Current Dominant Approach Research Articles

Label-noise learning via uncertainty-aware neighborhood sample selection

Existing deep learning methods often require a large amount of high-quality labeled data. Yet, the presence of noisy labels in the real-world training data seriously affects the generalization ability of the model. Sample selection techniques, the current dominant approach to mitigating the effects of noisy labels on models, use the consistency of sample predictions and observed labels to make clean selections. However, these methods rely heavily on the accuracy of the sample predictions and inevitably suffer when the model predictions are unstable. To address these issues, we propose an uncertainty-aware neighborhood sample selection method. Especially, it calibrates for sample prediction by neighbor prediction and reassigns model attention to the selected samples based on sample uncertainty. By alleviating the influence of prediction bias on sample selection and avoiding the occurrence of prediction bias, our proposed method achieves excellent performance in extensive experiments. In particular, we achieved an average of 5% improvement in asymmetric noise scenarios.

Reframing skills ecosystems for sustainable and just futures

The current dominant approach to vocational education and training (VET) does not work in theory, policy or practice in current contexts of unsustainability and global inequality. Nor is it fit for future purpose. Drawing on a large-scale research collaboration between four universities, funded by the UK’s Global Challenges Research Fund, with co-funding and funding in-kind from global south partners, this paper is a contribution to imagining new VET futures. It looks iteratively, reflexively and expansively at how our experience of VET system development involving boundary crossing between formal and informal VET systems interfaces with recent Northern work on the conceptualisation of social skills ecosystems, and how this concept can be expanded to address the challenge of skills for just transitions in the global South. We advance the skills ecosystems approach ontologically by drawing on critical realism (a growing trend in VET and development research). This allows us both to move beyond the structure-agency divide that has bedeviled the field, and with it the tendency to monoscalar analysis. Rather, we argue that accounts of VET and development must address both structure and agency, and their interplay, and must be multiscalar. This reading allows us to focus on the central importance of relationality. We argue that it is through networks and relationships that the precarious worlds of learning and work are brought together.

Sustainable marketing: an exploratory study of a sustain‐centric, versus profit‐centric, approach

AbstractAs the need for business to address pressing social and ecological issues intensifies, so does the importance of enhancing the development of sustainable marketing. The current dominant approach to sustainable marketing is based on a Triple Bottom Line (TBL) profit‐centric worldview, which suggests that firms can simultaneously improve their financial well‐being as they reduce negative social and ecological externalities. However, whereas the scope of TBL marketing is limited to sustainability initiatives that enhance profits, there is a growing need for—and interest in—developing a sustain‐centric approach to marketing that relaxes the need to maximize financial well‐being in order to optimize social and ecological well‐being. Even so, because of the dominance of the profit‐centric worldview, hallmarks of sustain‐centric marketing practices remain under‐developed and may even lend themselves to becoming inauthentically mimicked on a piecemeal basis by greenwashing profit‐centric firms. We provide an exploratory empirical study of marketing practices evident in two sustain‐centric firms and draw implications to advance theory for both sustain‐centric and profit‐centric marketing.

The use of autoencoders for training neural networks with mixed categorical and numerical features

AbstractWe focus on modelling categorical features and improving predictive power of neural networks with mixed categorical and numerical features in supervised learning tasks. The goal of this paper is to challenge the current dominant approach in actuarial data science with a new architecture of a neural network and a new training algorithm. The key proposal is to use a joint embedding for all categorical features, instead of separate entity embeddings, to determine the numerical representation of the categorical features which is fed, together with all other numerical features, into hidden layers of a neural network with a target response. In addition, we postulate that we should initialize the numerical representation of the categorical features and other parameters of the hidden layers of the neural network with parameters trained with (denoising) autoencoders in unsupervised learning tasks, instead of using random initialization of parameters. Since autoencoders for categorical data play an important role in this research, they are investigated in more depth in the paper. We illustrate our ideas with experiments on a real data set with claim numbers, and we demonstrate that we can achieve a higher predictive power of the network.

