Familiar Area Research Articles

Characteristic features of robberies against residential property committed by organised groups in rural areas

The relevance of the subject under study lies in the fact that under martial law, the problem of robberies against citizens’ homes is exacerbated, specifically, their danger increases due to the greater probability of members of an organised criminal group having firearms than in peacetime. The purpose of this study was to identify the characteristics of robberies against residential premises in rural areas committed by organised groups, to establish the factors which influence the choice of the victim of a future attack by the perpetrators, and to identify preventive measures to reduce the commission of such crimes. To address these issues, the study employed a set of methods of scientific cognition: systemic-structural, comparative, statistical, and systemic. The study found that a characteristic feature of such attacks is that they are committed by a group consisting mainly of fellow villagers with internally stable, long-term, trusting relationships, with a willingness to systematically commit violent crimes against individuals. They are characterised by a hierarchy and preparation for robberies in rural areas. It was established that during preparation for a robbery, to obtain the necessary information, offenders often study the routes of the village, find out information about its inhabitants, and select a victim. They can even speak directly to the potential victim and/or their neighbours. Therefore, interviewing villagers during the investigation of such a criminal offence is a significant step in identifying the perpetrators. The study identified factors that influence the commission of robberies in rural areas (presence of valuable property of the victim; remoteness of their residence, absence of neighbours; planned power outages, physically vulnerable person, etc.). To commit attacks on people’s homes in rural areas, attackers choose several villages in relatively familiar areas, which may be located in one region or in another region with which they border. It was noted that this complicates the work of law enforcement agencies in investigating this type of crime. The practical value of this study lies in the consideration by law enforcement officers of the theoretical results of this study regarding the impact on the choice of victims by criminals and the established characteristics inherent in such robberies

A familiar face and person processing area in the human temporal pole

How does the brain process the faces of familiar people? Neuropsychological studies have argued for an area of the temporal pole (TP) linking faces with person identities, but magnetic susceptibility artifacts in this region have hampered its study with fMRI. Using data acquisition and analysis methods optimized to overcome this artifact, we identify a familiar face response in TP, reliably observed in individual brains. This area responds strongly to visual images of familiar faces over unfamiliar faces, objects, and scenes. However, TP did not just respond to images of faces, but also to a variety of high-level social cognitive tasks, including semantic, episodic, and theory of mind tasks. The response profile of TP contrasted with a nearby region of the perirhinal cortex that responded specifically to faces, but not to social cognition tasks. TP was functionally connected with a distributed network in the association cortex associated with social cognition, while PR was functionally connected with face-preferring areas of the ventral visual cortex. This work identifies a missing link in the human face processing system that specifically processes familiar faces, and is well placed to integrate visual information about faces with higher-order conceptual information about other people. The results suggest that separate streams for person and face processing reach anterior temporal areas positioned at the top of the cortical hierarchy.

The role of memory-based movements in the formation of animal home ranges.

Most animals live in spatially-constrained home ranges. The prevalence of this space-use pattern in nature suggests that general biological mechanisms are likely to be responsible for their occurrence. Individual-based models of animal movement in both theoretical and empirical settings have demonstrated that the revisitation of familiar areas through memory can lead to the formation of stable home ranges. Here, we formulate a deterministic, mechanistic home range model that includes the interplay between a bi-component memory and resource preference, and evaluate resulting patterns of space-use. We show that a bi-component memory process can lead to the formation of stable home ranges and control its size, with greater spatial memory capabilities being associated with larger home range size. The interplay between memory and resource preferences gives rise to a continuum of space-use patterns-from spatially-restricted movements into a home range that is influenced by local resource heterogeneity, to diffusive-like movements dependent on larger-scale resource distributions, such as in nomadism. Future work could take advantage of this model formulation to evaluate the role of memory in shaping individual performance in response to varying spatio-temporal resource patterns.

Science as exploration in a knowledge landscape: tracing hotspots or seeking opportunity?

