Unfamiliar Terrain Research Articles

Promoting action on structural drivers of health inequity: principles for policy evaluation

Background:Insufficient progress has been made towards reducing health inequities, due in part to a lack of action on the root causes of health inequities. At present, there is a limited evidence base to guide policy decision making in this space. Key points for discussion:This paper proposes new principles for researchers to conduct health equity policy evaluation. Four key principles are presented: (1) where to evaluate – shifting from familiar to unfamiliar terrain; (2) who to evaluate – shifting from structures of vulnerability to structures of privilege; (3) what to evaluate – shifting from simple figures to complex constructs; and (4) how to evaluate – shifting from ‘gold standard’ to more appropriate ‘fit-for-purpose’ designs. These four principles translate to modifying the policy domains investigated, the populations targeted, the indicators selected, and the methods employed during health equity policy evaluation. The development and implementation of these principles over a five-year programme of work is demonstrated through case studies which reflect the principles in practice. Conclusions and implications:The principles are shared to encourage other researchers to develop evaluation designs of sufficient complexity that they can advance the contribution of health equity policy evaluation to structural policy reforms. As a result, policies and actions on the social determinants of health might be better oriented to achieve the redistribution of power and resources needed to address the root causes of health inequities.

Data-Driven Robust Barrier Functions for Safe, Long-Term Operation

Applications that require multirobot systems to operate independently for extended periods of time in unknown or unstructured environments face a broad set of challenges, such as hardware degradation, changing weather patterns, or unfamiliar terrain. To operate effectively under these changing conditions, algorithms developed for long-term autonomy applications require a stronger focus on robustness. Consequently, this work considers the ability to satisfy the operation-critical constraints of a disturbed system in a modular fashion, which means compatibility with different system objectives and disturbance representations. Toward this end, this article introduces a controller-synthesis approach to constraint satisfaction for disturbed control-affine dynamical systems by utilizing control barrier functions (CBFs). The aforementioned framework is constructed by modeling the disturbance as a union of convex hulls and leveraging previous work on CBFs for differential inclusions. This method of disturbance modeling grants compatibility with different disturbance-estimation methods. For example, this work demonstrates how a disturbance learned via a Gaussian process may be utilized in the proposed framework. These estimated disturbances are incorporated into the proposed controller-synthesis framework which is then tested on a fleet of robots in different scenarios.

A Reasonable Alternative System for Searching UAVs in the Local Area.

UAVs, used for professional purposes, often intervene in unfamiliar terrain and challenging conditions. Unlike recreational UAVs, such professional and specialised UAVs are very expensive to develop and operate, and their value is not negligible. Due to the nature of operations in an unknown or dangerous environment, there are also situations with forced interruption and termination of the flight mission or a collision with the environment. Locating a lost vehicle presents a new challenge for UAV operators. The possibilities of today’s localised commercial aircraft in distress (COSPASS/SARSAT systems) are undesirable for selective special-purpose drones. The optimisation of the location in the event of an emergency or catastrophic landing may be justified by a social or other condition, where the user wants to search for the device by a system other than the one experienced for rescuing people, ideally on their reserved frequencies. The article proposes a new approach to solving the problem based on the design of a terrestrial localisation system based on the methods of processing and correlation of the obtained data by the physical principle of the Doppler effect and its own system adaptation. This creates an innovative concept of a targeting system based on the broadcasting of distress (VHF) signal by crashed UAV. This signal is captured and evaluated by the IDVOR system, making it possible to determine the direction in which the searched UAV is placed. In order to determine the difference between standard targeting systems of the UAV, which use information about position (exact coordinates (x,y,z)), the IDVOR system is able to determine direction, independent of other systems in every “enemy” or “inhospitable” territory.

A gazelle's extraordinary, 18,000-km-long journey through the steppes of Mongolia.

A gazelle's extraordinary, 18,000-km-long journey through the steppes of Mongolia.

Robert A. Schneider. Dignified Retreat: Writers and Intellectuals in the Age of Richelieu.

Robert A. Schneider’s Dignified Retreat: Writers and Intellectuals in the Age of Richelieu is a thorough, generous, eminently approachable, and surprisingly timely account of early seventeenth-century French intellectual history. It should be of great use and interest not only to the historians for whom this might be relatively unfamiliar terrain but also to literary scholars looking for a helpful overview and historical reframing of the complex role writers and intellectuals played in France’s recovery from the religious wars of the sixteenth century. Schneider deliberately breaks with scholarly works that focus on a few key figures, often in the service of a teleological narrative that traces, say, the origin of the novel or the dawn of modernity. Instead, Schneider trains his lens on a relatively small span of time (1620–48) that roughly corresponds to the years that Richelieu spent in power (1624–42). Within this span, Schneider has read everyone and nearly...

