Shape Context Research Articles

Dementia Caregiving Experiences and Health Across Geographic Contexts by Race and Ethnicity.

Few studies have examined how the intersectionality of geographic context and race/ethnicity influences dementia caregiving. Our objectives were to determine whether caregiver experiences and health (a) differed across metro and nonmetro areas and (b) differed by caregiver race/ethnicity and geography. We used data from the 2017 National Health and Aging Trends Study and National Study of Caregiving. The sample included caregivers (n = 808) of care recipients ages 65 and older with "probable" dementia (n = 482). The geographic context was defined as the care recipient's residence in metro or nonmetro counties. Outcomes included caregiving experiences (care situation, burden, and gains) and health (self-rated anxiety, depression symptoms, and chronic health conditions). Bivariate analyses indicated that nonmetro dementia caregivers were less racially/ethnically diverse (82.7% White, non-Hispanic) and more were spouses/partners (20.2%) than their metro counterparts (66.6% White, non-Hispanic; 13.3% spouses/partners). Among racial/ethnic minority dementia caregivers, nonmetro context was associated with more chronic conditions (p < .01), providing less care (p < .01), and not coresiding with care recipients (p < .001). Multivariate analyses demonstrated that nonmetro minority dementia caregivers had 3.11 times higher odds (95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.11-9.00) of reporting anxiety in comparison to metro minority dementia caregivers. Geographic context shapes dementia caregiving experiences and caregiver health differently across racial/ethnic groups. Findings are consistent with previous studies that have shown that feelings of uncertainty, helplessness, guilt, and distress are more prevalent among people providing caregiving from a distance. Despite higher rates of dementia and dementia-related mortality in nonmetro areas, findings suggest both positive and negative aspects of caregiving among White and racial/ethnic minority caregivers.

Contexts shaping the development and success of elite sport systems: a scoping review

ABSTRACT The importance of contexts in analysing elite sport systems and policies, as reflected in substantial research over the past couple of decades, is considered to nurture or constrain the development and outcome of elite sport systems toward international sporting success. Theorising elite sport systems as institutions operating and embedded in an open system may provide insight into the “hows” (throughput processes) and the “whys” (conditions) of the effectiveness of sport systems and policies to determine what may work (or not work) for each country’s specific context. This scoping review aims to examine and map determinants of elite sport development in nations. Specifically, the review analysed how studies: (1) theorised the determinants, (2) used terms to denote contextual determinants for elite sport development and success and (3) described or conceptualised context. Further, the review identified context dimensions derived from the elite sport development determinants. The scoping review identified 19 studies that contain relevant contextual determinants. Findings present seven context dimensions derived from a neo-institutional organisation framework that pertain to different institutional contexts that may influence the development of elite sport policy systems. An improved conceptualisation of context may enhance our understanding of the relationship between processes (i.e., sport policy mechanisms) and contexts.

Institutional context and life satisfaction: does the rule of law moderate well-being inequalities?

ABSTRACT An emerging strand of research emphasizes the role of the macro institutional context in shaping the social distribution of well-being. This article examines the variations in the association between political power and subjective well-being by how the rule of law is instituted across societies. Two hypotheses of the rule of law role are tested: (a) power-tempering and (b) power-enhancement hypotheses. We use a unique dataset of 30,491 individuals from 27 countries with diverse social and political characteristics. We first confirmed the relationship between individuals’ perceptions of their positions in the power hierarchy and their overall satisfaction with their lives using models with country-level fixed effects. Moreover, this relationship significantly varies across countries, and the Rule of Law Index explains part of the variation, as indicated by random-effects models. In societies with well-defined, universally applicable, and fair laws, the association of one’s position of power and subjective well-being is reduced. Our study illustrates that institutions of better quality and functioning may equalize access to well-being.

