Public Aid Research Articles

Scene classification for remote sensing images with self‐attention augmented CNN

Remote sensing scene classification aims to automatically assign a specific semantic label to each image. It is challenging to classify remote sensing scene images due to the images' diversity and rich spatial information. Recently, convolutional neural networks have been widely used to overcome these difficulties, such as the famous Visual Geometry Group (VGG) network. However, the VGG network with local receptive fields cannot model the global information of remote sensing images well. It also needs a large number of parameters and floating point operations to achieve satisfactory accuracy. To overcome these challenges, we introduce the self-attention mechanism to the VGG network. Specifically, we replace the last four convolutional layers in the VGG-19 network with two cascaded self-attention blocks, each consisting of two multi-head self-attention (MHSA) layers with the residual network structure. The new structure can simultaneously explore the local and global information from remote sensing scenes. Such improvements not only reduce model parameters but also improve the classification performance. The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated through experiments on four public data sets, i.e., NaSC-TG2, WHU-RS19, AID and EuroSAT.

A case study of agri-food systems in rural Spain: Impacts, responses and institutional lessons

Galicia is one of Spain's leading regions regarding agricultural and livestock production. In the light of the COVID-19 crisis, the permeability to the economic shocks of these sectors led to an unprecedented recession, given the heterogeneity of their characteristics, resulting in widespread losses. The main objective of this article is to analyze the impact of COVID-19 in the agricultural and livestock sectors in Galicia and, at the same time, identify the degree of affectation in each of these sectors, determine the impact of the pandemic in each province and study the institutional responses to the COVID-19 crisis. For this purpose, financial analysis of these sectors will be carried out through a sample of 998 companies. The results show a variation in operating income of –16.41% in the agricultural sector and –9.15% in the livestock sector in Galicia, although they are mixed across the different provinces of the region. Despite the articulation of a network of public aids and the adoption of new commercialization strategies, there are sub-sectors with high losses, such as the ornamental plant industry and the subsector dedicated to the production of beef.

Predictors of Employment Status for Persons with Bipolar Disorder.

Bipolar disorder is characterized by manic and depressive episodes and can be a lifetime condition. Bipolar disorder has been found to be associated with various types of disabilities, including low employment rate and high dependence on public aid. The purpose of this study is to identify factors related to being employed for persons with bipolar disorder. Nine thousand eight hundred and eighty-six subjects with bipolar disorder were collected between July of 2012 and November of 2013 and retrieved from Taiwan national disability database on May of 2014. The mean age of the sample is 45.41 (SD = 10.5), with 64% as female. Logistic regression was used to examine the log odds of the predictive variables on outcome of employment. A Receiver Operating Characteristics analysis was applied to locate the cutoff score of World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule 2.0 for being employed. All demographic variables were found to be significantly correlated with employment status among subjects. The Receiver Operating Characteristics results revealed that those subjects whose scores were below 33.57 had about a four-fold higher probability of being in employment than those whose scores were above 33.57. The result provides insights into future research effort and intervention design aimed at helping persons with bipolar disorder to obtain gainful employment.

Information Gain Based Feature Selection for Improved Textual Sentiment Analysis

Sentiment analysis or opinion mining is the process of mining the emotion from a given text. It is a text mining technique that effectively measures the inclination of public opinions and aids in analysing the subjective information from the given context. Sentiment analysis evaluates the opinion of a sentiment as either positive or negative or neutral. Sentiments are very specific and with respect to the underlying content, it plays a very crucial role in depicting the real-world scenario. Sentiment analysis can be performed at three levels namely document level, sentence level and feature level. This paper proposes a novel Information Gain based Feature Selection algorithm that selects highly correlated features by removing inappropriate content. Using this algorithm, extensive sentimental analysis is performed at the document level, sentence level and feature level. Datasets from Cornell and Kaggle are exploited for experimental purposes. Compared to other baseline classifiers experimental results show that the proposed Information Gain based classifier resulted in an accuracy of 95, 96.3 and 97.4% for document, sentence and feature levels respectively. The proposed method is also tested with higher dimensional datasets namely Movielens 1M, 10M and 25M datasets. Experimental results proved that the proposed method works better even for high dimensional datasets.

