Hasil untuk "Sociology"

Z. Bauman

Kevin Baum, Johann Laux

As AI systems increasingly permeate high-stakes decision-making, the terminology regarding human involvement - Human-in-the-Loop (HITL), Human-on-the-Loop (HOTL), and Human Oversight - has become vexingly ambiguous. This ambiguity complicates interdisciplinary collaboration between computer science, law, philosophy, psychology, and sociology and can lead to regulatory uncertainty. We propose a clarification grounded in causal structure, focused on human involvement during the runtime of AI systems. The distinction between HITL and HOTL, we argue, is not primarily spatial but causal: HITL is constitutive (a human contribution is necessary for the decision output), while HOTL is corrective (external to the primary causal chain, capable of preventing or modifying outputs). Within HOTL, we distinguish three temporal modes - synchronous, asynchronous, and anticipatory - situated within a nested model of provider and deployer runtime that clarifies their different capacities for intervention. A second, orthogonal dimension captures cognitive integration: whether human and machine operate as complementary or hybrid intelligence, yielding four structurally distinct configurations. Finally, we distinguish these descriptive categories from the normative requirements they serve: statutory "Human Oversight" is a specific normative mode of HOTL that demands not merely a corrective causal position, but genuine preparedness and capacity for effective intervention. Because the same person may occupy both HITL and HOTL roles simultaneously, we argue that this role duality must be treated as a design problem requiring architectural and epistemic mitigation rather than mere acknowledgment.

Jinzhou Luo, Jiazhao Sun, Xiaoli Hao et al.

<i>Myzus persicae</i> is the most devastating piercing-sucking pest threatening tobacco production. Precise quantification of infestation severity is a prerequisite for precision pest management, making the integration of visual image analysis highly essential for efficient management. Current computer vision models in modern agriculture are primarily designed for classifying various pest species, and there is a lack of image-driven analytical tools for assessing the severity of damage inflicted by a single target pest. To supplement existing analytical tools and enable the graded recognition of tobacco aphid (<i>M. persicae</i>) infestation levels, we propose the Aphid-ResNetSwin model. This model is constructed by integrating a Global Channel-Spatial Attention module (a specialized attention mechanism) into the well-established InceptionResNetV2 architecture. Performance evaluation results demonstrated that the Aphid-ResNetSwin model achieved a graded recognition accuracy of 89.11%. Compared with widely adopted mainstream baseline models in computer vision, such as MobileNetV3, SwinTransformer, and InceptionResNetV2, our proposed model exhibited superior performance in recognition accuracy. Furthermore, the classification accuracy of our model for <i>M. persicae</i> infestation across all severity levels was significantly higher than that of manual identification, with the exception of healthy leaves. Collectively, our findings indicate that the Aphid-ResNetSwin model provides a robust tool for the graded recognition of <i>M. persicae</i> infestation, offering valuable model-based support for the precision control of aphids in tobacco fields.

Xuyan Ma, Yawen Wang, Junjie Wang et al.

In typical multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) problems, communication is important for agents to share information and make the right decisions. However, due to the complexity of training multi-agent communication, existing methods often fall into the dilemma of local optimization, which leads to the concentration of communication in a limited number of channels and presents an unbalanced structure. Such unbalanced communication policy are vulnerable to abnormal conditions, where the damage of critical communication channels can trigger the crash of the entire system. Inspired by decentralization theory in sociology, we propose DMAC, which enhances the robustness of multi-agent communication policies by retraining them into decentralized patterns. Specifically, we train an adversary DMAC\_Adv which can dynamically identify and mask the critical communication channels, and then apply the adversarial samples generated by DMAC\_Adv to the adversarial learning of the communication policy to force the policy in exploring other potential communication schemes and transition to a decentralized structure. As a training method to improve robustness, DMAC can be fused with any learnable communication policy algorithm. The experimental results in two communication policies and four multi-agent tasks demonstrate that DMAC achieves higher improvement on robustness and performance of communication policy compared with two state-of-the-art and commonly-used baselines. Also, the results demonstrate that DMAC can achieve decentralized communication structure with acceptable communication cost.

Hugues Draelants

A central challenge in social science is to generate rich qualitative hypotheses about how diverse social groups might interpret new information. This article introduces and illustrates a novel methodological approach for this purpose: sociological persona simulation using Large Language Models (LLMs), which we frame as a "qualitative laboratory". We argue that for this specific task, persona simulation offers a distinct advantage over established methods. By generating naturalistic discourse, it overcomes the lack of discursive depth common in vignette surveys, and by operationalizing complex worldviews through natural language, it bypasses the formalization bottleneck of rule-based agent-based models (ABMs). To demonstrate this potential, we present a protocol where personas derived from a sociological theory of climate reception react to policy messages. The simulation produced nuanced and counter-intuitive hypotheses - such as a conservative persona's rejection of a national security frame - that challenge theoretical assumptions. We conclude that this method, used as part of a "simulation then validation" workflow, represents a superior tool for generating deeply textured hypotheses for subsequent empirical testing.

