Personal identification with artificial intelligence under COVID-19 crisis: a scoping review

Background Artificial intelligence is useful for building objective and rapid personal identification systems. It is important to research and develop personal identification methods as social and institutional infrastructure. A critical consideration during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic is that there is no contact between the subjects and personal identification systems. The aim of this study was to organize the recent 5-year development of contactless personal identification methods that use artificial intelligence. Methods This study used a scoping review approach to map the progression of contactless personal identification systems using artificial intelligence over the past 5 years. An electronic systematic literature search was conducted using the PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, CINAHL, and IEEE Xplore databases. Studies published between January 2016 and December 2020 were included in the study. Results By performing an electronic literature search, 83 articles were extracted. Based on the PRISMA flow diagram, 8 eligible articles were included in this study. These eligible articles were divided based on the analysis targets as follows: (1) face and/or body, (2) eye, and (3) forearm and/or hand. Artificial intelligence, including convolutional neural networks, contributed to the progress of research on contactless personal identification methods. Conclusions This study clarified that contactless personal identification methods using artificial intelligence have progressed and that they have used information obtained from the face and/or body, eyes, and forearm and/or hand.

ENACTS: Advancing Climate Services Across Africa

Despite recent and mostly global efforts to promote climate services in developing countries, Africa still faces significant limitations in its institutional infrastructure and capacity to develop, access, and use decision-relevant climate data and information products at multiple levels of governance. The Enhancing National Climate Services (ENACTS) initiative, led by Columbia University's International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), strives to overcome these challenges by co-developing tailored, actionable, and decision-relevant climate information with and for a wide variety of users at the local, regional, and national levels. This is accomplished through an approach emphasizing direct engagement with the National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHS) and users of their products, and investments in both technological and human capacities for improving the availability, access, and use of quality climate data and information products at decision-relevant spatial and temporal scales. In doing so, the ENACTS approach has been shown to be an effective means of transforming decision-making surrounding vulnerabilities and risks at multiple scales, through implementation in over a dozen countries at national level as well as at the regional levels in both East and West Africa. Through the ENACTS approach, challenges to availability of climate data are alleviated by combining quality-controlled station observations with global proxies to generate spatially and temporally complete climate datasets. Access to climate information is enhanced by developing an online mapping service that provides a user-friendly interface for analyzing and visualizing climate information products. Use of the generated climate data and the derived information products is promoted through raising awareness in relevant communities, training users, and co-production processes.

Towards the Political Economy of Scientific and Technological Development (on Russian Example).

The article identifies the key problems of the development of innovative economics in Russia. One of the key and large-scale problems is the weak commercialization of innovations created with budget funds: there are many inventions, but few innovations. At present, there is also a problem of scientific migration in Russia: a significant number of scientists leave the country, thereby subsidizing the scientific and technological development of other states. The key reason for this state of affairs is the lack of the necessary institutional infrastructure. The willingness to solve the identified problems is closely related to the availability of competencies - not only scientific, but also organizational, as well as the presence of incentives,including incentives associated with the costs of innovations - not only in terms of obtaining the necessary knowledge and necessary for their implementation in the production process resources, but also to overcome the resistance of those who lose from innovation. That is why, in order to assess the possibility of a scientific and technological turn, it is necessary to understand what the forces of resistance are, as well as the organizational potential of groups, presumably ready to solve problems.

THE MAIN DIRECTIONS OF INCREASING THE DEVELOPMENT EFFICIENCY OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP FROM THE EUROPEAN NORTH OF RUSSIA

The article is devoted to the actual issues of entrepreneurship and government interac-tion efficiency increasing. In case of entre-preneurship sectors from the European North of Russia it is established the lack of institutional infrastructure, the weak entre-preneurship involvement to the public-private partnership. The main plan packages, which could increase the regional entrepreneurship development efficiency, are proposed.

Analysis of the institutional landscape and proliferation of proposals for global vaccine equity for COVID-19: too many cooks or too many recipes?

This article outlines and compares current and proposed global institutional mechanisms to increase equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, focusing on their institutional and operational complementarities and overlaps. It specifically considers the World Health Organization's (WHO’s) COVAX (COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access) model as part of the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A) initiative, the WHO’s COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP) initiative, the proposed TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Agreement) intellectual property waiver and other proposed WHO and World Trade Organization technology transfer proposals. We argue that while various individual mechanisms each have their specific individual merits—and in some cases weaknesses—overall, many of these current and proposed mechanisms could be highly complementary if used together to deliver equitable global access to vaccines. Nonetheless, we also argue that there are risks posed by the proliferation of proposals in this context, including the potential to disperse stakeholder attention or to delay decisive action. Therefore, we argue that there is now a clear need for concerted global multilateral action to recognise the complementarities of specific models and to provide a pathway for collaboration in attaining global equitable access to vaccines. The institutional infrastructure or proposals to achieve this amply exist at this point in time—but much greater cooperation from industry and clear, decisive and coordinated action from states and international organisations are urgently needed.