The selection of research topics by scientists can be viewed as an exploration process conducted by individuals with cognitive limitations traversing a complex cognitive landscape influenced by both individual and social factors. While existing theoretical investigations have provided valuable insights, the intricate and multifaceted nature of modern science hinders the implementation of empirical experiments. This study leverages advancements in Geographic Information System (GIS) techniques to investigate the patterns and dynamic mechanisms of topic-transition among scientists. By constructing the knowledge space across 6 large-scale disciplines, we depict the trajectories of scientists’ topic transitions within this space, measuring the flow and distance of research regions across different sub-spaces. Our findings reveal a predominantly conservative pattern of topic transition at the individual level, with scientists primarily exploring local knowledge spaces. Furthermore, simulation modeling analysis identifies research intensity, driven by the concentration of scientists within a specific region, as the key facilitator of topic transition. Conversely, the knowledge distance between fields serves as a significant barrier to exploration. Notably, despite potential opportunities for breakthrough discoveries at the intersection of subfields, empirical evidence suggests that these opportunities do not exert a strong pull on scientists, leading them to favor familiar research areas. Our study provides valuable insights into the exploration dynamics of scientific knowledge production, highlighting the influence of individual cognition, social factors, and the intrinsic structure of the knowledge landscape itself. These findings offer a framework for understanding and potentially shaping the course of scientific progress.

An alternative parameterization for the binormal ROC curve, with applications to sizing and simulation studies.

Because the conventional binormal ROC curve parameters are in terms of the underlying normal diseased and nondiseased rating distributions, transformations of these values are required for the user to understand what the corresponding ROC curve looks like in terms of its shape and size. In this paper I propose an alternative parameterization in terms of parameters that explicitly describe the shape and size of the ROC curve. The proposed two parameters are the mean-to-sigma ratio and the familiar area under the ROC curve (AUC), which are easily interpreted in terms of the shape and size of the ROC curve, respectively. In addition, the mean-to-sigma ratio describes the degree of improperness of the ROC curve and the AUC describes the ability of the corresponding diagnostic test to discriminate between diseased and nondiseased cases. The proposed parameterization simplifies the sizing of diagnostic studies when conjectured variance components are used and simplifies choosing the binormal a and b parameter values needed for simulation studies.

Hierarchical foraging strategies of migratory short-tailed shearwaters during the non-breeding stage

Foraging specialisations are common in animal populations, because they increase the rate at which individuals acquire food from a known and reliable source. Foraging plasticity, however, may also be important in variable or changing environments. To better understand how seabirds might respond to changing environmental conditions, we assessed how plastic the foraging behaviours of short-tailed shearwaters (Ardenna tenuirostris) were during their non-breeding season. To do this, we tracked 60 birds using global location sensing loggers (GLS) over a single year between 2012 and 2016 with the exception of 8 individuals that were tracked over 2 consecutive years. Birds predominantly foraged in either the Sea of Okhotsk/North Pacific Ocean (Western strategy) or the southeast Bering Sea/North Pacific (Eastern strategy). The eight birds tracked for 2 consecutive years all returned to the same core areas, indicating that these birds were faithful to foraging areas between years, although the time spent there varied, probably in response to local changes in food availability. Overall, 50% of the birds we tracked left their core area towards the end of the non-breeding period, moving into the Chukchi Sea, suggesting that the birds have flexible intra-seasonal foraging strategies whereby they follow prey aggregations. We hypothesise that seasonal declines in chlorophyll a concentrations in their primary core foraging areas coincide with changes in the availability of large-bodied krill, an important food source for short-tailed shearwaters. Decreasing prey abundance likely prompts the movement of birds out of their core foraging areas in search of food elsewhere. This strategy, through which individuals initially return to familiar areas but disperse if food is limited, provides a mechanism that allows the birds to respond to the effects of climate variability.

GPS tracking technology and re-visiting the relationship between the avian visual Wulst and homing pigeon navigation

Within their familiar areas homing pigeons rely on familiar visual landscape features and landmarks for homing. However, the neural basis of visual landmark-based navigation has been so far investigated mainly in relation to the role of the hippocampal formation. The avian visual Wulst is the telencephalic projection field of the thalamofugal pathway that has been suggested to be involved in processing lateral visual inputs that originate from the far visual field. The Wulst is therefore a good candidate for a neural structure participating in the visual control of familiar visual landmark-based navigation. We repeatedly released and tracked Wulst-lesioned and control homing pigeons from three sites about 10–15 km from the loft. Wulst lesions did not impair the ability of the pigeons to orient homeward during the first release from each of the three sites nor to localise the loft within the home area. In addition, Wulst-lesioned pigeons displayed unimpaired route fidelity acquisition to a repeated homing path compared to the intact birds. However, compared to control birds, Wulst-lesioned pigeons displayed persistent oscillatory flight patterns across releases, diminished attention to linear (leading lines) landscape features, such as roads and wood edges, and less direct flight paths within the home area. Differences and similarities between the effects of Wulst and hippocampal lesions suggest that although the visual Wulst does not seem to play a direct role in the memory representation of a landscape-landmark map, it does seem to participate in influencing the perceptual construction of such a map.