Simone Centellegher, Marco De Nadai, Marco Tonin et al.

Summary: In recent years, human mobility research has discovered universal patterns capable of describing how people move. These regularities have been shown to partly depend on individual and environmental characteristics (e.g., gender, rural/urban, and country). In this work, we show that life-course events, such as job loss, can disrupt individual mobility patterns. Adversely affecting individuals’ well-being and potentially increasing the risk of social and economic inequalities, we show that job loss drives a significant change in the exploratory behavior of individuals with changes that intensify over time since the job loss. Our findings shed light on the dynamics of employment-related behavior at scale, providing a deeper understanding of key components in human mobility regularities. These drivers can facilitate targeted social interventions to support the most vulnerable populations.

Zohar Barak, Nir Cohen

Abstract Scholarship on scientific mobility has long emphasized the structural and agentic difficulties faced by female researchers, especially in the male-dominated STEM disciplines. With notable exceptions, studies ignored the experience of early career female academics who travel internationally for professional reasons, including the various factors of support, which they draw on before and during relocation. This article examines narratives of Israeli PhD graduates who pursue an international postdoctoral fellowship (IPDF). Based on interviews with 24 female researchers in STEM disciplines who took up IPDF in North American universities, it explores the main support factors they draw on and examine their role in the relocation process. Our findings suggest that three factors were particularly instrumental; first, the support of their partners or husbands and, sometimes, their nuclear families, who were willing to make personal, social, and professional sacrifices for the mobility to materialize. Second, the support, both emotional and material, of their (post)doctoral advisors, and other academic colleagues, in their home or host institutions. Finally, prior experience - or familiarity - with academic or other forms of international mobility, were also salient. By analyzing the role of factors, which researchers rely on prior to and during their professional voyage, the study contributes to the field of academic mobility, nuancing the practical experience of ‘travelling’ (female) scientists. In so doing, it contributes to a better understanding of the pivotal, yet understudied, role of partners, families, and colleagues in academic mobilities, which could potentially reduce gender-based gaps in professional trajectories of early career scientists.

W. Wahyudi, O. Sukmana, B. Avianto

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: This research explores the impact of urbanization on informal workers in Surabaya, focusing on street vendors and day laborers. Urbanization in Surabaya has triggered significant economic and social transformations, created new job opportunities, and also increased challenges for informal workers.METHODS: The study employs a qualitative approach using in-depth interviews and participatory observation to collect data from informal workers.FINDINGS: The findings indicate that 78% of informal workers experience significant income volatility, while 65% report facing high competition and 72% lack access to essential resources. To cope, 68% extend their working hours, and 54% utilize social networks for support. Additionally, 61% of respondents benefit from government and non-profit support through training and economic empowerment programs, which has led to a 35% improvement in their skill levels. This study underscores the necessity for inclusive policies, as well as increased support for informal workers, to mitigate urbanization’s challenges and improve their overall quality of life.CONCLUSION: This research is expected to significantly contribute to understanding the dynamics of urbanization and its impact on informal workers, as well as offer practical solutions to improve their quality of life. Community support and optimized government policies can help address these challenges and create a more inclusive and sustainable urban environment.

Michał Ptak, Jarosław Neneman, Sylwia Roszkowska

Abstract The article aims to explain road CO2 emissions, including passenger car emissions in the EU member states, with the rates of indirect taxes (except VAT) for petrol and diesel oil. Apart from tax rates, the analysis includes some selected variables concerning economies and transport infrastructure, which impact CO2 car emissions. Compared to the existing literature, we focus on emissions from passenger cars and analyse more countries over a more extended period using more updated data. Our findings confirm that fuel taxes have a generally negative but limited impact on emissions from passenger cars. This impact is independent of whether we relate emissions to the number of inhabitants or GDP and is generally stronger in EU member states with higher taxes. In many countries, the economic affordability of fuels has significantly increased over the last few years. This phenomenon is another argument for a more active tax policy, i.e., general adjustment of the tax rates in line with inflation. There is also great importance for those adjustments in times of high fuel prices when governments are under tremendous pressure not only to stop tax increases but to reduce them, which was the case in 2022 after the Russian aggression on Ukraine.

