Proactive Mechanism Research Articles

Deep learning method for predicting weekly anatomical changes in patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma during radiotherapy.

Patients may undergo anatomical changes during radiotherapy, leading to an underdosing of the target or overdosing of the organs at risk (OARs). This study developed a deep-learning method to predict the tumor response of patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) during treatment. This method can predict the anatomical changes of a patient. The participants included 230 patients with NPC. The data included planning computed tomography (pCT) and routine cone-beam CT (CBCT) images. The CBCT image quality was improved to the CT level using an advanced method. A long short-term memory network-generative adversarial network (LSTM-GAN) is proposed, which can harness the forecasting ability of LSTM and the generation ability of GAN. Four models were trained to predict the anatomical changes that occurred in weeks 3-6 and named LSTM-GAN-week 3 to LSTM-GAN-week 6. The pCT and CBCT were used as input, and the tumor target volumes (TVs) and OARs were delineated on the predicted and real images (ground truth). Finally, the models were evaluated using contours and dosimetry parameters. The proposed method predicted the anatomical changes, with a dice similarity coefficient above 0.94 and 0.90 for the TVs and surrounding OARs, respectively. The dosimetry parameters were close between the prediction and ground truth. The deviations in the prescription, minimum, and maximum doses of the tumor targets were below 0.5Gy. For serial organs (brain stem and spinal cord), the deviations in the maximum dose were below 0.6Gy. For parallel organs (bilateral parotid glands), the deviations in the mean dose were below 0.8Gy. The proposed method can predict the tumor response to radiotherapy in the future such that adaptation can be scheduled on time. This study provides a proactive mechanism for planning adaptation, which can enable personalized treatment and save clinical time by anticipating and preparing for treatment strategy adjustments.

Efficient handling of ACL policy change in SDN using reactive and proactive flow rule installation

Software-defined networking (SDN) is a pioneering network paradigm that strategically decouples the control plane from the data and management planes, thereby streamlining network administration. SDN's centralized network management makes configuring access control list (ACL) policies easier, which is important as these policies frequently change due to network application needs and topology modifications. Consequently, this action may trigger modifications at the SDN controller. In response, the controller performs computational tasks to generate updated flow rules in accordance with modified ACL policies and installs flow rules at the data plane. Existing research has investigated reactive flow rules installation that changes in ACL policies result in packet violations and network inefficiencies. Network management becomes difficult due to deleting inconsistent flow rules and computing new flow rules per modified ACL policies. The proposed solution efficiently handles ACL policy change phenomena by automatically detecting ACL policy change and accordingly detecting and deleting inconsistent flow rules along with the caching at the controller and adding new flow rules at the data plane. A comprehensive analysis of both proactive and reactive mechanisms in SDN is carried out to achieve this. To facilitate the evaluation of these mechanisms, the ACL policies are modeled using a 5-tuple structure comprising Source, Destination, Protocol, Ports, and Action. The resulting policies are then translated into a policy implementation file and transmitted to the controller. Subsequently, the controller utilizes the network topology and the ACL policies to calculate the necessary flow rules and caches these flow rules in hash table in addition to installing them at the switches. The proposed solution is simulated in Mininet Emulator using a set of ACL policies, hosts, and switches. The results are presented by varying the ACL policy at different time instances, inter-packet delay and flow timeout value. The simulation results show that the reactive flow rule installation performs better than the proactive mechanism with respect to network throughput, packet violations, successful packet delivery, normalized overhead, policy change detection time and end-to-end delay. The proposed solution, designed to be directly used on SDN controllers that support the Pyretic language, provides a flexible and efficient approach for flow rule installation. The proposed mechanism can be employed to facilitate network administrators in implementing ACL policies. It may also be integrated with network monitoring and debugging tools to analyze the effectiveness of the policy change mechanism.

