heart failure. The age range of reported levels comprised the day of birth up to 18 years in both groups. The data set revealed that younger children have higher NT-proBNP values than older children and that heart failure patients had increased NT-proBNP levels compared to healthy controls which are also dependent on the severity of disease.ConclusionThe literature search and analysis confirmed that NT-proBNP is an important marker for the detection of heart failure and classification of disease severity in children. Thus, the compiled data set forms a solid data basis for long-term follow-up of a paediatric patient population with heart failure.ReferencesPonikowski P, Voors AA, Anker SD, et al. 2016 ESC Guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of acute and chronic heart failure: The task force for the diagnosis and treatment of acute and chronic heart failure of the european society of cardiology (ESC)developed with the special contribution of the heart failure association (HFA) of the esc. Eur Heart J 2016;37(27):2129–200.Disclosure(s)Tanja Gangnus, Fabian K. Suessenbach, Nina Makowski, Ilja Burdman, Stephanie Laeer, Björn B. Burckhardt declare that there is no conflict of interest. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework programme (FP/2007–2013) under grant agreement n°602295 (LENA).

This article analyzes the characteristics and limits of an integrity and anti-corruption policy of the Brazilian federal government offered to local governments. The Time Brazil Program is an initiative of the Office of Comptroller General of the Union (CGU) created in 2019, based on local policies implemented since its creation in 2003. After content analysis, it can be characterized, at the micro level, as a top-down strategy without enforcement of voluntary adhesion and dependent on the mayor, in which compliance-based internal actions predominate. Adherent, to a large extent, to international recommendations, it proposes incremental advances with emphasis on internal controls for the prevention and detection of administrative corruption, mainly petty corruption. It assumes that the irregularities are caused by lack of knowledge and regulation, and proposes the creation of filters and sanctions to increase control and reduce rent-seeking. On the other hand, there are limits that may affect its implementation and effectiveness, mainly in small cities, such as: lack of measures to act on grand corruption and politics; lack of value-based and ethic-based strategies to stimulate changes in organizational culture; emphasis on local regulation of good practices (soft law), but only internally, without interaction with the legislative power, which is fragile to changes of governments. Also, there is no forecast of indicators of long-term results and impact, beyond the regulatory adherence. The analysis characterizes Time as a complex policy and strongly subject to implementation gaps, as it contains limitations from its design. Its success depends on the construction of a local anti-corruption agenda and on the capacity of the comptroller’s office which in turn depends on the approval of laws by the legislature, in addition to pressure from local society and the horizontal accountability system. The development of local leadership capacity and effective partnerships within intergovernmental coalitions are factors that, if included, could facilitate proper policy implementation. Future research can assess their impacts and effectiveness.

Formulation of the problem. At the present stage of development of the Ukrainian state there is a difficult economic situation caused by the pandemic and Russia’s military invasion into Ukraine. Undoubtedly, this affects all spheres of life of Ukrainian society, including the implementation of the customs policy. This provides grounds for the discussion about the objective need to pay more attention to the development and improvement of customs policy, implemented in Ukraine. The key role is given to the state, called to regulate these processes. An effective customs policy must respond flexibly to external threats and counteract quickly all the possible negative consequences of such threats towards strengthening economic interests of the state and maximizing compliance with international rules and requirements in the national customs system. The customs policy is designed to regulate foreign trade and protect of domestic producers, ensure realization of national interests in the field of stimulating the development and restructuring of the national economy. Analysis of recent research and publications. A significant number of scholars study the peculiarities of customs policy implementation and consider this multifaceted phenomenon from different points of view. In particular, it is worth mentioning such scientists as M. Bilukha, O. Hodovanets, T.Yefymenko, I. Kveliashvili, O. Kolomoiets, Martyniuk, O. Mosiakina, V. Pashko, V.Khomutynnik, and others. Their works are devo- ted to the general issues of implementation of the customs policy in Ukraine, the role of cus- toms in the system of state bodies, management of customs activities and customs control. Distinguishing previously unsolved parts of the overall problem. Dynamic changes taking place in Ukrainian society today, in particular, hostilities in Ukraine, determine the need for a deep and unified understanding of the implementation of customs policy in the context of modern challenges, which necessitates further research in this field. Presentation of the main material of the study. The system of customs authorities is designed to implement customs policy in the country on the basis of the principles of territorial organization, foreign economic activity and international cooperation defined in the Constitution. The main legislative act regulating legal relations in the country and, in particular, in the field of customs policy, is the Constitution of Ukraine. A brief overview of the peculiarities of functioning of the customs authorities of developed countries shows their universality and management of tasks far beyond the scope of powers that is inherent in the Ukrainian customs authorities. In other words, customs authorities of Ukraine are characterized by narrow specialization and fulfillment of only those responsibilities that directly belong to the field of customs policy of the state. Foreign experience makes it possible to understand, which direction the Ukrainian state is moving in view of the unification of domestic customs policy. Thus, having chosen the European integration course, Ukraine has embarked on the path of expanding foreign economic ties and deepening cooperation with European countries. Accordingly, the customs policy of Ukraine, based on the legislative and regulatory framework built on European standards and which is designed to regulate legal relations arising between entities when crossing the customs border, gains particular importance. Customs legislation is very dynamic and constantly unified, as the state needs constant integration with the countries of the European Union and deepening relations with them within free economic zones. In particular, emphasis should be placed on Ukraine’s accession to the World Trade Organization. This fact, as well as the European integration aspirations of Ukraine, limit the sovereignty of Ukrainian legislation in the field of customs policy. After all, the World Trade Organization proclaims a course to reducing barriers in trade and exchange of goods and services between the member states, as well as to elimination of non– tariff methods of regulating international economic relations, and the constant reduction of import tariffs. Thus, Ukraine must adjust its legislative and regulatory framework in the field of customs policy to the standards and requirements of the World Trade Organization and the European Union. The following main areas of improvement of customs policy were identified: implementation of international standards and requirements for increasing the level of protection of national interests of the state; simplification of customs procedures to reduce the number of abuse in this area; increasing the efficiency of detection and counteraction to negative phenomena in the field of foreign trade; improving the implementation of foreign economic activities and creating optimal conditions for the participants. Conclusions. Thus, the customs policy in Ukraine has had sufficient regulatory and legislative support in recent decades. At the same time, given Ukraine’s desire to integrate into the European environment, cooperation with the World Trade Organization and other international organizations, it is necessary to increase attention to the regulatory framework of customs relations. Priority of international treaties over domestic Ukrainian legislation indicates the need to unify the legislation of Ukraine and bring it in line with international norms and standards.

