Crowds Of People Research Articles

Human Sensing Meets People Crowd Detection – A Case of Developing Countries

Purpose: The main purpose of this study was to examine the application of sensors and sensor networks for detection of people crowds in developing cities. This paper discusses unique challenges associated with people crowd detection especially in the urban towns of developing countries and gives a comparative review and analysis of popular human sensing approaches in the detection of people crowds.
 Methodology: This study provides a survey and categorization of popular human sensing approaches using literature especially published within the past two decades. The paper then analyzes current human sensing technologies vis-à-vis people crowd detection in developing cities. The respective strengths and shortfalls of various approaches are highlighted. Finally, by means of examples, a comparative analysis of different human sensing categories is carried out.
 Findings: The spontaneous, dynamic and chaotic nature of people crowds, together with the poor infrastructural development characteristic of developing economies pose unique challenges to the effectiveness of people crowd detection systems. Although there are advances in crowd detection, most of these are in the area of non-people crowds, while most of the research done on people crowd detection have been on indoor crowd settings. In addition, challenges unique to people crowd detection in developing countries include: scalability and cost of crowd detection systems, security of the detection system infrastructure, confidentiality of subjects being monitored, requirements for incentives and the ability to support passive and real time people crowd detection.
 Unique contribution to theory, practice and policy: This study emphasizes the need for both indoor and outdoor people crowd detection systems appropriate for the needs of developing cities. The study contributes to the body of knowledge since people crowds unlike other types of crowds present a unique set of challenges that call for special attention.

Non-volume preserving-based fusion to group-level emotion recognition on crowd videos

Group-level emotion recognition (ER) is a growing research area as the demands for assessing crowds of all sizes are becoming an interest in both the security arena as well as social media. This work extends the earlier ER investigations, which focused on either group-level ER on single images or within a video, by fully investigating group-level expression recognition on crowd videos. In this paper, we propose an effective deep feature level fusion mechanism to model the spatial-temporal information in the crowd videos. In our approach, the fusing process is performed on the deep feature domain by a generative probabilistic model, Non-Volume Preserving Fusion (NVPF), that models spatial information relationships. Furthermore, we extend our proposed spatial NVPF approach to the spatial-temporal NVPF approach to learn the temporal information between frames. To demonstrate the robustness and effectiveness of each component in the proposed approach, three experiments were conducted: (i) evaluation on AffectNet database to benchmark the proposed EmoNet for recognizing facial expression; (ii) evaluation on EmotiW2018 to benchmark the proposed deep feature level fusion mechanism NVPF; and, (iii) examine the proposed TNVPF on an innovative Group-level Emotion on Crowd Videos (GECV) dataset composed of 627 videos collected from publicly available sources. GECV dataset is a collection of videos containing crowds of people. Each video is labeled with emotion categories at three levels: individual faces, group of people, and the entire video frame.

Indonesian Legal Protection for Song Commercialization and Music Copyrights in Digital Platforms

The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the digital influence on the Indonesian music industry. Music concerts, which are usually held offline with crowds of people, are no longer possible because crowds can make new clusters of Covid-19. The Indonesian music industry needs alternatives to survive the pandemic, and the advance in technology has the solution. Virtual concerts that are broadcasted via digital platforms have started to thrive. They use copyrighted songs and/or music so that royalty payments are made in accordance with the type of use and needs. Unfortunately, the Law Number 28 of 2014 on Copyright and the Government Regulation Number 56 of 2021 on the Management of Song and/or Music Copyright Royalties do not regulate the use in detail and specific manners. Therefore, the industry actors have not found the right payment formula for the economic rights royalties. The absence of regulations certainly does not reduce the user’s primary obligation to obtain a songwriter's permission and pay royalties for song and/or music copyrights. The fulfillment of the obligation to pay royalties must still be accomplished with due regard to applicable provisions. This study examined the problems with a normative juridical method. It considered the practices and customs that apply in Indonesia. It also generated some perspectives from relevant stakeholders.