سیاست‌جنایی تقنینی افغانستان در برابر جرایم مالی کارکنان دولت با تأکید به اقدامات پیشگیرانه در سطح قانون‌گذاری و نهادهای رسمی

Criminal policy comprises a set of approaches through which responsible institutions respond to criminal phenomena to safeguard social order. Legislative criminal policy is one of the pillars of criminal policy and refers to the thought or response of a country's legislature to criminal phenomena. In legislative criminal policy, laws must be coherent, clear, and specific, preventing judges from interpreting legal texts differently. Inadequate laws lead to increased misunderstandings and judicial innovations. Agents and employees of the government represent a significant portion of a country's national assets. Their selection and employment as government agents and employees require passing through several stages, demonstrating their importance and competency. A significant portion of a country's assets is entrusted to government employees. Easy and direct access to vast amounts of information, confidential documents, government and non-government properties, as well as possessing executive power, may pose serious threats to government assets and individuals, providing government employees with the groundwork for committing crimes. Preventive measures are a proactive response to criminal phenomena that can be effective in deterring criminal activities before they occur. The question of the article is dedicated to exploring the impact of preventive measures on reducing crimes. The hypothesis consists of responses and proactive mechanisms that lead to a decrease in opportunities and contexts for committing crimes. The research method is defined as descriptive-analytical and library-based.

Availability of family care resources, bathing assistance and toileting assistance among older adults with functional limitations: an evidence-based study from China

BackgroundAn aging population has contributed to an increasing prevalence of functional limitations among older adults. Family support plays a crucial role in toileting and bathing assistance. Yet, the relationship between availability of family care resources and such actual assistance remains insufficiently explored. Our study aims to describe availability of family care resources and identify the association between availability of family care resources and toileting assistance or bathing assistance.MethodsThis study employed a cross-sectional analysis of data from the 2018 National Survey of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS). The availability of family care resources was assessed using measurements of spouse availability, adult child availability, and living arrangement. Bathing assistance and toileting assistance were measured based on self-reported receipt of such assistance. Descriptive statistics were used to depict the overall and subgroup situation of availability of family care resources. Multivariable logistic models were employed to investigate the relationship between availability of family care resources and the receipt of toileting assistance or bathing assistance.ResultsAmong the sample of older adults with functional limitations, 69% had a spouse, 63% had at least one adult child, and 80% resided with family members. Among those with bathing disability, 13% reported lacking bathing assistance, and among those with toileting disability, 54% reported lacking toileting assistance.Participants with 1-2 adult children had lower odds of receiving toileting assistance (OR: 0.28, 95% CI: 0.09, 0.91, p= 0.034) compared to those with three or more adult children. Spouse availability and living arrangement did not exhibit statistically significant associations with toileting assistance. Participants without a spouse had lower odds of receiving bathing assistance (OR: 0.27, 95% CI: 0.09-0.78, p= 0.016) in comparison to those with a spouse; however, adult child availability and living arrangement did not display statistically significant associations with bathing assistance.ConclusionThe present findings suggest a gap in family commitment when it comes to assisting older adults with functional limitations in bathing/toileting. To address this, policymakers are encouraged to prioritize the implementation of proactive mechanisms for identifying family caregivers, alongside incentives to enhance their engagement in practical caregiving activities. Furthermore, it is crucial to emphasize the prioritization of affordable and easily accessible formal toileting/bathing assistance options for older adults who lack sufficient family care resources.

Boosting Sustainable Consumption Behaviour Through Consumer Education in the Fashion Retail and Service Environment

Due to the growing environmental impact of the fashion industry, the demand for sustainable consumption is currently an urgent issue. The exponential increase of textile waste and the progressive reduction of product lifespan call for a shift to circular models, and in this context, consumer awareness has also become crucial. The retail environment, driven by an increasing shift towards a servitisation of the consumer experience, with its associated Product-Service Systems (PSSs), can provide a compelling opportunity to nurture consumer awareness, thus acting as a proactive mechanism to induce more responsible and sustainable behaviour. Within this framework, retail design is emerging as a key driver for sustainable behavioural changes in fashion consumption. This article, therefore, reflects on how fashion brands are actively orchestrating strategies within retail, defining dedicated PPSs to promote responsible consumption practices involving informative content, empowerment tools and co-creation initiatives that, going beyond awareness, can evolve into advocacy.

The Preparatory Activation of Guidance Templates for Visual Search and of Target Templates in Non-Search Tasks.