In modern conditions, the priority task for Ukraine is the institutional transformation of the economy, the main purpose of which is to ensure sustain-able socio-economic development. Healthcare is one of the most important elements of social infrastructure of society. Its functioning ensures the reproduction of human potential, determines the ability of the national economy as a whole in the long term to respond promptly to changes of the business environment. The purpose of the article is to identify the main trends and to predict the future development of health care in Ukraine. The methodological basis of the research consist of the scientific works of domestic, foreign scientists and leading experts, statistical and analytical materials of state authorities. A questionnaire was selected as the method of data collection for the study. The survey was conducted among the top executives of educational institutions, local authorities, Kherson trade union organizations. The results were obtained through the use of methods such as: expert method to study the impact of market factors on health; economic and mathematical methods for predicting trends in health care; abstract-logical method for theoretical generalization and formulation of conclusions. The results of the study indicate that to improve the organization of the health care system in Ukraine, it is necessary to create approaches to the development of key indicators of the system that can be applied at both national and regional levels. The governance model under development should allow to create the approaches that will give a qualitative prediction of the main indicators of health system development, primarily at the regional level, as a basis for testing and further implementation throughout Ukraine. The construction of prognostication scenarios for the development of health care for the example of the Kherson region (Ukraine) revealed the most important factors that have a significant impact on the overall outcome: the number of first reported cases of diseases in the total in the region. According to the views of the involved experts, considering the level of correlation, the following indicators are most influential: the real disposable income of the population, the economically active population aged 15-70 years, the number of hospitals, the number of doctors of all specialties and the average medical staff. It is established that in the short term the number of economically active population aged 15-70 years and the number of doctors of all specialties and medical staff have a significant impact on the number of first registered cases of diseases. Therefore, the top management of na-tional health care institutions should first and foremost ensure the development of an effective system of motivation for workers (doctors of all specialties and medical staff) to perform functional responsibilities effectively and improve the quality of medical services provided as a basis for ensuring prompt detection of cases of disease among population especially aged 15-70 years.

In 2023, the 100th anniversary of the outstanding Azerbaijani ophthalmologist, Honored Scientist, laureate of the M. Averbakh Prize, academician Zarifa Aliyeva, was celebrated. A significant chapter of academician Zarifa Aliyeva's illustrious scientific career, revealing her innate talent and unwavering dedication, is intrinsically linked to the Abdulla Garayev Institute of Physiology. In 1979, Zarifa khanum initiated and saw through the establishment of the laboratory “Physiology of the Visual Organ and Occupational Pathology." Her transition from an accomplished ophthalmologist to a pioneering theoretical scientist was a testament to her vision and leadership. The laboratory's early research focused on the topic of “Clinical-physiological and morphohistochemical characteristics of the visual organ in individuals working under the influence of various chemical factors." As a scientist, Zarifa khanum was committed to addressing the most pressing and significant issues of her era, particularly those concerning human well-being. At the time, Azerbaijan was considered a hub of the chemical industry in the former USSR. Consequently, her laboratory sought to comprehensively analyze the long-term, chronic impact of various chemical agents used in industrial settings on the visual organ, with a keen focus on early detection of associated changes. This pioneering work laid the foundation for a new direction in ophthalmology, not only in Azerbaijan but throughout the former Soviet Union, focusing on innovative approaches to studying and preventing occupational eye diseases. In recognition of her contributions, academician Zarifa Aliyeva was honored with the M.I. Averbakh Prize by the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences in 1981. This research unfolded on a grand scale, encompassing over 4,000 workers and approximately 500 agricultural specialists who participated in ophthalmological examinations. This exemplified the close alignment of science and production, a cornerstone of modern scientific inquiry, in the work conducted by Zarifa khanum five decades ago. Zarifa Khanum was an innovative scientist ahead of her time who introduced electrophysiological methods alongside extensive ophthalmological examinations in her research. Her studies delved into the effects of toxic substances on the functional state of the retina, free radical processes, and neurotransmitter levels. The results of her pioneering work continue to captivate and inspire numerous scholars in modern times. A special area of Zarifa khanum's scientific inquiry was the study of age-related changes in the visual organ. Her book, “Age-Related Changes of the Eye and Optic Nerve Tract," marked the genesis of a new field within ophthalmology, known as ophthalmological gerontology. This work remains highly pertinent today, especially in the context of ongoing gerontological research at our institute. It's worth noting that her laboratory's staff continued research in this vein after her passing. In the late 1980s, the laboratory's ophthalmologists actively participated in international scientific expeditions both in Azerbaijan and in regions of the former USSR, including Crimea, as part of the “Longevity Phenomenon” international cooperation program. They studied age-related changes in the visual organ among 900 individuals over 90 years of age, publishing several highly significant scientific articles that remain relevant to specialists today. In the 1990s, due to the challenging socio-political factors, Zarifa khanum's laboratory faced an unfortunate hiatus. In 2016, we took the initiative to reestablish this laboratory. A research group called “Physiology of Vision” was formed under the directorate to continue Zarifa khanum's legacy in the realm of physiology and age-related visual pathology. This group achieved remarkable scientific success in a short time, exploring intricate links between neurodegenerative diseases and the visual system's structures. With support from the Science Development Fund, the group launched international cooperation programs, enhancing its team and, ultimately, establishing the “Physiology of Vision and Neurodegenerative Processes” laboratory in 2021. Today, the laboratory is intently focused on studying the neurophysiological mechanisms of visual impairment during neurodegenerative diseases and pioneering innovative rehabilitation methods. The scientific ideas of academician Zarifa Aliyeva grow in relevance with time. Her scientific legacy perseveres, serving the cause of a healthier society. It is incumbent upon all of us to support this legacy and carry forward the scientific traditions of this eminent scientist. The International Conference "Physiology of vision and occupational pathologies: fundamental and applied aspects" and the 6th Congress of Azerbaijan Physiologists held on October 30-31, 2023, in Baku were dedicated to the 100th anniversaries of the National Leader of the Azerbaijani people, Heydar Aliyev, and the outstanding scientist, academician Zarifa Aliyeva. The current issue of the journal is dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the academician Zarifa Aliyeva.