Agrarian crises and producerist populism in French rural unions: limits and potential for an emancipatory rural politics

The article examines the reactions of two important agricultural trade unions in France, the ?Confédération Paysanne and the Coordination Rurale, to the liberalisation and financialisation of the ?European Common Agricultural Policy. It highlights the adoption of a "producerist populism" approach ?focused on the role of transnational economic and financial elites in co-opting the state, reducing ?public aid and as the main driver of the economic crises experienced by French farmers. The article ?traces the manifestations of this approach in the claims and analyses of the two unions in the face of ?recent economic developments in the wheat and dairy sectors in France. It argues that the producerist understanding of the crises in agriculture leads these two farmers unions, from opposite political backgrounds, to develop common arguments, opening to strategic alliances. Finally, based on the current ?debate on authoritarian populism in rural areas, the article discusses the interest in overcoming these ?narratives in favour of a more emancipatory rural perspective.?

The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on public engagement approaches to disaster preparedness for foreign residents: case of Tokyo Metropolitan Area, Japan

PurposeForeign residents in Japan are classified as one vulnerable group at risk of disasters. Therefore, various measures are in place to engage, educate and offer first-hand experiences of disaster countermeasures required to overcome systematic disaster preparedness problems. However, the need for Japan to prevent the spread and infection of COVID-19 has necessitated measures that prohibit public gatherings and other social activities. This study aims to look at how these arrangements have impacted public engagement approaches to disaster preparedness for foreign residents within the Tokyo Metropolitan Area.Design/methodology/approachThis study identifies local organizations and examines their methods of engagement that enhance the disaster preparedness of foreign residents in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area. The activities are examined in the context of when there was no COVID-19 pandemic and the current state of the pandemic. A change in activities attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic is then extracted and explained through field surveys and interviews with the relevant organization.FindingsThis study reveals that most disaster preparedness activities were best accomplished through in-person engagements. Nevertheless, online engagements have become the alternative option because of COVID-19 infection prevention. This change has widen the coverage of some activities but major setbacks include events cancelations and technical and technological challenges attributed to using online platforms.Research limitations/implicationsThis study did not examine the effectiveness of pre-COVID-19 pandemic engagement approaches and current changes attributed to the pandemic; many public engagement literatures acknowledge success to include the number of participants, the abilities of organizations to find ways to effectively and positively engage their stakeholders for meaningful partnerships, the number of clicks, access to a website and comments made online. Therefore, as organizations in this study have shown a glimpse of the above characteristics, there are indications of some level of effectiveness in their engagement approaches even amid a pandemic.Practical implicationsTo avoid such situations in the future, there is the need for the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, local governments and associated organizations to develop public engagement approaches that are flexible to resist or cope with in-person, remote encounters, or sudden circumstances that could potentially derail planned activities.Social implicationsThe most effects attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic are the cancelation of many disaster drill exercises, community disaster walks, training of volunteers for foreign residents’ assistance and many hours of “Yasashii Nihongo” lesson. The cancelation of activities is a setback to the efforts of self-help and mutual aid campaigns by authorities to reduce the impacts of disasters.Originality/valueThe spirit of inclusion has been an embodiment of disaster management approaches in Japan for years for which policy recognitions have been tagged along the dimensions of public aid, self-help and mutual aid. These are aimed at engaging the populace, especially foreign residents in disaster training and exercises, language study and other communal activities for disaster preparedness. However, to prevent the spread of COVID-19, there have been a series of restrictions on gathering and inter-personal public engagement activities in Japan. As foreigners are classified as the most vulnerable to disaster in Japan, it is important to understand how these restrictions will/are affecting the efforts of integration and disaster preparedness, which are a crucial part of the Government’s effort to reduce casualties and damage in the anticipated Nankai megathrust earthquake. Besides the results being useful for government interventions, it also adds to the knowledge of the repercussion of COVID-19 and how to plan for emergencies.

