Hasil untuk "Asia and Eurasia, Africa, Pacific Area, and Antarctica"

Samhita Pal, Jared D. Huling, Amir Asiaee

We develop estimators that improve precision of heterogeneous treatment effect estimates that allow borrowing information from observational studies when the available covariates in each data source do not perfectly match. Standard data-borrowing methods often assume perfectly matched covariates. We propose MR-OSCAR, an RCT-calibrated, two-stage estimation approach that first predicts the trial-missing variables using the observational data via imputation and then calibrates observational outcome predictions to the randomized trial, preserving the causal contrast, unlike the results for generalization, where imputation does not improve performance. Our theory gives finite-sample guarantees with a transparent error decomposition including an imputation error that shrinks as the observational mapping becomes more predictable. Simulations show that imputation almost always outperforms naively using only the shared covariates and clarifies when borrowing helps (strong predictability of the missing block, moderate trial size) and when it does not (poor predictability or dominant trial-only moderators). We motivate the approach with the Greenlight Plus trial on early childhood obesity and outline a forthcoming EHR analysis at Vanderbilt, highlighting the use of our method in common scenarios where data do not perfectly align.

Zhixiang Lu, Chong Zhang, Yulong Li et al.

The vision of an inclusive World Wide Web is impeded by a severe linguistic divide, particularly for communities in low-resource regions of Southeast Asia. While large language models (LLMs) offer a potential solution for translation, their deployment in data-poor contexts faces a dual challenge: the scarcity of high-quality, culturally relevant data and the prohibitive energy costs of training on massive, noisy web corpora. To resolve the tension between digital inclusion and environmental sustainability, we introduce Sustainable Agent-Guided Expert-tuning (SAGE). This framework pioneers an energy-aware paradigm that prioritizes the "right data" over "big data". Instead of carbon-intensive training on unfiltered datasets, SAGE employs a reinforcement learning (RL) agent, optimized via Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO), to autonomously curate a compact training set. The agent utilizes a semantic reward signal derived from a small, expert-constructed set of community dialogues to filter out noise and cultural misalignment. We then efficiently fine-tune open-source LLMs on this curated data using Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA). We applied SAGE to translation tasks between English and seven low-resource languages (LRLs) in Southeast Asia. Our approach establishes new state-of-the-art performance on BLEU-4 and COMET-22 metrics, effectively capturing local linguistic nuances. Crucially, SAGE surpasses baselines trained on full datasets while reducing data usage by 97.1% and training energy consumption by 95.2%. By delivering high-performance models with a minimal environmental footprint, SAGE offers a scalable and responsible pathway to bridge the digital divide in the Global South.

Dobrinskaya O.A.

The article examines the dynamics of Japanese-Indian relations during the Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's tenure in Japan. The realist approach, which seems to be the most suitable for analyzing the “diplomacy of realism” proclaimed by the Japanese leadership, is chosen as an analytical prism. Particular attention is paid to the political aspects of relations, as well as security issues and economic cooperation.Kishida Fumio returned the dynamics inherent in the bilateral dialogue during Shinzo Abe's time in power and temporarily lost under Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide, and continued developing relations in a wide range of areas. In general, F. Kishida's policy towards India demonstrates continuity, which indicates the stability of S. Abe's pragmatic course towards rapprochement. Despite the divergence of positions on the Ukrainian issue, bilateral ties remain strong due to the presence of common interests in the political and economic spheres. Japan considers India a like-minded country and a Quad ally, seeing it as a counterweight to China in the region.

Jessica Pidoux, Sofia Kypraiou, Sonia Kgomo et al.

Content moderation and data labelling work has shifted to the Global South, particularly Africa, where workers operate under precarious conditions while remaining invisible to users. This study addresses the gap in understanding the scope of this industry and the working conditions of African content moderation workforce through a participatory approach. We collaborated with a union of content moderators to conduct desk research, deploy a questionnaire (n=81), and gather ethnographic observations across nine months that could answer their social needs. Our findings show that content moderation operations span 43 out of 55 African countries, involving 17 major firms serving predominantly North-American and European clients, with workers facing insecurity and inadequate psychological support. We contribute the first comprehensive map of Africa's content moderation industry, demonstrate a participatory methodology that centers workers' collective actions in documenting their conditions, and apply Honneth's ``struggle for recognition'' framework to understand data workers' demands for professional acknowledgement.