Representations of task-relevant object attributes (attentional templates) control the adaptive selectivity of visual processing. Previous studies have demonstrated that templates involved in the guidance of attention during visual search are activated in a preparatory fashion prior to the arrival of visual search displays. The current study investigated whether such proactive mechanisms are also triggered in non-search tasks, where attentional templates do not mediate the guidance of attention towards targets amongst distractors but are still necessary for subsequent target recognition processes. Participants either searched for colour-defined targets among multiple distractors or performed two other non-search tasks where imperative stimuli appeared without competing distractors (a colour-based Go/NoGo task, and a shape discrimination task where target colour was constant and could thus be ignored). Preparatory activation of colour-selective templates was tracked by measuring N2pc components (markers of attention allocation) to task-irrelevant colour singleton probes flashed every 200 ms during the interval between target displays. As expected, N2pcs were triggered by target-coloured probes in the search task, indicating that a corresponding guidance template was triggered proactively. Critically, clear probe N2pcs were also observed in the Go/NoGo task, and even in the shape discrimination task in an attenuated fashion. These findings demonstrate that the preparatory activation of feature-selective attentional task settings is not uniquely associated with the guidance of visual search but is also present in other types of visual selection tasks where guidance is not required.

A New Vision of Wireless Edge Caching Networks (WECNs): Issues, Technologies, and Open Research Trends

The future generation of wireless cellular system is expected to accommodate extensive latency-sensitive, tactus-aware, and data-intensive intelligent applications, thereby posing significant challenges on current network architectures. For meeting the challenges, wireless edge caching has been envisioned as a viable enabler. However, the underlying key issues therein, such as reliability, effectiveness, and the joint design, are significantly undervalued. The reliability issue refers to the data-corruption problem incurred by hardware impairments, software upgrades, and network congestion at edges. The effectiveness issue here expresses the unsatisfactory cache hit efficiency. Whilst the joint design aims to acquire the tradeoff among different metrics. In this article, we are dedicated to filling these research gaps. Therewith, we first brief the hierarchical wireless edge caching network architecture with proactive mechanisms. Then, we elaborate on the research roadways towards these critical issues and examine how fault-tolerant coding and bundle recommendation strategies can potentially enhance the reliability and the effectiveness of edge caching in future intelligent communication era. Moreover, the interplay between forgoing mentioned aspects is illuminated as well. A pair of case studies are exemplified to further demonstrate the validity of our devised versatile solutions. At last, the open research opportunities and future trends are identified.

The social role of supply chain firms during the pandemic period

PurposeSocial risk management is vital for growth and business continuity. This study investigates the social risk shift in supply chain management during the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.Design/methodology/approachData were retrieved from Bloomberg between 2010 and 2021 regarding all supply chain enterprises from nine countries. The authors undertake a confirmatory examination of formulated hypotheses. Social supply chain risk (SSCR) refers to “firms that took the necessary steps to decrease social risks in their supply chain. Social risks involve the child or forced labor, poor working conditions, lack of a living and fair or minimum wage”. The authors complement the analysis and address the endogeneity issue using the dynamic generalized moments method (GMM).FindingsA significant positive relationship between COVID-19 and SSCR was discovered in this study. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain firms faced supply chain social risk. Notably, SSCR policies differ from one country to another during this period.Research limitations/implicationsThe research has some limitations. The sample data are limited to 9 countries. Furthermore, it was somewhat difficult to determine the country-wise difference using COVID-19 as a dummy variable. Future research may adopt qualitative approaches, such as structural or semi-structural interviews.Practical implicationsThe results have important implications for supply chain practitioners to consider the critical role of social risk in their operations. COVID-19 has exposed the new political economy and re-centered governments as the key actors in tackling grand challenges to safeguard workers, produce socially useful products and protect their stakeholders. Also, the study highlights the importance of governments and policymakers having a well-structured regulatory framework and environment for firms to comply with the social norms in their supply chain management. Finally, the study's findings should encourage supply chain managers to adopt a proactive mechanism that reduces the social risk impacts of pandemics.Originality/valueConsidering the historical backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, this study is unique in measuring the SSCR of enterprises from a worldwide viewpoint.

Statistical Learning of Distractor Suppression Downregulates Prestimulus Neural Excitability in Early Visual Cortex.