Aiding fossil fuel dependency: a cross-national analysis of energy sector aid, national autonomy, and CO2 emissions in 122 nations

In the past two decades, sociological research has flourished on the environmental impact of global financial flows from wealthy to poorer nations. The majority of this research, however, focuses on private financial flows such as foreign direct investment or World Bank lending. By contrast, this study examines how public aid dollars (energy sector foreign development aid) contributes to environmental degradation in developing nations. We also examine the effect of this aid relative to domestic autonomy, a form of good governance that measures a nation’s freedom to set its own domestic policy without interference from more powerful states. Using a longitudinal sample of 122 nations, we test the effects of aid and autonomy on CO2 emissions. In line with dependency theory, results show that aid donors encourage fossil fuel dependence in aid recipient countries and this leads to increased carbon dioxide emissions. Counter to some findings on good governance and the environment, our results do not show that domestic autonomy relates directly to carbon dioxide emissions. However, our results do suggest that more autonomous nations can offset the impact of fossil fuel development aid by imposing policies that push aid donors to invest in more environmentally-beneficial development projects.

Wykluczenie transportowe i systemowe sposoby jego przezwyciężania

This article aims to identify the instances of transport-related social exclusion in local communities and seeks solutions, to include domestic and foreign concepts. It claims that the inhabitants of local communities have the right to inclusion and explores the ways of achieving it. It considers the need to provide a local regulatory body created by local governments to oversee and coordinate the efforts to grant an equal access to transportation. It also explores the already existing regulatory features at the local level. It is recommended to free the entrepreneurial potential so far restricted by lawmakers convinced that the only solution is to support traditional forms of transportation based established routs and timetables as well as public aid. Without prejudice to such organizational forms, more individualized approached is needed, achievable within the new model of dispersed economy, more commonly known as shared economy. The transportation policy also needs to be more open to new technologies applicable in transportation such as drones and autonomous vehicles.

Planning seismic Inner Areas in Central Italy. Experimental application for the infrastructural project, lifeline and resilient public space in the shrinking territory

Natural calamities that repeatedly hit the Country, ranging from earthquake to climate change induced events – like landslides and floods – resulted in huge damages, worsened by the infrastructural degrade and by the abandonment of some territories, especially in the inner areas of the Country. There is therefore a pressing need to improve the infrastructural resiliency, focusing on extraordinary manutention, on the technological development of the monitoring activities and of the supporting infrastructure, on the prevention, the civil protection and the public aid. Resilience nonetheless, is a much wider concept, as it was made dramatically evident by the current pandemic crisis. This includes, for example, the capability of the urban system to respond to unexpected seismic events or health issues; the solidity of the public space fabric, of services and strategic program supporting communities needed to promptly and efficiently respond to sudden crisis. This paradigm, limited to municipal administrative boundaries, results in an increased fragmentation of the territorial safety project, where the connection between infrastructural networks at the regional scale is not always achieved. Peripheral urban contexts of the Inner Areas are exposed to “isolation Risks” in case of catastrophic events, as witnessed after the 2016 seismic events, where secondary infrastructure network was heavily affected, bringing great problems for those living in the areas. The paper explores experimental methodologies to bring substantial modifications to the villages and minor urban areas structure (for the damaged buildings as for the infrastructural network) that the reconstruction makes possible, making of it a unique occasion to renew and reorganise the territory.

Incidence and Prevalence of Pediatric Noninfectious Uveitis in Korea: A Population-Based Study.