Mahsa Jahangiri, Afrooz Jouzdani, Hamid Reza Khalesifard

Dust layers have already been reported to have negative impacts on the radiation budget of the atmosphere. But the questions are: How does the atmospheric surface temperature change during a dust outbreak, and what is its temporal correlation with variations of the dust outbreak strength? We investigated these at selected AERONET sites, including Bahrain, IASBS, Karachi, KAUST Campus, Kuwait University, Lahore, Mezaira, Solar Village, in Southwest Asia, and Dushanbe in Central Asia, using available data from 1998 to 2024. The aerosol optical depth at 870 nm and the temperature recorded at each site are taken as measures of dust outbreak strength and atmospheric surface temperature, respectively. The Hybrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (HYSPLIT) model and the aerosol optical depths recorded by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometers (MODIS) on board the Aqua and Terra satellites are used to specify the sources of the dust outbreaks. Our investigations show that in most cases, the temperature decreases during a dust outbreak, but in a considerable number of cases, the temperature rises. Temperature changes are mostly less than 5 °C. We found that a dust outbreak may affect the temperature even up to two days after its highest intensity time. This effect is more profound at sites far from large dust sources, such as IASBS in northwest Iran. For sites that are located on either a dust source or very close to it, the temperature and dust optical depth vary almost synchronously.

Amir Asiaee, Samhita Pal, James O'quinn et al.

We study causal discovery from observational data in linear Gaussian systems affected by \emph{mixed latent confounding}, where some unobserved factors act broadly across many variables while others influence only small subsets. This setting is common in practice and poses a challenge for existing methods: differentiable and score-based DAG learners can misinterpret global latent effects as causal edges, while latent-variable graphical models recover only undirected structure. We propose \textsc{DCL-DECOR}, a modular, precision-led pipeline that separates these roles. The method first isolates pervasive latent effects by decomposing the observed precision matrix into a structured component and a low-rank component. The structured component corresponds to the conditional distribution after accounting for pervasive confounders and retains only local dependence induced by the causal graph and localized confounding. A correlated-noise DAG learner is then applied to this deconfounded representation to recover directed edges while modeling remaining structured error correlations, followed by a simple reconciliation step to enforce bow-freeness. We provide identifiability results that characterize the recoverable causal target under mixed confounding and show how the overall problem reduces to well-studied subproblems with modular guarantees. Synthetic experiments that vary the strength and dimensionality of pervasive confounding demonstrate consistent improvements in directed edge recovery over applying correlated-noise DAG learning directly to the confounded data.

Samhita Pal, James O'quinn, Kaveh Aryan et al.

We study structure learning for linear Gaussian SEMs in the presence of latent confounding. Existing continuous methods excel when errors are independent, while deconfounding-first pipelines rely on pervasive factor structure or nonlinearity. We propose \textsc{DECOR}, a single likelihood-based and fully differentiable estimator that jointly learns a DAG and a correlated noise model. Our theory gives simple sufficient conditions for global parameter identifiability: if the mixed graph is bow free and the noise covariance has a uniform eigenvalue margin, then the map from $(\B,\OmegaMat)$ to the observational covariance is injective, so both the directed structure and the noise are uniquely determined. The estimator alternates a smooth-acyclic graph update with a convex noise update and can include a light bow complementarity penalty or a post hoc reconciliation step. On synthetic benchmarks that vary confounding density, graph density, latent rank, and dimension with $n<p$, \textsc{DECOR} matches or outperforms strong baselines and is especially robust when confounding is non-pervasive, while remaining competitive under pervasiveness.

Zakharova L.V.

The DPRK has historically directed significant efforts and resources to strengthening its defense capabilities, due to ongoing security challenges to the country. The article examines the origins and features of militarization in the economic model of the DPRK and reveals its specifics at the present stage. The study is based on the analysis of official North Korean statements and publications, as well as academic works of Russian and foreign researchers. In the 21st century, in a hostile military-political situation, the DPRK maintains a large army, and the development of the military-industrial complex remains a priority, with a focus on the implementation of high-tech nuclear and missile programs. The militarization of the economy will continue to be an integral feature of the DPRK’s economic model for the foreseeable future. It involves, on the one hand, the diversion of significant resources for military purposes, and, on the other hand, provides the country's leadership with the opportunity to solve national economic tasks by mobilizing the army and the military-industrial complex.