The drawbacks of drones: The effects of UAVs on escalation and instability in Pakistan

Growing reliance on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in the effort to combat militant groups has led to considerable debate about the consequences of this new mode of warfare. While critics have focused on the impact of civilian casualties on militant recruitment and the resulting use of terrorism, evidence suggests that ‘drones’ are paradoxically more effective in limiting civilian deaths compared to other forms of military force. This article demonstrates a different causal pathway connecting militant use of force to terrorist attacks. Drone strikes encourage militants to displace operations to urban centers. Confronted with unfamiliar terrain and greater government capacity, militants emphasize terrorist attacks against civilians. The article explores these dynamics in the longest running drone campaign, in Pakistan. While civilian casualties from drone strikes have no discernible effect on terrorism, strikes that kill militants increase terrorist attacks against civilians in urban settings, while failing to reduce attacks on government targets.

Designing Spacecraft to Explore Extreme Environments Within the Solar System

In the next few decades, upcoming technological advances will offer unprecedented opportunities to explore the solar system – both with autonomous robots, and through manned missions. Dr Jekan Thanga and the Space and Terrestrial Robotic Exploration (SpaceTREx) Laboratory at University of Arizona are at the forefront of efforts to design miniature spacecraft that will allow us to reach these distant worlds, and navigate their rugged, unfamiliar terrains. In the future, his team’s research could pave the way for the establishment of long-term, off-world human settlements, and the discovery of life in extreme, yet potentially habitable environments.

Situational Awareness and Problems of Its Formation in the Tasks of UAV Behavior Control

Situational awareness formation is one of the most critical elements in solving the problem of UAV behavior control. It aims to provide information support for UAV behavior control according to its objectives and tasks to be completed. We consider the UAV to be a type of controlled dynamic system. The article shows the place of UAVs in the hierarchy of dynamic systems. We introduce the concepts of UAV behavior and activity and formulate requirements for algorithms for controlling UAV behavior. We propose the concept of situational awareness as applied to the problem of behavior control of highly autonomous UAVs (HA-UAVs) and analyze the levels and types of this situational awareness. We show the specifics of situational awareness formation for UAVs and analyze its differences from situational awareness for manned aviation and remotely piloted UAVs. We propose the concept of situational awareness as applied to the problem of UAV behavior control and analyze the levels and types of this situational awareness. We highlight and discuss in more detail two crucial elements of situational awareness for HA-UAVs. The first of them is related to the analysis and prediction of the behavior of objects in the vicinity of the HA-UAV. The general considerations involved in solving this problem, including the problem of analyzing the group behavior of such objects, are discussed. As an illustrative example, the solution to the problem of tracking an aircraft maneuvering in the vicinity of a HA-UAV is given. The second element of situational awareness is related to the processing of visual information, which is one of the primary sources of situational awareness formation required for the operation of the HA-UAV control system. As an example here, we consider solving the problem of semantic segmentation of images processed when selecting a landing site for the HA-UAV in unfamiliar terrain. Both of these problems are solved using machine learning methods and tools. In the field of situational awareness for HA-UAVs, there are several problems that need to be solved. We formulate some of these problems and briefly describe them.

Selfie-related deaths using web epidemiological intelligence tool (2008-2021): a cross-sectional study.

The quest for extreme selfies killed 379 people since 2008. One in three was a traveller. Falls from height, transport and drowning were the top three causes. Many selfie deaths are the result of tourists taking risks in unfamiliar terrain. Travel medicine practitioners should routinely counsel travellers on responsible self-photography.

The Evolutionary Nature of Breakthrough Innovation: An Empirical Investigation of Firm Search Strategies

Breakthrough innovation has been an important topic of study for generations of scholars. Previous research in this domain has focused on exploring the way breakthroughs emerge from cumulative combination and recombination of prior technologies and knowledge components across vast numbers of firms and inventors. However, far less understood are the internal firm-level processes that give rise to breakthrough inventions. How do firms search for and select technologies with which to innovate? Could the trajectory of this search process itself play a role in influencing the likelihood that a developed invention will be a breakthrough? We ask these questions in our research. Our analysis examines three decades of innovation histories of over two and a half thousand firms. Longitudinal firm-level data and a novel measure of search (technological focal proximity) enable us to characterize corporate activity at a detailed level and to examine search strategies that led to breakthrough innovations as well as those that did not. Contrary to the established consensus that breakthroughs are associated with explorative search and less impactful inventions emerge through exploitation, our firm-centric approach reveals that breakthroughs develop from a search process that evolves in phases and involves both exploration (initially) and exploitation (subsequently). In the early phases, firms that successfully develop breakthrough inventions explore unfamiliar terrain. However, as the process unfolds, they progressively shift their search strategies to exploitation of accumulated knowledge. Our findings call into question the strong dichotomy between exploration and exploitation that has played such a prominent role in theories about the origins of breakthrough innovation.