Taylor Domingos, Chris M. Smith

Research finds racial disparities in the frequency and severity of police violence. Police violence research has not interrogated gender to the same effect. We build on theories of “gender irrelevance” to argue that violent incidents between police and civilians cannot be extricated from masculinity’s relevance. However, in contexts when police respond to women as violent, police render women’s femininity as irrelevant. Using 2016–2021 California URSUS data and supplementary archival examples, we examine gender and race across fatal and nonfatal police violence incidents. We find that women are no more or less likely to experience fatal relative to nonfatal police violence than men of the same racial group when accounting for police perceptions of civilians being armed. We also find racial differences in perceptions of weapons, with lower barriers for fatal violence against Black and Latinx civilians. When women are in high-conflict, violent situations, other statuses become hyper-present beyond women’s femininity.

Kwonhyung Lee, Yejin Lim, Sunghyun Cho

Migrant laborers subject to ROK's Employment Permit System(EPS) must strike a balance between host country's high wage and 'Depreciation of skill-relevance entailed by immigration', whilst taking account of the 'migration costs'. This study modelizes the optimization mechanism of migrant workers and the firms hiring them -- then induces the solution of the very model, namely, 'Subgame Perfect Nash Equilibrium(SPNE)', by utilizing game theory's 'backward induction' method. Analyzing the dynamics between variables at SPNE state, the attained stylized facts are what as follows; [1]Host nation's skill-relevance and wage differential have positive correlation. [2]Emigrating nation's skill-relevance and wage differential have negative correlation. Both stylized facts -- [1,2] -- are operationalized into 'Host nation skill-relevance hypothesis(H1)' and 'Emigrating nation skill-relevance hypothesis(H2)', respectively; of which are thoroughly tested by OLS linear regression analysis. In all sex/gender parameters(Total/Men/Women), test results support both hypotheses with statistical significance, thereby inductively substantiating the constructed model. This paper contributes to existing labor immigration literature in three following aspects: (1)Stimulate the economic approach to migrant labor analysis, and by such means, break away from the overflow of sociology, anthropology, political science, and jurisprudence in prior studies; (2)Shed a light on the EPS's microeconomic interaction process, of which was left undisclosed as a 'black box'; (3)Seek a complementary synthesis of two grand strands of research methodology -- that is, deductive modeling and inductive statistics.

Dmitrij Celov, Remigijus Leipus

Large-scale aggregation and its inverse, disaggregation, problems are important in many fields of studies like macroeconomics, astronomy, hydrology and sociology. It was shown in Granger (1980) that a certain aggregation of random coefficient AR(1) models can lead to long memory output. Dacunha-Castelle and Oppenheim (2001) explored the topic further, answering when and if a predefined long memory process could be obtained as the result of aggregation of a specific class of individual processes.  In this paper,  the disaggregation scheme of Leipus et al.  (2006) is briefly discussed. Then disaggregation into AR(1)  is analyzed further, resulting in a theorem that helps, under corresponding assumptions, to construct a mixture density for a given aggregated by AR(1) scheme process. Finally the theorem is illustrated by FARUMA mixture densityÆs example.

José Barrera Blanco

Luis Manuel Cerdá Suárez, Carmen Cristófol Rodriguez

El neuromarketing es un tópico fundamental en el mundo tecnológico actual y ha experimentado un crecimiento explosivo en los últimos años como herramienta de la comunicación. Últimamente, las asignaturas de neuromarketing han mejorado mucho cuando la enseñanza está respaldada por cursos y experimentos de laboratorio siguiendo el paradigma de "aprender haciendo", que proporciona a los estudiantes una comprensión más profunda de su aprendizaje. Sin embargo, muchos programas educativos no enseñan a los estudiantes sobre el uso y las aplicaciones del neuromarketing. Bajo el supuesto de que los avances en neuromarketing cambiarán las prácticas tradicionales en el aula, el objetivo de este trabajo es proponer una combinación de tecnologías para convertir un proyecto de neuromarketing en una actividad de laboratorio, haciendo que este sea más atractivo para los estudiantes al mejorar la aplicación de los planes de estudio en postgrados de administración de empresas. Este proyecto ha sido evaluado con éxito sobre la base de respuestas a cuestionarios de estudiantes y expertos que calificaron positivamente la actividad de laboratorio, encontrando el aprendizaje como muy bueno y/o excelente, alcanzándose además buenos resultados académicas. En el contexto específico de una universidad privada virtual, este trabajo se orientó al diseño de un taller de neuromarketing para desarrollar determinadas competencias genéricas en la mejora de los procesos educativos en las universidades. Los hallazgos de esta investigación resultan relevantes en las decisiones de política educativa, pero también en la teoría y práctica pedagógica en el ámbito de este estudio.