Bats’ brains encode single neurons for each of their buddies

Whether we're talking about a murder of crows or a crowd of people, social group dynamics can get incredibly complex. In each interaction, individuals within a group must juggle who is who, what is happening, whether they've met before and what happened in those past interactions. Keeping track of such details allows you to distinguish your best friend from your mortal enemy. In their new paper published in Science, Maimon Rose and colleagues from University of California Berkeley, USA, looked to unravel how complex ideas such as identity and context in social communication are encoded in the brain.To address this question, the team studied a long-lived and highly social species, the Egyptian fruit bat (Rousettus aegyptiacus). These animals typically live up to 25 years in colonies with thousands of other bats. Throughout their lifetime, they form long-lasting social ties and only chat with neighbours in close proximity, making them ideal to study the neural mechanisms of group social communication.To study the bat brains, Rose strapped tiny wireless hats onto groups of 4–5 bats. These hats simultaneously recorded brainwaves from each bat and allowed the scientists to identify which bats were conversing at any one time. From scanning 1153 single neurons from 7 different bats, the researchers found that certain neurons fired in response to the bat's own calls while other neurons fired when it listened to calls from other bats. Moreover, calls from specific individuals caused specific neurons (‘identity neurons’) to fire in response, suggesting that the bat brain encodes a single neuron for each buddy.When scientists compared brainwaves from each member of a group of bats, they found that all group members were on the same wavelength, meaning their brain activity patterns were remarkably synchronized whether a bat was calling or listening to a call. This neural coordination during communication among friends remained stable over at least 2 weeks. Thus, these long-lived, highly social bats can form ‘best friendships’ that are stable over time and reliably encoded in their neural repertoire.To study the bat behaviours, Rose and Boaz Styr then built an LED light-based bat-tracking system to trace which individuals like to spend more or less time close to the rest of the group. The authors found that the identity neurons of anti-social bats, which spend less time close to the rest of the group, fired less reliably in response to their respective bat buddies. Moreover, their brainwaves were less synchronized with that of others in the group.To show that these patterns of neural activity are specific to social interactions, the researchers trained bats to call in a non-social context, this time in response to a reward rather than spontaneously. They found that in this context, much like in anti-social bats, identity neurons were less reliable indicators of identity and brain activity patterns of members in the group were less coordinated.Many animals, including humans, are social creatures. Although communication often occurs in a group setting, prior studies had only looked at either one brain at a time or one side of communication at a time. This study provides novel insights into the neuronal process by which the complexities of group social communication are handled. Studies such as this one bring us one step closer to understanding what controls our ability to communicate gracefully in a group.

Water level monitoring system using GSM network

Unexpected water shortages are common, especially in densely populated areas and homes. Water supply is carried out from a reservoir located on the roof of the building. Apparently, there is no early warning system that allows monitoring of the water level in the tank at a critical level. This situation occurs when there is no one to monitor the water level. People face such problems when the need for water is greater and when there is a large crowd of people. This paper proposes a solution for a water monitoring system using a Global System for Mobile communication (GSM) network to avoid such manual control problems. In this prototype, a water level message will be sent to a person whose mobile phone is connected to the GSM network so that the water level in the tank can be monitored and known. The pumping system automatically switches off when the water reaches its maximum level.

Studying tourist congestion as a form of overtourism through Tripadvisor reviews: Case study: Charles Bridge, Prague

Overtourism is a current phenomenon which also includes crowds of people in a tourist destination. This research analyzes overtourism to a much visited tourist objective through Tripadvisor reviews, by highlighting the key concepts which are suggesting the existence of the overtourism phenomenon. The method consisted to examine the reviews posted on Tripadvisor by the tourists who visited one of the most important tourist attractions in Prague, namely Charles Bridge. The tool used for this purpose was Leximancer program. Using an analysis from multiple perspectives (during the 2019 low and peak tourist season, and during the Covid-19 pandemic), the results of the concept maps captured the intensity of the phenomenon of overtourism in all three contexts. Thus, specific themes and concepts generated by the program suggest that Carles Bridge suffers from overtourism regardless of the tourist season.