The Evolutionary Nature of Breakthrough Innovation: Re-Evaluating the Exploration vs. Exploitation

Over the past few decades, a consensus has emerged that breakthrough innovations emerge from exploration of novel terrain while more routine innovations are the product of exploitation. In this paper, we revisit this explore versus exploit dichotomy with an analysis of three decades of innovation histories of over two and a half thousand firms. Longitudinal firm-level data and a novel measure of search (Technological Focal Proximity) enable us to characterize corporate activity at a detailed level and examine both search strategies that lead to breakthroughs and those that do not. Contrary to the existing literature, we find that breakthrough innovations develop from a search process that evolves in phases and involves both exploration (initially) and exploitation (subsequently). In the early phases, firms explore unfamiliar terrain. However, as the process unfolds, firms shift their search strategies to focus on exploiting cumulative knowledge. Our findings call into question the strong dichotomy between exploration versus exploitation that has played such a prominent role in theories about the origins of breakthrough innovation, and have potential implications for strategy, organizational design, management practice, and corporate culture.

Abstract of: Learning to Understand Collaborative Process: The Unexpected Outcome of Working across Unfamiliar Terrains

Abstract of: Learning to Understand Collaborative Process: The Unexpected Outcome of Working across Unfamiliar Terrains

Cultural conflicts in select Diaspora Novels: Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss & Jumpha Lahiri’s The Namesake

People are identified by their culture basically. When we know the new culture it will enrich our knowledge but adopting the same and living in an alien land will affect our freedom of thought and life. Folks move from one place to another for all kind of betterment. Change of whereabouts and language from one to other drag the people to a further complicated world. They drop all their hopes towards the newness and try to adjust or struggle for their life in the unexpected circumstances. Man Booker Prize winner, a famous Indian Diaspora writer, Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss discusses different kind of losses take place by man’s displacement. The characters Biju, Sai and Bela represent the pain and affliction of departers. They are longing for identity and want to create a comfort zone in the alien soil leads them frustrated. Jumpha Lahiri, the Pulitzer Prize winner, put across the same expatriate sensibility in her novel The Namesake. The protagonist Gogol and others Ashoke, Ashima migrate to another country still wants to follow their culture and traditional values there. These novels traced the concept of cultural identity with rootlessness and ancestral expectation. The present paper deals with identity predicament in the basis of cultural conflict through the characters’ strife of unfamiliar terrain.

The ‘Double Transition’ for First-Year Students: Understanding the Impact of Covid-19 on South Africa’s First-Year University Students

While all students are affected by the advent of the Covid‑19 pandemic, the first‑year student population remains a special category of vulnerability for higher education. This is on account of the way the Covid‑19 pandemic has disrupted their transition into university and complicated the nature of their entry into and through the formal academic cycle. This article uses the notion of a ‘double transition’ as a framework for positioning and locating the first‑year student transition within the context of the prevailing Covid‑19 pandemic. ‘Double transition’ refers to an additional transition coupled with that of the first‑year transition, with regard to the extraordinary situation of students navigating their entry into the unfamiliar terrain of academia while simultaneously navigating the Covid‑19 pandemic. The article provides a circumscribed summary of the effects of Covid‑19 on university students and looks to describe and explain the nature and shape of first‑year transitions in relation to the transition necessitated by the Covid‑19 pandemic. It concludes with four key strategies for supporting first‑year students as the pandemic continues.

THE FRENCH 47TH INFANTRY REGIMENT DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR: AN ENVIRONMENTAL APPROACH

The First World War can be examined from the perspective of traditional military history as well as the perspective of the relationship between combatants and the environment. The author reveals based on a wide range of archival materials, printed media and ego-documents (diaries, memoirs, letters) the question of combat peculiarities of the 47th Infantry Regiment of the French Army considering with the influence of environmental conditions on the soldiers. The author demonstrates the dependence of the regiment's intensity and efficiency of combat operations on the terrain, weather and climate changes on the Western Front of the First World War. In the first phase of the conflict, soldiers were extremely vulnerable to even the slightest temperature changes (extreme heat, cold) due to their uniforms' problems. Physical strain from long marches across unfamiliar terrain and an extended stay in the trenches also harmed their health. The combat unit's active influence on the environment is also emphasised, with the pollution of the battlefield by sewage, leftover ammunition and weapons. The soldiers' health being adversely affected by the polluted environment (above all, the spread of contagious diseases, poisoning by chemical and metal warfare agents) is also considered. Severe environmental changes during battles also made combat operations more difficult. Thus, during the First World War, both the soldiers of the 47th Infantry Regiment of the French Army and all the other poilus became hostages to a severely altered environment due to the impact of millions of combatants.

