Conceptual Drawbacks Research Articles

Deep Learning for Abnormal Human Behavior Detection in Surveillance Videos—A Survey

Detecting abnormal human behaviors in surveillance videos is crucial for various domains, including security and public safety. Many successful detection techniques based on deep learning models have been introduced. However, the scarcity of labeled abnormal behavior data poses significant challenges for developing effective detection systems. This paper presents a comprehensive survey of deep learning techniques for detecting abnormal human behaviors in surveillance video streams. We categorize the existing techniques into three approaches: unsupervised, partially supervised, and fully supervised. Each approach is examined in terms of its underlying conceptual framework, strengths, and drawbacks. Additionally, we provide an extensive comparison of these approaches using popular datasets frequently used in the prior research, highlighting their performance across different scenarios. We summarize the advantages and disadvantages of each approach for abnormal human behavior detection. We also discuss open research issues identified through our survey, including enhancing robustness to environmental variations through diverse datasets, formulating strategies for contextual abnormal behavior detection. Finally, we outline potential directions for future development to pave the way for more effective abnormal behavior detection systems.

Crises and the history of science: a materialist rehabilitation

Abstract Over the past four decades, historians of science have come to discard crisis as a guiding heuristic in ‘big-picture’ narratives of scientific change. In this article, we argue that it can be rehabilitated without reintroducing the conceptual drawbacks of earlier historiographies. We suggest that analysing material crises as distinct episodes of knowledge-in-the-making focuses attention on the mangling of science and social order. We distinguish material crises from Kuhnian intellectual crises; the analysis of material crises begins with the interactive dynamics of actor practices and performances, emergent within concrete social orders, rather than from technical breakdowns within isolable theoretical paradigms. Drawing on Reinhart Koselleck's account of crisis, we characterize such events as patterned shifts in the tempo of actor behaviours, which are brought about by real-time processes of realization. In addition to the familiar, contemporary cases of climate change and COVID-19, we sketch out how three historical crises transformed knowledge production in disparate ways: the Ming–Qing transition in late imperial China, crises of labour precarity in seventeenth-century Istanbul and the 1960 Sharpeville massacre in South Africa.

Electrochemical Detection of Drugs via a Supramolecular Cucurbit[7]uril-Based Indicator Displacement Assay.

Electrochemical detection methods are attractive for developing miniaturized, disposable, and portable sensors for molecular diagnostics. In this article, we present a cucurbit[7]uril-based chemosensor with an electrochemical signal readout for the micromolar detection of the muscle relaxant pancuronium bromide in buffer and human urine. This is possible through a competitive binding assay using a chemosensor ensemble consisting of cucurbit[7]uril as the host and an electrochemically active platinum(II) compound as the guest indicator. The electrochemical properties of the indicator are strongly modulated depending on the complexation state, a feature that is exploited to establish a functional chemosensor. Our design avoids cumbersome immobilization approaches on electrode surfaces, which are associated with practical and conceptual drawbacks. Moreover, it can be used with commercially available screen-printed electrodes that require minimal sample volume. The design principle presented here can be applied to other cucurbit[n]uril-based chemosensors, providing an alternative to fluorescence-based assays.

Central Banks and Climate Change: Mission Impossible?

ABSTRACT There is growing presumption that central banks have a significant role to play in addressing environmental challenges, especially climate change. This article explains, on the basis of both theoretical and empirical evidence, that attempting to use existing central bank tools and powers to tackle climate change will prove inadequate to tackle the issue(s) at hand. From a positivist perspective at least—and contrary to the claims made in the literature—the tools that central banks possess are insufficient to make any meaningful contribution to emissions reductions and prevent global heating. This is because many of the proposals made by academics, regulators, and legislators to expand the central bank toolkit to equip banks to tackle climate change suffer from deep conceptual and practical drawbacks when applied in this domain. These critical weaknesses mean that the policy prescriptions that flow from them will be of limited impact; this would likely be the case even if central banks were to obviate their mandates more explicitly and attempt to use such tools to address climate change directly. In so doing, they waste valuable political and economic capital that might be usefully deployed in tackling climate change. The obstacles to using these tools are not political or legal; they are inherent in their operation.

