We study classical continuous automorphisms of the torus (cat maps) from the viewpoint of the Koopman theory. We find analytical formulae for Koopman modes defined coherently on the whole of the torus, and their decompositions associated with the partition of the torus into ergodic components. The spectrum of the Koopman operator is studied in four cases of cat maps: cyclic, quasi-cyclic, critical (transition from quasi-cyclic to chaotic behaviour) and chaotic. The synthetic spectrum associated with the ergodic decomposition is also studied.
Recent Large Vision-Language Models (LVLMs) have introduced a new paradigm for understanding and reasoning about image input through textual responses. Although they have achieved remarkable performance across a range of multi-modal tasks, they face the persistent challenge of hallucination, which introduces practical weaknesses and raises concerns about their reliable deployment in real-world applications. Existing work has explored contrastive decoding approaches to mitigate this issue, where the output of the original LVLM is compared and contrasted with that of a perturbed version. However, these methods require two or more queries that slow down LVLM response generation, making them less suitable for real-time applications. To overcome this limitation, we propose ONLY, a training-free decoding approach that requires only a single query and a one-layer intervention during decoding, enabling efficient real-time deployment. Specifically, we enhance textual outputs by selectively amplifying crucial textual information using a text-to-visual entropy ratio for each token. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that our proposed ONLY consistently outperforms state-of-the-art methods across various benchmarks while requiring minimal implementation effort and computational cost. Code is available at https://github.com/zifuwan/ONLY.
Usman Hamid is the Chairperson of the Public Virtue Institute and Director of Amnesty International Indonesia. He is also a lecturer at the Indonesia Jentera School of Law, a human rights lawyer, and a member of the expert council at the Indonesian Bar Association (PERADI-RBA). In 1998, as a student activist at Trisakti University, he became involved in protests that contributed to the fall of the Suharto regime. He subsequently became the coordinator of KontraS, the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence. In 2004, he was appointed to the Presidential Fact-Finding Team that investigated the murder of prominent human rights defender Munir Said Thalib. In 2011, he was appointed to the Presidential Unit for the Supervision of Development, where he reviewed Indonesia’s National Human Rights Action Plan for 2011–2014. This commentary reflects on the unmet expectations of human rights improvements during President Jokowi's two terms in Indonesia. Written from his perspective of a long-time human rights activist, Usman Hamid critiques Jokowi's failure to address key human rights issues, including past violations, minority protections, and civil liberties, despite Jokowis early promises. The author combines personal experiences with an analysis of Jokowi's political compromises and their impact on Indonesia's declining human rights landscape.
History of Asia, Unlocalized maps (Asian studies only)
This article investigates the nexus between private Islamic education initiatives and spiritual self-development trainings that address in particular Muslim women in Kyrgyzstan. Translating religious knowledge into a pedagogy for self-development that works through biography, embodiment and persuasive aesthetics, publicly active veiled Muslim women contribute to the pluralisation of Islamic knowledge circulation in Kyrgyzstan and shape a kind of female leadership distinct from that of traditional religious authorities. Tackling Muslim professionalism as a practice of articulation that works through an embodied pedagogy, the authors highlight how professional Muslim women engage in affective politics and construct collective subjectivities that build on notions of Muslim modernity by promoting the imaginary of the active, self-reliant and knowledgeable Muslim woman. Thinking Muslim professionalism through affective work, this article seeks to better understand how Muslim renewal and religious revitalisation inspire educational and media professionalism in today’s Kyrgyzstan. Furthermore, the paper discusses the ways in which publicly active veiled Muslim women build inclusive communities of belonging through professional activities that transcend social and spatial boundaries.
History of Asia, Unlocalized maps (Asian studies only)
Let $K$ be a nonempty subset of a Banach space $X$. A mapping $T\colon K\to K$ is called $\mathfrak{cm}$-nonexpansive if for any sequence $(u_i)_{i=1}^\infty$ and $y$ in $K$, $\limsup_{i\to\infty} \sup_{A\subset\{1,\dots, n\}}\|\sum_{k\in A} \big(T u_{i+k} - Ty\big)\|\leq \limsup_{i\to\infty} \sup_{A\subset\{1,\dots, n\}}\|\sum_{k\in A} (u_{i+k} - y)\|$ for all $n\in\mathbb{N}$. As a subclass of the class of nonexpansive maps, its FPP is well-established in a wide variety of spaces. The main result of this paper is a fixed point result relating $\mathfrak{cm}$-nonexpansiveness, $\ell_1$ spreading models and Schauder bases with not-so-large basis constants. As a consequence, we deduce that Banach spaces with the weak Banach-Saks property have the fixed point property for $\mathfrak{cm}$-nonexpansive maps.
