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Urban imaginaries in the affective politics of becoming a new town in Romania
Get PDFThe post-2000 urbanisation wave of Eastern Europe, which saw about 470 communes granted township status, has received minimal attention in urban studies. This paper focuses on the key case of Romania where rural-to-urban reclassification, and its reversal, are grassroots-driven and contingent on local referenda. Given this democratic process, we examine the urban imaginaries that have shaped these referenda and their aftermath, and how they relate to questions of place-making, struggle, and resistance. We conceptualise the urban imaginary as a discursive construction and a collective feeling generative of political action. Drawing on a rich array of data, including local residents' opinions and retrospective recollections, media coverage, parliamentary acts and statistical sources, we identify four enduring urban imaginaries that fuelled significant pro-town referenda and continue to shape contentious evaluations of their outcomes. These are: the conceived urban of technocrats; the grand City fantasy rooted in socialist industrial legacies; the modest urban imaginary centred on desire for basic infrastructure; and the urban limbo, a space of stigmatisation marked by the denial of infrastructural citizenship. By framing locals' demands for urban (de)(re)classification as resistance to peripheralisation, dispossession and stigmatisation, we contribute to the academic debate on how the urban is understood when we listen to the marginalised voices inhabiting the blurred rural/urban border, whether in Eastern Europe's new towns, China's urban villages or East Asia's urban extensions
Accuracy Paradox in Large Language Models: Examining Current Regulatory Approaches for Addressing Hallucination
No full textThe rapid development and deployment of generative AI systems, particularly large language models (LLMs), have transformed the way information is generated and consumed. As these models become increasingly integrated into critical domains such as healthcare, education, and law, their outputs carry significant epistemic, legal, and societal implications. One of the common regulatory approaches, recognised by both academia and regulatory authorities, is to prioritise accuracy as a primary metric for assessing the reliability of AI-generated content. However, this article argues that such an accuracy-centric approach fails to address deeper challenges and, paradoxically, can exacerbate existing issues.
This article conceptualises the accuracy paradox in LLMs, highlighting how improvements in accuracy may enhance the articulation and persuasiveness of outputs while amplifying problems such as hallucination, misinformation, lack of trustworthiness, and the erosion of meaningful transparency. Beyond these concerns, the accuracy-centric approach also risks fostering AI manipulation, nudging behaviours, and marginalising plurality in social and informational contexts. Key values such as group privacy, social heterogeneity, and decision-making autonomy will be overlooked, while entrenched biases and inequalities are inadvertently reinforced.
The article critiques current regulatory frameworks of overreliance on statistical accuracy to tackle this issue, ignoring the recursive risks of hallucination loops, where misinformation is perpetuated and worsens over time through training on synthetic data that crowding out human information. It also highlights the dangers of social deskilling, as increasing reliance on AI erodes critical human capacities for judgement and decision-making. Within this conceptual framework, it critically examines the current legal framework of the General Data Protection Law, AI Act and Digital Service Act. It found that these legal frameworks, while addressing certain aspects of aforementioned issues, often fall short in tackling the deeper epistemic and societal challenges posed by hallucination caused risks in LLMs. Specifically, they focus heavily on data accuracy and compliance requirements but fail to adequately account for issues in epistemic and societal levels.
To address these challenges, the article calls for a shift in regulatory focus from a accuracy-centric approach to trustworthiness, meaningful transparency, and the recognition of a plurality of values in addressing issues caused by hallucinations in LLMs. This includes mechanisms for reasoning traceability, explicit uncertainty communication, and safeguarding diverse social and informational contexts. By reconceptualising the regulatory landscape, this article aims to develop a more holistic framework for regulating the unique risks posed by GenAI
Performance of 8 smoking metrics for modeling survival in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma
No full textImportance: Cigarette smoking is a strong risk factor for mortality in patients diagnosed with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). However, little evidence supports which smoking metric best models the association between smoking and survival in HNSCC.
Objective: To determine which smoking metric best models a linear association between smoking exposure and overall survival (OS) in patients with HNSCC.