Pharmacological interventions enhance virus-free generation of TRAC-replaced CAR T cells

Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) redirected T cells are potent therapeutic options against hematological malignancies. The current dominant manufacturing approach for CAR T cells depends on retroviral transduction. With the advent of gene editing, insertion of a CD19-CAR into the T cell receptor (TCR) alpha constant (TRAC) locus using adeno-associated viruses for gene transfer was demonstrated, and these CD19-CAR T cells showed improved functionality over their retrovirally transduced counterparts. However, clinical-grade production of viruses is complex and associated with extensive costs. Here, we optimized a virus-free genome-editing method for efficient CAR insertion into the TRAC locus of primary human T cells via nuclease-assisted homology-directed repair (HDR) using CRISPR-Cas and double-stranded template DNA (dsDNA). We evaluated DNA-sensor inhibition and HDR enhancement as two pharmacological interventions to improve cell viability and relative CAR knockin rates, respectively. While the toxicity of transfected dsDNA was not fully prevented, the combination of both interventions significantly increased CAR knockin rates and CAR T cell yield. Resulting TRAC-replaced CD19-CAR T cells showed antigen-specific cytotoxicity and cytokine production in vitro and slowed leukemia progression in a xenograft mouse model. Amplicon sequencing did not reveal significant indel formation at potential off-target sites with or without exposure to DNA-repair-modulating small molecules. With TRAC-integrated CAR+ T cell frequencies exceeding 50%, this study opens new perspectives to exploit pharmacological interventions to improve non-viral gene editing in T cells.

Model-Free Quantum Control with Reinforcement Learning

Model bias is an inherent limitation of the current dominant approach to optimal quantum control, which relies on a system simulation for optimization of control policies. To overcome this limitation, we propose a circuit-based approach for training a reinforcement learning agent on quantum control tasks in a model-free way. Given a continuously parameterized control circuit, the agent learns its parameters through trial-and-error interaction with the quantum system, using measurement outcomes as the only source of information about the quantum state. Focusing on control of a harmonic oscillator coupled to an ancilla qubit, we show how to reward the learning agent using measurements of experimentally available observables. We train the agent to prepare various non-classical states using both unitary control and control with adaptive measurement-based quantum feedback, and to execute logical gates on encoded qubits. This approach significantly outperforms widely used model-free methods in terms of sample efficiency. Our numerical work is of immediate relevance to superconducting circuits and trapped ions platforms where such training can be implemented in experiment, allowing complete elimination of model bias and the adaptation of quantum control policies to the specific system in which they are deployed.

Advancing the study of driving forces of landscape change

ABSTRACT Over the past 25 years, the study of driving forces of landscape change has developed into a central theme in land change science by contributing to theory development, promoting the analysis of causation of change and gaining insights into how landscape development could be steered into a societally more desirable direction. Based on this progress, we designate important research avenues, reviewing critical challenges forming the base for advancing the study of driving forces of landscape change and addressing the question on how the study of driving forces can contribute to system transformative research. For each of the research avenues, we describe the current dominant approach and provide some specific ways of advancing both the conceptualization and the research methods. Together, advancing on these research avenues will promote a more social-ecological systems perspective to the study of driving forces of landscape change.

Teaching multiple approaches to management to facilitate prosocial and environmental well-being.

Friedman’s maxim “The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits” (p. 32) has shaped what managers consider effective management. This Financial Bottom Line approach to management has been challenged by both Positive Organizational Scholarship (POS) and Critical Management Studies (CMS). POS highlights how enhancing prosocial and other nonfinancial considerations can increase profits, consistent with the current dominant Triple Bottom Line approach. In contrast, CMS tends to critique any approach that seeks to maximize profits by creating dysfunctional power symmetries and marginalization. This study introduces a third option, the Social and Ecological Thought approach, which promotes maximizing social and ecological well-being while remaining financially viable. A longitudinal pre-post intervention in a sample of undergraduate management students showed that teaching multiple approaches to management—Financial Bottom Line, Triple Bottom Line, and Social and Ecological Thought—resulted in learners becoming less likely to espouse profit-related goals (e.g. to maximize efficiency, productivity, profitability) and more likely to identify nonfinancial ones (e.g. extra-organizational prosociality and reduction of marginalization) when characterizing effective management. However, the results did not support predictions regarding intra-organizational prosociality and marginalization, or power asymmetries. We discuss implications for pedagogy and the future development of POS and CMS.

