Early contours of Philippine foreign policy under Ferdinand Marcos Jr.: like father, like son

Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. won the Philippines' presidential election by a land­slide on 9 May and was officially sworn in on 30 June. During the election cam­paign, Marcos Jr. - the son of Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr. who was ousted in 1986 - remained extremely vague when it came to describing his foreign and security policies. Some observers initially speculated that Marcos Jr. would con­tinue to pursue the foreign policy shift towards the People's Republic of China that had been estab­lished by his predecessor Rodrigo Duterte. Several weeks into Marcos Jr.'s presidency, however, a much more nuanced picture has emerged. It appears that the newly elected president is likely seeking to balance the Philippines' relations with China and the US to a greater extent than his predecessor. He therefore seems to be follow­ing in his father’s foreign policy footsteps. This could open up new opportunities for coopera­tion between the Philippines and Germany and the EU - provided that such collabo­ration considers the high degree to which Manila's current foreign policy agenda seems to be driven by domestic concerns and objectives. (author's abstract

Small, but important: Traffic light proposals for detecting small traffic lights and beyond

Traffic light detection is a challenging problem in the context of self-driving cars and driver assistance systems. While most existing systems produce good results on large traffic lights, detecting small and tiny ones is often overlooked. A key problem here is the inherent downsampling in CNNs, leading to low-resolution features for detection. To mitigate this problem, we propose a new traffic light detection system, comprising a novel traffic light proposal generator that utilizes findings from general object proposal generation, fine-grained multi-scale features, and attention for efficient processing. Moreover, we design a new detection head for classifying and refining our proposals. We evaluate our system on three challenging, publicly available datasets and compare it against six methods. The results show substantial improvements of at least $12.6\%$ on small and tiny traffic lights, as well as strong results across all sizes of traffic lights.Comment: Accepted at ICVS 202

Erste Konturen der philippinischen Außenpolitik unter Ferdinand Marcos jr: wie der Vater, so der Sohn

Ferdinand (genannt "Bongbong") Marcos junior gewann am 9. Mai mit einem Erd­rutschsieg die Präsidentschaftswahlen der Philippinen und wurde am 30. Juni offiziell vereidigt. Während des Wahlkampfs war der Sohn des 1986 gestürzten philippinischen Diktators Ferdinand Marcos senior in außen- und sicherheitspolitischen Fra­gen äußerst vage geblieben. Einige Beobachter spekulierten zunächst über eine Fort­führung der unter Amtsvorgänger Rodrigo Duterte vollzogenen außenpolitischen Hinwendung zur Volksrepublik China. Mittlerweile zeigt sich jedoch bereits ein deutlich nuancierteres Bild der zu erwartenden Außenpolitik unter Marcos jr. Der neugewählte Präsident dürfte in stärkerem Maße als sein Vorgänger eine Balance im Verhältnis zu China und den USA suchen. Er tritt damit in die außenpolitischen Fuß­stapfen seines Vaters. Ein solcher Kurs könnte Deutschland und der EU neue Koope­rationsmöglichkeiten eröffnen - sofern die Zusammenarbeit den in erster Linie innen­politisch motivierten Zielsetzungen der neuen Marcos-Regierung entspricht. (Autorenreferat

Indonesiens G20-Präsidentschaft und der Krieg Russlands gegen die Ukraine: Jakarta zwischen allen Stühlen?

Das kürzlich abgehaltene Außenministertreffen der G20-Staaten in Indonesien stand, nicht zuletzt wegen des Verhaltens von Moskaus Vertreter Sergej Lawrow, ganz im Zeichen des russischen Angriffskriegs gegen die Ukraine. Dies zeigte sich auch an der komplizierten Position, die das G20-Gastgeberland im Umgang mit der Krisensitua­tion einnimmt. Indonesien hat zwar im Rahmen der Generalversammlung der Verein­ten Nationen (UN) im März ein Ende der russischen Invasion gefordert, danach aber weder Sanktionen gegen Moskau mitgetragen noch Russland vom G20-Gipfel aus­geladen. Zuletzt besuchte Indonesiens Präsident Joko Widodo als erster asiatischer Regierungschef seit Beginn des Krieges sowohl Kiew als auch Moskau. Während sich Jakarta aus Sicht westlicher Kritiker damit zwischen alle Stühle setzt, ist diese Hal­tung im Inneren populär und entspricht zudem tradierten Prinzipien indonesischer Außenpolitik. Ein Kurswechsel Jakartas im Hinblick auf den G20-Gipfel im November ist daher unwahrscheinlich. (Autorenreferat