Design, Setting, and Participants: A retrospective multicenter cohort study of 6 clinical epidemiological studies was performed. Five were part of the Human Papillomavirus, Oral and Oropharyngeal Cancer Genomic Research (VOYAGER) consortium. Participants included patients 18 years and older with pathologically confirmed HNSCC. Data were collected from January 2002 to December 2019, and data were analyzed between January 2022 to November 2024.
Main Outcomes and Measures: The primary outcome was OS. The performance of 8 smoking metrics, including pack-years, duration, and log cig-years (calculated as log10[cigarettes smoked per day + 1] × number of years smoked) for modeling OS were compared. Metric performance was measured by the strength of association in Cox proportional hazard models, linearity based on P for linear trend, Akaike information criterion (AIC; lower value indicates better model fit), and visual assessment of spline curves. Secondary outcomes included modeling OS in clinicodemographic subgroups and HNSCC anatomic subsites. Exploratory outcomes included cancer-specific survival and noncancer survival.
Results: In total, 8875 patients with HNSCC (2114 [24%] female; median [IQR] age, 61 [54-69] years) were included. Of 8 smoking metrics evaluated, smoking duration (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR], 1.11 [95% CI, 1.03-1.19]) and log cig-years (aHR, 1.11 [95% CI, 1.04-1.18]) had the highest aHRs; both had a statistically significant linear association with OS. Log cig-years had the lowest AIC linear value and the most visually linear spline curve when modeling OS. Duration and log cig-years outperformed pack-years for modeling OS regardless of age, smoking status, and cancer stage. Both performed well in lip and oral cavity, laryngeal (only duration was significant), and human papillomavirus–negative oropharyngeal subsites. In an exploratory analysis, duration had the highest aHR (1.15 [95% CI, 1.02-1.29]), and log cig-years had the lowest AIC linear value when modeling noncancer survival.
Conclusions and Relevance: In this cohort study, smoking duration and log cig-years best modeled a linear relationship with OS for patients with HNSCC. Both metrics maintained robust performance within specific clinicodemographic subgroups and anatomic subsites. Although most HNSCC survival models control for smoking exposure using smoking status or pack-years, duration and log cig-years may be superior metrics to account for the effects of smoking on survival
World Congress on Science and Soccer 2025 (WCSS 2025): encourage progress, enhance practice
No full textNo abstract available
Orientation-tuned surround-suppression is strongest within perceived 3D surfaces
Get PDFOur perception of contrast is strongly affected by contextual factors. A well-known example is that of orientation-tuned surround suppression (OTSS). Surrounds have more suppressive effects on the perceived contrast of the center when they have the same orientation. This phenomenon has been linked to horizontal interactions within the early visual cortex. Here we show that the strength of suppression is modulated strongly by the perceived three-dimensional structure of the scene. Placing the surround at a different retinal disparity, and therefore perceived depth, decreased OTSS, regardless of whether the surround was placed behind or in front of the center. The difference in disparity was, however, not the key determinant of the strength of OTSS. Suppressive interactions were strongest when the surround formed a
three-dimensional surface that was continuous with the center and weaker when the surround seemed to be part of a separate surface, even when the surround seemed to be closer to the center in perceived depth.