What is Inclusive Development? Introducing the Multidimensional Inclusiveness Index

Despite decreasing global poverty, feelings of increasing inequalities drive growing dissatisfaction with development outcomes. Inclusive development benefiting larger parts of societies will be perceived as more legitimate. Yet, there is neither a thorough agreement on what constitutes inclusive development nor a convenient measurement tool. The purpose of this paper is to address both these shortcomings in the literature. We derive a notion of inclusive development that is human-based and acknowledges all factors important for well-being. With the introduction of the Multidimensional Inclusiveness Index (MDI), we address the conceptual drawbacks of prominent approaches like the Human Development Index (HDI), Inequality-Adjusted Human Development Index and Inclusive Development Index (IDI) and extend the available data sample (by 50% compared to the HDI). The MDI consists of two subindices—one on development equity and development achievements each—and is calculated in three versions for up to 171 countries for the years 1960–2018. By applying principal component analysis, we rely on the structure of the underlying data for the aggregation of the 14 variables into the subindices. The subindices are aggregated by geometric mean. We show that regional development patterns are captured and major political events reflected in MDI country trends. Despite correlations resulting from data similarities, the MDI provides new insights when compared to HDI, IDI and gross domestic product . All three MDI versions display increasing global averages over time. These positive trends are largely driven by improvements in the achievements dimension. Despite optimistic trends in recent years, equity considerations deserve a stronger emphasis in development concepts.

Medical Education in Pakistan: Challenges & Way Forward

There have been many conceptual and practical drawbacks in how the medical education has been developed in Pakistan. Though there has been expansion in the medical education sector since the creation of this country, the doctors available for the existing population are not sufficient thus affecting the overall quality of medical care. To understand this particular issue, associated factors are required to be analyzed. Medical education in Pakistan is affected by the growth of the private medical colleges, mal-distribution of resources, traditional curricula that focus on theoretical knowledge more than the practical training and absence of uniform admission processes in the public and the private sectors. To keep pace with socio-economic development and the quality of medical education, there is a need for re-evaluation of every facet at each and every level: creation of strong and efficient accreditation system; promotion of equality in the distribution of resources; curriculum redesigning with stricter implementation of guidelines provided by Pakistan Medical Commission (PMC) and improvement in the teaching and assessment methodologies for graduates in the medical profession; thus providing optimum healthcare delivery ensuring competence concomitantly and bringing positive change in the system.

Framework for the sustainable development of village tanks in cascades as an adaptation to climate change and for improved water security, Sri Lanka

Abstract The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all UN member states, provides a policy framework for achieving sustainable development goals. The 13th SDG: Climate Action is fully dedicated to ‘taking urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts’. Increasing storage is a key adaptation strategy in the water sector, and restoration and rehabilitation of ancient village tanks have been identified as one of the Nationally Determined Contributions in Sri Lanka. Though the country has engaged in the restoration of village tanks for nearly 170 years, only around 50% of the ancient tanks amounting to around 16,000 are restored and in working condition. Hence, this study aims to identify a strategy for restoring the abandoned tanks in the country towards achieving Sustainable Development Goals. The study reviewed the evolution of policies and approaches adopted in developing village tanks and identified conceptual and technical drawbacks in the existing normative assessment approach. New conceptual and decision-making frameworks were developed, incorporating design-level strategic considerations identified while following a multidimensional and transdisciplinary approach. The approach presented would be a viable strategy to develop village tanks in cascades as sustainable social–ecological systems.

Practical Applications of ESG Investing: Conceptual Issues

Our understanding of what exactly ESG investing is, and how successful it is at achieving various desired outcomes, is complicated by several conceptual drawbacks. In <b>ESG Investing:</b><i>Conceptual Issues</i>, from the Winter 2020 issue of <i>The Journal Wealth Management</i>, <b>Bradford Cornell</b> (<b>Anderson Graduate School of Management</b>) asserts that the very nature of what constitutes an ESG investment is unclear–and that there are no standard measures for evaluating how effective each one is at achieving its desired social outcome. Additionally, while billions of dollars are pouring into ESG investments, the popularity of “green” equities means lower returns, though in some cases upside can be mined by actively “greening” and selling off targeted investments. Practitioners who advocate abandoning the usual imperative to maximize shareholder value in favor of a more holistic stakeholder model are asking corporations to shoulder the burden of solving social problems. Public policy, Cornell says, should be left to democratically elected leaders, not corporate executives. <b>TOPICS:</b>ESG investing, portfolio construction, wealth management