Climate change induced sea-level rise (SLR) is on its increase globally. Regionally the lowlands of China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, and islands of the Malaysian, Indonesian and Philippine archipelagos are among the world’s most threatened regions. Sea-level rise has major impacts on the ecosystems and society. It threatens coastal populations, economic activities, and fragile ecosystems as mangroves, coastal salt-marches and wetlands. This paper provides a summary of the current state of knowledge of sea level-rise and its effects on both human and natural ecosystems. The focus is on coastal urban areas and low lying deltas in South-East Asia and Vietnam, as one of the most threatened areas in the world. About 3 mm per year reflects the growing consensus on the average SLR worldwide. The trend speeds up during recent decades. The figures are subject to local, temporal and methodological variation. In Vietnam the average values of 3.3 mm per year during the 1993-2014 period are above the worldwide average. Although a basic conceptual understanding exists that the increasing global frequency of the strongest tropical cyclones is related with the increasing temperature and SLR, this relationship is insufficiently understood. Moreover the precise, complex environmental, economic, social, and health impacts are currently unclear. SLR, storms and changing precipitation patterns increase flood risks, in particular in urban areas. Part of the current scientific debate is on how urban agglomeration can be made more resilient to flood risks. Where originally mainly technical interventions dominated this discussion, it becomes increasingly clear that proactive special planning, flood defense, flood risk mitigation, flood preparation, and flood recovery are important, but costly instruments. Next to the main focus on SLR and its effects on resilience, the paper reviews main SLR associated impacts: Floods and inundation, salinization, shoreline change, and effects on mangroves and wetlands. The hazards of SLR related floods increase fastest in urban areas. This is related with both the increasing surface major cities are expected to occupy during the decades to come and the increasing coastal population. In particular Asia and its megacities in the southern part of the continent are increasingly at risk. The discussion points to complexity, inter-disciplinarity, and the related uncertainty, as core characteristics. An integrated combination of mitigation, adaptation and resilience measures is currently considered as the most indicated way to resist SLR today and in the near future.References Aerts J.C.J.H., Hassan A., Savenije H.H.G., Khan M.F., 2000. Using GIS tools and rapid assessment techniques for determining salt intrusion: Stream a river basin management instrument. 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Purpose The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted the European Union (EU) through heavy pressure on health services, business activity and people's life. To mitigate these effects, government agencies, civil society and the private sector are working together in proposing innovative initiatives. In this sense, this study aims to characterize and explore the relevance of these projects to mitigate the effects of COVID-19. Design/methodology/approach The Observatory of Public Sector Innovation provided by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development was considered to enable the identification and exploration of innovative projects to combat COVID-19. A methodology based on mixed methods is adopted to initially identify quantitatively the distribution of these projects, followed by a qualitative approach based on thematic analysis that allows exploring their relevance. Findings A total of 206 initiatives in the EU have been identified. The distribution of these projects is quite asymmetric, with Portugal and Austria totaling 33.52% of these projects. Most of these projects focus on the areas of public health, infection detection and control, virtual education, local commerce, digital services literacy, volunteering and solidarity and hackathons. Originality/value This work is relevant to identifying and understanding the various areas in which COVID-19 initiatives have been developed. This information is of great relevance for the actors involved in this process to be able to replicate these initiatives in their national, regional and local contexts.

Abstract The identification of atmospheric rivers (ARs) is crucial for weather and climate predictions as they are often associated with severe storm systems and extreme precipitation, which can cause large impacts on the society. This study presents a deep learning model, termed ARDetect, for image segmentation of ARs using ERA5 data from 1960 to 2020 with labels obtained from the TempestExtremes tracking algorithm. ARDetect is a CNN-based UNet model, with its structure having been optimized using automatic hyperparameter tuning. Inputs to ARDetect were selected to be the integrated water vapour transport (IVT) and total column water (TCW) fields, as well as the AR mask from TempestExtremes from the previous timestep to the one being considered. ARDetect achieved a mean intersection-over-union (mIoU) rate of 89.04% for ARs, indicating its high accuracy in identifying these weather patterns and a superior performance than most deep learning-based models for AR detection. In addition, ARDetect can be executed faster than the TempestExtremes method (seconds vs minutes) for the same period. This provides a significant benefit for online AR detection, especially for high-resolution global models. An ensemble of 10 models, each trained on the same dataset but having different starting weights, was used to further improve on the performance produced by ARDetect, thus demonstrating the importance of model diversity in improving performance. ARDetect provides an effective and fast deep learning-based model for researchers and weather forecasters to better detect and understand ARs, which have significant impacts on weather-related events such as floods and droughts.

AbstractBACKGROUNDChestnut fruit quality is affected by fungal contamination. The study of the patterns of contamination in the postharvest is crucial to individuate the critical phases and propose solutions. To understand how fungal colonization varies on fruits, the composition of mycobiota was investigated in postharvest handling and in between tissues (shell and kernel).RESULTSFungal sequences were clustered into 308 operational taxonomic units (OTUs). Biodiversity was higher in shell than kernel tissues. Results evidenced the risk of new contamination in specific phases such as the ‘cold bath’ and storage. Genera known as mycotoxin producers were detected in all phases. Specifically, 47 OTUs belonging to Penicillium, eight to Fusarium and two to Aspergillus genera were identified. While Fusarium spp. was sensitive to ‘warm bath’ phase, Penicillium spp. was largely insensitive and accumulated in storage conditions. Surprisingly, Aspergillus spp. was poorly represented. Aflatoxin, ochratoxin A, fumonisins and T‐2/HT‐2 detection was performed for shell and kernel, and process phases. Higher contamination was observed on shell than in kernel samples. While aflatoxins were within the European Union (EU) limits for dry fruits, Ochratoxin exceeded the EU limits. The present study represents the first report of fumonisins and T‐2/HT‐2 detection in chestnuts.CONCLUSIONFungal contamination taxa is high in chestnut fruits following postharvest handling and storage. A parametrization of process phases such as the ‘warm bath’ is functional to reduce the risk for some taxa. For other spoilage and mycotoxigenic genera strict sanitation procedures of equipment and water must be individuated and implemented to reduce their impact. © 2024 The Author(s). Journal of The Science of Food and Agriculture published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society of Chemical Industry.