The results suggest that visual features that are perceived to form part of the same surface can engage in stronger suppressive interactions than those perceived to lie on different surfaces. This raises questions about
how the underlying neural interactions become restricted to surfaces and support the view that top-down information about perceptual organization can gate interactions occurring at lower levels in the
visual system
Remote pulmonary artery pressure-guided management of patients with heart failure: A clinical consensus statement of the Heart Failure Association (HFA) of the ESC
Get PDFEpisodes of worsening heart failure (HF) are a major cause of unplanned hospitalizations. Their onset is usually preceded by an early increase in intracardiac pressures with subsequent worsening of symptoms due to congestion. Implantable devices allowing daily remote pulmonary artery pressure (PAP) monitoring are useful to identify early haemodynamic changes so that medical therapy can be adjusted at an early stage, before symptom onset, and HF‐related hospitalizations be prevented. Second, the use of these devices may help to maintain clinical stability keeping PAP in the target range on a day‐to‐day basis. The CardioMEMS system allows remote PAP monitoring, and PAP‐guided medical therapy has reduced HF‐related hospitalizations in prospective, randomized, controlled clinical trials in symptomatic patients with HF, independent of their left ventricular ejection fraction. The safety and feasibility of other devices, like the Cordella implantable PAP sensor, have also been demonstrated and clinical usefulness in larger patient populations is currently being assessed in several trials. Most of the studies testing remote PAP monitoring were reported after the 2021 European Society of Cardiology HF guidelines. An update of the clinical significance and potential implications for clinical practice of these systems seems therefore warranted. The aim of this clinical consensus statement is to summarize current knowledge on remote PAP‐guided management of patients with HF, with a special focus on current evidence from clinical trials, potential impact on clinical practice and management aspects
Explainable CNN for brain tumor detection and classification through XAI based key features identification
Get PDFDespite significant advancements in brain tumor classification, many existing models suffer from complex structures that make them difficult to interpret. This complexity can hinder the transparency of the decision-making process, causing models to rely on irrelevant features or normal soft tissues. Besides, these models often include additional layers and parameters, which further complicate the classification process. Our work addresses these limitations by introducing a novel methodology that combines Explainable AI (XAI) techniques with a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) architecture. The major contribution of this paper is ensuring that the model focuses on the most relevant features for tumor detection and classification, while simultaneously reducing complexity, by minimizing the number of layers. This approach enhances the model's transparency and robustness, giving clear insights into its decision-making process through XAI techniques such as Gradient-weighted Class Activation Mapping (Grad-Cam), Shapley Additive explanations (Shap), and Local Interpretable Model-agnostic Explanations (LIME). Additionally, the approach demonstrates better performance, achieving 99% accuracy on seen data and 95% on unseen data, highlighting its generalizability and reliability. This balance of simplicity, interpretability, and high accuracy represents a significant advancement in the classification of brain tumor
Grasping Data: Mapping Out HCI Methods for Children and Young People's Interactions with their Personal Data
No full textChildren and young people today are uniquely datafied, tracked, and digitally monitored like no generation before them. Children are increasingly vulnerable to data collection through seemingly benign toys and devices equipped with voice recognition, geolocation, sensors, and cameras, but typically lack awareness or control over these data exchanges, as consent is usually provided by adult caregivers (who may also lack data literacy). Although there have been advancements in legislation and design guidelines, there is a significant need for interdisciplinary approaches to directly empower children in understanding, valuing and benefiting from their personal data, as well as learning to manage it. We ask, how can the CHI community support children to be informed and included in design for and with their personal data? How do we support children to participate in their personal data – and do they want to? This workshop aims to gather designers, researchers and practitioners working on projects relating to children's personal data, and to map out the current practices and methods at play across the CHI community on this critical topic
Recoverable and sensitive pressure-induced mechanochromic photoluminescence of a Au-P complex
Get PDFA binuclear Au-P complex [Au2(2-bdppmapy)2](PF6)2 (1) was synthesised by the reaction of 2-bdppmapy (N,N′-bis-(diphenylphosphanylmethyl-2-aminopyridine) with AuCN and [Cu(MeCN)4]PF6. The solid phase of 1 emitted bright yellow phosphorescence at λmax = 580 nm under UV excitation (QY = 4.41%, τ = 1.88 μs), which shifted to green (λmax = 551 nm, QY = 5.73%) after being pressurised under 5 MPa. This colour change was recoverable upon exposure to CH2Cl2 vapor. Similar mechanochromic photoluminescence behaviour was observed after grinding the crystals of 1. A filter paper impregnated with 1 demonstrated recyclable write/erase functionality for encrypted information transfer
Microfoundations of entrepreneurial leadership: successful women entrepreneurs in a developing economy
No full textThis study explores how entrepreneurial leadership (EL) develops and is enacted in women-led ventures within a non-Western, patriarchal context. Using a microfoundational lens and multiple case studies of successful Pakistani women entrepreneurs, we uncover how EL emerges through contextually embedded enablers, emerging tensions, and navigating tactics. Findings reveal that women draw on family support, elite networks, and symbolic cues to build legitimacy and influence, while navigating gendered constraints and power asymmetries. Our model advances a processual understanding of EL, demonstrating how micro-level actions, shaped by sociocultural context, contribute to opportunity recognition, venture growth, and leadership legitimacy in underresearched settings
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