Practical Applications of ESG Investing:Conceptual Issues

Our understanding of what exactly ESG investing is, and how successful it is at achieving various desired outcomes, is complicated by several conceptual drawbacks. In <b>ESG Investing:</b><i>Conceptual Issues</i>, from the Winter 2020 issue of <i>The Journal Wealth Management</i>, <b>Bradford Cornell</b> (<b>Anderson Graduate School of Management</b>) asserts that the very nature of what constitutes an ESG investment is unclear–and that there are no standard measures for evaluating how effective each one is at achieving its desired social outcome. Additionally, while billions of dollars are pouring into ESG investments, the popularity of “green” equities means lower returns, though in some cases upside can be mined by actively “greening” and selling off targeted investments. Practitioners who advocate abandoning the usual imperative to maximize shareholder value in favor of a more holistic stakeholder model are asking corporations to shoulder the burden of solving social problems. Public policy, Cornell says, should be left to democratically elected leaders, not corporate executives. <b>TOPICS:</b>ESG investing, portfolio construction, wealth management

Severe limitations of the FEve metric of functional evenness and some alternative metrics.

The metric of functional evenness FEve is an example of how approaches to conceptualizing and measuring functional variability may go astray. This index has several critical conceptual and practical drawbacks: Different values of the FEve index for the same community can be obtained if the species have unequal species abundances; this result is highly likely if most of the traits are categorical.Very minor differences in even one pairwise distance can result in very different values of FEve.FEve uses only a fraction of the information contained in the matrix of species distances. Counterintuitively, this can cause very similar FEve scores for communities with substantially different patterns of species dispersal in trait space.FEve is a valid metric only if all species have exactly the same abundances. However, the meaning of FEve in such an instance is unclear as the purpose of the metric is to measure the variability of abundances in trait space. We recommend not using the FEve metric in studies of functional variability. Given the wide usage of FEve index over the last decade, the validity of the conclusions based on those estimates is in question. Instead, we suggest three alternative metrics that combine variability in species distances in trait space with abundance in various ways. More broadly, we recommend that researchers think about which community properties (e.g., trait distances of a focus species to the nearest neighbor or all other species, variability of pairwise interactions between species) they want to measure and pick from among the appropriate metrics.

Polyphenol-Mediated Autophagy in Cancer: Evidence of In Vitro and In Vivo Studies.

One of the hallmarks of cellular transformation is the altered mechanism of cell death. There are three main types of cell death, characterized by different morphological and biochemical features, namely apoptosis (type I), autophagic cell death (type II) and necrosis (type III). Autophagy, or self-eating, is a tightly regulated process involved in stress responses, and it is a lysosomal degradation process. The role of autophagy in cancer is controversial and has been associated with both the induction and the inhibition of tumor growth. Autophagy can exert tumor suppression through the degradation of oncogenic proteins, suppression of inflammation, chronic tissue damage and ultimately by preventing mutations and genetic instability. On the other hand, tumor cells activate autophagy for survival in cellular stress conditions. Thus, autophagy modulation could represent a promising therapeutic strategy for cancer. Several studies have shown that polyphenols, natural compounds found in foods and beverages of plant origin, can efficiently modulate autophagy in several types of cancer. In this review, we summarize the current knowledge on the effects of polyphenols on autophagy, highlighting the conceptual benefits or drawbacks and subtle cell-specific effects of polyphenols for envisioning future therapies employing polyphenols as chemoadjuvants.

Advanced exact synthesis of Clifford+T circuits

Quantum systems provide a new way of conducting computations based on the so-called qubits. Due to the potential for significant speed-ups, this field received significant research attention in recent years. The Clifford+T library is a very promising and popular gate library for these kinds of computations. Unlike other libraries considered so far, it consists of only a small number of gates for all of which robust, fault-tolerant realizations are known for many technologies that seem to be promising for large-scale quantum computing. As a consequence, (logic) synthesis of Clifford+T quantum circuits became an important research problem. However, previous work in this area has several drawbacks: Corresponding approaches are either only applicable to very small quantum systems or lead to circuits that are far from being optimal. The latter is mainly caused by the fact that current synthesis realizes the desired circuit by a local, i.e., column-wise, consideration of the underlying unitary transformation matrix to be synthesized. In this paper, we analyze the conceptual drawbacks of this approach and propose to overcome them by taking a global view of the matrices and perform a separation of concerns regarding individual synthesis steps. We precisely describe a corresponding algorithm as well as its efficient implementation on top of decision diagrams. Experimental results confirm the resulting benefits and show improvements of up to several orders of magnitudes in costs compared to previous work.

