Russian governance reforms sustain old political ways

Significance Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin has the backing he needs to deliver his efficiency programme, which still involves top-down government in which recipients have little say. Impacts The prime minister formally ranks second in the hierarchy, but Mishustin is not so far viewed as a potential successor to Putin. Macroeconomic policy management is assigned to specific officials and is not so much Mishustin's mandate. Mishustin will be judged on the government's handling of the pandemic and may be held accountable if the Kremlin needs a scapegoat.

Benin’s Talon will look to secure his legacy

Significance Talon took 86.57% of the votes, on an official turnout of 50.17%, while his nearest opponent took 11.29%. Talon’s winning margin -- the largest since Benin’s return to multiparty democracy in 1990 -- was made possible due to controversial electoral and constitutional reforms in recent years that have fundamentally weakened the main opposition. Impacts Talon is likely to try to increase his regional profile as he seeks to open Benin to more regional trade. Benin’s first female vice-president, Talon’s potential successor, will seek to promote more progressive laws for women’s empowerment. While Talon may engage in token reconciliation efforts, his administration will clamp down on seemingly 'disruptive' opposition figures.

Transfert du pouvoir épiscopal

Précis Cet article porte sur la transmission du pouvoir épiscopal dans la France du dix-septième siècle à partir de la correspondance d'Antoine Godeau (1605–72), évêque de Vence. Ce dernier a envoyé près d'une trentaine de lettres à son successeur potentiel, des lettres qui ont été éditées après la mort de leur auteur. Dans le cadre de cet article, cette correspondance est d'abord étudiée comme pratique d’écriture—la direction spirituelle—et de publication—la mise en recueil. Elle est localisée, en ce sens où ses différents lieux et temps de production et de circulation ont été analysés. Par la suite, son analyse révèle les opérations et les dynamiques par lesquelles un évêque en place transmet le pouvoir à son successeur. Antoine Godeau (1605–72), bishop of Vence, wrote nearly thirty letters to a potential successor to his position, Louis de Thomassin. These letters, published after his death, offer remarkable insight into the transfer of episcopal power in seventeenth-century France. This article focuses first on the epistolary practices associated with spiritual direction and second on the process of collection and publication of the correspondence. Godeau's letters reflect the different places and times of their composition and circulation, and they demonstrate the efforts of a sitting bishop to transfer his power to his successor.

Robust Deep Speaker Recognition: Learning Latent Representation with Joint Angular Margin Loss

Speaker identification is gaining popularity, with notable applications in security, automation, and authentication. For speaker identification, deep-convolutional-network-based approaches, such as SincNet, are used as an alternative to i-vectors. Convolution performed by parameterized sinc functions in SincNet demonstrated superior results in this area. This system optimizes softmax loss, which is integrated in the classification layer that is responsible for making predictions. Since the nature of this loss is only to increase interclass distance, it is not always an optimal design choice for biometric-authentication tasks such as face and speaker recognition. To overcome the aforementioned issues, this study proposes a family of models that improve upon the state-of-the-art SincNet model. Proposed models AF-SincNet, Ensemble-SincNet, and ALL-SincNet serve as a potential successor to the successful SincNet model. The proposed models are compared on a number of speaker-recognition datasets, such as TIMIT and LibriSpeech, with their own unique challenges. Performance improvements are demonstrated compared to competitive baselines. In interdataset evaluation, the best reported model not only consistently outperformed the baselines and current prior models, but also generalized well on unseen and diverse tasks such as Bengali speaker recognition.

Anak Sebagai Korban Tindak Pidana Perdagangan Orang Menurut Undang-Undang No. 35 Tahun 2014

Children are a mandate and a gift from God Almighty. Dignity as a human being is also inherent in them. Children are the potential successor and young generation who carry forward the ideals of the nation's struggle. They have a strategic role and special characteristics that ensure the continuity of the nation and state in the future. In order for each child to be able to bear this responsibility in the future, she/he needs to have the widest possible opportunity to grow and develop optimally, physically, mentally, socially, and nobly. Therefore, it is necessary to make efforts to protect the welfare of children by providing guarantees for the fulfillment of their rights as well as treatment without discrimination. This research was conducted with the aim of describing how the legal protection of children as victims of trafficking in persons based on Law Number 35 of 2014 concerning Child Protection and how the sanctions against the perpetrators of child trafficking. The research method used in this research was normative legal research. The results of this study indicated that legal protection for children as victims of trafficking in persons based on Law Number 35 of 2014 concerning Child Protection includes the protection of dignity, as well as recognition of human rights possessed by children based on legal provisions of abuse. In addition, the sanctions against the perpetrators of child trafficking are regulated in Law Number 21 of 2007 concerning the Eradication of the Crime of Trafficking in Persons.