Priyanshi Singhai, Kathy Pegion, Akintomide A. Akinsanola et al.

This study explores the mechanisms behind anomalous positive and negative rainfall events in the southeastern United States (SEUS), emphasizing the interplay between upper-level large-scale atmospheric teleconnections and the lower-level North Atlantic Subtropical High (NASH). Through a novel conditional weather regime analysis of geopotential height at both lower and upper levels across the Pacific-North America-Atlantic region, we identify distinct clusters representing persistent and recurring circulation patterns originating from the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Our analysis of lower-level conditional weather regimes reveals two distinct phases of the NASH that influence rainfall patterns in the SEUS region. In one phase, the weakening and eastward shift of the NASH's northern boundary reduces the central low-level jet, enhances cyclonic circulation, and increases rainfall in the SEUS. In the other phase, the excessive latent heating associated with enhanced SEUS rainfall triggers a wave train pattern that strengthens the intensity of NASH. Conversely, the opposite conditions apply during anomalous negative rainfall events. Additionally, the upper-level conditional weather regime indicates that large-scale dynamics of East Asian summer monsoons trigger the Rossby wave patterns, contributing considerably to the variability in SEUS rainfall from the upper levels. Therefore, our research highlights the crucial role of global atmospheric teleconnections at upper and lower levels in shaping SEUS precipitation patterns.

Mercy Nyamewaa Asiedu, Iskandar Haykel, Awa Dieng et al.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) for health has the potential to significantly change and improve healthcare. However in most African countries, identifying culturally and contextually attuned approaches for deploying these solutions is not well understood. To bridge this gap, we conduct a qualitative study to investigate the best practices, fairness indicators, and potential biases to mitigate when deploying AI for health in African countries, as well as explore opportunities where artificial intelligence could make a positive impact in health. We used a mixed methods approach combining in-depth interviews (IDIs) and surveys. We conduct 1.5-2 hour long IDIs with 50 experts in health, policy, and AI across 17 countries, and through an inductive approach we conduct a qualitative thematic analysis on expert IDI responses. We administer a blinded 30-minute survey with case studies to 672 general population participants across 5 countries in Africa and analyze responses on quantitative scales, statistically comparing responses by country, age, gender, and level of familiarity with AI. We thematically summarize open-ended responses from surveys. Our results find generally positive attitudes, high levels of trust, accompanied by moderate levels of concern among general population participants for AI usage for health in Africa. This contrasts with expert responses, where major themes revolved around trust/mistrust, ethical concerns, and systemic barriers to integration, among others. This work presents the first-of-its-kind qualitative research study of the potential of AI for health in Africa from an algorithmic fairness angle, with perspectives from both experts and the general population. We hope that this work guides policymakers and drives home the need for further research and the inclusion of general population perspectives in decision-making around AI usage.

Jean Paolo Lacap

The Thai yaoi culture is getting a lot of attention in several parts of the world. Numerous Thai boy’s love (BL) series are a huge hit in Thailand and other countries. Despite the notable success of Thai yaoi and BL culture, there is less attention given to this topic in past studies and literature. Moreover, no study has investigated how yaoi culture may affect travel motivation. Hence, the present study examines the effect of yaoi media consumption on travel motivation of Filipino viewers of Thai boys’ love series. A prediction approach was employed, and partial least squares (PLS) path modelling was used to measure the hypothesized relationships. The study reveals that all dimensions of cultural proximity significantly affect Thai yaoi media consumption, and Thai yaoi media consumption was found to have an influence on emotional involvement and travel motivation. Emotional involvement was also found to significantly affect travel motivation, and, at the same time, act as a mediator between Thai yaoi media consumption and travel motivation. The current research offers novel theoretical insights about media consumption and its relation to travel motivation in the context of Thai pop-cultural boys’ love series.

Domakhina Yu.A.