Uveitis is less common in children than in adults; however, pediatric uveitis has a relatively severe disease course that affects the quality of life. Although it is important to understand the epidemiological characteristics of pediatric uveitis, few studies have been conducted in large populations without referral bias. This study investigated the nationwide incidence and prevalence of pediatric uveitis in South Korea according to period, age, anatomic type, and systemic associations. This nationwide population-based cohort study used data from the Korean National Health Insurance Service from 2002 to 2018. This study included patients younger than 19 years of age with noninfectious uveitis with at least three claims of diagnostic codes of uveitis on separate days with at least once claim of prescription codes of steroid and immunosuppressive agents. All the cases were classified as anterior or non-anterior uveitis, and the overall incidence and prevalence were estimated by age, sex, and period. Patients with noninfectious uveitis were categorized by the presence of associated systemic conditions. A total of 10,862,616 patients over 128,688,078 person-years were evaluated from 2005 to 2016. Overall, 5,368 cases of anterior uveitis and 604 cases of non-anterior uveitis were identified. The incidence and prevalence of pediatric noninfectious uveitis were 4.64 per 100,000 person-years (95% confidence interval [CI], 4.52-4.76) and 8.25 per 100,000 persons (95% CI, 8.09-8.41). Both the incidence and prevalence of pediatric uveitis increased with age. Anterior uveitis accounted for 84.7% of pediatric noninfectious uveitis prevalent cases (6.99 per 100,000 persons). Cases of juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA)-associated uveitis accounted for 8.7% (926 cases) of pediatric noninfectious uveitis cases with a prevalence of 0.72 per 100,000 (95% CI, 0.67-0.77). The proportion of systemic associations was higher and JIA-related uveitis accounted for 11.2% (803 cases) of recurrent or chronic noninfectious uveitis cases with a prevalence of 0.62 per 100,000. This is the first population-based study investigating the largest population of pediatric patients with uveitis in Korea. The nationwide incidence and prevalence of pediatric noninfectious uveitis in 2005-2016 were 4.64 per 100,000 person-years and 8.25 per 100,000, respectively. The proportion of JIA in pediatric noninfectious uveitis was 8.7%. These population-based study findings provide a better understanding of the public health burden and aid in the planning of health-care strategies for pediatric patients with uveitis.

The Global Compact for Migration and the Venezuelan Migration Crisis in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. A Comparative Approach

Since 2015 the Venezuelan migration and refugee crisis has become a central issue in the Latin American political agenda. Hyperinflation, high rates of poverty and violence, and the lack of infrastructure have triggered the exodus of millions of Venezuelans to countries throughout the region, most in need of humanitarian assistance. This essay explores how Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador, the primary host countries for the Venezuelan migration within the region, have implemented the Global Compact for Migration. Once considered ‘sending’ migrant countries, the three countries of this study have had to come up with strategies to handle the large numbers of migrants coming from Venezuela. By adopting the Compact these countries agreed upon treating migration as a common challenge, and to that extent, to join forces to replace domestic, individual efforts to deal with migration with coordinated actions to reinforce the rights-based approach to migration proposed by the Global Compact. And yet, such a statement does not mean that Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador have uniformly implemented the Compact. The recent tightening of the refugee and immigration procedures in some countries of Latin America, including Peru and Ecuador, illustrates the variety of public discourses regarding the Compact within the region. While further research is desirable to clarify the role of public aid agencies, NGOs, and foundations in implementing the Compact, this article aims to describe the particularities of the national political debate in Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador when adopting the Compact and seeks to assess to what extent the Compact has transformed the domestic migration policies in these countries in light of the Venezuelan migration crisis.

The role of public aid and restrictions’ circumvention in SMEs’ pandemic survival strategies

The role of public aid and restrictions’ circumvention in SMEs’ pandemic survival strategies

A sustainable relationship between the nation and its citizens through public aid for Japanese language education

A sustainable relationship between the nation and its citizens through public aid for Japanese language education

Financial sustainability in Italian Organic Farms: An analysis of the FADN Sample

