Use and abuse of the planet in non-rich regions: histories of fracking and windmills in a more than human geographical perspective

<abstract> <p>Remote and marginal areas with scarce and vulnerable populations are "comfortable" settings and suitable places for the development of new extractive activities for energy production. Fracking and modern windmills are often controversial activities in marginal areas for native and local populations, with varying political positions from local elites. The new scalar policies associated with the energy project introduce some of the resistance strategies in the form of more than human geographies or hybrid spatial relationships that characterize recent human geography. This paper explores and suggests possible ways of integrating local interests with regional or national policies based on the "health" of marginal populations, marginal rather than human materiality's and marginal more-than-human.</p> </abstract>

Human pose estimation based on parallel atrous convolution and body structure constraints

Human pose estimation is still a challenging task in computer vision, especially in the case of camera view transformation, joints occlusions and overlapping, the task will be of ever-increasing difficulty to achieve success. Most existing methods pass the input through a network, which typically consists of high-to-low resolution sub-networks that are connected in series. Still, during the up-sampling process, the spatial relationships and details might be lost. This paper designs a parallel atrous convolutional network with body structure constraints (PAC-BCNet) to address the problem. Among the mentioned techniques, the parallel atrous convolution (PAC) is constructed to deal with scale changes by connecting multiple different atrous convolution sub-networks in parallel. And it is used to extract features from different scales without reducing the resolution. Besides, the body structure constraints (BC), which enhance the correlation between each keypoint, are constructed to obtain better spatial relationships of the body by designing keypoints constraints sets and improving the loss function. In this work, a comparative experiment of the serial atrous convolution, the parallel atrous convolution, the ablation study with and without body structure constraints are conducted, which reasonably proves the effectiveness of the approach. The model is evaluated on two widely used human pose estimation benchmarks (MPII and LSP). The method achieves better performance on both datasets.

Computational approach to solving problems of spatial processing of point sets on two-dimensional regular grids

The paper presents an approach to solving problems of spatial processing on sets of points on a plane. The presented method consists in plotting regions of an arbitrary geometric shape near given points of the set on a regular grid and determining the intersection points of the regions using spatial hash tables to improve the efficiency of operations. The proposed approach is implemented in the form of software for determining the spatial relationships between points as a sequence of operations with discretized sets and allows visualization of research results. Figs.: 2. Refs.: 13. Keywords: spatial processing task; point set; plane; regular grid; spatial hash table.

Exchange rate pass-through in Russian regions: Searching for spatial dependencies

Introduction. The article examines the spatial heterogeneity and factors of the exchange rate pass-through effect in consumer prices in Russian regions. Two hypotheses are tested. The first hypothesis is that there are differences in the magnitude of the passthrough between the Russian regions, the second is the significant influence of spatial relationships between regions on the magnitude of the pass-through effect. Theoretical analysis. The factors of the interregional differences in the pass-through effect are analyzed: the share of imports in the consumption structure, the share of value added produced in the domestic market in the final price of goods, transaction costs, the level of competition and the market structure. Empirical analysis. First pass-through estimates were obtained by means of vector autoregression model. Then the spatial dependence of the exchange rate pass-through was investigated on the basis of the global Moran and Geary indices, LISA, SAR and SEM models. Results. The results indicate the heterogeneity of the pass-through effect in Russian regions, which confirms the first of the hypotheses put forward. Confirmation of the second hypothesis was found only for food products in the short term, which is due to the nature of commodity flows between Russian regions. It is concluded that it is necessary to study the spatial relationships of the pass-through effect based on disaggregated prices.

Unsupervised random forest for affinity estimation

This paper presents an unsupervised clustering random-forest-based metric for affinity estimation in large and high-dimensional data. The criterion used for node splitting during forest construction can handle rank-deficiency when measuring cluster compactness. The binary forest-based metric is extended to continuous metrics by exploiting both the common traversal path and the smallest shared parent node.The proposed forest-based metric efficiently estimates affinity by passing down data pairs in the forest using a limited number of decision trees. A pseudo-leaf-splitting (PLS) algorithm is introduced to account for spatial relationships, which regularizes affinity measures and overcomes inconsistent leaf assign-ments. The random-forest-based metric with PLS facilitates the establishment of consistent and point-wise correspondences. The proposed method has been applied to automatic phrase recognition using color and depth videos and point-wise correspondence. Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in affinity estimation in a comparison with the state-of-the-art.

Across Edges: Art to Cartography; One Landscape to the Next

Maps have the empowering effect of placing the “world at your fingertips,” compressing portions of it into a more “knowable” form. I find that some places have this map-like character even in real life—natural environments that are sliced by sharp, unexpected edges and contrasts into more accessible and digestible fragments. Over the years I have explored creating maps that heighten these places’ compressed quality but also preserve their immersive aspect.This search led me first to the field of landscape architecture, and then into two dimensions after I realized that creating these idealized places out in real world was mostly a fantasy. I began piecing together travel photographs into abstract photomontages, later reinterpreted in oil paints, that sharpen natural edges and contrasts to depict imaginary places. I then transitioned to watercolors, and toward depicting places not quite as imaginary, using the same fractured style to combine travel-inspired landscapes with bird’s-eye views.Finding the task of painting the individual fragments less engaging than the process of shaping them into compositions, I came to think of these works as maps in terms of both theory and process—in emphasizing the spatial relationships between scenes rather than the individual scenes themselves. My motivation for creating these maps has expanded beyond personal fulfilment to include conveying the fragility of the natural remnants and contrasts that captivate me.

New data on the stratigraphy of the Paleogene in Solnik area, Eastern Bulgaria

Based on lithostratigraphic reinterpretation of five borehole sections and lithostratigraphic interpretation of two seismic profiles, new data on the Dvoynitsa Formation’s lithology, subdivision and spatial distribution were obtained. The Armera and Gebesh Members were recognized in the area of the villages of Solnik and Bardarevo, as their spatial relationships and distribution are visualized by drawing up of four geological cross-sections.

Living on the edge: Occupying the facade to enrich urban density

<p>Living on the edge critiques oppressive aspects of urban living. It advocates façade occupation to enhance the experience of density and enrich the street edge to achieve a vibrant and metropolitan New Zealand. Sited in Te Aro, Wellington Central, the project proposes a citywide inversion of the typical high-rise building layout, relocating primary circulation to the street edge to dramatically reform the spatial relationships between dwelling, building and street. The project is an inhabitable facade system comprised of various combinations of the colannade, the gallery and the annexe. This can be applied to existing or integrated with new buildings and varied in response to specific street conditions. By creating multifunctional outdoor living integrated with circulation spaces, the design offers a vision for vertical communities with enhanced dwelling amenity to encourage more New Zealanders to embrace high density living.</p>