The IRT-Buggy – Vehicle Platform for Research and Education

This paper presents the “IRT-Buggy”, a model vehicle that is designed as a platform for research and education and that is developed at RWTH Aachen University. With two steered front wheels and two powered rear wheels, it can reach speeds of approx. 45km/h at a weight of slightly over 60kg. The vehicle’s non-holonomous 2D kinematics are very comparable to the ones of a typical passenger vehicle. It is equipped with sensors that in similar form are also found in passenger vehicles, such as wheel speed sensors, inertial sensors and a GNSS sensor. Throughout the development of the model vehicle, special attention is paid to making the vehicle as useful as possible for control engineering tasks. For example, the electronic interfaces are designed in such a way that easy and intuitive access to all essential vehicle functions is granted while at the same time flexibility is not compromised due to oversimplification. The vehicle’s operational concept allows new users to quickly operate the vehicle safely and to begin experimenting. Mechanisms are implemented that provide certain protection from maloperation. At the same time, experienced users can have full access to the actuation capabilities of the vehicle at different levels. The IRT-Buggy is intended to be usable by students in an educational context, but also to serve as a serious experimental platform for control engineering research, with no conceptual drawbacks compared to a “real” passenger vehicle other than the obvious limitations due to size, power or achievable speed.

Forty-three years of Ramsar and urban wetlands

The Ramsar Convention is unquestionably the backbone of modern wetland management theory and practice. In the last four decades, it has mainstreamed wetlands in the environmental discourse and fostered the development of a comprehensive institutional framework for wetland governance. However, many of the wetlands that occur in human-dominated landscapes remain acutely threatened. The problem is most alarming in urban areas, especially in the fast expanding cities of the developing world, where unprecedented wetland destruction is leading to recurring environmental disasters. This triggers the question: are these failures in wetland governance purely induced by factors exogenous to Ramsar-based institutions or are they manifestations of conceptual drawbacks within Ramsar conceptual framework. Here, we investigate the success and failures of the application of the Ramsar framework's policy directives and management guidelines for urban wetlands using two rapidly expanding cities in South Asia as case studies – Colombo (Sri Lanka) and Kolkata (India). We conclude that despite its remarkable achievements over the past four decades, the Ramsar framework has several conceptual drawbacks that weaken its effectiveness in complex urban contexts. An inadequate recognition of the complex dynamics of urban social-ecological systems, an inadequate recognition of the political complexity of the policy processes, and a lack of an environmental justice perspective are the main shortcomings contributing to failures in urban wetlands governance. While we acknowledge that some solutions are contingent upon national and transnational level socio-political processes and reforms, we offer a set of technical and strategic modifications to the Ramsar framework that can significantly improve its effectiveness in urban wetlands governance.

Probabilistic graphical models to deal with age estimation of living persons.

Due to the rise of criminal, civil and administrative judicial situations involving people lacking valid identity documents, age estimation of living persons has become an important operational procedure for numerous forensic and medicolegal services worldwide. The chronological age of a given person is generally estimated from the observed degree of maturity of some selected physical attributes by means of statistical methods. However, their application in the forensic framework suffers from some conceptual and practical drawbacks, as recently claimed in the specialised literature. The aim of this paper is therefore to offer an alternative solution for overcoming these limits, by reiterating the utility of a probabilistic Bayesian approach for age estimation. This approach allows one to deal in a transparent way with the uncertainty surrounding the age estimation process and to produce all the relevant information in the form of posterior probability distribution about the chronological age of the person under investigation. Furthermore, this probability distribution can also be used for evaluating in a coherent way the possibility that the examined individual is younger or older than a given legal age threshold having a particular legal interest. The main novelty introduced by this work is the development of a probabilistic graphical model, i.e. a Bayesian network, for dealing with the problem at hand. The use of this kind of probabilistic tool can significantly facilitate the application of the proposed methodology: examples are presented based on data related to the ossification status of the medial clavicular epiphysis. The reliability and the advantages of this probabilistic tool are presented and discussed.