Visual attention is highly influenced by past experiences. Recent behavioral research has shown that expectations about the spatial location of distractors within a search array are implicitly learned, with expected distractors becoming less interfering. Little is known about the neural mechanism supporting this form of statistical learning. Here, we used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to measure human brain activity to test whether proactive mechanisms are involved in the statistical learning of distractor locations. Specifically, we used a new technique called rapid invisible frequency tagging (RIFT) to assess neural excitability in early visual cortex during statistical learning of distractor suppression while concurrently investigating the modulation of posterior alpha band activity (8-12 Hz). Male and female human participants performed a visual search task in which a target was occasionally presented alongside a color-singleton distractor. Unbeknown to the participants, the distracting stimuli were presented with different probabilities across the two hemifields. RIFT analysis showed that early visual cortex exhibited reduced neural excitability in the prestimulus interval at retinotopic locations associated with higher distractor probabilities. In contrast, we did not find any evidence of expectation-driven distractor suppression in alpha band activity. These findings indicate that proactive mechanisms of attention are involved in predictive distractor suppression and that these mechanisms are associated with altered neural excitability in early visual cortex. Moreover, our findings indicate that RIFT and alpha band activity might subtend different and possibly independent attentional mechanisms.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT What we experienced in the past affects how we perceive the external world in the future. For example, an annoying flashing light might be better ignored if we know in advance where it usually appears. This ability of extracting regularities from the environment is called statistical learning. In this study, we explore the neuronal mechanisms allowing the attentional system to overlook items that are unequivocally distracting based on their spatial distribution. By recording brain activity using MEG while probing neural excitability with a novel technique called RIFT, we show that the neuronal excitability in early visual cortex is reduced in advance of stimulus presentation for locations where distracting items are more likely to occur.

Secure and Energy-Efficient Network Topology Obfuscation for Software-Defined WSNs

Network topology obfuscation (NTO) is generally considered as a promising proactive mechanism to mitigate traffic analysis attacks. The main challenge is to strike a balance among energy consumption, reliable routing, and security levels due to resource constraints in sensor nodes. Furthermore, software-defined wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are more vulnerable to traffic analysis attacks due to the uncovered pattern of control traffic between the controller and the nodes. In this article, a new energy-aware NTO mechanism is proposed, which maximizes the attack costs and is efficient and practical to be deployed. Specifically, first, a route obfuscation method is proposed by utilizing ranking-based route mutation, based on four different critical criteria: 1) route overlapping; 2) energy consumption; 3) link costs; and 4) node reliability. Then, a sink node obfuscation method is introduced by selecting several fake sink nodes that are indistinguishable from actual sink nodes, according to the <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$k$ </tex-math></inline-formula> -anonymity model. As a result, the most suitable routes and sink nodes can be selected, and a highest obfuscation level can be reached without sacrificing energy efficiency. Finally, extensive simulation results demonstrate that the proposed methods can strongly mitigate traffic analysis attacks and achieve effective NTO for software-defined WSNs. In addition, the proposed methods can reduce the success rate of the attacks while achieving lower energy consumption and higher network lifetime.

POTENSI PENGGUNAAN BERIMPAK APLIKASI MUDAH ALIH JOM LAPOR ASNAF

Zakat is an Islamic system that is very important in nurturing and developing people who need help. A proactive mechanism in identifying and reporting genuine asnaf cases is very important to contribute to an effective and efficient zakat distribution system. Asnaf tracking is a proactive process where the zakat management tries to find the asnaf before it becomes known to the public (such as spread through social media). In the flow of social media, information spreads very quickly. The dissemination of this information will give a very negative perception to the community, that the management of zakat is very weak in redistributing the zakat they collect to those who are entitled to it. It will have a bad psychological effect on zakat producers, and their trust will be low. This project examines the implementation of the asnaf tracking system that has been done manually by the Kedah State Zakat Board (LZNK) and also examines the requirements in producing a good asnaf tracking system. Then the analysis is done to produce a suitable mobile application design. The Rapid Application Development Methodology (RAD) is used to develop a mobile application called Jom Lapor Asnaf (JLA). This application has gone through the usability evaluation phase for 33 users and has successfully democratized the process of identifying and reporting asnaf. Usability test results have shown that 95.5% of users are satisfied with the overall performance of JLA. A total of 91.1% indicated that this application is ease-of-use, user-friendly, and the display is simple and attractive. 91.7% of users feel that JLA increases efforts to track and identify asnaf more efficiently and effectively. This has a great impact that using the JLA application is very beneficial to asnaf in an effort to provide various forms of assistance for the well-being of the global community.