Research in NLP for Central Asian Turkic languages - Kazakh, Uzbek, Kyrgyz, and Turkmen - faces typical low-resource language challenges like data scarcity, limited linguistic resources and technology development. However, recent advancements have included the collection of language-specific datasets and the development of models for downstream tasks. Thus, this paper aims to summarize recent progress and identify future research directions. It provides a high-level overview of each language's linguistic features, the current technology landscape, the application of transfer learning from higher-resource languages, and the availability of labeled and unlabeled data. By outlining the current state, we hope to inspire and facilitate future research.
As a type of figurative language, an East Asian idiom condenses rich cultural background into only a few characters. Translating such idioms is challenging for human translators, who often resort to choosing a context-aware translation from an existing list of candidates. However, compiling a dictionary of candidate translations demands much time and creativity even for expert translators. To alleviate such burden, we evaluate if GPT-4 can help generate high-quality translations. Based on automatic evaluations of faithfulness and creativity, we first identify Pareto-optimal prompting strategies that can outperform translation engines from Google and DeepL. Then, at a low cost, our context-aware translations can achieve far more high-quality translations per idiom than the human baseline. We open-source all code and data to facilitate further research.
Abstract The recent trend of the internationalization of higher education has increased the significance of English as a medium of instruction and communication on campus in non-English speaking countries. Within this context, this study explores emotional vulnerability of teachers of Korean as a second language (KSL) over their foreign language competency, particularly English. Analysis of interviews of twelve KSL teachers demonstrates these teachers’ divergent ways of interpreting and implementing Korean-only instruction, a prevalent norm within the language program, according to their perceived foreign language competency and relevant emotional vulnerability. KSL teachers with proficiency in other foreign language(s) tended to challenge the monolingual norm by utilizing their bilingual skills and experiences as resources for their teaching. Monolingual KSL teachers interpreted Korean-only narrowly and supported a monolingual immersion approach as a way to secure their teacher authority. Regardless of their attitudes towards the Korean-only instruction, however, most teachers experienced various levels of anxiety concerning their perceived lack of adequate English proficiency in the KSL classroom. The results suggest how second language teachers struggle to maintain legitimacy and authority against the hegemony of English in non-English second language contexts, providing implications for the language teacher education.
Low-cost and efficient dynamic monitoring of surface salinization information is critical in arid and semi-arid regions, we conducted a remote sensing inversion exercise for soil salinity in the Bosten Lake watershed in Xinjiang, Northwest China, with a total area of about 43,930 km2, a typical watershed in an arid area. Sentinel MSI and Landsat OLI data were combined with measured soil salinity data in July 2020, and optimal combination bands were selected based on characteristic bands to create a grid search-support vector machine (GS-SVM) inversion model of soil salt content. The maximum value of soil salt content in the Bosten Lake watershed was 11.8 g/kg. The minimum value was 0.41 g/kg, and the average value was 4.77 g/kg, soil salinization is serious. The results of previous studies were applied to the estimation of salt content in Bosten Lake watershed and could not meet the monitoring requirements of the study area, R2 < 0.3. The GS-SVM soil salinity monitoring model was established based on the optimal DI, RI, and NDI remote sensing indexes for the Bosten Lake watershed. After model verification, it was found that the optimal model of image data was the Landsat OLI first-derivative model with R2 of 0.64, RMSE of 3.12, and RPD of 1.64, indicating that the prediction ability of the model was high. We used the first-order derivative model of Landsat OLI data to map the soil salt content in the Bosten Lake watershed in arid area, and found that soil salt content in most of the study area was between 10 and 20 g/kg, indicating severe salinization. This study not only reveals the distribution characteristics of salinization in Bosten Lake watershed, but also provides a scientific basis for soil salinization monitoring in Central Asia to lay a foundation for further soil salinization monitoring in arid areas.
