Results of the study of demographic problems in Russia in the 21st century

Demographic problems are among the most acute in modern Russia. This is evidenced by the great attention paid to them by the authorities, the media, and public organizations. Demographic science uses its own methods to find the ways to solve the existing problems. And in Russia the coverage of demographic problems in scientific publications has a special perspective, since on the one hand, specialists are professionally versed in the topic and see nuances incomprehensible "from the outside". On the other hand, many researchers in the field of social sciences are characterized by a critical approach to any actions of the authorities, and the existing achievements may be downplayed, as they do not reach the final goal. In particular, firstly, the mortality rate in Russia has been decreasing for almost all the years of the 21st century, but it is still very high as compared to most European countries. Secondly, the birth rate in the country is low by world standards, but it is higher than in most European countries. As a result, these facts are interpreted in different ways both in a positive and in a negative way. At the same time, all demographic projections indicate that in the coming decades the natural decline of the Russian population will continue. And to solve this problem, it is necessary to search for new approaches, measures of demographic policy that is impossible without combined efforts of all domestic demographers, despite theoretical, practical and other differences. The national project "Demography" and related programs ("Health Care" and others) can solve problems only subject to necessary scientific development of the proposed measures and their adaptation to the real Russian conditions.

DEPOPULATION IN PERIPHERAL REGIONS OF EASTERN POLAND – DETERMINANTS AND CONSEQUENCES

The study examines demographic processes and the resulting challenges for the development of areas at risk of depopulation. The research covered regions defined as NUTS 2 in European Union nomenclature and classified as the Eastern Poland Macroregion in Polish regional policy. This macroregion is counted among the peripheral regions of Poland. The demographic processes taking place within these regions, and especially in many local administrative units (LAU 2), point to a threat of depopulation. The scope of the detailed study is from 2010 to 2020. Descriptive, tabular and graphical methods, as well as demographic projections until 2040 were used to analyse and present the materials for the analysed provinces. It was found that unfavourable demographic processes are intensifying and pose a threat to socio-economic development, especially for the peripheral rural communes of these regions. Progressing decline in fertility, increasing life expectancy, as well as intensified migration processes lead to unfavourable changes in the population structure, and, in the long run, to depopulation, which will undoubtedly multiply economic and social problems in these regions.

Future Cinema: The Transition From Film-Making To Experience-Making Experiencing Alzheimer's Through Immersive Design For Emotions And Empathy In Extended Realities

Demographic projections of many western democracies show them to be aging nations. To keep thriving we must ensure that our citizens are aging in a healthy manner without isolation from society. This means, in turn, that we must increase our understanding for the experience of aging in society. Alzheimer’s disease is one of the most misunderstood conditions for our aging populations, and is a problematic condition for caregivers and family members to support. This MRP seeks to build extended reality experiences that immerse users emotionally in some of the symptoms of aging and Alzheimer’s to build understanding and empathy. The project seeks to use mixed reality to make a positive social impact on the general population.

Future Cinema: The Transition From Film-Making To Experience-Making Experiencing Alzheimer's Through Immersive Design For Emotions And Empathy In Extended Realities

Demographic projections of many western democracies show them to be aging nations. To keep thriving we must ensure that our citizens are aging in a healthy manner without isolation from society. This means, in turn, that we must increase our understanding for the experience of aging in society. Alzheimer’s disease is one of the most misunderstood conditions for our aging populations, and is a problematic condition for caregivers and family members to support. This MRP seeks to build extended reality experiences that immerse users emotionally in some of the symptoms of aging and Alzheimer’s to build understanding and empathy. The project seeks to use mixed reality to make a positive social impact on the general population.