Introduction: Most head and neck region malignancies arise in the epithelium of oral cavity, larynx, pharynx, nasal cavity and paranasal sinuses. Most of head and neck carcinomas are squamous cell carcinoma. It is the 6th most common carcinoma in the world according to Union for International Cancer control. AIM: To evaluate the spectrum of malignant lesions in head and neck region and to look for the associated risk factors. Methodology: A one year retrospective study was carried out in the Department of Pathology in collaboration with the Department of ENT, from Feb 2022 to Jan 2023, where 140 parafn embedded tissue blocks of head and neck biopsies were collected from the archives of the department. Results: A total 140 cases were included of which 104 (74.3%) were males and 36 (25.7%) were females. Male to female ratio = 2.8:1. The most affected age group is 51-60 years. The most important risk factor is betel nut consumption followed by tobacco chewing. The most common site involved is the oropharynx followed by tongue. Most of the carcinomas are moderately differentiated squamous cell carcinomas. Conclusion: Head and neck malignancies are quite common in Northeastern region of India, so wehave performed this study to evaluate the spectrum of malignant lesions in head and neck region. Its association with risk factors are also studied for the prevention, early detection, early treatment intervention and withdrawal from risk habits for improving the wellbeing of the people in the society

Introduction: Involvement of community pharmacists in the detection and control of hypertension improves patient care. However, current guidelines do not provide recommendations on collaboration between pharmacists and physicians, especially when and how to refer patients with undetected or uncontrolled hypertension to a physician. Methods: The German Society of Cardiology (DGK) and the ABDA - Federal Union of German Associations of Pharmacists developed and tested a structured referral guideline for community pharmacists. The project included a guideline-directed blood pressure measurement and recommendations when patients should be referred to their physician. A “red flag” referral within 4 weeks was recommended when SBP was >140 mmHg or DBP >90 mmHg (for subjects <80 years), and >160 mmHg or >90 mmHg (≥80 years) in undetected individuals, or >130 mmHg or >80 mmHg (<65 years) and >140 mmHg or >80 mmHg (≥65 years) in treated patients (Figure). Results: Blood pressure was measured in 187 individuals (86 with known hypertension) from 17 community pharmacies. In patients with hypertension, poorly controlled blood pressure was detected in 55% (n=47) and were referred. A total of 16/101 subjects without a history of hypertension were referred to their physician because of uncontrolled blood pressure. Conclusion: Structured blood pressure testing in community pharmacies identified a significant number of subjects with undetected/undiagnosed hypertension and patients with poorly controlled blood pressure. Community pharmacists could play a significant role in collaboration with physicians to improve the management of hypertension.

This paper presents a comprehensive review of the latest trends, global developments, and practical implications in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). The introduction highlights the transformative impact of AI and ML across various sectors, including healthcare, finance, transportation, manufacturing, retail, and entertainment. The purpose of the scientific research is to analyze the scientific, knowledge, and practical significance of AI and ML developments, emphasizing their potential impact on diverse domains. The study encompasses three main parts: state-ofthe- art trends, global developments, and practical implications. The scientific and practical importance of this paper lies in its examination of the growth and transformative potential of AI and ML technologies. The research methodology involves a comprehensive literature review, covering academic journals, conference proceedings, and reputable research papers and reports, to provide valuable insights and advancements in the field. The key findings of the paper revolve around significant trends in AI and ML, such as the increasing adoption of deep learning techniques and the integration of AI with big data analytics. Additionally, the study highlights global developments in AI research and investments from countries like the United States, China, Canada, Japan, South Korea, and the European Union. Practical implications include improved disease diagnosis and personalized treatment plans in healthcare, enhanced fraud detection and risk assessment in finance, and the use of AI-powered virtual assistants in customer service interactions. The research brings practical relevance to industries and policymakers, demonstrating the transformative potential of AI and ML in reshaping sectors and improving various aspects of human life. The paper concludes with recommendations for establishing robust frameworks to govern the responsible development and deployment of AI and ML systems, ensuring their long-term viability and beneficial impact on society.

Abstract Background/Introduction Cardiomyopathies are common and affect up to 1:250 of the population. Despite conferring a risk for sudden cardiac death and substantial disease burdens that could be reduced through better awareness, detection and care, cardiomyopathy care is rarely incorporated in European and national health policies. New European Society of Cardiology cardiomyopathy guidelines (1) could substantially benefit care but need to be supported by effective policies. Cardiomyopathies Matter is a Europe-wide, multistakeholder initiative aiming to raise awareness about cardiomyopathies and to ensure they receive the policy attention they warrant from EU and national decision-makers. Methods Cardiomyopathies Matters participants include experts from the fields of cardiology, cardiac nursing, economics, and patient advocacy, coordinated by a Secretariat, representing 36 countries and 6 patient advocacy groups (PAGs). A Policy Roadmap and other publications were co-created based on i) reviews of published and grey literature, and ii) input from topic experts and PAGs through 2 group workshops, individual consultation meetings, and a modified nominal group technique reviewing successive drafts toward consensus approval. Results The Roadmap (2) identifies unmet needs and challenges throughout the patient care pathway and offers holistic EU and national policy recommendations to address these and improve patient outcomes (Figure 1). These include policy measures to support early and accurate diagnosis, access to expert multidisciplinary care, guidelines-informed disease investigation and management, holistic support and empowerment of patients and carers, and research and innovation. Key aspects for nurses and allied health professionals include the need for 1)improved knowledge and awareness to promote early diagnosis; 2)rapid referral systems to multidisciplinary care and access to specialist cardiomyopathy or heart failure nurses care coordination, 3)genetic counselling (index cases and cascade/family screening), and 4)support of patients and families. Building on existing examples of good practice at national expert centre networks (e.g. France, Spain, UK),Cardiomyopathies Matter published updated policy recommendations for the European Union mandate (3), which are now being adopted more widely. National initiatives are underway or in development in Belgium, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, and Spain. Local actions include multistakeholder roundtables and events, national Roadmap publications, events, educational activities, and media outreach. Conclusions EU and national Cardiovascular Health Action Plans are needed, with specific attention to cardiomyopathies and other inherited CVDs. Cardiomyopathies Matter fosters collaboration between healthcare professionals, PAGs and policymakers to promote policies that ensure all patients and families have access to guidelines-informed care.Figure 1Cardiomyopathy Priorities