The article highlights the role of the Japan-U.S. military Alliance in regional security at the present stage. The Asia-Pacific region is an important economic and political center that continues to develop at a rapid pace. At the same time, the region's hotbeds of instability and complex of unresolved problems have a negative impact on regional security. The Japan-U.S. Alliance has adapted to modern realities and has gained prominence in the regional security system. The author analyzes the current factors of strengthening the Alliance, including its relations with China and Russia and the situation on the Korean peninsula. The article examines the main contradictions that exist in Japan-China, Japan-North Korea and Japan-Russia relations. Japan continues to consider China and the DPRK as the main sources of threats to regional security. The territorial dispute over the Senkaku (Diaoyu) archipelago remains a stumbling block in Sino-Japanese relations, which also got greatly complicated due to the increased activity of China in the region, particularly in the East China Sea. North Korea's nuclear program and continued missile tests are a serious factor of instability in the Asia-Pacific region and the present situation in the Korean peninsula is a great concern to a number of countries, including Japan. As for Russia-Japan relations, for a long time the main disagreement has been the absence of a peace treaty and Tokyo's territorial claims, but the Ukrainian factor has contributed to increasing tensions between the two countries. The article gives the forecast for Japan's future policy, which would aim to strengthen the alliance, and analyzes the role of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD), which includes both Japan and the United States. The author describes the formation of the dialogue, gives a description of its current course of action and makes predictions about its future development. Despite the strong cooperation between the participants in the security field, today the structure of QUAD is still closer to a forum than to a full-fledged organization.

Kim En Un

Almost 70 years ago, on July 27, 1953 the representatives of the warring parties of the DPRK and PRC – the Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army (KPA), leader of the DPRK Kim Il Sung and the Commander of the Chinese People's Volunteer Army, General (one of the 10 marshals of the PRC) Peng Dehuai, along with the Commander-in-Chief of the UN Command, American General Mark W. Clark, signed the Korean Armistice Agreement. One of the main participants in the war, South Korea, represented by the President Rhee Syngman, refused to sign it, and since then Seoul has not changed its position on this document. The article examines the circumstances of the outbreak of the Korean War of 1950–1953, its causes, nature, results, as well as the reasons why it remains unfinished up to this day. The author draws historical parallels with other similar conflicts and suggests the prospects and possibilities of a legal end to the Korean War.

Kobelev E.V.

The presented historic essay is dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Paris Agreement on ending the war and restoring peace in Vietnam (January 27, 1973). The author analyzes the main Vietnamese publications over this period, which show the process of the political leadership of the United States and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam realizing the need and possibility of a political settlement of a long military conflict, as well as the most important features of the Paris negotiations and their completion on terms that meet the national interests of the Vietnamese people. The essay pays primary attention to the book of memoirs of a direct participant in the negotiations, a representative of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam Nguyen Thi Binh “Family, friends and homeland. Memories”. Separate sections of this book are given verbatim in the essay, from which the reader can learn the details of the long negotiation process and their personal perception by the author of the memoirs. The essay also highly appreciates the role of the main Vietnamese “negotiator”, the Secretary of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Vietnam Le Duc Tho, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his great contribution in achieving the Paris Agreement, but refused to accept it on principled grounds.

Antje Missbach, Jemma Purdey

Australia is a sought-after destination for international students, including from countries of the Global South such as Indonesia. Prior to the pandemic, the tertiary education of international students was its second largest export. At the onset of the pandemic, Australia’s Prime Minister told international students they should return home immediately, warning them that they would not be supported by the government if they chose to stay. Throughout 2020 and 2021, Australian media outlets offered shocking reports and images of international students who had lost their homes and were queuing at soup kitchens. Experts feared that these images and the overall treatment of international students would do long-lasting damage not only to the education sector but also to Australia’s people-to-people relations overseas. In this article, we explore the destinies of postgraduate students from Indonesia during the pandemic in Australia. As Indonesia’s closest neighbor, Australia is the preferred destination for Indonesian students studying abroad and Australia has targeted Indonesia as a growth market in recent years. Based on qualitative interview data, we offer a picture of how this cohort of international students “muddled through” the pandemic. We ask what damage may have been done by the Australian government’s closure of its international borders and strict pandemic restrictions to its reputation as a welcoming country and center of educational excellence. What consequences might there be for this vital Indonesia–Australia relationship, in particular, and for the future of student and broader university engagement between the two countries? Our findings show a much more optimistic outlook than expected.