With the European Green Deal, presented in December 2019, the EU Commission aims at making Europe the world's first climate neutral continent by 2050. In this plan agriculture plays a key role and so does organic farming. The aim of this work is to assess the financial sustainability of organic farms compared to conventional ones, measuring the liquidity they generate, evaluating its adequacy and identifying the factors that influence its extent. Specifically, this study uses the Italian FADN sample, made up of 18 TFs, and measures the Free Cash Flow on Equity (FCFE) for both organic and conventional farms. The econometric analysis identifies the variables contributing to cash flow production and is based on three types of variables: structural, including the cash flow itself, relative to farm results. The analysis showed that financial sustainability is greater for organic than conventional farms, and in several cases the level reached by the former is very high especially in mixed TFs. Yet, a major part of the sustainability of organic farms is due to EU payments, mainly of the cap II type.Also, the balance of business relationships with customers and suppliers allows organic farms to increase liquidity almost as much as the total amount of public aid received. Still, this result should be supported by improving price and yield conditions, as much of the GMO is achieved with below-average value for both variables. Finally, our analytical approach can be used by Countries using the FADN to assess the situation of their agriculture and help direct policy support better.

MEASUREMENT OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF PUBLIC AID FOR FARMS IN POLAND

Agricultural policy is an attempt to put into practice the laws of economic theory, in order to achieve goals defined by the State. This research, carried out on a sample of four groups of Polish farms, contributes to the question of how to improve short-term economic policy in order to stimulate market mechanisms for the long-term development of the sector. Using data from the Polish FADN for 2008-2019, the authors of the study apply the modified PSM method to determine the economic effects of changes taking place on farms. The research indicates that effective investments are the source of long-term development and economic success. At the same time, it shows that economic entities, by optimizing their microeconomic objective function, adjust investments to the objectives of public aid, which reduces the effectiveness of the use of financial resources.

China-EU Two-level Cooperation and Challenges on Public Health during the COVID-19

International public health cooperation has always been one of the typical issues of bilateral and multilateral diplomatic ties in the international community. As two important actors in the international community, China and the EU have worked on many transnational public health cooperation projects. The two-level division of the EU's foreign policy competence decided the Cooperation and Challenges on Public Health between China-EU. Cooperation with the EU member states is expanding, the cooperation with the level of the EU started to show up. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, both China and the EU have publicly expressed their support for WHO's anti-pandemic measures. China has actively provided public health aid to Central and Eastern European countries and shared the Anti-COVID-19 experience. In this article, the author reviewed the progress and mechanism of China-EU public health cooperation, discussed how China and the EU have jointly dealt with the pandemic by sharing experience, providing aids, strengthening multilateralism and international cooperation, and building a community with a healthy future for humankind since the outbreak of COVID-19. Facing the COVID-19，China-EU health cooperation should be further strengthened to show the importance of a community with a shared future for humanity.

Perception of the reasons for living in poverty in Hungary

AbstractThe question of what are considered the causes of poverty is often neglected in the literature of this area of research. This paper analyzes the attributes of poverty in Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County, Hungary, which is one of the most disadvantaged areas of the country. Research was carried out in 2011 and 2019 using the method of systematic data collection, making possible the comparison of the changing perceptions of poverty over time. The research objective is to discover whether, as is common in Eastern European countries, support for explanations which blame structural conditions is dominant in the public perception of poverty. This research has made it clear, that the poor are often considered by the public to be responsible for their own vulnerable situation. With regard to the area where the research took place there is a discrepancy between reality and the public perception of poverty and the functioning of the welfare system which is thought to be generous and which is considered to offer multiple types of public aid for a wide range of recipients.

Addressing Disparities for Intersectional BIPOC Communities: The Hood Medicine Initiative Case Study.

Addressing Disparities for Intersectional BIPOC Communities: The Hood Medicine Initiative Case Study.