Khoja Isma’ilis in Canada and the United States

Khojas constitute the predominant group in the Shi’a Nizari Isma’ili movement of Islam, globally and in North America. They are of South Asian ethnicities and belong to the 700-year old Satpanth tradition. Other groups attached to the movement are indigenous to Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and China. Khojas have led them in the formation of a diaspora spanning Asia, Africa, Europe, North America, and Australasia. This transnational religious collectivity holds Aga Khan IV, who ascended to leadership in 1957, to be its Imam in lineal descent from ‘Ali ibn ‘Abi Talib and Fatima, the Prophet Muhammad’s daughter. He has established a “Seat of the Imamat” (also designated a “Diwan”) in Lisbon, Portugal, and he resides in France, from where he provides religious and worldly guidance to followers around the world. The Imam appoints the leaders of the system of councils that govern the jamats (communities) in various countries. His non-denominational Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), which operates social, economic, and cultural programs, has become one of the world’s largest non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Elite Khoja families, particularly those of East African provenance, tend to dominate the leadership of the Imam’s institutions. They also have hegemony in the Canadian and American self-governance structures. As a group, Khojas are the wealthiest and most educated in the movement, offering substantial funding as well as professional and voluntary services to the Aga Khan’s institutional infrastructure. Their North American ranks provide a steady stream of monetary, physical, and intellectual resources for the Imam’s transnational programs. However, a paradox lies at the heart of the movement. The Satpanth tradition and Khoja cultural identity has been in the process of marginalization since the early 20th century. A steady effort has sought to eliminate what are perceived to be “Hindu” aspects of the Khojas’ religious and cultural heritage. The movement’s research, educational and cultural bodies give minimal attention to Satpanth. An essentialized Isma’ili Muslim identity is favored over what was, since the movement’s earliest days, a pluralist pursuit of universal truth.

Institutionally Speaking, are Global Standards Adoptable in a Given Jurisdiction? A Critical Analysis of the IFRS's Use in Ukraine through the Lens of New Institutional Accounting

This paper examines the consequences of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoption in Ukraine through the lens of New Institutional Accounting theory. IFRS adoption's effects on management's reporting incentives, enforcement and institutional complementarities are analysed. I find that adoption at a technical level is not enough to be called "adoption" as profound changes at the institutional level are also required. Adopted IFRS are subjected to the same type of institutional and market pressures that gave rise to the old set of standards and as a result, the practice of financial reporting is unchanged at its core while only new technical rules apply. Hence, jurisdictions should not pursue only technical adoption but should also try their best to align as close as possible all institutional aspects of this issue. The best advice for all jurisdictions with an institutional infrastructure similar to Ukraine's is to strengthen management's reporting incentives and enforcement mechanisms.

Capital Account Liberalization Institutions and Economic Growth in the Emerging World

Purpose: The relationship between capital account liberalization and economic growth has been a fervently discussed subject among economists and policy-makers. The role of institutions is imperious to comprehensively investigate the impact of financial openness on growth. The objective of the study is to inspect the nexus between financial liberalization and economic growth after incorporating the contribution of institutional quality. Methodology: A panel of data on 17 emerging market economies (EMEs) is used for the period 1995-2019. We employ the GMM technique by using different de facto and de jure measures of financial liberalization along with institutional variables. Findings: The empirical results illustrate that better quality institutions strengthen the connection between capital account liberalization and output growth in the emerging World. Implications: The policymakers should focus on the more beneficial nature of financial liberalization such as FDI. Also, the policy should be aiming at availing the services of efficient human resources with proper institutional infrastructure.

Evaluation of the effectiveness of innovative development in countries with different types of national innovation systems

Today, in the context of crisis phenomena, limited resources, external challenges and threats, the key importance in managing the economic systems of states is to maintain economic growth and sustainable economic development. One of the main factors for ensuring economic growth is the active introduction of innovations in various spheres of social production. With the help of innovations, the growth of the main macroeconomic indicators is carried out by reducing material costs (reducing energy intensity, capital intensity of production) and without additional involvement of labor in production. In the scientific literature, there are various models of the transition of the state’s economic system to the path of innovative development. The main condition for the effectiveness of the innovation process in the state is the integrity of its institutional infrastructure. In a broad sense, such an infrastructure is understood as a national innovation system (NIS). In the economic literature, there are three main types of NIS: Euro-Atlantic, Asian, and alternative. The article assesses the dependence of economic growth on the innovative development of states with different types of NIS. The factors that have the greatest impact on economic growth in the Russian Federation are identified, and the main directions for the development of innovation activities are formed, depending on the identified factors.