Behavioral economics and the ‘new’ paternalism1

Abstract The paper provides a critical appraisal of the normative program of behavioral economics known as ‘new paternalism’. First, it explores the theoretical foundations of behavioral economics, describes major behavioral anomalies associated with bounded rationality of economic agents and discusses its normative principles and political implications. It then discusses the main empirical and conceptual drawbacks of new paternalism and provides arguments for the alternative non-welfarist normative tradition based on the idea of freedom.

Conceptual and technical aspects of transfection and gene delivery.

Genetically modified animals are state of the art in biomedical research as gene therapy is a promising perspective in the attempt to cure hereditary diseases. Both approaches have in common that modified or corrected genetic information must be transferred into cells in general or into particular cell types of an organism. Here we give an overview of established and emerging methods of transfection and gene delivery and provide conceptual and technical advantages and drawbacks of their particular use. Additionally, based on a flow chart, we compiled a rough guideline to choose a gene transfer method for a particular field of application.

Positive attitudes on aging: a life course view

Chosen as paper of the month in this issue of International Psychogeriatrics, Shenkin and colleagues (2014) tackle the complex but important issue of how older adults perceive the experience of aging and the life course factors that relate to these perceptions and attitudes. Taking advantage of data from a large, well-characterized group of healthy, community-living older persons in the United Kingdom (the Lothian Birth Cohort of 1963; Deary et al., 2007), the authors conclude that in spite of common tendencies in the medical literature, the popular press, or cultural stereotypes to focus on negative aspects of aging, older persons themselves generally report positive attitudes toward aging. Taking a life course approach, the authors conclude that the most significant and pervasive correlates associated with positive attitudes of aging across three assessed domains (psychosocial loss, physical change, and psychological growth) are personality traits. In contrast, affective disturbances (depression/anxiety) are associated with more negative attitudes to aging. The authors also identify other potentially modifiable factors associated with attitudes to aging, including physical disability, social class, or living circumstances. The authors point out several limitations of this work, including the self-selected sample limiting generalizability; psychometric and conceptual drawbacks of the Attitudes on Aging Questionnaire; and variance not explained by a priori clinically focused predictor variables.

Predicting the structural parameters of integrally skinned porous membranes

The objective of this study is to propose a novel approach for predicting the structural parameters of integrally skinned porous membranes using gas permeation data. It is intended to overcome the limitation of the conventional gas permeation testing (GPT) method, since the latter method seems to suffer from several conceptual drawbacks. In particular, a comparison is made between the theoretical calculation and the experimental data to show the superiority of the newly proposed model. The new model is a modification of Wakao et al.'s model, in which, unlike the conventional GPT method, the contribution of the slip flow is considered. Although Wakao et al.'s model was found superior to the conventional GPT method, the model fitting to the experimental data was not completely satisfactory. It was likely that the slip flow, although its effect cannot be neglected, is not fully developed. Therefore, a factor ψ is introduced to show the extent of the contribution of the slip flow mechanism to the total gas permeation rate. As a result, the new method can overcome the shortcomings of the conventional GPT method by manifesting the following advantages: (i) it can cover the entire range of J versus P diagram, (ii) it can specify the contribution of the individual mechanisms involved in the total gas permeation and (iii) unlike the conventional GPT method, it is not limited by any constraints or conditions of data acquisition. In summary, the model can predict pore size and effective porosity, and also simulate the experimental J versus P trends with sufficient accuracy (within ~2% over the pressure range studied) for all types of membranes, i.e. NF, UF, MF, MD and membrane contactors. In view of this fact, the proposed model is simpler to apply than Rangarajan et al.'s model and more accurate than the conventional GPT method.

Behavioral Economics and New Paternalism &lt;i&gt;(Part II)&lt;/i&gt;

The paper provides a critical appraisal of the normative program of behavioral economics known as new paternalism. Part II of the paper discusses main empirical and conceptual drawbacks of this approach and provides arguments for the alternative non-welfarist normative tradition based on the idea of freedom.