How emergent self organizing maps can help counter domestic violence.

Topographic maps are an appealing exploratory instrument for discovering new knowledge from databases. During the past years, new types of Self Organizing Maps (SOM) were introduced in the literature, including the recent Emergent SOM. The ESOM is used to study a large set of police reports describing a whole range of violent incidents that occurred during the year 2007 in the police region Amsterdam-Amstelland (the Netherlands). It is demonstrated that it provides an exploratory search instrument for examining unstructured text in police reports. First, it is shown how the ESOM was used to discover a whole range of new features that better distinguish domestic from non-domestic violence cases. Then, it is demonstrated how this resulted in a significant improvement in classification accuracy. Finally, the ESOM is showcased as a powerful instrument for the domain expert interested in an indepth investigation of the nature and scope of domestic violence.

A new self-organizing neural gas model based on Bregman divergences

In this paper, a new self-organizing neural gas model that we call Growing Hierarchical Bregman Neural Gas (GHBNG) has been proposed. Our proposal is based on the Growing Hierarchical Neural Gas (GHNG) in which Bregman divergences are incorporated in order to compute the winning neuron. This model has been applied to anomaly detection in video sequences together with a Faster R-CNN as an object detector module. Experimental results not only confirm the effectiveness of the GHBNG for the detection of anomalous object in video sequences but also its selforganization capabilities.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec

Biological Principles in Self-Organization of Young Brain - Viewed from Kohonen Model

Variants of the Kohonen model are proposed to study biological principles of self-organization in a model of young brain. We suggest a function to measure aquired knowledge and use it to auto-adapt the topology of neuronal connectivity, yielding substantial organizational improvement relative to the standard model. In the early phase of organization with most intense learning, we observe that neural connectivity is of Small World type, which is very efficient to organize neurons in response to stimuli. In analogy to human brain where pruning of neural connectivity (and neuron cell death) occurs in early life, this feature is present also in our model, which is found to stabilize neuronal response to stimuli

Commoning and climate justice

Commoning represents a dynamic and emergent means of risk-reduction and livelihood provision which can address the shortcomings of both market and state-oriented economic systems -- increasingly relevant as climate change threatens human subsistence worldwide. This paper brings together international examples of responses to climate-related threats that are collective (not privatizing), to provide preliminary empirical evidence about how and in what circumstances people may develop equitable communal institutions rather than ones that worsen community fragmentation. The examples include traditional and new forms of commons which help to meet local subsistence needs and develop communities’ social, political and economic resilience in the face of climate change, exploring how climate justice -- improving the local and global equity of climate change impacts and processes – can advance in parallel with commons development.This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, FRN IDRC and SSHRC File Agreement No. 2017-008

Building a Birth-to-College Model: Professional Learning Communities

The newest in a planned series of case studies on building a birth-to-college model of education released by the University of Chicago Urban Education Institute (UEI) and the Ounce of Prevention Fund this case study outlines how to create professional learning communities (PLCs) of teachers, administrators and family support staff spanning the early childhood to K-12 spectrum. The intent of the PLCs is to create environments where practitioners take the lead in collaboratively studying and piloting effective, developmentally informed practices that prepare children for college, beginning at birth.This teaching case study is intended to illustrate the evolutionary process of PLC development by UEI and the Ounce and inform the work of others interested in building similar birth-to-college systems to benefit children and families. It is based on interviews of 25 participants in the Birth-to-College Partnership, observations of PLC and other Birth to-College Partnership meetings over the six-month period between January 2012 and June 2012, and a review of Birth-to-College meeting notes and other documents dating back to June 2010