“Do not touch it!” Today’s Children’s Visual Competencies in Comparison with the Pre-Digital Era in Light of their Art Educational Environment

The task of twenty-first century art education is to contribute to the blossoming of the child’s personality. In this article, I approach this challenge from two principal directions, both of which provide a window onto unfamiliar terrain. This project sought to answer the following research questions: How do plastic, spatial (3D) creative capacities develop, and how do they compare with the kindergarten’s accustomed advancement of picture-creating, planar (2D) capabilities? How do kindergartners’ skills as measured in the 1970s compare with those of kindergartners today? A follow-on project examined children’s skills in the context of built environment education, asking the questions: Where, and with whom, do children find the best conditions for creation and arts education? What kinds of environments are most favourable? The results showed a clear deterioration of children’s drawing development from 1974 until today, as well as from drawings in both studies to modelling today. However, a more promising discovery was that depictions of movement appear much sooner in the case of plastic arts works than in drawings. This opens the way to an orientation that in our increasingly urbanised world, can help our children grow into adults who responsibly shape our environment, sensitive to their own age, as self-possessed problem solvers, employing the toolkit of education through art. The study is based on ongoing, long-term research of the 3612+ Visual Skills Lab group, employing both qualitative and quantitative methods to evaluate the artistic proficiencies of nearly a thousand children, mostly aged 3–7, in dozens of kindergartens in Hungary, through hands-on exercises as well as surveys of teachers, parents and other interested parties.

Statewide School Redesign: Integrating Design Thinking and the Four Disciplines of Execution as a Continuous School Improvement Process

Sixty-six school districts and more than 150 schools in the state of Kansas are participating in the Kansans Can Redesign Project. In this article, we present a case study of using Design Thinking as a systemic process to structure continuous school improvement. The collage of real-life scenarios presented in our case shows the integration of Design Thinking and the Four Disciplines of Execution and highlights the nuances and delicacies involved in the process as the major change agents work together and engage theory-to-practice applications of design thinking for change. Also illustrated in the case are the struggles and successes experienced by schools as they venture into the unfamiliar terrains of the design thinking process and enact on the integrated principles to school redesign.

Manoeuvring the Complexities of Field Research in Africa: Experiences from Voter Turnout Research in Ghana

Field research enables interaction between a researcher and research participants, offering an opportunity for the discovery of primary empirical data. As exciting as field research can be, for a novice researcher or research in unfamiliar terrain, community field research can also be daunting. These challenges may include, but are not limited to, the determination of community entry strategies, identification of potential respondents, as well as dealing with the non-availability of respondents. Based on field experiences, this research note offers practical suggestions on how to deal with these challenges within the realm of political science fieldwork. The experiences from a Voter Turnout research in Ghana shared in this note are of particular relevance to field research designs in the subject area of voter participation, focusing on voters as informants rather than experts or members of a professional network. Keywords: Field Research; Political Science; Field Strategies; Voter Turnout.

The Hiker's Guide to the RIME Supplement: Choosing Directions in Research.

In this Commentary, the authors seek to build on prior RIME commentaries by considering how researchers transition from worldviews, focal lengths, and research goals to research directions and methodological choices. The authors use the analogy of a hiker to illustrate how different researchers studying a similar phenomenon can choose among different research directions, which lead down different paths and offer different perspectives on a problem. Following the hiker analogy, the authors use the "Research Compass" to categorize the 15 research papers included in the 2020 Research in Medical Education supplement according to their research aim and corresponding methodological approach. The authors then discuss implications of the relative balance of these study types within this supplement and within health professions education research at large, emphasizing the critical importance of studying a topic from multiple vantage points to construct a richer and more nuanced understanding of health professions education challenges. The authors conclude by recognizing the challenges we face in the current era of COVID-19 and by calling health professions education researchers and practitioners to continue our collective efforts to improve learner education and patient care, as we together navigate the unfamiliar terrain of the present day.

Language Translation on Intelligent Navigation System using Image Processing

Visitors traveling to different countries around the world often find it hard to understand and communicate in local languages, because they don't understand it. They can't read the words written on the navigational boards or banners at these new locations. Text detection, extraction, and translation system must, therefore, be built to identify and recognize the text found on the navigation boards. This system proposes and implements a three-stage process that involves detection, extraction, and translation using the concepts of Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) and Long Short Term Memory networks or simply “LSTMs”. The framework has been designed to take into account the need to create a desktop application that extracts the text from images based on traffic navigation boards and then translates it further into a user-understandable language. In this way, the user can grasp the unfamiliar language and roam freely in the unfamiliar terrains.