My climate journey: one cognitive behavioural psychotherapist’s account, and a commentary linking to the scientific and practice literature

Abstract Climate change distress is a challenge to people seeking help, and to those providing help. Those providing help are working in a new area of clinical practice where little is known, but they may also be experiencing climate change distress. The aim of this article is to highlight the personal and professional implications of the unfolding climate crisis and how we might better understand and support those with understandable, yet intense, emotional reactions to the climate crisis. This article consists of a first-person narrative by the first author, and a commentary on the narrative based on the psychology of climate change literature by the second author. We have worked independently on the narrative and commentary; each is responsible for their own contribution. The narrative highlights the first author’s personal experience of moving from denial to facing the truth of the climate crisis and the impact on professional practice. The commentary by the second author found that literature is scarce, but more familiar areas of practice may help to understand and respond to climate change distress. Practitioners face a situation where they may experience similar emotions to their clients, analogous to the shared threat of the pandemic. Awareness of the crisis is daunting, but therapy, self-reflection and action can help hold our emotions and support our clients. The evidence is limited but experience of the pandemic suggests that CBT can respond, adapt, innovate, and even revolutionise mental healthcare. These two perspectives suggest, despite the challenges, there may be reasons for hope. Key learning aims (1) To increase familiarity with climate change distress and its multi-faceted presentations. (2) To understand the importance of self-care for climate activists and the different forms this may take. (3) To consider the implications of being a practitioner helping people with climate change distress, while also experiencing climate change distress. (4) To reflect on the tensions between, and the potential integration of, the personal and the professional in the context of climate change.

Attract or repel: how street features shape pedestrians’ leisure walks in cities

ABSTRACT The paper presents a field study analysing how pedestrians walked for leisure purposes in a familiar urban area, and why they walked as they did. Using mobile-based GPS, the walking trajectories of 44 participants were recorded, followed by the administration of a post-walk survey. Results show that participants gravitated towards five distinct paths that were similar in length (three shorter and two longer paths), yet observably different with respect to specific street features. Correspondingly, participants rated street features associated with these differences as factors that either attracted them towards, or repelled them away, from walking in specific streets.

A familiar face and person processing area in the human temporal pole

A familiar face and person processing area in the human temporal pole

Metaphor in Marketing Language

From Aristotle to Roman Jakobson to George Lakoff, Mark Johnson and others, the concept of metaphor has undergone substantial changes. This paper deals with conceptual metaphor in marketing language. At the heart of metaphorical conceptualisations are mappings between different conceptual domains, linking a newer or more complex, more abstract domain with a more familiar or simpler, more accessible one. In addition to denotative terms, a vast network of conceptual metaphors operates in marketing language, helping to shape and understand its key concepts. The most numerous category of conceptual metaphors are created with the key marketing variables of product, brand, consumer, enterprise and promotion as their reference points. The most common metaphors in marketing language are the living organism metaphor, the war metaphor (including the sports metaphor), the anthropomorphic metaphor, the medical metaphor. Metaphor is not an isolated phenomenon, but a resource used systematically in marketing language, with a substantial role in building the economic reality of the field, facilitating the understanding of abstract and complex marketing concepts by analogy with familiar areas of experience.

Long-term home range stability provides foraging benefits in western gorillas.

Long-term home range stability presumably emerges because familiarity with an area improves fitness through increased foraging efficiency, reduced predation risk, or reduced costs of intergroup aggression. While the use of spatial memory by primates has been widely demonstrated, few studies have examined whether long-term space use creates opportunities for interannual reuse of spatial knowledge. Here we examine the ranging behavior of western gorillas (Gorilla gorilla) to assess the degree of long-term site fidelity and the foraging consequences of reuse of space. We measured interannual home range overlap over a 10-year period for a single group of gorillas at the Mondika Research Center, using both grid-based and kernel density estimation. By plotting the total area used over time, we identified periods of home-range stability and expansion. We compared foraging and ranging behavior in familiar versus unfamiliar areas, considering fruit trees visited, dietary diversity, and daily path length, to determine whether the lack of spatial knowledge in unfamiliar areas was associated with foraging costs. Average interannual home range overlap by the group remained high throughout the study. During periods of home range expansion, daily path lengths increased but not the number of fruit trees visited, suggesting that reduced familiarity with the area led to decreased foraging efficiency because individuals lacked prior knowledge of where to find resources. Western gorillas at Mondika exhibit long-term home range stability, presumably reflecting a strategy that relies on the use of spatial memory to increase foraging efficiency that is favored by their reliance on ephemeral fruit resources.