Dual-V-Sense-Net (DVN): Multisensor Recommendation Engine for Distraction Analysis and Chaotic Driving Conditions

The Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) features provide better safe driving dynamics reducing road accidents and collisions. Typically, these include lane assist, automatic night vision, adaptive cruise control, driver risk analysis primarily seen in high-end vehicles. Furthermore, such a proactive mechanism alerts the drivers in unsafe/ dangerous situations and enable drivers to respond with immediate actions. However, such ADAS-based solutions do not work very well in heterogeneous, less-disciplined, and chaotic road traffic environments, as seen in Asian countries such as India, Bangladesh, Burma, Nepal, etc. In this regard, this paper aims to propose an advanced integrated deep learning framework <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Dual-V-sense-Net (DVN)</i> to provide recommendations for safe driving. A new dataset - Behavioral Understanding of Driver’s-Distraction Dataset for India (BUDDI), is proposed for the behavioral understanding of driver’s distraction. This proposed recommendation framework is designed in a two-step manner. The first step involves an in-vehicle driver distraction analysis with real-time frontal and cross-view naturalistic driver data for driver distraction analysis. Second step is to perform an exhaustive experimental evaluation is carried out for the tasks such as road traffic scene perception, road navigable area prediction with vehicular temporal dynamics, lane assist, safe drivable area navigation and driver distraction alert. A decision block modeling helps in safe/unsafe driving predictions considering the feature importance. We present comprehensive experimental results for road segmentation, vehicular road lane categorization, obstacle recognition, and driver behavioral pattern prediction using the BUDDI and Indian Driving Dataset (IDD) datasets.

If you don't let it in, you don't have to get it out: Thought preemption as a method to control unwanted thoughts.

To attain goals, people must proactively prevent interferences and react to interferences once they occur. Whereas most research focuses on how people deal with external interferences, here we investigate the use of proactive and reactive control in dealing with unwanted thoughts. To examine this question, we asked people to generate an association to each of several repeating cue words, while forbidding the repetition of associations. Reactively rejecting and replacing unwanted repeated associations after they occur entails slower response times. Conversely, proactive control entails constricting the search space and thus faster response times. To gain further insight into different potential proactive thought control mechanisms, we augmented the analysis of raw response times with a novel, hypothesis-based, tractable computational model describing how people serially sample associations. Our results indicate that people primarily react to unwanted thoughts after they occur. Yet, we found evidence for two latent proactive control mechanisms: one that allows people to mitigate the episodic strengthening of repeated thoughts, and another that helps avoid looping in a repetitive thought. Exploratory analysis showed a relationship between model parameters and self-reported individual differences in the control over unwanted thoughts in daily life. The findings indicate the novel task and model can advance our understanding of how people can and cannot control their thoughts and memories, and benefit future research on the mechanisms responsible for unwanted thought in different psychiatric conditions. Finally, we discuss implications concerning the involvement of associative thinking and various control processes in semantic fluency, decision-making and creativity.

Joint Content Caching, Recommendation, and Transmission Optimization for Next Generation Multiple Access Networks

We exploit a behavior-shaping proactive mechanism, namely, recommendation, in cache-assisted non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) networks, aiming at minimizing the average system’s latency. Thereof, the considered latency consists of two parts, i.e., the backhaul link transmission delay and the content delivery latency. Towards this end, we first examine the expression of system latency, demonstrating how it is critically determined by content cache placement, personalized recommendation, and delivery associated NOMA user pairing and power control strategies. Thereafter, we formulate the minimization problem mathematically taking into account the cache capacity budget, the recommendation-oriented requirements, and the total transmit power constraint, which is a non-convex, multi-timescale, and mixed-integer programming problem. To facilitate the process, we put forth an entirely new paradigm named <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">divide-and-rule</i> . Specifically, we first solve the short-term optimization problem regarding user pairing as well as power allocation and the long-term decision-making problem with respect to recommendation and caching, respectively. On this basis, an iterative algorithm is developed to optimize all the optimization variables alternately. Particularly, for solving the short-timescale problem, graph theory enabled NOMA user grouping and efficient inter-group power control manners are invoked. Meanwhile, a dynamic programming approach and a complexity-controllable swap-then-compare method with convergence insurance are designed to derive the caching and recommendation policies, respectively. From Monte-Carlo simulation, we show the superiority of the proposed joint optimization method in terms of both system latency and cache hit ratio when compared to extensive benchmark strategies.