PKM Utilization of Podcasts as Communication Media for Da'wah Broadcasting during the Covid Outbreak

The COVID-19 pandemic requires people to adapt to current conditions that prohibit activities involving large numbers of people or create a crowd of people. Society is faced with virtual conditions in every situation activity, especially in religious activities. The places of worship are commonly closed. Today the implementation of prayer in the congregation is used to avoid the spread of covid 19. This article aims to report the results of community service related to the use of podcasts as a medium of communication broadcasting da'wah in mosques. This service activity also provides convenience for mosque administrators in the East Probolinggo area to deliver propaganda. This service is expected to help mosque administrators understand and use podcasts to communicate religious activities. And able to use social media and communication media to deliver spiritual information and da'wah.

Gestalt counseling application to resolve psychological disorder

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on children in Indonesia is getting bigger and wider. Based on an analysis of various policy responses and research findings, it was found that one of the impacts caused by the pandemic was that it greatly impacted children's mental health. health protocols, most children have fear, anxiety, are starting to adapt to crowds of people because for almost a year they have only been undergoing the learning process online. Moreover, the impact caused by this virus is death. Gestalt therapy is a therapeutic approach used by many groups in their research. This approach is still rarely used in the school environment by counselors due to a lack of knowledge in using this Gestalt approach technique. The purpose of writing can provide information that the Gestalt approach with the techniques in it makes a good contribution in overcoming psychological disorders in children. The author uses the literature analysis method through Publish or Perish and uses VOS (Vos of viewers). This literature review has explored research on the benefits of the Gestalt approach for children. The results of using this literature analysis is that the Gestalt approach is beneficial for children, namely: emotional self-expression, conflict resolution, contact with therapists, well-being, self-esteem, communication skills and are useful in treating psychological disorders including reducing depression, child anxiety, parental anxiety, and symptoms of trauma and other psychological disorders. From the results of the literature review it shows that evidence of Gestalt interventions is effective in dealing with psychological disorders in children.

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ORIENTA + COVID" CALL CENTER SERVICE IN THE XINGU-PA REGION

Worldwide, guidelines have been developed that indicate the adoption of measures, which can guide and assist the population in times of pandemic. In this sense, several cities have incorporated the practice of health call centers with qualified specialists to provide correct information about the disease, creating remote channels to make calls such as telephones, video calls and applications that do not require the crowding of people at health units. The objective of the work was to describe the “Orienta+COVID” call center service installed in the Xingu-PA region, Brazil. The study was carried out in the Xingu region, Pará, Brazil. The reports of the attendants participating in the project were collected and the attendance registration report, which took place from May 25th to June 30th, 2020, was analyzed. A total of 1210 visits were made in the period analyzed through 60 attendants who took turns on duty. During tele orientation, health professionals collected patient data, their complaints and doubts to determine, through the classification of symptoms, what would be the guidelines to be passed. The call center performed by health professionals during the project was essential to answer patients' doubts as well as being able to better guide them on how to proceed in suspected or confirmed cases of the new coronavirus and thus contribute to reducing the demand for urgent and emergency services.

Likely behaviours of people under emergency circumstances in hospitals: A cross-sectional study.

Hospitals, which play an important role in reducing injuries and casualties, must be prepared for a crowd of people in emergencies. The present study aimed to survey and collect data on the likely behaviours of people under emergency circumstances in hospitals in order to improve emergency response plans in these places. The target population was all individuals present in three hospitals from Tabriz (including patients, companions and treatment staff), and the sample size was 1145. A questionnaire was administered to this population in order to collect the data. The comparison of different groups was performed based on participants' gender and their role. Results showed that, in general, everyone in the surveyed hospitals is more likely to choose a reactive strategy rather than a preventive strategy as well as a cooperative strategy rather than a competitive strategy, and less willing to use lifts during emergencies. Comparing different strategies utilized by different people resulting from ordered logit models revealed that there are significant differences in evacuation strategies between men and women as well as between treatment staff and all respondents. Men were more likely to select a proactive strategy rather than a reactive strategy compared to women. Also, the treatment staff group were more likely to employ a cooperative strategy and less likely to use a competitive strategy compared to other people. In view of the role of hospitals, the results of this study can play a major role in policy-making to predict the behaviour of different individuals in healthcare settings and perform needs assessment to consider the necessary facilities or raining required for different people in various countries.