Density‐dependent natal philopatry in southern House Wrens

Staying or leaving the natal site is a decision that not only affects the individual but may have profound implications at the population level. Many studies have analysed natal philopatry in passerines, albeit mostly migratory species in the northern hemisphere. Here we explore the potential ecological drivers of the individual decision to remain or leave the natal site in a southern hemisphere sedentary species, the southern House WrenTroglodytes aedon bonariae. Using a 14‐year database, we assessed if juvenile local recruitment was affected by demographic and/or social factors. Average annual juvenile recruitment was 18.4%, but it varied between years (range 9.3–44%), and male recruitment was higher than female recruitment. Juvenile recruitment was negatively associated with adult breeding abundance in the hatching year, but was not related to variation in adult sex ratio, adult breeding abundance in the breeding year or nesting success. Also, we found no evidence of inbreeding avoidance. The results seem to support the hypothesis that philopatry rate is regulated by intraspecific competition for resources. Juveniles that fledge in years when the density of breeding adults is low may have advantages in obtaining territories and mates early, benefiting from settling in familiar areas and reducing dispersal costs.

A self-balancing tray for elderly people

As statistical data reveal, there has been a constant demand for the products and services of a growing targeted group of older people. The activity presented in this paper describes a prototype to help the performance of older persons in daily activities in relation to their need for mobility support in their municipal. Recent research has shown that people prefer aging in their familiar areas, thus guiding designers to provide a safe and appropriate environment for older people, regardless of their physical condition and limitations. A survey was conducted to better understand the difficulties adults face and the concepts were designed to help their way of life-based on responses. A decrease in functional mobility resulting in loss of balance is a common scenario for aged people. Thus, a prototype of a self-balancing tray is presented and discussed in this work. The self-balancing tray can overcome major vibrations without spilling the contents on the tray. The design gives a basic proof of concept of such a variant of self-balancing trays intended to make carrying foods and other daily chores easier for older people.

The Road Not Taken: Technological Uncertainty and the Evaluation of Innovations

When venturing into unfamiliar areas of technology, inventors face ex ante technological uncertainty, that is many possible alternative technological paths going forward and limited guidance from existing technological knowledge for predicting the likelihood that a given path will successfully result in an invention. I theorize, however, that this ex ante technological uncertainty becomes less apparent when evaluating inventions in hindsight. When one knows that a given technological path turned out to be successful ex post, it may be difficult to appreciate the ex ante plausibility of reasons to prefer alternative paths. As a result, inventions may seem more obvious to those evaluating inventions with the benefit of hindsight. My theory yields a counterintuitive implication; when inventors venture into less familiar areas of technology, there is a greater risk of evaluators overestimating obviousness due to hindsight bias. Empirical evidence comes from novel data on accepted and rejected patent applications, including hand-collected data from the text of applicant objections to obviousness rejections and examiners’ subsequent reversals of rejections in response to applicant objections.

It Began in Ponds and Rivers: Charting the Beginnings of the Ecology of Fish Cognition.

But fish cognitive ecology did not begin in rivers and streams. Rather, one of the starting points for work on fish cognitive ecology was work done on the use of visual cues by homing pigeons. Prior to working with fish, Victoria Braithwaite helped to establish that homing pigeons rely not just on magnetic and olfactory cues but also on visual cues for successful return to their home loft. Simple, elegant experiments on homing established Victoria's ability to develop experimental manipulations to examine the role of visual cues in navigation by fish in familiar areas. This work formed the basis of a rich seam of work whereby a fish's ecology was used to propose hypotheses and predictions as to preferred cue use, and then cognitive abilities in a variety of fish species, from model systems (Atlantic salmon and sticklebacks) to the Panamanian Brachyraphis episcopi. Cognitive ecology in fish led to substantial work on fish pain and welfare, but was never left behind, with some of Victoria's last work addressed to determining the neural instantiation of cognitive variation.