The dimensional elements of the right to freedom of religion or belief in the South African Constitution – an evaluation in light of relevant core international human rights instruments

Current interpretations of the right to freedom of religion or belief (FoRB) in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) make important distinctions between two dimensions of the right – a forum externum and a forum internum.1 This distinction is important since, according to current interpretations, the forum externum can be limited, whereas the forum internum is absolute. In South African human rights law, the protection of the right to freedom of religion or belief is scattered across various sections of the Bill of Rights and as a result, can be limited by the general limitation clause in sec. 36. Contrary to the mentioned international human rights documents, South African law does not consider any fundamental right (or parts thereof) to have an absolute character and aims to strike a balance on the limitation of conflicting rights (with the aim of reconciling them to each other). This distinction is amplified by the judicial interpretation of religious freedom rights and their individual, collective, public, and private manifestations. Consequently, this distinct approach to the codification and limitation of the right to religious freedom raises several important questions in comparison to the current dominant approach taken in the mentioned international human rights documents (where the two dimensions are currently being distinguished, resulting in the mentioned consequences regarding limitation). Most significantly, to what extent does South African law acknowledge the two the limitation of the two dimensions of religious freedom? dimensions of the right? What is the difference in effect of the general limitation clause on the limitation of the two dimensions of religous freedom?

A Path to Standardizing Material Evidence Collection in Chinese Criminal Justice

An analysis of detailed police dossiers and participant interviews in two urban districts reveals that, in the field of criminal justice in China, the process of collection, circulation, and disposal of material evidence has been highly problematic. Even though the process appears to adhere to a legal framework most of the time, its failures can be readily seen in the absence or violation of norms. For example, procedures have routinely been mixed together or invented; the use of warrants has been limited or avoided; the approval process has frequently been circumvented; the management of the criminal property has been slipshod. Exploring the structural contradictions of the evidence collection process and the behavior of police officers and their motivations can help clarify the factors that shape the process as it exists today, the presence or absence of norms that guide evidence collection behavior, and the mechanisms that govern the actual practices of evidence collection. The current dominant approach to reforms in this field is legal transplantation. However, this approach may fail to respond to local practices or may fail to take into account participants’ mentalities. In order to find norms that are suitable for China’s circumstances, future standardization reforms of material evidence collection should take both transplanted experience and actual operations into consideration.

Balancing instrumental rationality with value rationality: towards avoiding the pitfalls of the productivist ageing policy in the EU and the UK.

The current dominant approach to active ageing policy in the EU and the UK is the productivist approach. Drawing on Weber's concepts of instrumental rationality and value rationality, this article argues that this approach is principally informed by instrumental rationality and thus has the potential to instrumentalize older persons, to become an oppressive ideological narrative, and to ignore the unique developmental meanings in late life. To avoid these pitfalls, the article proposes balancing instrumental rationality with value rationality. The balancing can occur in three dimensions. First, the value of internally oriented activities for late life should be recognized. Second, the value of participatory policy development needs to be upheld. Third, the value of meaning-in-life for the well-being and growth of older adults should be validated.

Understanding Tenure Security, Infrastructure and Livelihoods Nexus in Slum Upgrading

The economic, social and environmental challenges associated with the proliferation of informal settlements in the urban space, especially in the global south, are extensively documented and acknowledged. Slum or informal settlement upgrading has been seen as the current best redress mechanism. However, its potential to do so especially in meeting the target of making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable by 2030 is constrained by sectoral approaches and limited appreciation of linkages in upgrading interventions in addition to an overemphasis on physical more than people centred interventions. Understanding linkages and interrelationships in upgrading interventions are critical for integration, coordination, synergy and sustainability and so are wellbeing aspects in achieving balanced development. However, there is limited knowledge on these and this study sought to contribute to this knowledge gap by investigating linkages in upgrading interventions with a specific focus on tenure security, infrastructure and livelihoods improvements. Based on case study fieldwork undertaken in Eldoret, the fifth largest town in Kenya and qualitative and quantitative data analysis, the paper argues that there is a nexus in tenure security, infrastructure and livelihoods improvement in upgrading. This calls for rethinking the current dominant single approach to upgrading in favor of multisector, integrated and linked up approaches that capitalise on synergies while minimizing trade-offs and interweaving human and physical elements in upgrading for greater impact and sustainability. Understanding how the tenure, infrastructure and livelihoods upgrading interventions are interlinked and the dynamics therein are crucial to the policy and practice of upgrading. Keywords- Tenure security,Infrastructure, Livelihoods, Linkages, Upgrading DOI : 10.7176/RHSS/9-8-12 Publication date : April 30 th 2019

Keynes and Samuelson Combined Provided the Complete Foundation for a Science of Macroeconomics: Complexity Modeling Is Welcome, But Not Necessary, for a Scientific Foundation for Macroeconomics

