Improving automatic face recognition with user interaction

Face recognition systems aim to recognize the identity of a person depicted in a photograph by comparing it against a gallery of prerecorded images. Current systems perform quite well in controlled scenarios, but they allow for none or little interaction in case of mistakes due to the low quality of images or to algorithmic limitations. Following the needs and suggestions of investigators, we present a guided user interface that allows to adjust from a fully automatic to a fully assisted modality of execution, according to the difficulty of the task and to amount of available information (gender, age, etc.): the user can generally rely on automatic execution and intervene only on a limited number of examples when a failure is automatically detected or when the quality of intermediate results is deemed unsatisfactory. The interface runs on top of a preexistent automatic face recognition algorithm in such a way to guarantee full control over the execution flow and to exploit the peculiarities of the underlying image processing techniques. The viability of the proposed solution is tested on a classic face identification task run on a standard publicly available database (the XM2VTS), assessing the improvement to user interaction over the automatic system performance.     

The Italians in Europe

Given Italy's reputation for fiscal profligacy, the zeal with which Italians strove to meet the strict budgetary and other criteria to qualify for full participation in European Monetary Union might be in need of explanation. On a wider front, Italy has displayed an enthusiasm for European integration which has been largely free of the reservations occasionally shown by member-states of comparable size and importance. This paper considers explanations which have been advanced for Italians' pro-European attitude, such as Catholic universalism and Roman imperial traditions, but rejects them as insufficient, in order to argue that the modern experience of the nation-state in Italy has failed to produce a strong sense of allegiance to a national identity, encouraging Italians to look to the European level of supranational institutions. Furthermore, it is argued that this lack of strong national allegiance in Italy is not simply a negative characteristic, but has allowed for the preservation of traditions of localism, federalism and social partnership in Italy which are potentially valuable contributions to a future configuration of the European Union.     

Intergroup Biases as a Function of Reflected Status Appraisals and Support for Legitimizing Ideologies: Evidence from the USA and Israel

Theory and research suggest that members of high-status groups feel more positively about their own group than members of low-status groups feel about their group. The studies presented here test two hypotheses derived from this general idea (1) that members of high-status groups will show greater bias in favor of the in-group when they believe that others perceive the status difference between their group and relevant low-status groups to be larger; and (2) that this relationship will be stronger when high-status group members also endorse ideologies legitimizing their privileged status. However, because low group status may have self-protective properties, it was hypothesized that imputed status differences would not relate to out-group bias among low-status group members, regardless of ideology endorsement. Two studies—using samples from the United States and Israel, respectively—provided clear support for these hypotheses. Implications for the study of both intergroup biases and legitimizing ideologies are discussed.     

A critical reappraisal of some voting power paradoxes

Power indices are meant to assess the power that a voting rule confers a priori to each of the decision makers who use it. In order to test and compare them, some authors have proposed ‘natural’ postulates that a measure of a priori voting power ‘should’ satisfy, the violations of which are called ‘voting power paradoxes.’ In this paper two general measures of success and decisiveness based on the voting rule and voters' behavior and some of these postulates/paradoxes test each other. As a result serious doubts are cast on the discriminating power of most voting power postulates.     

Political geography

I study a model of geopolitical organization endogenizing the size of nations, their public spending and their degree of openness. The optimal geography may not be a stable equilibrium and a bias toward too many countries tends to emerge. An exogenous increase in openness tends to reduce the size of countries but also to increase the size of their public sectors. When openness is endogenous there can be multiple equilibria, some with globalization backlash associated with large nations and small governments and others with smaller countries, bigger governments and high openness. However, stable equilibria may imply excessive globalization, too many countries and too much government spending.     

When Do Welfare Attitudes Become Racialized? The Paradoxical Effects of Education

Recent research suggests that welfare attitudes may be shaped by negative perceptions of blacks, suggesting an implicit racialization of the policy. But what might inhibit the racialization of welfare? In this vein, research indicating that education facilitates tolerance suggests that negative racial perceptions and welfare attitudes may be less related among the educated. However, education may also be associated with a greater ability to connect general predispositions with specific policy attitudes. Somewhat paradoxically, this suggests that the association between racial perceptions and welfare attitudes may be stronger among the college‐educated, despite their lower overall levels of racial hostility. Study 1 shows that education attenuates negative racial perceptions, while strengthening their impact on public‐assistance attitudes—but only when assistance is described as “welfare.” Study 2 extends and qualifies this finding, showing that education strengthens the relationship between perceptions of welfare recipients and global welfare attitudes only when recipients are black.     

Thinking outside the box,improvisation, and fast learning: Designing policy robustness to deal with what cannot be foreseen

Policies are continually subjected to turbulence and crises. Interest in policy robustness as a fundamental way to deal with what cannot be foreseen is increasing. Thus, there is a flourishing stream of literature suggesting that policies need to be designed to be agile and flexible. However, the associated characteristics remain undeveloped. This article fills this gap by drawing on lessons obtained from the unplanned behaviors that were adopted in the management of the COVID-19 pandemic. Individual and organizational behaviors characterized by outside the box thinking, improvisation, and fast learning yielded solutions to unexpected problems. In this article, some of these emblematic unplanned behaviors are assessed, and the research builds on the literature on policy robustness, crisis management, and organizational theory to identify three enabling conditions to design more robust policies: coordinated autonomy, training for unplanned responses, and political institutional capacity.