Dr. Ping Yang is University Distinguished Professor and holds the David Bullock Harris Chair in geosciences at Texas A&M University (TAMU), where he currently serves as the Senior Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences. He previously served as Department Head of Atmospheric Sciences (2012-2018) and Associate Dean for Research (2019-2022) in the College of Geosciences at TAMU. Dr. Yang has supervised/co-supervised 30 doctoral dissertations and 20 master’s degree theses. He has published 366 peer-reviewed journal papers, thirteen invited book chapters, and four books. His publications have been cited 24,144 times (Google Scholar)/15,974 times (Web of Science) with an H-index of 79 (Google Scholar)/62 (Web of Science), as of 26 Sept 2023. His research focuses on light scattering, radiative transfer, and remote sensing. Since joining TAMU, Yang has been extramurally funded for 83 research projects. Yang is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), OPTICA (formerly the Optical Society of America), The Electromagnetics Academy, the American Geophysical Union (AGU), the American Meteorological Society (AMS), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Yang received a number of awards/honors, including the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal (2017), the Ascent Award by the AGU Atmospheric Science Section (2013), the David and Lucille Atlas Remote Sensing Prize by AMS (2020), and the van de Hulst Light-Scattering Award by Elsevier (2022), and a university-level faculty research award (2017) bestowed by The TAMU Association of Former Students (AFS). Dr. Yang was an elected member of the International Radiation Commission (IRC) under the International Association of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences (2012-2020) and was appointed as one of the 16 members of the U.S. National Research Council-Space Studies Board's Committee on Earth Science and Applications from Space (October 2018- June 2022). He has served as an editor of the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences (2015-2020) and currently serves as an Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy & Radiative Transfer and an editor of the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres. Dr. George W. Kattawar is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Physics & Astronomy and the Institute of Quantum Science & Engineering at Texas A&M University. He is an internationally renowned expert in radiative transfer and light scattering dealing with full Mueller matrix/Stokes vector processes. He has made significant contributions in using radiative transfer in such diverse areas as biomedical optics, planetary atmospheres, cloud and aerosol property studies related to climate studies, invisibility cloaking, ultrashort laser propagation in water, and anthrax detection. To list just a few among his seminal contributions, he was the first to show that the clouds of Venus were not water, which was the view held by two eminent scientists Carl Sagan and Richard Goody. It was this seminal work which led to the ultimate determination of the Venus cloud composition. He is one of the first researchers to apply Monte Carlo techniques to radiative transfer in planetary atmospheres. This technique is now being used by researchers all over the world and is also now being used in medical physics. He gave the first correct explanation of the “Ring effect” which had remained an enigma for over twenty years. This paper was designated by a world-renowned scientist at NASA to be the best paper of the decade in atmospheric science. Dr. Kattawar and his collaborators developed one of the most powerful time dependent, three-dimensional Monte Carlo codes capable of handling full Mueller matrix solutions for a coupled atmosphere-ocean system with a fully stochastic interface. This code will become the “Gold Standard” for all future researchers in biomedical, atmospheric, and oceanic optics. He is one of the first to show that nonspherical objects can be made totally invisible if the optical properties are selected in the right way. Dr. Kattawar received many awards and recognitions, including Fellow of the Optical Society of America (1976); Amoco Foundation Teaching Excellence Award (1981); Teacher/Scholar Award (1990), Nils Gunnar Jerlov Award (2014), and van de Hulst Light Scattering Award (2015); He was also elected for two, three-year terms on the Committee on Recommendations for U.S. Army Basic Scientific Research under the National Research Council. He is a former Associate Editor of the Journal of Geophysical Research-Oceans and a former Associate Editor of the Journal of Transport Theory and Statistical Physics. He was selected to be editor of the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) Milestone Series on “Multiple Scattering in Plane Parallel Atmospheres and Oceans: Techniques”. He was selected (2009) to serve on the External Advisory Board of the Stevens Institute of Technology to assess their engineering and science programs. He was appointed as Academic Advisor of the Board of Directors of the Texas Academy of Science. He was selected by Applied Optics as one of the 50 most prolific authors in the last 50 years.

The conceptual fuzziness of terms like misinformation, disinformation, rumour, gossip, conspiracy theories has been discussed by various scholars (e.g. DiFonzo & Bordia, 2007; Rojecki & Meraz, 2016). In both academic research and media reports, it is common to see these terms being used interchangeably. To develop better understanding of how and why different forms of misinformation operate, it is important to clarify the conceptual boundaries between these terms in a meaningful way. Field of Application/Theoretical foundation: In their social psychology research, DiFonzo and Bordia (2007) propose an effective way to differentiate rumour from other terms, which emphasises the content, function, and context of each concept. This three-dimensional framework can be applied to systematically differentiate concepts related to misinformation. In the field of media and communication studies, as research on digital misinformation continues to grow, it is crucial for researchers to understand the contexts of each concept and choose the appropriate term in accordance with their research agenda. It is worth noting that there are also overlapping dimensions between these concepts. For instance, rumour can contain misinformation, and conspiracy theories can be used for propaganda. Example study: Zeng (2018) Information on Zeng, 2018 Author: Jing Zeng Interest of the study: In her study on online rumours during times of crises, Zeng (2018) applies DiFonzo and Bordia’s (2007) framework to differentiate seven seemingly similar concepts: misinformation, disinformation, rumour, gossip, urban legend, propaganda, and conspiracy theories. Table 1. Summary of main features of seven concepts related to misinformation Content Context Function Misinformation Inaccurate information Any circumstances of information circulation. Does not have to have any specific function Gossip Talk about individuals or private behaviour Shared between individuals or in casual social events. Maintaining network, interpersonal relations Urban legend Meaning-making, value-endorsing stories related to contemporary life Casual setting for storytelling. Promote cultural and moral values Disinformation Deliberately deceptive information Disseminated by institutions. Undermine public support Propaganda Messages instrumentally disseminated to promote a political cause Following a top-down pattern, disseminated by official sources. Promote political and ideological values Rumour Unofficial information unverified by