Keynes and Samuelson provided the theoretical, technical and mathematical modeling necessary in order to provide a complete scientific foundation for macroeconomic theory. Keynes’s Aggregate Supply Curve (ASC),presented initially on pp. 55-56 in footnote 2 of the General Theory and in great detail in chapter 20, provided the foundations for incorporating multiple equilibria and degrees of uncertainty, based on his analysis of interval valued probability and weight of the evidence from the A Treatise on Probability, into macroeconomic analysis. Keynes’s 1938-39 work on Harrod’s draft copy of dynamic, intertemporal, economic growth, based on multiplier-accelerator interactions, which generated positive feedback impacts, combined with Samuelson’s work on the interaction of the multiplier and accelerator in 1939 and in his dissertation, showed that microeconomic optimization techniques, based on negative feedback, can’t incorporate interactive feedback impacts. They are inapplicable at a macro level dealing with multiple equilibria. Only the stability properties of the multiple equilibria can be examined. It is impossible to determine whether the many, possible, different equilibriums are optimal in the sense of being full employment equilibriums or unemployment equilibriums. Unfortunately, the current dominant approach to macroeconomics, with its claims of constant, inter-temporal, dynamic utility and profit maximization over all times with known subjective probability distributions, is, as Savage stated, “utterly ridiculous”, as well as being “preposterous”. The Lucas-Real Business cycle model approach to macroeconomics with a single representative agent needs to be replaced as soon as possible by the combined work of J M Keynes and Paul Samuelson that was done in the late 1930’s.

Peer Feedback, Learning, and Improvement: Answering the Call of the Institute of Medicine Report on Diagnostic Error.

In September 2015, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) published a report titled "Improving Diagnosis in Health Care," in which it was recommended that "health care organizations should adopt policies and practices that promote a nonpunitive culture that values open discussion and feedback on diagnostic performance." It may seem counterintuitive that a report addressing a highly technical skill such as medical diagnosis would be focused on organizational culture. The wisdom becomes clearer, however, when examined in the light of recent advances in the understanding of human error and individual and organizational performance. The current dominant model for radiologist performance improvement is scoring-based peer review, which reflects a traditional quality assurance approach, derived from manufacturing in the mid-1900s. Far from achieving the goals of the IOM, which are celebrating success, recognizing mistakes as an opportunity to learn, and fostering openness and trust, we have found that scoring-based peer review tends to drive radiologists inward, against each other, and against practice leaders. Modern approaches to quality improvement focus on using and enhancing interpersonal professional relationships to achieve and maintain high levels of individual and organizational performance. In this article, the authors review the recommendations set forth by the recent IOM report, discuss the science and theory that underlie several of those recommendations, and assess how well they fit with the current dominant approach to radiology peer review. The authors also offer an alternative approach to peer review: peer feedback, learning, and improvement (or more succinctly, "peer learning"), which they believe is better aligned with the principles promoted by the IOM. © RSNA, 2016.

Trading accuracy for speed in approximate consensus

AbstractApproximate consensus is an important building block for distributed systems, used overtly or implicitly in applications as diverse as formation control, sensor fusion, and synchronization. Laplacian-based consensus, the current dominant approach, is extremely accurate and resilient, but converges slowly. Comparing Laplacian-based consensus to exact consensus algorithms, relaxing the requirements for accuracy and resilience should enable a spectrum of algorithms that incrementally tradeoff accuracy and/or resilience for speed. This manuscript demonstrates that may be so by beginning to populate this spectrum with a new approach to approximate consensus, Power-Law-Driven Consensus (PLD-consensus), which accelerates consensus by sending values across long distances using a self-organizing overlay network. Both a unidirectional and bidirectional algorithm based on this approach are studied. Although both have the same asymptotic O(diameter) convergence time (vs. O(diameter2) for Laplacian-based), unidirectional PLD-consensus is faster and more resilient than bidirectional PLD-consensus, but exhibits higher variance in the converged value.