Mechanisms and ways of transmission of SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus infection

The relevance of the problem. A new coronavirus infection caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus has created an emergency situation of international importance. The incidence of it is characterized by a rapid spread across all countries, high morbidity rates, severe complications and mortality. Despite the fact that there are currently vaccines, it is not yet possible to stop the infection. Of particular importance as a preventive measure is the impact on the second link of the epidemic process. In this connection, obtaining objective data on the mechanisms and ways of spreading the SARS-CoV-2 virus will allow for more rational preventive measures and significantly reduce the risk of transmission of infection. The aim is to analyze current data on the mechanisms and ways of spreading the COVID-19 pathogen from available literature sources and to consider possible measures to influence the second link of the epidemiological chain in order to reduce the risks of infection. Materials and methods. The selection of peer-reviewed literature published from 2019 to 2021 was carried out. in the PubMed database and e-Library.ru, as well as links in articles. To obtain statistical data, the Internet resources of the World Health Organization (WHO), open data of Rospotrebnadzor, the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation, Rosstat were used. Results. Analysis of scientific sources containing information on the mechanisms and ways of transmission of the new coronavirus infection COVID-19 indicates that the authors in their publications mention almost all the mechanisms and ways of transmission of this disease, but to varying degrees of their significance. The main mechanism of the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is aspiration with airborne and airborne dust transmission routes. At the same time, the effect of contact, fecal-oral mechanisms is not excluded, the probability of the implementation of the vertical mechanism of transmission of the pathogen from the mother to the child, as well as the genital tract, is being studied. An important measure for the prevention of a new infection is the impact on the second link of the epidemic process, especially ensuring the highly efficient operation of ventilation and air conditioning systems in medical institutions and public places with a massive crowd of people, as well as compliance with personal preventive measures and disinfection measures.

Semantic thingsourcing for the Internet of Things

SummaryIn the context of Internet of Things, thingsourcing is poised to promote the collective behavior that should prevail among things despite their independent nature being confined into silos. By analogy with crowdsourcing where crowds of (sometimes anonymous) people are contacted for their expertise, thingsourcing abstracts crowds of things and provides the necessary mechanisms for composing things together so they collectively satisfy users' demands. However, to ensure successful discovery of things according to these demands' requirements, an ontology‐based semantic description of things is deemed necessary. This article presents an approach for enriching things' descriptions semantically in preparation for their composition with respect to specific scripts that define who will do what, when, and where. A system demonstrating semantic thingsourcing along with a case study about dairy supply‐chain is presented in this article as well.

The Tangi

The first day, it was dark, the clouds hung over us, not only the rain clouds but the cloud of sadness that lingered since that last day with him. We stood huddled at the gate, hiding from the rain under umbrellas but also from the eyes of the crowds of people watching us in our grief. The kaumatua of the marae signaled it was time, time for us to take him inside the Marae where he would lay, where we would share him with all the others who had come to be with him.