authorities Circulated in circumstances of ambiguity, danger or threat. Make sense of an uncertain circumstance Conspiracy theory Proposed explanations of an event or a practice that refer to the machinations of influential people, institutions, or a secret society Emerged in responses to uncertainty and perceived threats posed by a coalition of elites/secret actors, and constructed as ‘alternative’ explanations challenging narratives provided by governments, mainstream media or scientific institutions. Serves as a threat management response, and often also as an anti-establishment/anti-science, political and ideological stance Misinformation is the most generic one among these terms, in the sense that it does not emphasise the social and political dimension of information. The concept of misinformation is mostly discussed in tandem with information, particularly by Information Science scholars. As a form of information, the defining feature of misinformation is its inaccuracy. Such inaccuracy is not necessarily caused by false information, but can also be caused by irrelevant and incomplete information. Gossip is also a form of unverified information; however, the content is more private, and is mostly circulated in an interpersonal context (DiFonzo & Bordia, 2007; Rojecki & Meraz, 2016). In terms of function, instead of sense making, gossip is propagated for social purposes. As summarised by Foster (2004), gossip functions to achieve the formation, adaptation, and maintenance of social networks. This is to say, individuals share gossip in the context of managing their relationship with members within their social group. For instance, early literature on gossip associated the practice of gossiping with female social networking. As Rysman (1977) pointed out, one key reason behind the patriarchal criticism on female gossiping is gossip’s ability ‘to develop social ties outside the institution of male dominance’ (p. 176). This personal and interpersonal focus on the concept of gossip is its most distinctive feature. Disinformation and propaganda are two very closely related concepts, because they are both disseminated for political purposes (Lewandowsky, Stritzke, & Freund, 2013). In terms of content, disinformation is deliberately deceptive information that is used to undermine public support of a regime, whereas propaganda is information used to mobilise public support for a political cause or a regime (Rojecki & Meraz, 2016). The word disinformation originated from ‘dezinformacija’, a Russian term coined in the former Soviet Union (Karlova & Fisher, 2013). Given the particular cultural and political context in the region at that time, this term was originally closely associated with intelligence operations and political tactics. However, the definition of disinformation has, over time, expanded to include the propagation of misinformation that is non-politically motivated. Urban legends are contemporary tales that are shared to promote moral and cultural values (DiFonzo & Bordia, 2007). Construed in this way, urban legends are similar to propaganda in the sense that they encode and transmit values, but they are used mythologically rather than strategically. Furthermore, where propaganda emphasises political and ideological values, urban legends focus on cultural and moral values. One key criterion for an urban legend is that it must be grounded in the day-to-day affairs of contemporary life, hence the ‘urban’ in urban legend (Bennett & Smith, 2013). A classic example of an urban legend is the claim that a tooth left in a glass of Coca Cola can dissolve overnight. This story promotes health messages to avoid excessive consumption of soda drinks. Another case is the tale of a drugged traveller awakening in an ice-filled bathtub, only to discover one of his kidneys has been removed by organ thieves. This tale echoes a classic form of legend that teaches the moral lesson to avoid dangerous situations. Rumour, in terms of content, is unofficial information – that is, information whose authenticity is not verified by an appeal to authority. By this definition, the defining characteristic of rumour content is not its falsity, but its ‘unofficial’ status and therefore its relationship to social institutions (Fine, 2007). Second, rumour arises in contexts that are ambiguous, threatening or potentially threatening (DiFonzo & Bordia, 2007, p. 20). In such uncertain contexts, rumour functions to make sense of the unknown situation. This may explain why rumour goes hand in hand with crisis events, during which there is often a paucity of information and a state of anxiety among the populace. Conspiracy theories’ content is proposed explanations of an event or a practice that refer to the machinations of powerful people, institutions, or a secret society (e.g. Coady, 2003; Goertzel, 1994; Keeley, 1999). One distinctive feature of conspiracy theories is its reference to a coordinated group of deliberate actors. For instance, in anti-vaccination conspiracy theories, ‘big pharma’ companies are accused of conspiring with politicians; likewise, flat earthers implicate NASA in the plot to keep the truth about the “true nature” of the Earth from the public. Similar to rumour mongering, the context in which conspiracy theories emerge is often one of uncertainty and perceived risks, and conspiracy theorising represents a form of ‘alternative’ collective sensemaking to challenge established narratives provided by the mainstream media and institutions. Therefore, conspiracy theorising is not merely sensemaking, but also has anti-establishment and anti-science undercurrents. Therefore, in terms of function, conspiracy theories serve as (1) a threat management response to ‘secret coalitions’ that are perceived to pose direct threats to the collective well-being, health, and safety of the society (van Prooijen et al., 2018); and (2) a political and ideological stance (Hofstadter, 2012). References Bennett, G., & Smith, P. (2013). Contemporary legend: A reader. London: Routledge. Coady, D. (2003). Conspiracy theories and official stories. International Journal of Applied Philosophy, 17(2), 197–209. DiFonzo, N., & Bordia, P. (2007). Rumor, gossip and urban legends. Diogenes, 54(1), 19-35. Fine, G. A. (2007). Rumor, trust and civil society: Collective memory and cultures of judgment. Diogenes, 54(1), 5-18. Foster, E. K. (2004). Research on gossip: Taxonomy, methods, and future directions. Review of General Psychology, 8(2), 78-99. Goertzel, T. (1994). Belief in conspiracy theories. Political Psychology, 15, 731–742. Hofstadter, R. (2012). The paranoid style in American politics. New York: Vintage. Karlova, N. A., & Fisher, K. E. (2013). A social diffusion model of misinformation and disinformation for understanding human information behaviour. Information Research, 18(1), paper 573. Keeley, B. L. (1999). Of conspiracy theories. The Journal of Philosophy, 96(3), 109–126. Lewandowsky, S., Stritzke, W. G. K., Freund, A. M, Oberauer, K., and Krueger, J. I. (2013). Misinformation, disinformation, and violent conflict: From Iraq and the ‘War on Terror’ to future threats to peace. American Psychologist, 68(7), 487-501. Losee, R. M. (1997). A discipline independent definition of information. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 48(3), 254-269 Rojecki, A., & Meraz, S. (2016). Rumors and factitious informational blends: The role of the web in speculative politics. New Media & Society, 18(1), 25-43. Rysman, A. (1977). How the ‘gossip’ became a woman. Journal of Communication, 27(1), 176-180. van Prooijen, J. W., & Van Vugt, M. (2018). Conspiracy theories: Evolved functions and psychological mechanisms. Perspectives on psychological science, 13(6), 770-788. Zeng, J. (2018). Contesting rumours on social media during acute events: The 2014 Sydney siege and 2015 Tianjin blasts (Doctoral dissertation, Queensland University of Technology). Available at https://eprints.qut.edu.au/115786/.