Participatory citizenship: Critical perspectives on client-centred occupational therapy

Background/aims: This article aims to discuss client-centred practice, the current dominant approach within occupational therapy, in relation to participatory citizenship. Occupational therapists work within structures and policies that set boundaries on their engagement with clients, while working with complex, multidimensional social realities. Methods: The authors present a critical discussion shaped by their research, including a survey, discussions at workshops at international conferences, and critical engagement with the literature on occupational therapy, occupation, and citizenship. Conclusion: A focus on citizenship suggests reframing professional development based on the participation in public life of people as citizens of their society. While occupational therapists often refer to clients in the context of communities, groups, families, and wider society, the term client-centred practice typically represents a particular view of the individual and may sometimes be too limited in application for a more systemic and societal approach. Significance: The authors question the individual focus which has, until recently, been typical of client-centred occupational therapy. Placing citizenship at the core of intervention is a transformative process that assumes all people are citizens and conceives of health as a collective issue, influencing the way we educate, do research, and practise.

Mapping letters from the future: exploring narrative processes of imagining the future.

This article uses Letters from the Future (a health promotion instrument) to explore the human capacity of imagining the future. From a narrative perspective, letters from the future are considered to be indicative of a variety of forms through which human beings construct and understand their future selves and worlds. This is consistent with an interpretive approach to understanding the human mind, which offers an alternative for the current dominant causal-explanatory approach in psychology. On the basis of qualitative analysis of 480 letters from the future, collected online from a diverse group of Dutch and German persons, we first identified five narrative processes operating in the letters: imagining, evaluating, orienting, expressing emotions and engaging in dialogue. Second, using comparative analysis, we identified six types of how these processes are organized in the letters as a whole. These types differ regarding functionality (which of the five processes was dominant); temporality (prospective, retrospective and present-oriented); the extent to which a path between present and future was described; and the vividness of the imagination. We suggest that these types can be used in narrative health practice as 'pathways' to locate where letter writers are on their path to imagine the future, rather than as a normative taxonomy. Future research should focus on how these pathways can be used to navigate to health and well-being.

Teaching and Learning English in Thailand and the Integration of Conversation Analysis (CA) into the Classroom

This paper provides an overview of English language teaching and learning, specifically as it pertains to teaching English conversational skills in Thailand. The paper examines the shortcomings of the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approach, the current dominant pedagogical approach in the nation, and explores how the integration of Conversation Analysis (CA) can potentially address those shortcomings. It is argued that CA can be used as a teaching tool to raise awareness of the mechanisms of conversation, which are potentially critical to a successful interaction, but oftengo unnoticed by both teachers and learners. This paper also posits that CA can serve as a diagnostic tool for examining talk and identifying problems that can hinder students from achieving targeted communicative teaching and learning goals. It is recommended that English teachers be trained to deploy CA in conjunction with CLT so as to increase students’ overall communicative competence.

Spatially explicit modeling of parking search as a tool for urban parking facilities and policy assessment

The engineering view of a measurable, supply-independent, demand for parking that can be expressed by “minimum parking codes” has been generally rejected during the last two decades and is gradually being replaced by “maximum provision” codes, limited parking development, and demand pricing. To assess new planning practices one has to estimate the drivers' reaction to proposed spatial–temporal parking limitations. The paper applies a high-resolution spatially explicit agent-based model termed “PARKAGENT” as a tool for this assessment. The model is used for evaluation of parking demand in the Diamond Exchange area in Ramat Gan, a city in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, for estimating the effectiveness of planned parking facilities for different development scenarios in the area and assessing electronic signage system that directs drivers to vacant parking lots. The results strongly indicate the advantages of agent-based modeling over the current dominant engineering approach and show the potential benefits of using an intelligent parking guidance system.

“They Just Know”: The epistemological politics of “evidence-based” non-formal education

Community education and outreach programs should be evidence-based. This dictum seems at once warranted, welcome, and slightly platitudinous. However, the “evidence-based” movement's more narrow definition of evidence—privileging randomized controlled trials as the “gold standard”—has fomented much debate. Such debate, though insightful, often lacks grounding in actual practice. To address that lack, the purpose of the study presented in this paper was to examine what actually happens, in practice, when people support the implementation of evidence-based programs (EBPs) or engage in related efforts to make non-formal education more “evidence-based.” Focusing on three cases—two adolescent sexual health projects (one in the United States and one in Kenya) and one more general youth development organization—I used qualitative methods to address the questions: (1) How is evidence-based program and evidence-based practice work actually practiced? (2) What perspectives and assumptions about what non-formal education is are manifested through that work? and (3) What conflicts and tensions emerge through that work related to those perspectives and assumptions? Informed by theoretical perspectives on the intersection of science, expertise, and democracy, I conclude that the current dominant approach to making non-formal education more evidence-based by way of EBPs is seriously flawed.