Activity Recognition for Ambient Assisted Living with Videos, Inertial Units and Ambient Sensors

Worldwide demographic projections point to a progressively older population. This fact has fostered research on Ambient Assisted Living, which includes developments on smart homes and social robots. To endow such environments with truly autonomous behaviours, algorithms must extract semantically meaningful information from whichever sensor data is available. Human activity recognition is one of the most active fields of research within this context. Proposed approaches vary according to the input modality and the environments considered. Different from others, this paper addresses the problem of recognising heterogeneous activities of daily living centred in home environments considering simultaneously data from videos, wearable IMUs and ambient sensors. For this, two contributions are presented. The first is the creation of the Heriot-Watt University/University of Sao Paulo (HWU-USP) activities dataset, which was recorded at the Robotic Assisted Living Testbed at Heriot-Watt University. This dataset differs from other multimodal datasets due to the fact that it consists of daily living activities with either periodical patterns or long-term dependencies, which are captured in a very rich and heterogeneous sensing environment. In particular, this dataset combines data from a humanoid robot’s RGBD (RGB + depth) camera, with inertial sensors from wearable devices, and ambient sensors from a smart home. The second contribution is the proposal of a Deep Learning (DL) framework, which provides multimodal activity recognition based on videos, inertial sensors and ambient sensors from the smart home, on their own or fused to each other. The classification DL framework has also validated on our dataset and on the University of Texas at Dallas Multimodal Human Activities Dataset (UTD-MHAD), a widely used benchmark for activity recognition based on videos and inertial sensors, providing a comparative analysis between the results on the two datasets considered. Results demonstrate that the introduction of data from ambient sensors expressively improved the accuracy results.

Regional concentration of higher education

This research article focuses on the regional concentration of higher education. The purpose of the research is to examine the effects of this concentration and to devise some possible outcomes and implications for the regional economic growth and development. We discuss the endogeneity of higher education and evaluate the differences such as the official demographic projections or the growth-related factors, including student numbers predicted by official statisticians. Our article contributes to ongoing research on the role of higher education in promoting regional economic development and emerging inequalities in the regions around the world. In addition, it focuses on the existence of the multiple channels of activity through which tertiary education institutions (TEIs) benefit their regional economies. In addition, the paper tackles the issue of regional concentration of TEIs within and across regions and clearly demonstrates how the geography of higher education has evolved and developed in the recent years.

UN POPULATİON PROSPECTS: CASE OF CENTRAL ASİA

The world’s populatıon is expected to increase by 2 billion people within the next 30 years, from current 7.7 billion to 9.7 billion in 2050. By 2050, the population of Central Asia is expected to grow by 36.9%, which is faster than the world average of 26.2%, crossing benchmark of 100 million people. Under conditions of UN demographic projections, Kazakhstan would need to maintain its yearly real GDP growth between 4.3% and 4.7% throughout 2020-2050 in order to maintain its current level of welfare relative to the rest of the world. Kazakhstan, as well as the entire region of Central Asia, has a demographic profile that is very favorable for having economic growth within the next three decades.

Microsimulation of Residential Activity for Alternative Urban Development Scenarios: A Case Study on Brussels and Flemish Brabant

The historically rooted suburbanization of Flanders and the Brussels Capital Region (BCR) in Belgium has resulted in severe urban sprawl, traffic congestion, natural land degradation and many related problems. Recent policy proposals put forward by the two regions aim for more compact urban development in well-serviced areas. Yet, it is unclear how these proposed policies may impact residential dynamics over the coming decades. To address this issue, we developed a Residential Microsimulation (RM) framework that spatially refines coarse-scale demographic projections at the district level to the level of census tracts. The validation of simulated changes from 2001 to 2011 reveals that the proposed framework succeeds in modelling historic trends and clearly outperforms a random model. To support simulation from 2011 to 2040, two alternative urban development scenarios are defined. The Business As Usual (BAU) scenario essentially represents a continuation of urban sprawl development, whereas the Sustainable Development (SUS) scenario strives for higher-density development around strategic well-serviced nodes in line with proposed policies. This study demonstrates how residential microsimulation supported by scenario analysis can play a constructive role in urban policy design and evaluation.