The behavioral immune system in action: Psychological correlates of pathogen disgust sensitivity in healthcare professionals working in a COVID-19 hospital

The behavioral immune system includes a set of proactive mechanisms that inhibit contact with pathogens in the first place. These mechanisms offer a sort of psychological and behavioral prophylaxis against infection. The aim of this study was to assess the functionality of the behavioral immune system under conditions of strong ecological validity. Our hypothesis was that the emotional and more primitive component of the behavioral immune system (i.e. pathogen disgust sensitivity) acts as a powerful predictor of fear of infection. The sample was made up of 101 healthcare professionals working in a COVID-19 hospital when vaccination was not yet available. We conducted a hierarchical regression analysis to assess the role of germ-related disgust in modulating levels of fear. After controlling for the significant effects of depressive symptoms and exposure to people with a confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19, we found that fear of infection was more intense in those healthcare workers who reported higher levels of germ-related disgust. Fear of infection was not related to perceived infectability, an individual variable informed by more rational cognitive appraisals. These findings show that, even in healthcare workers who can take advantage of their professional knowledge and acquired skills for rational appraisals, the most primitive component of the behavioral immune system still plays a major role in eliciting fear of COVID-19. It is likely that the psychological reactions elicited by the behavioral immune system promote preventive health behaviors in modern environments as well.

Testing the underlying processes leading to learned distractor rejection: Learned oculomotor avoidance.

Target templates stored in visual memory guide visual attention toward behaviorally relevant target objects. Visual attention also is guided away from nontarget distractors by longer-term learning, a phenomenon termed "learned distractor rejection." Template guidance and learned distractor rejection can occur simultaneously to further increase search efficiency. However, the underlying processes guiding learned distractor rejection are unknown. In two visual search experiments employing eye-tracking, we tested between two plausible processes: proactive versus reactive attentional control. Participants searched through two-color, spatially unsegregated displays. Participants could guide attention by both target templates and consistent nontarget distractors. We observed fewer distractor fixations (including the first eye movement) and shorter distractor dwell times. The data supported a single mechanism of learned distractor rejection, whereby observers adopted a learned, proactive attentional control setting to avoid distraction whenever possible. Further, when distraction occurred, observers rapidly recovered. We term this proactive mechanism "learned oculomotor avoidance." The current study informs theories of visual attention by demonstrating the underlying processes leading to learned distractor suppression during strong target guidance.

ОПЫТ ИНИЦИАТИВНОГО БЮДЖЕТИРОВАНИЯ КАК ФОРМА ВЗАИМОДЕЙСТВИЯ ОРГАНОВ МЕСТНОГО САМОУПРАВЛЕНИЯ С НАСЕЛЕНИЕМ

On 1 January, 2021 amendments to the Budget Code of the Russian Federation and the Federal Law of 6 October, 2003 No. 131-FL «General Principles of Local Self-Government in the Russian Federation» came into force. The aim of the study is to consider the accumulation of practical experience in involving the population in solving issues of improvement at the municipal level as the basis for the formation of civil society and the creation of a legal basis for the application of proactive budgeting mechanisms at the federal and local levels. The article focuses on the issues of initiative budgeting, which makes it possible to ensure the participation of citizens in the budget process, involves taking into account the proposals of citizens when sending funds to solve problems relevant to a particular territory. All this is ultimately designed to increase the efficiency and transparency of spending budget funds, to ensure that the needs and wishes of residents are taken into account, which in turn provides an incentive for the development of civil society institutions, increases the accountability of the authorities to the population, promotes the development of communication and the establishment of "feedback" between the population and power. Initiative budgeting makes it possible to ensure the participation of citizens in the budget process, involves taking into account the proposals of citizens when allocating funds to solve problems that are relevant for a particular territory. The authors summarized the existing practice of the process of applying initiative budgeting in several municipalities of the Tambov region. All this is ultimately designed to increase the efficiency and transparency of spending budget funds, to ensure that the needs and wishes of residents are taken into account, which in turn provides an incentive for the development of civil society institutions, increases the accountability of the authorities to the population, promotes the development of communication and the establishment of "feedback" between the population and power.