The Efforts of the Royal Thai Domestic Bureaucracy in an Effort to Protest against the Haze/Smog from Indonesia

This study aims to explain three determinant factors in influencing a country in making policies, especially the kingdom of Thailand. The three determinants of the considerations above have an interconnected role in influencing every consideration of policy makers to make decisions. Where in the domestic context, which consists of domestic politics, economic and military forces play a role together with the international context in shaping the direction of foreign policy. So that these three considerations do not stand separately because they influence each other in the policy-making process. The existence of deforestation and fires in Indonesia has caused significant problems. Because deforestation and forest fires are directly transboundary haze which makes Indonesia a smoke haze contributing country in the Southeast Asian region. Therefore, in relation to forest fires in Indonesia which have become an environmental issue, the Indonesian government also has a responsibility towards cross-border air pollution. Where in terms of international law, state responsibility is an obligation that must be carried out by a country to other countries. So that the Indonesian government in this case has responsibility for cross-border air pollution that occurs in Southeast Asia. The Indonesian government has also ratified ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary haze pollution (AATHP). Therefore, the Indonesian government is trying to solve this problem in a sustainable manner.

Too “Full of Gender” How Activists Conceptualize the Promises and Pitfalls of Gender-Neutral Identity Documents

Abstract The social movements literature identifies a dilemma that activists face between principles of affirming and deconstructing identity. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 85 activists from diverse political perspectives, this article shows that, in discussing identity documents (IDs), progressive activists took a practical approach that recognized both the advantages and drawbacks of recognition. They expressed support both for initiatives that would provide additional sex/gender marker options—beyond M or F—on IDs and those that would remove sex/gender markers from IDs altogether. This article argues that progressives readily perceived the drawbacks of recognition in the case of IDs because this context—more than others—cues concerns about state regulation and surveillance. Conservatives, who advocate for limiting government power in other contexts, were less likely than progressives to support the idea of removing sex/gender markers from government IDs, appealing to other priorities to justify this stance. Together, these findings underscore the extent to which expediency motivates social activists. They also show how both political orientation and social context shape preferences for emphasizing versus de-emphasizing sex/gender.

Attentional fluctuations and the temporal organization of memory

Event boundaries and temporal context shape the organization of episodic memories. We hypothesized that attentional fluctuations during encoding serve as “events” that affect temporal context representations and recall organization. Individuals encoded trial-unique objects during a modified sustained attention task. Memory was tested with free recall. Response time variability during the encoding tasks was used to characterize “in the zone” and “out of the zone” attentional states. We predicted that: 1) “in the zone”, vs. “out of the zone”, attentional states should be more conducive to maintaining temporal context representations that can cue temporally organized recall; and 2) temporally distant “in the zone” states may enable more recall “leaps” across intervening items. We replicated several important findings in the sustained attention and memory fields, including more online errors during “out of the zone” vs. “in the zone” attentional states and recall that was temporally structured. Yet, across four studies, we found no evidence for either of our main hypotheses. Recall was robustly temporally organized, and there was no difference in recall organization for items encoded “in the zone” vs. “out of the zone”. We conclude that temporal context serves as a strong scaffold for episodic memory, one that can support organized recall even for items encoded during relatively poor attentional states. We also highlight the numerous challenges in striking a balance between sustained attention tasks (long blocks of a repetitive task) and memory recall tasks (short lists of unique items) and describe strategies for researchers interested in uniting these two fields.

How does institutional context shape work-related functionings for regular and self-employed workers? A contextualised application of the capability approach to Belgium, France and the Netherlands

PurposeAccording to Sen's theoretical framework of capability (1985), individuals reach their full potential once they have the freedom, intended as the set of functionings at their disposal, to do so. However, many critiques have been developed against the lack of embeddedness of the capability approach in social and political relations and structures. In this article, the authors investigate the influence of three institutional contexts (Belgium, the Netherlands and France) on the respective work-related functionings of self-employed and regular workers, with a focus on human capital investment and institutional support offered to them.Design/methodology/approachData from the European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) are used to highlight similarities and differences in building work-related functionings for regular and self-employed workers. A regression analysis is provided at the country level.FindingsIn the three labour markets, the authors find that the building of work-related functionings is more successful for regular employees, especially as regards institutional support. Self-employed workers, on the other hand, need to rely on their individual capability as regards employment protection and human capital investment. However, the authors find interesting differences between the three institutional contexts. In both Belgium and France, self-employed workers are subject to higher instability in terms of changes in salary and hours worked, whereas atypical work is better positioned in the Dutch labour market. The Netherlands is also characterised by a less significant gap between regular and self-employed workers with respect to participation in training.Originality/valueIn this article, the authors contextualise Sen's (1985) theoretical framework by taking into account the institutional differences of labour markets. In particular, the authors provide a novel application of his capability approach to regular and self-employed workers in an economically relevant European area.