N. H. Idris, S. Vignudelli, X. Deng

This paper presents the assessment of altimetric data from Sentinel-3A satellite operating in Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) mode for sea level research studies and applications over the largest archipelagos at Southeast Asia. Both qualitative and quantitative assessments are conducted by analysing the physical shapes of waveforms, comparing with quasi-independent geoidal height data and independent tide gauge measurements. The results identified the percentage of ocean like and non-ocean like waveforms are 91% and 9%, respectively. Off 9% of non-ocean like waveforms, the major class is multi-peak (7%) followed by the quasi-specular waveforms (2%) observed near the coastline (<10 km). Ocean like waveforms typically appear beyond 500 m from the coastline. When comparing with geoidal heights and tide gauge measurements, the performance of sea levels from several retrackers are assessed. The SAMOSA+ retracker outperforms other retrackers (i.e. sub-waveform and modified threshold retrackers with 30%, 20% and 10%). That is, the standard deviation of differences against geoidal heights, and the temporal correlation against tide gauges are superior in most cases. In terms of root mean square error (RMSE), all retrackers are ranging with RMSE <20 cm in all cases. It can be concluded that in general, the SAMOSA+ retracked sea levels are accurate over the complicated regions at the Southeast Asia.

George Boateng, Samuel John, Samuel Boateng et al.

Africa has a high student-to-teacher ratio which limits students' access to teachers for learning support such as educational question answering. In this work, we extended Kwame, a bilingual AI teaching assistant for coding education, adapted it for science education, and deployed it as a web app. Kwame for Science provides passages from well-curated knowledge sources and related past national exam questions as answers to questions from students based on the Integrated Science subject of the West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (WASSCE). Furthermore, students can view past national exam questions along with their answers and filter by year, question type, and topics that were automatically categorized by a topic detection model which we developed (91% unweighted average recall). We deployed Kwame for Science in the real world over 8 months and had 750 users across 32 countries (15 in Africa) and 1.5K questions asked. Our evaluation showed an 87.2% top 3 accuracy (n=109 questions) implying that Kwame for Science has a high chance of giving at least one useful answer among the 3 displayed. We categorized the reasons the model incorrectly answered questions to provide insights for future improvements. We also share challenges and lessons with the development, deployment, and human-computer interaction component of such a tool to enable other researchers to deploy similar tools. With a first-of-its-kind tool within the African context, Kwame for Science has the potential to enable the delivery of scalable, cost-effective, and quality remote education to millions of people across Africa.

N'kouano Anasthasie N’Toumon

Le droit de la concurrence de l’UEMOA présente une nette similitude avec le droit européen. Mais il s’en éloigne car les règles importantes du système de droit européen font défaut au droit UEMOA de la concurrence. Le fait que le système juridique de l'Union européenne soit étranger au contexte ouest-africain donne lieu à de sérieux problèmes qui doivent être progressivement résolus. Il est particulièrement important de restructurer les autorités de concurrence, la procédure de la Commission et de régler le problème de la répartition des compétences. C’est pour cela qu’une réforme du droit UEMOA de la concurrence s’impose.

Polenova A.L.

The cooperation of the DPRK and the Republic of Korea (ROK) in the spheres of culture, sports and science is a crucial component of relations between these countries. The latest decade, which began with Kim Jong-un coming to power in the DPRK, included some rewarding and diverse cultural and humanitarian events such as the Olympic warming of 2018, when the world witnessed an activation of interKorean diplomatic dialogue. The article provides examples of both successful and failed joint initiatives in cultural and humanitarian spheres. Among them are symbolically important performances of the joint Korean team during major sports events, exchanges of music concerts, projects involving visual arts. Both sides have taken measures to vitalize scientific cooperation, but did not succeed. After the political dialogue returned to former tense state, cooperation in cultural and humanitarian spheres also came to naught even before the DPRK closed its borders in 2020 due to the COVID-19 epidemic

Shixian Zhai, Daniel J. Jacob, Drew C. Pendergrass et al.

Coarse particulate matter (PM) is a serious air pollution problem in East Asia. Analysis of air quality network observations in the North China Plain and the Seoul Metropolitan Area shows that it is mainly anthropogenic and has decreased by 21% over 2015-2019. This anthropogenic coarse PM is generally not included in air quality models but scavenges nitric acid to suppress the formation of fine particulate (PM2.5) nitrate, a major contributor to PM2.5 pollution. Including it in the GEOS-Chem model decreases simulated PM2.5 nitrate to improve agreement with observations. Decreasing anthropogenic coarse PM over 2015-2019 directly increases PM2.5 nitrate in summer, offsetting the effect of other emission controls, while in winter it increases the sensitivity of PM2.5 nitrate to ammonia and sulfur dioxide emissions. Our work implies the need for stronger ammonia and nitrogen oxides emission controls to improve PM2.5 air quality as coarse PM continues to decrease.