Pharmacists have the right to refuse to fill ivermectin prescriptions

Pharmacists have the right to refuse to fill ivermectin prescriptions

COVID-19 Contact Tracing and Detection-Based on Blockchain Technology

The fight against the COVID-19 pandemic still involves many struggles and challenges. The greatest challenge that most governments are currently facing is the lack of a precise, accurate, and automated mechanism for detecting and tracking new COVID-19 cases. In response to this challenge, this study proposes the first blockchain-based system, called the COVID-19 contact tracing system (CCTS), to verify, track, and detect new cases of COVID-19. The proposed system consists of four integrated components: an infection verifier subsystem, a mass surveillance subsystem, a P2P mobile application, and a blockchain platform for managing all transactions between the three subsystem models. To investigate the performance of the proposed system, CCTS has been simulated and tested against a created dataset consisting of 300 confirmed cases and 2539 contacts. Based on the metrics of the confusion matrix (i.e., recall, precision, accuracy, and F1 Score), the detection evaluation results proved that the proposed blockchain-based system achieved an average of accuracy of 75.79% and a false discovery rate (FDR) of 0.004 in recognizing persons in contact with COVID-19 patients within two different areas of infection covered by GPS. Moreover, the simulation results also demonstrated the success of the proposed system in performing self-estimation of infection probabilities and sending and receiving infection alerts in P2P communications in crowds of people by users. The infection probability results have been calculated using the binomial distribution function technique. This result can be considered unique compared with other similar systems in the literature. The new system could support governments, health authorities, and citizens in making critical decisions regarding infection detection, prediction, tracking, and avoiding the COVID-19 outbreak. Moreover, the functionality of the proposed CCTS can be adapted to work against any other similar pandemics in the future.

Methodological approaches and algorithms for recognizing and counting animals in aerial photographs

Introduction: The complexity of recognition and counting of objects in a photographic image is directly related to variability of related factors: physical difference of objects from the same class, presence of images similar to objects to be recognized, non-uniform background, change of shooting conditions and position of the objects when the photo was taken. Most challenging are the problems of identifying people in crowds, animals in natural environment, cars from surveillance cameras, objects of construction and infrastructure on aerial photo images, etc. These problems have their own specific factor space, but the methodological approaches to their solution are similar. Purpose: The development of methodologies and software implementations solving the problem of recognition and counting of objects with high variability, on the example of reindeer recognition in the natural environment. Methods: Two approaches are investigated: feature-based recognition based on binary pixel classification and reference-based recognition using convolutional neural networks. Results: Methodologies and programs have been developed for pixel-by-pixel recognition with subsequent binarization, image clustering and cluster counting and image recognition using the convolutional neural network of Mask R-CNN architecture. The network is first trained to recognize animals as a class from the array of MS COCO dataset images and then trained on the array of aerial photographs of reindeer herds. Analysis of the results shows that feature-based methods with pixel-by-pixel recognition give good results on relatively simple images (recognition error 10–15%). The presence of artifacts on the image that are close to the characteristics of the reindeer images leads to a significant increase in the error. The convolutional neural network showed higher accuracy, which on the test sample was 82%, with no false positives. Practical relevance: А software prototype has been created for the recognition system based on convolutional neural networks with a web interface, and the program itself has been put into limited operation.

“The Whistleblower”

