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Robust 2D human pose estimation with parallel graph–attention modeling and entropy-aware feature decoding
Full text linkRobust 2D human pose estimation remains challenging due to occlusion and background interference, which introduce substantial uncertainty into visual representations. This paper proposes PMNet, a Parallel Modeling Network that integrates explicit graph-based structural modeling and implicit self-attention-based semantic modeling through parallel pathways to jointly capture local dependencies and global contextual relationships among key points. From an information-theoretic perspective, occlusion and clutter can be interpreted as sources of increased representational uncertainty. PMNet addresses this issue by progressively reducing ambiguity through complementary structural reasoning and attention-based information selection. The framework incorporates a criss-cross attention module for feature filtering, an adaptive nonlinear fusion strategy for branch coordination, and an error-compensated decoding method to refine key point localization. Extensive experiments on MPII and MSCOCO demonstrate competitive performance and improved robustness under challenging scenario
‘What Does Mattress Girl Have that We Didn’t Have?’ Narratives of sexual violence and social change on US university campuses
No full textIn 2014, activism around sexual violence on US university campuses had become highly visible in popular culture, resulting in numerous policy changes at universities and wider legal changes, such as California’s ‘Yes Means Yes’ law on affirmative consent in higher education. Using a reflective piece published by a campus activist from the 1990s this article argues that the period from the 1990s to 2010s was one of complex and contradictory changes around sexual violence, with the issue of rape on campus becoming an increasing public concern, but one framed by racialised and classed narratives of the vulnerable student, increasingly carceral responses to sexual violence, and incorporation of student activism within the logics of the neoliberal university. The article suggests that unpacking these historic shifts might allow different ways of understanding sexual violence on campus
A practical algorithm for 3-admissibility
Full text linkThe -admissibility of a graph is a promising measure to identify real-world networks that have an algorithmically favourable structure.
We design an algorithm that decides whether the -admissibility of an input graph~ is at most~ in time~\runtime and space~\memory, where is the number of edges in and the number of vertices. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first explicit algorithm to compute the -admissibility.
The linear dependence on the input size in both time and space complexity, coupled
with an `optimistic' design philosophy for the algorithm itself, makes this algorithm practicable, as we demonstrate with an experimental evaluation on a corpus of \corpussize real-world networks.
Our experimental results show, surprisingly, that the -admissibility of most real-world networks is not much larger than the -admissibility, despite the fact that the former has better algorithmic properties than the latter
Carceral diagonalism: the punitive safety politics linking left and right transnational anti-gender mobilisations
No full textThis article examines how carceral safety logics have driven cross-political, anti-transgender alliances within the global ‘anti-gender’ movement. While anti-gender politics are typically associated with right-wing, nationalist, and religious conservatism, this article traces how ‘gender critical’ strands of feminism on the left have joined these mobilisations by reframing opposition to trans rights as protective measures for women. Through the concept of ‘carceral diagonalism’, the article explores how divergent political actors – across left, liberal, and right formations – are sutured together through a shared vision of safety that relies on the identification, exclusion, and punishment of perceived dangerous others. This framing positions trans people, particularly trans women, as threats to non-trans women and children to justify the blocking and rollback of gender-based rights. Drawing on Britain as a key example, the article shows how carceral logics enable unlikely alliances to converge through affectively charged safety narratives that mask deeper structural violences
Metal music, masculinity, and mass shootings
No full textWhat can experiences of sexism and violence in music teach us about the imminent dangers perpetuated by hypermasculinity?Drawing from her own experience as a cis-woman in the realm of heavy metal music, author Deborah Kay Phillips critiques the genre’s role in amplifying hypermasculinity to the point of violence. Exploring the intersections of gender, gun culture, and mental health, Metal Music, Masculinity, and Mass Shootings follows Deborah’s first-hand experience of a metal concert mass shooting, and the resulting reflection on the issues surrounding metal music in the throes of PTSD. Deborah argues by comparing her own experiences to the academic research that the toxic, violent, and misogynistic foundations of the genre produce real world consequences that must be examined for transformation.Providing an important critique of a male-dominated genre and the repercussions of its toxic masculinity, this book is ideal reading for students of Feminism, Gender Studies, Music Studies, and Mental Health