WU Hongli, XUE Yunzhen, WU Junying

ObjectiveTo understand the research status quo and hotspots of the elderly migrant following child in China.MethodsThe relevant literature on the elderly migrant following child was retrieved from the China National Knowledge Infrastructure（CNKI） from 2010 to 2020，and the Citespace5.6.R5 bibliometric software was used for visual analysis.ResultsA total of 388 papers were included，and the number of published papers showed an overall upward trend；the source of disciplines was mainly sociology and supplemented by political science； qualitative research was the main method used in the field；author cooperation and institutional cooperation were loose；the research hotspots revolve around social integration，social adaptation，social support，elderly care in different places，influencing factors，and social work.ConclusionsThe publication level，research depth，and attention of the research literature on the elderly migrant following child need to be strengthened；research disciplines and methods need to be more abundant and diversified；cooperation need to deepen cross⁃unit，cross⁃regional，and cross⁃disciplinary collaboration；community care workers should pay more attention to the spiritual care of the elderly migrant following child，the government should also increase the purchase of social services.

Facundo Rodriguez

The aim of this work is to use some categories of Actor-Network Theory (ANT) developed by Bruno Latour in the book Reassembling the Social -- An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory to analyze a current controversy that occurs in the area of cosmology: the dark matter existence and its characteristics. The central idea of this article is to try to decipher which type of agent is the dark matter and open the discussion about this topic from a sociological perspective.

Rahile Kızılkaya Yılmaz

The West is known to have had interest in Islam since the 18th century through the transformative effect of the methods developed to examine religious sources within the framework of this interest in Islamic studies. Revealing the academic background and historical, ideological, psychological, religious, political and socio-cultural factors that have led orientalists working in the field of Islamic sciences is important for this field. This study will reveal in the context of Goldziher’s method for evaluating hadiths how Orientalists had been influenced by the culture and civilization they emerged from and how these influences directed their studies on Islam. Studies that have drawn attention to how Goldziher adopted his method for evaluating hadiths and took inspiration from Hegel’s philosophy of history prepared the intellectual background for the writing of this article. The study will first point out Goldziher’s postition within the Orientalist tradition and then present his method for dating hadiths alongside his Muhammedanische Studien, which is considered the most important work upon which Goldhizer based his method. Hegel’s philosophy of history will be explained in terms of the subject of the study, followed by a look into how Hegel’s philosophy of history affected Goldziher’s method for evaluating hadiths.

Verena Biehl, Verena Biehl, Thomas Gerlinger et al.

Objective: This scoping review investigates current developments in the professional characteristics of health promotion (HP) with a focus on the German speaking part of Europe. The conceptualization of HP is a prerequisite for progressing HP professionalization and clarifying the interconnectedness between HP and Public Health.Methods: The search strategy was informed by sociological professionalization theories. Original publications were included in a content-based analysis.Results: Ninety publications (37 original publications) were identified in the review. The results are summarized in categories based on professional characteristics: 1) profession, 2) ethics, 3) education/training 4) competencies, and 5) quality. The professionalization of HP regarding the professional characteristics is less developed in the German compared to the international literature.Conclusion: The mixed findings emphasize the relevance of a common HP conceptualization. The HP core competencies, which have been developed by the International Union for Health Promotion and Education must be further promoted. A strong HP workforce within Public Health strengthens the HP status in policy contexts and society and its contribution to promoting health and tackling social inequalities in health.

Maria Berghs

Alon Jacovi, Ana Marasović, Tim Miller et al.

Trust is a central component of the interaction between people and AI, in that 'incorrect' levels of trust may cause misuse, abuse or disuse of the technology. But what, precisely, is the nature of trust in AI? What are the prerequisites and goals of the cognitive mechanism of trust, and how can we promote them, or assess whether they are being satisfied in a given interaction? This work aims to answer these questions. We discuss a model of trust inspired by, but not identical to, sociology's interpersonal trust (i.e., trust between people). This model rests on two key properties of the vulnerability of the user and the ability to anticipate the impact of the AI model's decisions. We incorporate a formalization of 'contractual trust', such that trust between a user and an AI is trust that some implicit or explicit contract will hold, and a formalization of 'trustworthiness' (which detaches from the notion of trustworthiness in sociology), and with it concepts of 'warranted' and 'unwarranted' trust. We then present the possible causes of warranted trust as intrinsic reasoning and extrinsic behavior, and discuss how to design trustworthy AI, how to evaluate whether trust has manifested, and whether it is warranted. Finally, we elucidate the connection between trust and XAI using our formalization.