194 Challenging the Dogma of Radiographs a Joint Above and Below a Suspected Fracture: Quantification of Waste in Wrist Fracture Evaluation

The dogmatic teaching and practice to obtain X-ray imaging of the joint above and below every suspected wrist fracture is ingrained in emergency medicine and orthopedics. Originally recommended in a 1975 abstract, based on no data, this idea has been perpetuated to the present. In the interest of patient cost, resource management, and throughput we questioned the utility of this knee jerk radiographic exploration. We assessed the probability of identifying fractures outside of the wrist x-ray when no tenderness to palpation was elicited beyond the wrist. We performed a retrospective medical record review of patients diagnosed with wrist fractures at an urban public aid academic hospital. Inclusion criteria: was ICD diagnosis of distal radius, distal ulna, or carpal bone fractures at discharge between April 2019 and April 2020. Patients were excluded if they were <18 years of age, GCS <15, documented tenderness to the hand, proximal forearm, elbow, or humerus, or follow up visits. The documented physical exams performed by ED providers and Orthopedic consults were reviewed to identify location of tenderness both at the wrist and elsewhere. Undocumented tenderness was assumed to be negative. Analysis was performed with descriptive statistics including 95% confidence intervals. 716 patient encounters were identified. After exclusions, the cohort included 345 unique patients who presented with only wrist tenderness. Of the 345 patients, 113 were between the ages 18-40, 193 were between 40-65, and 39 patients were over 65. 177 (51%) were female. Based on our exclusion criteria, this sample had no tenderness outside of the wrist. Still, there were 268 hand x-rays, 284 forearm x- rays, 77 elbow x-rays, and 21 humerus x-rays performed. There were zero additional fractures identified in this imaging beyond the wrist. Analysing the frequency and outcome of these additional x-rays allowed estimation of the upper limit of the 95% CI as a way of estimating the probability of identifying an additional fracture. Forearm radiographs identified 0 % additional fractures, (95% CI (0.0 to 1.3%)). Hand x-rays 0% (95% CI (0.0 to 1.4%). Wrist x-rays alone identified 345 distal radial fractures, 184 distal ulna fractures, 14 carpal bone fracture/dislocations, and 1 proximal metacarpal fracture. The proportion of patients with additional radiographs that identified a fracture not identified on wrist x-ray in this sample was zero. Based on sample size the potential miss rate is likely less than 2%. This argues against default image ordering above and below tenderness and may provide savings on time, radiation, and cost.

Public Aid and Entrepreneurship During the Covid-19 Pandemic in the European Union Countries

The aim of the article: The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic made it necessary to involve the state in the process of rescuing numerous business entities from bankruptcy. In the European Union, the aid measure for entrepreneurs takes a form of public aid, which, as it turns out, is the necessary and the only tool to protect SME sector enterprises against bankruptcy. Social isolation caused by the virus that spread on a large scale effectively inhibited the development of entrepreneurship, which is inherently related to the economic development of countries. The aim of the article is therefore to indicate that supporting entrepreneurs within the framework of public aid may help to reverse the unfavorable economic trends related to the disturbed development of entrepreneurship.&#x0D; Methodology: The article analyzes and assesses the government solutions introduced to the Polish economic reality, the purpose of which is to counteract the effects of Covid-19. The paper presents the current public aid tools available to entrepreneurs along with their financial dimension.&#x0D; Results of the research: State aid granted by the state to entrepreneurs during the crisis caused by Covid-19 is indispensable for their further functioning. The paper presents aid instruments related to COVID-19 that are available to entrepreneurs. The analysis shows that public aid addressed to entrepreneurs injured as a result of the lockdown comes from many sources and is almost tailored to the individual entrepreneur. The entities providing aid on the basis of state aid include: banks, local government units, executive bodies of local government units, Social Insurance Fund, State Fund for Rehabilitation of Disabled People, financial intermediaries, bodies constituting local government units, the European Investment Bank, Polish Development Fund, district and voivodeship labor offices and BGK (Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego). Having prepared a package of systemic solutions, the government introduced them systematically, depending on the situation of individual sectors of the economy. Special solutions in the form of financial shields were addressed directly to the tourism sector (e.g. loans for tour operators) or the catering sector, which in the face of the pandemic were most exposed to a decrease in revenues. The impact of introduced solutions on the country’s economy can be assessed only in the next few years, but the multitude and diversified nature of the anti-crisis solutions introduced in Poland will certainly contribute to slowing down the negative consequences of Covid-19 in the economy.