Recent research at the intersection of AI explainability and fairness has focused on how explanations can improve human-plus-AI task performance as assessed by fairness measures. We propose to characterize what constitutes an explanation that is itself "fair" -- an explanation that does not adversely impact specific populations. We formulate a novel evaluation method of "fair explanations" using not just accuracy and label time, but also psychological impact of explanations on different user groups across many metrics (mental discomfort, stereotype activation, and perceived workload). We apply this method in the context of content moderation of potential hate speech, and its differential impact on Asian vs. non-Asian proxy moderators, across explanation approaches (saliency map and counterfactual explanation). We find that saliency maps generally perform better and show less evidence of disparate impact (group) and individual unfairness than counterfactual explanations. Content warning: This paper contains examples of hate speech and racially discriminatory language. The authors do not support such content. Please consider your risk of discomfort carefully before continuing reading!
Background Asciminib is a first-in-class STAMP (Specifically Targeting the ABL Myristoyl Pocket) tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI). Its efficacy and safety profile in patients with chronic-phase chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML) have been shown in the Phase 3 ASCEMBL study, comparing asciminib 40 mg twice daily versus bosutinib 500 mg once daily. However, asciminib use in Chinese patients has hitherto not been reported. Moreover, the safety of high-dose asciminib (≥150 mg twice daily) in the Asian population is yet to be addressed. Here we present the real-world clinical outcomes of Chinese patients with Ph+ leukaemias in Hong Kong who received asciminib through a Managed Access Program (MAP). Methods Queen Mary Hospital (QMH) is a university-affiliated tertiary hospital in Hong Kong. Patients with Ph+ leukaemias under the care of QMH for whom asciminib was requested through MAP were included. Details on patient demographics, disease history, prior treatment lines, asciminib usage, adverse events, efficacy and death were collected. Results At data cut-off for analysis on 30 June 2023, 13 patients for whom asciminib was approved had data available. One patient passed away before the commencement of asciminib, and thus was excluded (Table 1). There were 7 patients with CML, who on diagnosis were all in chronic phase at a median age of 53 (22-70) years. All had received imatinib and at least one newer generation TKI, with 5 patients (71%) having received ponatinib. The majority (5 patients, 71%) received asciminib because of lack of efficacy of prior treatment, with 4 patients also having the T315I mutation. The median age at asciminib treatment (median dose: 400 mg, 80-400 mg) was 64 (28-76) years, with a median time from diagnosis of 81 (13-314) months. Two patients received imatinib concomitantly. The median duration of treatment was 12 (6-38) months. Two patients were already in at least major molecular response (MMR) before treatment, and have maintained that response. Two patients had ≥ 1-log reduction of BCR::ABL1 transcript level. Three patients had stable disease. There was one death unrelated to CML (Figure 1). There were 5 patients with Ph-positive acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL), at a median age of 57 (18-68) years at diagnosis. All had received prior chemotherapy in combination with a TKI (imatinib, N=3; dasatinib, N=5; ponatinib, N=5), with 3 patients having undergone allogeneic haematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HSCT). Three patients had detectable kinase domain mutation (T315I, N=2; E255K + E459K, N=1). The majority (3 patients, 60%) received asciminib because of lack of efficacy of prior treatment. The median age at asciminib treatment (median dose: 240 mg, 80-400 mg) was 58 (19-72) years, with a median time from diagnosis of 22 (7-47) months. The median duration of treatment was 16 (2-19) months. Four patients received another ATP-competitive TKI concomitantly (imatinib, N=1; dasatinib, N=1; ponatinib, N=2). For patients receiving asciminib due to prior treatment failure (N=3), complete molecular response (CMR) was achieved in 2 patients with measurable residual BCR:: ABL1; 1 patient with frank leukaemia achieved complete remission with incomplete hematologic recovery with molecular response at 0.06%. For two patients receiving asciminib because of intolerance to prior treatment, one further improved from MR4 to CMR while pre-existing CMR was maintained in the other patient. There were 3 deaths; 2 due to COVID-19 and 1 due to refractory leukaemia (Figure 1). Asciminib showed an acceptable safety profile, with raised lipase leading to dose reduction only in 1 patient. Grade 3 or above toxicities were all haematological, observed in 5 patients, 2 of whom had previous allo-HSCT. One patient on asciminib-ponatinib treatment developed grade 2 renal impairment. Conclusion Asciminib demonstrated promising clinical efficacy with satisfactory tolerance in this cohort of Ph+ leukaemias failing multiple lines of therapy. Further investigation of its therapeutic role in Ph+ ALL is warranted.
Lindsay A. Ross, Huah Shin Ng, Julia O’Mahony
et al.