IntroductionBritish initiatives to manage both the number of arrivals of asylum seekers and the experiences of those who arrive have burgeoned in recent years. The budget dedicated to asylum seeker management increased from £357 million in 1998-1999 to £1.71 billion in 2004-2005, making the Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND) the second largest concern of the Home Office behind the Prison Service in 2005 (Back et al). The IND was replaced in April 2007 by the Border and Immigration Agency (BIA), whose expenditure exceeded £2 billion in 2007-2008 (BIA). Perhaps as a consequence the number of asylum seekers applying to the UK has fallen dramatically, illustrating the continuing influence of exclusionary state policies despite the globalisation and transnationalisation of migrant flows (UNHCR; Koser).One of the difficulties with the study of asylum seekers is the persistent risk that, by employing the term ‘asylum seeker’, research conducted into their experiences will contribute towards the exclusion of a marginalised and abject group of people, precisely by employing a term that emphasises the suspended recognition of a community (Nyers). The ‘asylum seeker’ is a figure defined in law in order to facilitate government-level avoidance of humanitarian obligations by emphasising the non-refugeeness of asylum claimants (Tyler). This group is identified as supplicant to the state, positioning the state itself as a legitimate arbiter. It is in this sense that asylum seekers suffer a degree of cruel optimism (Berlant) – wishing to be recognised as a refugee while nevertheless subject to state-defined discourses, whatever the outcome. The term ‘forced migrant’ is little better, conveying a de-humanising and disabling lack of agency (Turton), while the terms ‘undocumented migrant’, ‘irregular migrant’ and ‘illegal migrant’ all imply a failure to conform to respectable, desirable and legitimate forms of migration.Another consequence of these co-opted and politically subjugating forms of language is their production of simple imagined geographies of migration that position the foreigner as strange, unfamiliar and incapable of communication across this divide. Such imaginings precipitate their own responses, most clearly expressed in the blunt, intrusive uses of space and time in migration governance (Lahav and Guiraudon; Cohen; Guild; Gronendijk). Various institutions exist in Britain that function to actually produce the imagined differences between migrants and citizens, from the two huge, airport-like ‘Asylum Screening Units’ in Liverpool and London where asylum seekers can lodge their claims, to the 12 ‘Removal Centres’ within which soon-to-be deported asylum seekers are incarcerated and the 17 ‘Hearing Centres’ at which British judges preside over the precise legal status of asylum applicants.Less attention, however, has been given to the tension between mobility and stillness in asylum contexts. Asylum seeker management is characterised by a complex combination of enforced stillness and enforced mobility of asylum seeking bodies, and resistance can also be understood in these terms. This research draws upon 37 interviews with asylum seekers, asylum activists, and government employees in the UK conducted between 2005 and 2007 (see Gill) and distils three characteristics of stillness. First, an association between stillness and safety is clearly evident, exacerbated by the fear that the state may force asylum seekers to move at any time. Second, stillness of asylum seekers in a physical, literal sense is intimately related to their psychological condition, underscoring the affectual properties of stillness. Third, the desire to be still, and to be safe, precipitates various political strategies that seek to secure stillness, meaning that stillness functions as more than an aspiration, becoming also a key political metric in the struggle between the included and excluded. In these multiple and contradictory ways stillness is a key factor that structures asylum seekers’ experiences of migration. Governing through Mobility The British state utilises both stillness and mobility in the governance of asylum seeking bodies. On the one hand, asylum seekers’ personal freedoms are routinely curtailed both through their incarceration and through the requirements imposed upon them by the state in terms of ‘signing in’ at local police stations, even when they are not incarcerated, throughout the time that they are awaiting a decision on their claim for asylum (Cwerner). This requirement, which consists of attending a police station to confirm the continuing compliance of the asylum seeker, can vary in frequency, from once every month to once every few days.On the other hand, the British state employs a range of strategies of mobility that serve to deprive asylum seeking communities of geographical stillness and, consequently, also often undermines their psychological stability. First, the seizure of asylum seekers and transportation to a Removal Centre can be sudden and traumatic, and incarceration in this manner is becoming increasingly common (Bacon; Home Office). In extreme cases, very little or no warning is given to asylum seekers who are taken into detention, and so-called ‘dawn raids’ have been organised in order to exploit an element of surprise in the introduction of asylum seekers to detention (Burnett). A second source of forced mobility associated with Removal Centres is the transfer of detainees from one Removal Centre to another for a variety of reasons, from the practical constraints imposed by the capacities of various centres, to differences in the conditions of centres themselves, which are used to form a reward and sanction mechanism among the detainee population (Hayter; Granville-Chapman). Intra-detention estate transfers have increased in scope and significance in recent years: in 2004/5, the most recent financial year for which figures are available, the British government spent over £6.5 million simply moving detainees from one secure facility to another within the UK (Hansard, 2005; 2006).Outside incarceration, a third source of spatial disruption of asylum seekers in the UK concerns their relationship with accommodation providers. Housing is provided to asylum seekers as they await a decision on their claim, but this housing is provided on a ‘no-choice’ basis, meaning that asylum seekers who are not prepared to travel to the accommodation that is allocated to them will forfeit their right to accommodation (Schuster). In other words, accommodation is contingent upon asylum seekers’ willingness to be mobile, producing a direct trade-off between the attractions of accommodation and stillness. The rationale for this “dispersal policy”, is to draw asylum seekers away from London, where the majority of asylum seekers chose to reside before 2000. The maintenance of a diverse portfolio of housing across the UK is resource intensive, with the re-negotiation of housing contracts worth over a £1 billion a constant concern (Noble et al). As these contracts are renegotiated, asylum seekers are expected to move in response to the varying affordability of housing around the country. In parallel to the system of deportee movements within the detention estate therefore, a comparable system of movement of asylum seekers around the UK in response to urban and regional housing market conditions also operates. Stillness as SanctuaryIn all three cases, the psychological stress that movement of asylum seekers can cause is significant. Within detention, according to a series of government reports into the conditions of removal centres, one of the recurring difficulties facing incarcerated asylum seekers is incomprehension of their legal status (e.g. HMIP 2002; 2008). This, coupled with very short warning of impending movements, results in widespread anxiety among detained asylum seekers that they may be deported or transferred imminently. Outside detention, the fear of snatch squads of police officers, or alternatively the fear of hate crimes against asylum seekers (Tyler), render movement in the public realm a dangerous practice in the eyes of many marginalised migrants. The degree of uncertainty and the mental and emotional demands of relocation introduced through forced mobility can have a damaging psychological effect upon an already vulnerable population. Expressing his frustration at this particular implication of the movement of detainees, one activist who had provided sanctuary to over 20 asylum seekers in his community outlined some of the consequences of onward movement.The number of times I’ve had to write panic letters saying you know you cannot move this person to the other end of the country because it destabilises them in terms of their mental health and it is abusive. […] Their solicitors are here, they’re in process, in legal process, they’ve got a community, they’ve got friends, they may even have a partner or a child here and they would still move them.The association between governance, mobility and trepidation highlights one characteristic of stillness in the asylum seeking field: in contra-distinction to the risk associated with movement, to be still is very often to be safe. Given the necessity to flee violence in origin