The eROSITA extragalactic CalPV serendipitous catalog

Context. The eROSITA X-ray telescope on board the Spectrum-Roentgen-Gamma (SRG) observatory performed calibration and performance verification (CalPV) observations between September 2019 and December 2019, ahead of the planned 4-yr all-sky surveys. Most of them were deep, pointing-mode observations. Aims. We present here the X-ray catalog detected from the set of extra-galactic CalPV observations released to the public by the German eROSITA consortium, and the multiband counterparts of these X-ray sources. Methods. We developed a source detection method optimized for point-like X-ray sources by including extended X-ray emission in the background measurement. The multiband counterparts were identified using a Bayesian method from the CatWISE catalog. Results. Combining 11 CalPV fields, we present a catalog containing 9515 X-ray sources, whose X-ray fluxes were measured through spectral fitting. CatWISE counterparts are presented for 77% of the sources. Significant variabilities are found in 99 of the sources, which are also presented with this paper. Most of these fields show similar number counts of point sources as typical extragalactic fields, and a few harbor particular stellar populations

ISLES 2015 - A public evaluation benchmark for ischemic stroke lesion segmentation from multispectral MRI

Ischemic stroke is the most common cerebrovascular disease, and its diagnosis, treatment, and study relies on non-invasive imaging. Algorithms for stroke lesion segmentation from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) volumes are intensely researched, but the reported results are largely incomparable due to different datasets and evaluation schemes. We approached this urgent problem of comparability with the Ischemic Stroke Lesion Segmentation (ISLES) challenge organized in conjunction with the MICCAI 2015 conference. In this paper we propose a common evaluation framework, describe the publicly available datasets, and present the results of the two sub-challenges: Sub-Acute Stroke Lesion Segmentation (SISS) and Stroke Perfusion Estimation (SPES). A total of 16 research groups participated with a wide range of state-of-the-art automatic segmentation algorithms. A thorough analysis of the obtained data enables a critical evaluation of the current state-of-the-art, recommendations for further developments, and the identification of remaining challenges. The segmentation of acute perfusion lesions addressed in SPES was found to be feasible. However, algorithms applied to sub-acute lesion segmentation in SISS still lack accuracy. Overall, no algorithmic characteristic of any method was found to perform superior to the others. Instead, the characteristics of stroke lesion appearances, their evolution, and the observed challenges should be studied in detail. The annotated ISLES image datasets continue to be publicly available through an online evaluation system to serve as an ongoing benchmarking resource (www.isles-challenge.org).Peer reviewe

Use of culverts in dikes in the floodplain

In order to investigate the effect of culverts in a dike during flood waves with the aim to mitigate the effects of high water, experiments have been done on the discharge capacity of culverts in a dike. The dataset consist of velocity measurements and water levels for various configurations

Microwave irradiation - a closer look at heating efficiencies

Microwave irradn. is rapidly evolving into a common heat source in different areas of chem. including medicinal and org. chem. as well as polymer chem. The major advantages of the use of microwave irradn. are the often obsd. faster and cleaner reactions and sometimes changes in selectivity. Although the majority of beneficial effects might be explained by the faster heating, higher attainable temps. due to closed reaction vessels and the more homogeneous heat profile, in some cases selective heating results under microwave irradn. results in changes in selectivity or it allows chem. that cannot be performed with conventional heating. Besides these well-documented advantages of the use of microwave irradn., it is often claimed that microwave irradn. is a fast and efficient heat source. To investigate the validity of the claimed efficient heating under microwave irradn., we examd. the efficiency of microwave heating various solvents under microwave irradn. using a monomode microwave reactor. Examples of temp.-time profiles and the corresponding efficiency curves are shown in the Figure. In addn., the effects of adding salt or passive heating elements on the heating efficiency were studied. The heating efficiency for water was further examd. using different reaction vols. as well as monomode and multimode microwave synthesizers. [on SciFinder (R)

Tools of the Architect

What tools, procedures, and methods do architects use? The triptychs on display show their approach both in analytical and designerly ways. The first panel of each triptych represents an architectural question; the second panel represents a method. The third panel showcases the confrontation of that question and method. The project thus expands known architectural tools such as drawing, writing, and modelling. Through their thorough exploration of architectural tools, the presented triptychs show an in-depth understanding of the specific qualities of the architectural project. A better insight into the capacity of these methods supports more locally responsive and socially inclusive architecture, aiming for an urban architecture of collectivity