Putting Religious Bias in Context: How Offline and Online Contexts Shape Religious Bias in Online Prosocial Lending

Biases on online platforms pose a threat to social inclusion. We examine the influence of a novel source of bias in online philanthropic lending, namely that associated with religious differences. We first propose religion distance as a probabilistic measure of differences between pairs of individuals residing in different countries. We then incorporate this measure into a gravity model of trade to explain variation in country-to-country lending volumes. We further propose a set of contextual moderators that characterize individuals’ offline (local) and online social contexts, which we argue combine to determine the influence of religion distance on lending activity. We empirically estimate our gravity model using data from Kiva.org, reflecting all lending actions that took place between 2006 and 2017. We demonstrate the negative and significant effect of religion distance on lending activity, over and above other established factors in the literature. Further, we demonstrate the moderating role of lenders’ offline social context (diversity, social hostilities, and governmental favoritism of religion) on the aforementioned relationship to online lending behavior. Finally, we offer empirical evidence of the parallel role of online contextual factors, namely those related to community features offered by the Kiva platform (lending teams), which appear to amplify the role of religious bias. In particular, we show that religious team membership is a double-edged sword that has both favorable and unfavorable consequences, increasing lending in general but skewing said lending toward religiously similar borrowers. Our findings speak to the important frictions associated with religious differences in individual philanthropy; they point to the role of governmental policy vis-à-vis religious tolerance as a determinant of citizens’ global philanthropic behavior, and they highlight design implications for online platforms with an eye toward managing religious bias.

Social Determinants of Health and Traumatic Brain Injury: Implications for Rehabilitation Service Delivery and Outcomes.

Social Determinants of Health and Traumatic Brain Injury: Implications for Rehabilitation Service Delivery and Outcomes.

The role of the university environment in shaping education and employment inequalities

ABSTRACT Life course theory posits that social, structural, and cultural contexts shape individuals’ life outcomes. Using this theory, we investigated whether inequalities in education and employment outcomes for young people with marginalised identities are shaped by the university environment they attended. Based on UK national statistics, universities with similar social, cultural, economic, and physical environments were clustered. These clusters were linked to the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England (LSYPE) cohort dataset to determine whether different university environments predicted differences in outcomes. We observed a mixed picture with no definitive pattern for any marginalised identity. Social and economic environments played a role in predicting education outcomes of young people. Social, cultural, and economic environments were important in predicting employment outcomes. The physical environment did not have any impact. This research emphasises a need for more creative policies within certain universities that address education and employment inequalities.

Contexts and Constraints: The Substantive Representation of Women in the Canadian House of Commons and Senate

ABSTRACT This paper explores the way in which institutional context shapes legislators’ ability to represent women’s interests. In recent decades, scholars have turned their attention to the process of representation in parliament, and we develop a novel theoretical framework that accounts for patterns of representational behaviour. Through an examination of the different institutional contexts of the two houses of the Canadian parliament, we argue that unelected, less partisan contexts give legislators more opportunities to act for women’s interests than elected, partisan contexts where legislators must respond to the demands of their parties and their constituents in order to maintain power. To illustrate our theory, we examine two instances of legislative policymaking on women’s equality issues. Our illustrations justify further investigation of unelected legislators as critical actors in the substantive representation of women in institutions around the world.

Treating Religion as a Personal Choice: Opportunities and Dilemmas Involved in the Religious Identity Constructions of Turkish Muslim Immigrants

Abstract Studies examining the implications of treating religion as a personal choice have often focused on whether this individualistic approach to religion has undermined or strengthened religious commitment and identity. My findings, which are based on qualitative in-depth interviews with 20 Turkish Muslim immigrants living in the United States, show that treating religion as a personal choice does not simply intensify or weaken religious identities but instead generates opportunities while simultaneously leading to dilemmas surrounding individual religious identity constructions. Furthermore, my findings concerning the dilemmas arising from this particular approach to religion show that individuals can still remain attached to religious authority structures despite repeatedly mobilizing a discourse that signals autonomy via narratives of “choice.” This finding revises assumptions about how religious identities take shape in the cultural context of religious individualism and contributes to the study of Muslim immigrant religious identities.

