A Low-Shot Object Counting Network With Iterative Prototype Adaptation

We consider low-shot counting of arbitrary semantic categories in the image using only few annotated exemplars (few-shot) or no exemplars (no-shot). The standard few-shot pipeline follows extraction of appearance queries from exemplars and matching them with image features to infer the object counts. Existing methods extract queries by feature pooling which neglects the shape information (e.g., size and aspect) and leads to a reduced object localization accuracy and count estimates. We propose a Low-shot Object Counting network with iterative prototype Adaptation (LOCA). Our main contribution is the new object prototype extraction module, which iteratively fuses the exemplar shape and appearance information with image features. The module is easily adapted to zero-shot scenarios, enabling LOCA to cover the entire spectrum of low-shot counting problems. LOCA outperforms all recent state-of-the-art methods on FSC147 benchmark by 20-30% in RMSE on one-shot and few-shot and achieves state-of-the-art on zero-shot scenarios, while demonstrating better generalization capabilities.Comment: Accepted to ICCV2023, code: https://github.com/djukicn/loc

Conflict, food insecurity, and globalization:

"We explore how globalization, broadly conceived to include international humanrights norms, humanitarianism, and alternative trade, might influence peaceful and foodsecure outlooks and outcomes. The paper draws on our previous work on conflict as a cause and effect of hunger and also looks at agricultural exports as war commodities. We review studies on the relationships between (1) conflict and food insecurity, (2) conflict and globalization, and (3) globalization and food insecurity. Next, we analyze countrylevel, historical contexts where export crops, such as coffee and cotton, have been implicated in triggering and perpetuating conflict. These cases suggest that it is not export cropping per se, but production and trade structures and food and financial policy contexts that determine peaceful or belligerent outcomes. Export cropping appears to contribute to conflict when fluctuating prices destabilize household and national incomes and when revenues fund hostilities. Also, in these scenarios, governments have not taken steps to progressively realize the right to adequate food or to reduce hunger and poverty. We conclude by exploring implications for agricultural development, trade, and human rights policies." Authors' AbstractHunger, Conflict, war, Globalization, Crops, exports, coffee, Cotton, Human rights, Right to food, Fair trade,

DEVELOPMENT AND SHELTER CHALLENGES OF SMALL ISLANDS: PLANNING WITH A PRO-POOR PERSPECTIVE

This paper explores why and how small island developing states (SIDS) in the Asia-Pacific region should adopt pro-poor policies to overcome development related affordable housing challenges. It first outlines SIDS’ common development challenges—small size, remoteness, greater exposure to economic and environmental shocks, and brisk urbanization. In a globalized world, SIDS’ developmental and geographic constraints make providing equitable shelter harder. Developing Asia’s rapid urban growth and simultaneously widening urban inequality offer hope and sound caution alike for SIDS, whose potential and propensity to attract global investment are unique. Tourism-based economic development is poised to accelerate the private sector’s influence on SIDS’ land and housing markets. This paper presents the cities of Honolulu (USA), Surabaya (Indonesia), and Dili (Timor Leste) as cases that exemplify, respectively, the advanced, intermediate, and early stages of a possible development continuum for SIDS. Utilizing secondary literature, primary qualitative field-research, news media sources, and observations, it demonstrates that despite common developmental challenges SIDS’ diverse governance models and institutional capacities preclude definitive solutions. Instead, it argues for tailored yet flexible policy responses informed by multiple pro-poor principles—inclusivity, affordability, alternative forms of tenure security, and innovative design and construction. Sensitive, context-appropriate adaptation of innovative policy tools that have proven effective in fraught contexts elsewhere (especially, transfer of development rights, inclusionary housing, land pooling/sharing, participatory slum upgrading, and community benefits agreements) can guide SIDS to expand pro-poor shelter provision

Designing an incubator of public spaces platform: Applying cybernetic principles to the co-creation of spaces

The paper is based on the experience of creating and piloting a functioning ‘Incubator’ crowdsourcing platform for designing public spaces in an estate regeneration project in South London. The paper uses a cybernetics framework to analyse and present the way the platform itself was created and how issues of effectiveness, efficiency and equity were dealt with. It explores the generic qualities of interface and reviews applications of variety reduction in established crowdsourcing CS) models. It briefly presents the legal and socio-spatial parameters (like property rights) associated with the creation of the Incubators platform as well as the generic rules applicable to human-spatial relationships, based on studies exploring human-spatial interactions. Practical constraints including costs, catchments, life-span and meaningful feedback are looked into, followed by a discussion on social and political limitations associated with this form of public participation. The paper explains how those constraints where taken into account when establishing the operational parameters of the software platform and the experiences gained from the operation of the platform. Challenges and complications, such as the exclusion of actors, are identified together with the responses encountered in practice. While the Incubators platform succeeded in attracting younger planning participation demographics, older demographics were marginalised by the platform’s graphical user interface and social networking features. These findings highlight why, in spite of what it promises, ‘crowdsourced urbanism’ is prone to similar traits with those of analogue participation. In that sense, creating a CS platform which could convey the grass-roots ideas of actors and users of urban spaces in an efficient way that could be applied to a broad range of planning systems, appears to be a challenge

Towards a response to epistemic nihilism

This chapter develops an account of epistemic nihilism—roughly, the rejection of truth’s intrinsic or instrumental value in favor of statements that reject or obscure truth to secure an advantage for the speaker—by examining three instances of such nihilism: lying, bullshit, and trolling. It further argues that epistemic nihilism, exacerbated by changes in the media landscape, can pose a significant threat to liberal democratic institutions and ideals by undermining the democratic ideal of good faith engagement on a level playing field, while also encouraging undemocratic actions (e.g., terrorism) among interlocutors who take the nihilist’s claims seriously. Finally, this chapter argues that in extreme cases, we are justified in denying epistemic nihilists a platform from which to speak by drawing a parallel with vexatious litigant laws that deny individuals the right to petition courts for redress on the grounds that abuse of that right results in significant harm to both individuals and the legal system itself

Global Institutional Philanthropy: A Preliminary Status Report

Philanthropy is growing and gaining visibility around the world. Private giving has an increasingly important role in addressing human suffering, promoting social justice and equitable economic growth, and strengthening and supporting a broad array of civil society goals and organizations. Yet as a field of study -- if indeed it is a "field" of study -- global philanthropy is in its infancy. It defies definition at the same time that it provokes interest and inquiry. While many have contributed to our understanding of global giving, it is fair to say that there are no individual or institutional experts. Reliable giving data can be found in only a limited number of countries. Globally comparable data is non-existent. Careful analysis of philanthropic giving through a global lens is hard to find. Given the vast and uncharted landscape of global philanthropy, any effort to define its boundaries or describe its contours is likely to be misleading. Such efforts are equally likely to obscure or at least only partially represent the rich diversity and complexity of philanthropy as it is practiced in countries and cultures around the world