countries and the tendency for destination country governments to require constant re-positioning, often backed-up with the threat of force, stillness comes to be viewed as offering a sort of sanctuary. Indeed, the Independent Asylum Commission charity that has conducted a series of reviews of asylum seekers’ treatment in the UK (Hobson et al.), has recently suggested dispensing with the term ‘asylum’ in favour of ‘sanctuary’ precisely because of the positive associations with security and stability that the latter provides. To be in one place for a sustained period allows networks of human trust and reciprocity to develop which can form the basis of supportive community relationships. Another activist who had accompanied many asylum seekers through the legal process spoke passionately about the functions that communities can serve in asylum seekers’ lives.So you actually become substitute family […] I think it’s what helps people in the midst of trauma when the future is uncertain […] to find a community which values them, which accepts them, which listens to them, where they can begin to find a place and touch a creative life again which they may not have had for years: it’s enormously important.There is a danger in romanticising the benefits of community (Joseph). Indeed, much of the racism and xenophobia directed towards asylum seekers has been the result of local community hostilities towards different national and ethnic groups (Boswell). For many asylum seekers, however, the reciprocal relations found in communities are crucially important to their well-being. What is more, the inclusion of asylum seekers into communities is one of the most effective anti-state and anti-deportation strategies available to activists and asylum seekers alike (Tyler), because it arrests the process of anonymising and cordoning asylum seekers as an homogenous group, providing instead a chance for individuals to cast off this label in favour of more ‘humane’ characteristics: families, learning, friendship, love.Strategies for StillnessFor this reason, the pursuit of stillness among asylum seekers is both a human and political response to their situations – stillness becomes a metric in the struggle between abject migrants and the state. Crucial to this political function is the complex relationship between stillness and social visibility: if an asylum seeker can command their own stillness then they can also have greater influence over their public profile, either in order to develop it or to become less conspicuous.Tyler argues that asylum seekers are what she calls a ‘hypervisible’ social group, referring to the high profile association between a fictional, dehumanised asylum seeking figure and a range of defamatory characteristics circulated by the popular printed press. Stillness can be used to strategically reduce this imposed form of hypervisibility, and to raise awareness of real asylum seeker stories and situations. This is achieved by building community coalitions, which require physically and socially settled asylum seeking families and communities. Asylum advocacy groups and local community support networks work together in the UK in order to generate a genuine public profile of asylum seekers by utilising local and national newspapers, staging public demonstrations, delivering speeches, attending rallies and garnering support among local organisations through art exhibitions, performances and debates. Some activist networks specialise explicitly in supporting asylum seekers in these endeavours, and sympathetic networks of journalists, lawyers, doctors and radio producers combine their expertise with varying degrees of success.These sorts of strategies can produce strong loyalties between local communities and the asylum seekers in their midst, precisely because, through their co-presence, asylum seekers cease to be merely asylum seekers, but become active and valued members of communities. One activist who had helped to organise the protection of an asylum seeker in a church described some of the preparations that had been made for the arrival of immigration task forces in her middle class parish.There were all sorts of things we practiced: if they did break through the door what would we do? We set up a telephone tree so that each person would phone two or three people. We had I don’t know how many cars outside. We arranged a safe house, where we would hide her. We practiced getting her out of the room into a car […] We were expecting them to come at any time. We always had people at the back […] guarding, looking at strangers who might be around and [name] was never, ever allowed to be on her own without a whole group of people completely surrounding her so she could feel safe and we would feel safe. Securing stillness here becomes more than simply an operation to secure geographic fixity: it is a symbolic struggle between state and community, crystallising in specific tactics of spatial and temporal arrangement. It reflects the fear of further forced movement, the abiding association between stillness and safety, and the complex relationship between community visibility and an ability to remain still.There are, nevertheless, drawbacks to these tactics that suggest a very different relationship between stillness and visibility. Juries can be alienated by loud tactics of activism, meaning that asylum seekers can damage their chances of a sympathetic legal hearing if they have had too high a profile. Furthermore, many asylum seekers do not have the benefits of such a dedicated community. An alternative way in which stillness becomes political is through its ability to render invisible the abject body. Invisibility is taken to mean the decision to ‘go underground’, miss the appointments at local police stations and attempt to anticipate the movements of immigration removal enforcement teams. Perversely, although this is a strategy for stillness at the national or regional scale, mobile strategies are often employed at finer scales in order to achieve this objective. Asylum seekers sometimes endure extremely precarious and difficult conditions of housing and subsistence moving from house to house regularly or sleeping and living in cars in order to avoid detection by authorities.This strategy is difficult because it involves a high degree of uncertainty, stress and reliance upon the goodwill of others. One police officer outlined the situation facing many ‘invisible’ asylum seekers as one of poverty and desperation:Immigration haven’t got a clue where they are, they just can’t find them because they’re sofa surfing, that’s living in peoples coffee shops … I see them in the coffee shop and they come up and they’re bloody starving! Despite the difficulties associated with this form of invisibility, it is estimated that this strategy is becoming increasingly common in the UK. In 2006 the Red Cross estimated that there were some 36 000 refused and destitute asylum seekers in England, up from 25 000 the previous year, and reported that their organisation was having to provide induction tours of soup kitchens and night shelters in order to alleviate the conditions of many claimants in these situations (Taylor and Muir). Conclusion The case of asylum seekers in the UK illustrates the multiple, contradictory and splintered character of stillness. While some forms of governance impose stillness upon asylum seeking bodies, in the form of incarceration and ‘signing in’ requirements, other forms of governance impose mobility either within detention or outside it. Consequently stillness figures in the responses of asylum seeking communities in various ways. Given the unwelcome within-country movement of asylum seekers, and adding to this the initial fact of their forced migration from their home countries, the condition of stillness becomes desirable, promising to bring with it stability and safety. These promises contrast the psychological disruption that further mobility, and even the threat of further mobility, can bring about. This illustrates the affectual qualities both of movement and of stillness in the asylum-seeking context. Literal stillness is associated with social and emotional stability that complicates the distinction between real and emotional spaces. While this is certainly not the case uniformly – incarceration and inhibited personal liberties have opposite consequences – the promises of stillness in terms of stability and sanctuary are clearly significant because this desirability leads asylum advocates and asylum seekers to execute a range of political strategies that seek to ensure stillness, either through enhanced or reduced forms of social visibility.The association of mobility with freedom that typifies much of the literature surrounding mobility needs closer inspection. At least in some situations, asylum seekers pursue geographical stillness for the political and psychological benefits it can offer, while mobility is both employed as a subjugating strategy by states and is itself actively resisted by those who constitute its targets.ReferencesBack, Les, Bernadette Farrell and Erin Vandermaas. A Humane Service for Global Citizens. London: South London Citizens, 2005.Bacon, Christine. 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