Can Building “Artificially Intelligent Cities” Safeguard Humanity from Natural Disasters, Pandemics, and Other Catastrophes? An Urban Scholar’s Perspective

In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has started to manifest itself at an unprecedented pace. With highly sophisticated capabilities, AI has the potential to dramatically change our cities and societies. Despite its growing importance, the urban and social implications of AI are still an understudied area. In order to contribute to the ongoing efforts to address this research gap, this paper introduces the notion of an artificially intelligent city as the potential successor of the popular smart city brand—where the smartness of a city has come to be strongly associated with the use of viable technological solutions, including AI. The study explores whether building artificially intelligent cities can safeguard humanity from natural disasters, pandemics, and other catastrophes. All of the statements in this viewpoint are based on a thorough review of the current status of AI literature, research, developments, trends, and applications. This paper generates insights and identifies prospective research questions by charting the evolution of AI and the potential impacts of the systematic adoption of AI in cities and societies. The generated insights inform urban policymakers, managers, and planners on how to ensure the correct uptake of AI in our cities, and the identified critical questions offer scholars directions for prospective research and development.

A Three-Tier Framework for Understanding Disruption Trajectories for Blockchain in the Electricity Industry

Ever since the invention of Bitcoin by the pseudonymous Satashi Nakamoto, cryptocurrency has provoked debate in banking and finance sectors, and is sometimes considered a potential successor to fiat currency. Blockchain, the new technology underpinning decentralised and immutable databases, has seen much discussion as a potentially game-changing development. Although many industries are exploring its value, the technology has thus far made only minor impacts. A rapidly expanding base of research has emerged on blockchain's role as a potential disruptor in the electrical energy industry. However, it may be difficult to distinguish hype from more imminently plausible impacts. This paper attempts to serve as a guide for engineering management wishing to make sense of blockchain's potential in electricity. This is accomplished by formulating a novel blockchain industry disruption framework, which exists across three tiers. These tiers extend from ideas with the least effect on an industry to total revolutionary concepts that could completely transform an industry. This taxonomy is constructed by examining existing research into disruption hierarchies and blockchain classification methods. Through the lens of this taxonomy, a literature review is performed on blockchain's role in energy to draw out themes and ideas characterising each tier. The potential likelihood of real-world application of various ideas are discussed, giving consideration to how established industries may be affected or disrupted. The authors provide some conjecture here. Finally, courses of action are suggested for those whose sector may be affected by blockchain.

A Three-Tier Framework for Understanding Disruption Trajectories for Blockchain in the Electricity Industry

Ever since the invention of Bitcoin by the pseudonymous Satashi Nakamoto, cryptocurrency has provoked debate in banking and finance sectors, and is sometimes considered a potential successor to fiat currency. Blockchain, the new technology underpinning decentralised and immutable databases, has seen much discussion as a potentially game-changing development. Although many industries are exploring its value, the technology has thus far made only minor impacts. A rapidly expanding base of research has emerged on blockchain's role as a potential disruptor in the electrical energy industry. However, it may be difficult to distinguish hype from more imminently plausible impacts. This paper attempts to serve as a guide for engineering management wishing to make sense of blockchain's potential in electricity. This is accomplished by formulating a novel blockchain industry disruption framework, which exists across three tiers. These tiers extend from ideas with the least effect on an industry to total revolutionary concepts that could completely transform an industry. This taxonomy is constructed by examining existing research into disruption hierarchies and blockchain classification methods. Through the lens of this taxonomy, a literature review is performed on blockchain's role in energy to draw out themes and ideas characterising each tier. The potential likelihood of real-world application of various ideas are discussed, giving consideration to how established industries may be affected or disrupted. The authors provide some conjecture here. Finally, courses of action are suggested for those whose sector may be affected by blockchain.

How to Test, Analyze, and Reduce Memory Interference Delay in Modern COTS Multicore Systems?

In modern Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) multicore systems, cores can produce several simultaneous memory requests. The processing of such requests over the memory controller negatively impacts the interference delay triggered by running parallel tasks on the platform. In this paper, we propose a software-based testing approach for analyzing memory interference delay, when cores are exposed to extensive read/write requests that access in parallel their Cache Coherent Interconnect. The hardware targeted in this work is the well-known LayerScape QorIQ LS2085A, which can be approached as a potential successor to the Freescale QorIQ P4080. The test analysis was conducted based on a bare-metal operating system that we developed to guarantee a deterministic execution environment at all time points. Our testing was accomplished using a set of carefully designed synthetic benchmarks as well as TACLeBench benchmarks.