Impact of COVID-19 on Radiology Trainee Safety, Education, and Wellness: Challenges Experienced and Proposed Solutions for the Future.

Impact of COVID-19 on Radiology Trainee Safety, Education, and Wellness: Challenges Experienced and Proposed Solutions for the Future.

Deep Transfer Learning based Fusion Model for Environmental Remote Sensing Image Classification Model

ABSTRACT Remote-sensing images comprise massive amount of spatial and semantic data that can be employed for several applications. Presently, deep learning (DL) models for RS image processing become a familiar research area. Due to the advancements of recent satellite imaging sensors , the issue of huge amount of data processing becomes a challenging problem. To accomplish this, deep transfer learning (DTL) models are developed to resolve the semantic gap among various datasets This study develops a new DTL-based fusion model for environmental remote-sensing image classification, called DTLF-ERSIC technique. The proposed technique focuses on the design of fusion model to combine multiple feature vectors and thereby attains maximum classification performance. The DTLF-ERSIC technique incorporates the entropy-based fusion of three feature extraction techniques, namely, Discrete Local Binary Pattern (DLBP), Residual Network (ResNet50), and EfficientNet models. Besides, a rain optimization algorithm (ROA) with fuzzy rule-based classifier (FRC) is applied to predict the class labels of the test RS images and shows the novelty of the work. A comprehensive experimental analysis of the DTLF-ERSIC technique takes place on benchmark dataset and examined the results in terms of different performance measures. The simulation results reported the supremacy of the DTLF-ERSIC technique over the recent state-of-art techniques.

Metaphor in Mahathir’s political speeches in the context of economic crisis

ABSTRACT This study draws on Lakoff and Johnson's conceptual metaphor theory to examine the use of metaphors in business-related political speeches by Mahathir Mohamad in 2000, a year which marked a turning point for Malaysia as it recovered from the Asian financial crisis of 1997–1999. We adopt Charteris-Black's three-step procedure for metaphor analysis, from identification to interpretation and explanation. The predominant patterns of metaphor use include the predominance of economy-related concepts, demonstrating his primary concern at that time; the predominance of health, journey and war domains, demonstrating how he perceived the economy-related concepts; and a combination of different domains to refer to the same concept, demonstrating how he tried to comprehensively address various aspects of the economy. The study also reveals two strategies employed to create a vivid and effective image in the audience's mind: the use of a wide range of metaphor mappings and a series of connected segments to guide interpretation. The overall effect was that Mahathir was able to make his thoughts on economy and economy-related concepts more accessible to his audience by linking them to metaphors that represent familiar areas of experience.

Repeated training of homing pigeons reveals age-dependent idiosyncrasy and visual landmark use

Recent research into the navigational strategies of homing pigeons, Columba livia , in the familiar area has highlighted the phenomenon of route fidelity: birds forming idiosyncratic flight paths to which they are loyal over multiple releases from the same site, and even returning to this path when released from a nearby unfamiliar location. Such results highlight the potential importance of visual landmark cues in the homing process. However, not all birds have been found to produce idiosyncratic routes or show this route-joining behaviour. Here we used birds with and without flight experience to study the formation of idiosyncratic routes when released repeatedly from a single location, followed by two off-route releases with differing topography to see how flight experience and local landmark features can influence navigational strategy in the familiar area. We found that, over the course of 20 sequential releases, birds with greater flight experience tended to form idiosyncratic routes whereas less experienced birds did not show this tendency. When released from nearby sites (from which the birds had not previously been released), a range of navigational strategies were seen, including flying parallel to the learned route (suggestive of a learned compass direction), a direct flight path towards home (again indicative of compass use), rejoining the learned route and following the coastline. These latter strategies are suggestive of landmark usage. Analysis using time lag embedding was also used to assess the off-route releases, and the short-term correlation dimension values produced were also indicative of strategies using one or two factors (landmarks, compass or a combination of these two). Individual birds often showed different strategies at different sites, suggesting that the use of different navigational cues is highly flexible and situationally dependent. • Birds with greater flight experience form idiosyncratic routes more readily. • Multiple homing strategies occur when released close to a familiar site. • Age and site-specific biases occurred in which strategies were used. • Flexibility within individuals was seen in terms of strategy choice and cue use.