Unleashing speculative urbanism: Speculation and urban transformations

The papers and commentaries constituting this special issue offer new insights into speculative urbanism from the perspective of two southern metropolises. Based on an international and interdisciplinary collaboration comparing speculative urbanism in central and peri-urban Jakarta (Indonesia) and Bengaluru (India), and interrogating the literature triggered by a seminal 2011 paper by Michal Goldman, this issue extends existing speculative urbanism scholarship in four ways. First, the papers in this special issue take a multi-scalar approach, placing speculative urban practices within the broader spatio-temporal conjunctural contexts shaping their emergence. Second, extending currently economistic framings, they show how speculation also is socio-cultural. The diverse actors engaged in speculative urbanism do not simply seek to accumulate wealth; they do so with aspirations in mind for differentially imagined, but yet-to-be-realized, urban/peri-urban futures. Third, they highlight how speculative urbanism involves a broader range of actors than the usual suspects (developers and financial institutions), including land brokers, individual landlords, the state and its actors, and residents displaced from informal settlements. Fourth, they draw attention to diverse objects of urban speculation; not only land and property, but also more-than-human phenomena such as urban socio-ecologies and socio-technical networks.

Context understanding in computer vision: A survey

Contextual information plays an important role in many computer vision tasks, such as object detection, video action detection, image classification, etc. Recognizing a single object or action out of context could be sometimes very challenging, and context information may help improve the understanding of a scene or an event greatly. Appearance context information, e.g., colors or shapes of the background of an object can improve the recognition accuracy of the object in the scene. Semantic context (e.g. a keyboard on an empty desk vs. a keyboard next to a desktop computer ) will improve accuracy and exclude unrelated events. Context information that are not in the image itself, such as the time or location of an images captured, can also help to decide whether certain event or action should occur. Other types of context (e.g. 3D structure of a building) will also provide additional information to improve the accuracy. In this survey, different context information that has been used in computer vision tasks is reviewed. We categorize context into different types and different levels. We also review available machine learning models and image/video datasets that can employ context information. Furthermore, we compare context-based integration and context-free integration in mainly two classes of tasks: image-based and video-based. Finally, this survey is concluded by a set of promising future directions in context learning and utilization.

Non-Rigid Point Cloud Matching Based on Invariant Structure for Face Deformation

In this paper, we present a non-rigid point cloud matching method based on an invariant structure for face deformation. Our work is guided by the realistic needs of 3D face reconstruction and re-topology, which critically need support for calculating the correspondence between deformable models. Our paper makes three main contributions: First, we propose an approach to normalize the global structure features of expressive faces using texture space properties, which decreases the variation magnitude of facial landmarks. Second, we make a modification to the traditional shape context descriptor to solve the problem of regional cross-mismatch. Third, we collect a dataset with various expressions. Ablation studies and comparative experiments were conducted to investigate the performance of the above work. In face deformable cases, our method achieved 99.89% accuracy on our homemade face dataset, showing superior performance over some other popular algorithms. In this way, it can help modelers to build digital humans more easily based on the estimated correspondence of facial landmarks, saving a lot of manpower and time.

Transnational sensemaking narratives of highly skilled Canadian immigrants' career change

PurposeThe authors answer calls for research on the experiences of international professionals' career transitions by investigating how highly skilled immigrants make sense of their career changes in the host country's labor market.Design/methodology/approachThe authors report on a qualitative, inductive and elaborative study, drawing on sensemaking theories and career transitions literature and nine semi-structured reflective interviews with highly skilled Canadian immigrants.FindingsThe authors identified four career change narratives: mourning the past, accepting the present, recreating the past and starting fresh. These narratives are made sense of in a transnational context: participants contended with tensions between past, present and future careers and between relevant home and host country factors affecting their career decisions. Participants who were mourning the past or recreating the past identified more strongly with their home country professions and struggled to find resources in Canada. In accepting the present and starting fresh, participants leveraged host country networks to find career opportunities and establish themselves and their families in the new environment.Originality/valueA transnational ontology emphasizes that immigrants' lives are multifaceted and span multiple national contexts. The authors highlight how the tensions between the home and host country career contexts shape immigrants' sensemaking narratives of their international career change. The authors encourage scholars and practitioners to take a transnational contextual approach (spatial and temporal) to guide immigrants' career transitions and integration into the new social environment.