The impact of stimulus format on task inhibition during task switching.

Switching between competing tasks is supported by active inhibition of the preceding task. The level of task stimulus processing at which interference between competing tasks must occur for inhibition to be recruited is still unclear. Here, we investigated whether inhibition is recruited by task conflict occurring at an early or late (semantic) stage of task stimulus processing by dissociating the task stimulus format from its meaning. In two experiments, participants performed three different numerical judgment tasks on numerical stimuli that could be presented as digits or number words (e.g., "6" or "six") in a cued task-switching procedure. The effects of the change of stimulus format for the inhibition of the previous task were investigated and assessed by the N-2 task repetition cost, an index of the extent to which task representations are inhibited. The N-2 task repetition cost observed in the same stimulus format condition disappeared when target stimuli on task N-1 were presented in a different format from stimuli of task N-2 and N. This occurred both when the format changed from digits to number words stimuli (Experiment 1) as well as when it changed from number words to digits stimuli (Experiment 2). Results indicated that task set inhibition is recruited very early during the stimulus processing stage. They also provided evidence that task inhibition is not tied to task preparation processes but operates as a reactive, rather than proactive mechanism of conflict resolution.

Impatient behavior modelling and simulation of bidirectional pedestrian flow dynamics based on proactive effect

Impatience is a psychological factor that varies from person to person and constantly changes with the environment in real time. In this paper, a model based on cellular automaton is presented to investigate the dynamics of bi-directional flow, with considering individual impatient behaviors. Potential field is defined to represent pedestrian’s interest in available space, which provides an approach to the description of proactive mechanism in bi-directional flow. By formulating the dynamics with controllable parameters, individual impatience level is measured, recorded and updated to trigger off the personalized behaviors. Three different patterns of impatient behaviors are modeled and compared with each other. Simulation results demonstrate the different performances of impatient behavior patterns. Comparing with the situation without considering impatience, bidirectional flow is improved in terms of speed, flow rate and waiting time when impatience level is used to triggers off the sidestep behavior. However, the collective performance shows a deterioration at a most density level when impatience is regarded as a direct parameter to estimate the priority to a target cell among several competitors. The parameter sensitivity analysis of impatience intensity and decision threshold shows the flexibility of the model to present the impatience effect. Simulation experiments under different scenarios also reveal the effects of low proportion of slower pedestrians, walkway width and mixed behavior mode on the efficiency of pedestrian counter flow.

Public Procurement Concept as A Path Dependence Result

The rationale and conditions for transformation of a coordination mechanism in public procurement in Russia from market to redistribution, based on the quasi-market technology, are outlined. The authors view modernization of the economic framework of public procurement as an outcome of institutionalizing the rational conduct principles under the influence of such factors as public production conditions and path dependence. The paper describes transformation of the main elements of the machinery for financing public procurement associated with changing the institutional management structure towards support for the “best quality at an affordable price” principle. Alternatives of transaction managements in the financing system of supplying products for public needs are reviewed: from centralized planning in the USSR to the mixed economy in the today’s Russia. A comparative analysis based on the typical features of the market mechanism for transaction coordination justifies the quail-market nature of public procurement technologies in the Russian Federation. Arguments are given for procurement technology dynamics as returning to redistributive transaction coordination that facilitates transformation of public procurement from an economic-structure neutral into a proactive mechanism geared to form new economic orders. A sequence of tasks is given in order to execute the procurement concept in terms of institutional methodology as well as the prospects for developing a system of public procurement as a mechanism of proactive budgeting policy under bilateral economic sanctions that means de-liberalization of international economic relations. Public contractual system is a factor that is gradually restoring an ability to play a stabilizing and stimulating role in order to support the growth of national production and innovations by employing the taxpayer’s money to attain the national strategic development goals