The Whistleblower Simbarashe Steyn Kundizeza (bio) It began the day I bumped into Silas Chikwama at the Eastgate shopping mall in Harare. It was raining quite heavily that January afternoon. A sizeable crowd of people had gathered under the cover of the mall's high roof. Most were milling aimlessly around, taking each other's pictures or going from one shop to another wistfully looking at expensive goods that their meagre salaries didn't allow them to buy while they waited for the rain to subside. Taking advantage of the thick crowds, a few informal and illegal currency dealers mingled unobtrusively amongst the public, recognizable only by the large wads of cash they held, muttering from time to time "maUSA, maRand"—they were exchanging United States dollars for the South African rand and vice versa. I had just come out of a bank on the ground floor when I ran into him. The last time I had seen him prior to this day was when I was in high school where he had been my teacher for three years. I felt a bit awkward seeing him now because since then I'd had a brief relationship with his niece Agatha and I wasn't sure whether he knew about this or how he felt about it if he did. He started balding and had gained weight considerably too, but on the whole he still looked the same. He spotted me first and greeted me with a very firmly grasped handshake and his characteristic rowdy, exuberant laughter. After that he launched into an endless stream of questions, which I answered as briefly as I could. I was doing quite well, thank you. Oh, my grandmother was fine. Yes, really. Yes, I'd already graduated from university. Thank you. A Bachelor of Science Honours Degree in Computer Science. Yes, that's right. A job? Well, yes. Sort of. I mean I am working, but I am still looking for something better. No, they weren't paying me much. Yes, I was sure. Chikwama shook his head in sympathy. "It's hard to find a good job these days, Frank. I feel sorry for you young people; back in our day you [End Page 239] knew you had a reasonable chance of getting a job after college. But these days …" he nodded towards a passing forex dealer "That's all you can do. Wheeling and dealing. University graduates like you are driving taxis or selling second hand clothes in flea markets. Can you imagine?'' "The situation is really bad," I agreed. "Let's hope things will get better soon," Chikwama sighed. "So how's the job? Are you still at Houghton Park High?" I asked. He looked scandalized. "No, I quit two years ago! I'm no longer in teaching. Didn't Agatha tell you?" "No, she didn't tell me," I said. Chikwama smiled at me, a lewd look on his face. So he knew about Agatha and me. "Yes, I decided to resign. Teaching is a very frustrating job nowadays, Frank. And poorly paid, too. My wife and children deserve to eat rice and chicken, not just sadza and vegetables every day, until their intestines start turning green, don't they?" They certainly did, and I said so. But what was he doing now if not teaching? He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and looked at his watch before he said shortly, "I'm working in security these days." Security? I looked closely at him, and decided that his suit looked far too expensive for him to be a security guard. "Do you now own a security company?'' I asked. Chikwama laughed and said, "No, not that kind of security. I meant national security. For the C-Tens." C-Ten, the man on the street's nickname for the Central Intelligence Organization. If Silas Chikwama had shouted that single word, the whole Eastgate shopping mall would've frozen instantly, save perhaps for the money dealers who would've almost certainly started to flee, with visions of beefy men clad in dark suits and wielding brick-sized fists (which reputedly could knock a man senseless with just...

“Brasil, decime qué se siente”: a study of agglomeration in a stadium in the World Cup

This study investigates visitor reactions to the human and spatial agglomeration of World Cup stadiums, relating the variable of crowding perception to emotions and consumer’s satisfaction. The largest world event based on a single sport, the Cup moves millions of tourists during the period of its accomplishment. Constantly explored in previous research, the perception of crowding presents a gap in the tangent to relationships established in entertainment environments. The quantitative research, based on the Machleit, Kellaris and Eroglu (1994) scale, presented 270 cases analyzed using the Structural Equation Modeling method. The results indicate that the crowding of people in football stadiums during the World Cup triggers positive emotions in the consumer, contrary to most previous studies conducted in other types of environments. The perception of spatial crowding, in turn, maintained the negative character mostly attested by the literature, relating negatively to positive emotions. There was evidence that perception of human crowding influences more intensely on satisfaction than the perception of space crowding.

Cybernetics Approach Using Agent-Based Modeling in the Process of Evacuating Educational Institutions in Case of Disasters

In the context of an emergency, evacuating people from a location in the shortest possible time is essential, as is the high degree of safety that people should expect when evacuating. Lately, in Romania there have been more and more fire events generated by different causes. This article will use agent-based modeling to simulate an emergency evacuation model in NetLogo. The model has been used to perform and analyze various scenarios. With the help of NetLogo, we managed to perform 400 simulations with the evacuation of 180 people (students, teachers, and non-teaching staff) based on which we developed several recommendations to streamline the evacuation process in order to reduce the possibility of death. The present research will help to identify the evacuation times from a school, but it will also highlight certain aspects that may occur during the evacuation. The model that was used in this research took into account the individual particularities of the people taking part in the evacuation, emphasizing the effects that form in a crowd of people when evacuating; effects such as the funnel effect, which is caused by the formation of bottlenecks around narrow areas. All these things are part of the analysis of the measurement of entropy of the exhaust system, a problem that has captured all of the specialists’ attention. Finally, solutions have been proposed to improve evacuation time in case of disasters.