Happier citizens, stronger tax support: how life satisfaction shapes support for taxation, and willingness to fund public goods
Full text linkThere is a growing interest in understanding people’s attitude towards taxation as this helps policymakers to design more effective tax policy reforms. Looking at economies in transitions, particularly, Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and Former Soviet Union (FSU) countries, we examine whether life satisfaction shapes people’s inclination to pay taxes. We find that: i) People who are more satisfied with their lives are generally more willing to contribute through taxes and support public services. ii) Subjective wellbeing helps explain how citizens view taxation, including whether they see it as fair, effective, and worth supporting. iii) People with higher life satisfaction are more likely to support taxes when revenues are directed toward healthcare, education, environmental protection, and poverty reduction
Aging populations, labour productivity and technology
No full textThis paper explores how demographic aging—marked by declining fertility and increasing life expectancy—shapes labor productivity through its interaction with technological progress. Building on Simon Kuznets’ early insights, which highlight the vital role of younger cohorts in driving innovation and economic dynamism, the paper reviews a growing body of evidence showing that aging alters the structural conditions necessary for sustained productivity growth. While aging may initially encourage capital deepening and automation as firms respond to labor scarcity, these gains are short-lived. Over time, the shrinking share of young, skilled, and mobile workers undermines innovation, reduces technology adoption capacity, and slows total factor productivity (TFP) growth. The analysis further connects these dynamics to Hansen’s secular stagnation hypothesis, arguing that demographic forces contribute to chronic underinvestment, weak demand, and subdued technological diffusion. Although aging economies may adopt more automation technologies, such as robotics, this reflects a narrow and reactive form of innovation rather than the broad-based technological advances that historically fueled productivity gains. The paper also highlights how aging reduces business dynamism and constrains human capital accumulation, weakening the absorptive capacity needed for complex, skill-intensive technologies. Without institutional reforms to support lifelong learning, entrepreneurship, and inclusive innovation, demographic aging threatens to become a structural drag on productivity. In sum, the paper positions aging not merely as a demographic shift but as a transformative force that reshapes the labor-technology-productivity nexus, underscoring the need for forward-looking policies to sustain growth in aging societies
Managing multi-stakeholder co-creation to address grand challenges: the role of paradox management capabilities
Full text linkAddressing Grand Challenges such as disruptive sustainability require transformative innovations and policy frameworks that enable coordinated, systemic, multi-stakeholder co-creation. Yet, we have limited understanding of the capabilities needed to manage the paradoxical tensions that arise in multi-stakeholder co-creation networks. We make an original contribution by using an evidence base composed of 30 co-creation initiatives from 21 countries and 3 transnational initiatives, developed to address challenges relating to the COVID-19 pandemic, a Grand Challenge characterised, exactly like disruptive sustainability, by large scale, complexity, and uncertainty. Our findings advance paradox theory by articulating six higher-order paradox-management capabilities needed to manage paradoxes relating to two levels of transformative innovation, project co-creation and programme co-creation. For each of these higher-order capabilities, we identify more specific routine capabilities that allow partners to manage these paradoxes to achieve swift and successful co-creation for disruptive sustainability. We provide implications for policy and practice
The outlandish book: or the travelling naturalist
Full text linkThe Outlandish Book represents a reconstruction of a work that Robert Boyle was intending to publish at the time of his death in 1691. Subtitled ‘the Travelling Naturalist’, it comprises an anthology of conversations that he had with voyagers to exotic regions -- each of them self-contained, vivid and engrossing. The stories that Boyle was told are here presented with a brief commentary, but are otherwise left to speak for themselves. The volume is available in printed, hard-copy form (ISBN 978-0-9551608-5-1), but, in addition, a PDF of its entire content is available through Birkbeck Institutional Research Online (BIROn)
The Ethics of Open Scholarship
Full text linkA panel at Michigan State University's Ethics Week event on the ethics of open scholarshi
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