Background Women with multiple sclerosis (MS) may face challenges related to managing reproduction, pregnancy, and menopause while simultaneously managing their disease. The purpose of this scoping review was to map the literature broadly related to topics relevant to women's health in MS to inform the clinical and research communities about the existing types and sources of evidence and knowledge gaps. Apart from coverage of topics within the field of women's health, we were interested in potential gaps related to geographic and racial and ethnic diversity. We also aimed to understand the degree of inclusion of women with progressive MS in this research. Methods We searched the EMBASE and Ovid Medline databases from 1980 until November 23, 2020. We included case-control and cohort studies, clinical trials and case series published in any language, conducted in women with MS, clinically isolated syndrome, or radiologically isolated syndrome, that addressed women's health. Two reviewers independently screened abstracts and full-text reports for study inclusion, and completed data extraction. Results Of 112,106 citations screened, 1,041 underwent full-text review and 353 met the inclusion criteria. The number of studies regarding women's health has increased exponentially over time. Almost half of the studies were conducted (at least in part) in Europe, while 21.7% were conducted in North America; only one study was conducted in Africa. Most studies did not report the race or ethnicity of their participants (n = 308, 87.2%). Among the 353 studies, 509 topics were reported as some studies addressed more than one topic. Over one-third of these focused on pregnancy (n = 201, 37.2%), followed by fetal/neonatal outcomes (14.4%) and sexual dysfunction (10%). Among the 201 studies that focused on pregnancy, only 51 (25.4%) included participants with progressive MS. Conclusions This review identifies important knowledge gaps related to women's health in MS and particularly the need for future studies to include participants with a broader range of races and ethnicities, with progressive MS, and living in Asia-Pacific and African regions.
Much of contemporary landslide research is concerned with predicting and mapping susceptibility to slope failure. Many studies rely on generalised linear models with environmental predictors that are trained with data collected from within and outside of the margins of mapped landslides. Whether and how the performance of these models depends on sample size, location, or time remains largely untested. We address this question by exploring the sensitivity of a multivariate logistic regression—one of the most widely used susceptibility models—to data sampled from different portions of landslides in two independent inventories (i.e. a historic and a multi-temporal) covering parts of the eastern rim of the Fergana Basin, Kyrgyzstan. We find that considering only areas on lower parts of landslides, and hence most likely their deposits, can improve the model performance by >10% over the reference case that uses the entire landslide areas, especially for landslides of intermediate size. Hence, using landslide toe areas may suffice for this particular model and come in useful where landslide scars are vague or hidden in this part of Central Asia. The model performance marginally varied after progressively updating and adding more landslides data through time. We conclude that landslide susceptibility estimates for the study area remain largely insensitive to changes in data over about a decade. Spatial or temporal stratified sampling contributes only minor variations to model performance. Our findings call for more extensive testing of the concept of dynamic susceptibility and its interpretation in data-driven models, especially within the broader framework of landslide risk assessment under environmental and land-use change.
This article offers an ideological examination of China’s ecological civilisation initiative with respect to its globalisation agenda. The basic argument is that the Chinese state’s eco-civilisation project is an open-ended, statist technocratic bricolage that appropriates a philosophy of human–nature harmony and facilitates a reformed communism intended to enchant both domestic and global audiences with a set of human universal values. The article considers eco-civilisation to be technically devised as an attractive initiative packed with the Chinese state’s propagated universal values without a specific manual of operations. It is a one-size-fits-all concept but provides enough room for creative tailoring under specific circumstances in different geographical, cultural, economic and political contexts. In the course of delivering this argument, the article discusses how eco-civilisation is domestically and internationally promoted and how it is an inherent part of the renewed but reformed communism of the Chinese state.
History of Asia, Unlocalized maps (Asian studies only)
Jahnavi Yidavalapati, Priyanka Sinha, Subaveerapandiyan A
The study examined the research data management and related services offered by South Asian countries' academic libraries. Research applied quantitative approach and survey research design method were used for this study. The survey questionnaire was distributed randomly to academic library professionals in five countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. The sample population comprised 67 library professionals from various institutes of five countries. The study recommends that institutes or funding organizations support staff to attend conferences and workshops on research data management, library professionals have to join MOOC to take courses related to research data services, Institute or professionals conduct in-house staff workshops and presentations. The study also found that 64.2 per cent agreed compliance with funder requirements and preservation are major issues.