“Taking context seriously”: Exploring the enactment of gender policy mandates in Catalan education

Several laws and plans contemplate the incorporation of a gender perspective in education in Catalonia. This article analyzes how the relevant policy mandates are transferred, recontextualized and implemented in Catalan secondary schools. Drawing on 15 focus groups with representatives of teachers, students, management teams and families (N=103) from 12 secondary schools in the region, the paper explores the multiple forms of enactment that take place according to the particularities of each of the contexts. Using the analytical framework established by Braun et al. (2011), the results show how the material, the situational, the external, and particularly, the professional context shape the enactment of gender policies in Catalan education. Likewise, the article highlights how actors at the school level develop gender-sensitive practices based on their values and beliefs. Finally, we discuss how, far from a top-down approach, there is also policymaking at the lowest level of the educational system: the school.

“I never should have been a doctor”: a qualitative study of imposter phenomenon among internal medicine residents

IntroductionImposter phenomenon is common among medical trainees and may influence learning and professional development. The authors sought to describe imposter phenomenon among internal medicine residents.MethodsIn 2020, using emailed invites we recruited a convenience sample of 28 internal medicine residents from a teaching hospital in Baltimore, Maryland to participate in an exploratory qualitative study. In one-on-one interviews, informants described experiences of imposter phenomenon during residency training. Using thematic analysis to identify meaningful segments of text, the authors developed a coding framework and iteratively identified and refined themes. Informants completed the Clance Imposter Phenomenon Scale.ResultsInformants described feelings and thoughts related to imposter phenomenon, the contexts in which they developed and the impact on learning. Imposter phenomenon has profound effects on residents including: powerful and persistent feelings of inadequacy and habitual comparisons with others. Distinct contexts shaping imposter phenomenon included: changing roles with increasing responsibilities; constant scrutiny; and rigid medical hierarchy. Learning was impacted by inappropriate expectations, difficulty processing feedback, and mental energy diverted to impression management.DiscussionInternal medicine residents routinely experience imposter phenomenon; these feelings distort residents’ sense of self confidence and competence and may impact learning. Modifiable aspects of the clinical learning environment exacerbate imposter phenomenon and thus can be acted upon to mitigate imposter phenomenon and promote learning among medical trainees.

A shape-based multiple segmentation algorithm for change-point detection

We consider the detection and localization of change points for the off-line sequence of observations. Specifically, we propose a new multi-segmentation algorithm for detecting multiple change-points, named shape-based multiple segmentation algorithm, which is a generalization of binary segmentation. The proposed method is combined with deep mining on the shape information of the test statistics curve to overcome the Gaussian distribution hypothesis limitation and the limitation of traditional segmentation methods only being able to detect one change-point per stage. Combined with shape context, a robust testing statistic was developed via a shape-based descriptor statistic instead of the traditional CUSUM statistic. Then a data-driven threshold by the rightmost sudden-drop point is proposed, and the change points are further identified by single-peak identification. An efficient multiple segmentation based on a shape recognition procedure is implemented to locate change points. The effectiveness of the proposed procedure is illustrated using both synthetic data sets and real world data from electrical distribution networks.

Gendered times: how gendered contexts shape campaign messages of female candidates

Abstract We develop and test a theory of gendered political times, which argues that the gendered political climate during an election shapes the extent to which female candidates emphasize feminine or masculine traits in campaign messages. We measure gendered electoral contexts through rigorous analyses of public opinion data and news media content of the top issues during an election, and we complement these data with an analysis of the gendered traits candidates emphasize in campaign messages during U.S. congressional election cycles from 2000 through 2018. Our results suggest that feminine electoral contexts do not necessarily lead female candidates, or male candidates, to rely on feminine traits. We find that masculine electoral contexts lead female candidates to rely more heavily on feminine traits. Our results have important implications for understanding the forces that shape the way candidates develop strategic campaign messages, and the factors that ultimately influence women’s under-representation in politics.