Search Results (16)

Brain medical image registration is a fundamental premise for the computer-assisted treatment of brain diseases. The brain is one of the most important and complex organs of the human body, and it is very challenging to perform accurate and fast registration on it. Aiming at the problem of voxel folding in the deformation field and low registration accuracy when facing complex and fine objects, this paper proposed a fully convolutional multi-constraint cascaded attention network (MCANet). The network is composed of two registration sub-network cascades and performs coarse-to-fine registration of input image pairs in an iterative manner. The registration subnetwork is called the dilated self-attention network (DSNet), which incorporates dilated convolution combinations with different dilation rates and attention gate modules. During the training of MCANet, a double regularization constraint was applied to punish, in a targeted manner, the excessive deformation problem, so that the network can generate relatively smooth deformation while having high registration accuracy. Experimental results on the Mindboggle101 dataset showed that the registration accuracy of MCANet was significantly better than several existing advanced registration methods, and the network can complete relatively smooth registration. Full article

In spatial public goods games, groups consisting solely of defectors do not benefit. Consequently, intelligent defectors are inclined to incur the cost of punishing other defectors to enable cooperators to flourish within the group, thereby safeguarding their own advantages. Drawing from real-world observations where early preparation often dictates future success, we integrated probabilistic punishment into the public goods game and analyzed two scenarios. In the first scenario, a probabilistic punishment mechanism was established, wherein the higher the cost was of monitoring and enforcement, the greater was the probability of punishment. In the second scenario, a compensation and fine distribution mechanism was introduced alongside probabilistic punishment, where the outcome of the punishment determined whether the smart defector recovered part of the fine or rewarded cooperators with additional benefits. This incentivized smart defectors to judiciously assess the punishment cost required to effectively protect their interests. The study demonstrated that both mechanisms significantly enhanced cooperation, with the probabilistic punishment model involving fine distribution and compensation proving more effective than simple probabilistic punishment alone. These results offer novel insights into the dynamics of probabilistic punishment and the role of fine distribution in fostering cooperation. Full article

Cooperative governance of water pollution is an effective initiative to implement the strategy for the protection of the Yangtze River Basin. Based on the stakeholder theory, this paper constructs a tripartite evolutionary game model of water pollution in the Yangtze River Basin from the perspective of “cost–benefit”. This paper analyzes the stability of possible equilibrium points of the evolutionary game system by scenarios and further explores the influence of key factors on the evolution of the cooperative governance system of water pollution in the Yangtze River Basin using numerical simulation. According to the findings, (1) the watershed system comprises three key stakeholders: local governments, enterprises, and the public. Each stakeholder’s behavioral strategy choice is influenced by its unique factors and the behavioral strategy choices of the other two stakeholders. (2) Equilibrium points represent the potential strategic equilibrium presented by each stakeholder. When the net income of a particular behavioral strategy within the set exceeds zero, stakeholders will be more inclined to choose that behavioral strategy. (3) The key influencing factors in the evolutionary game are regulatory costs, reputation loss, material rewards, and violation fines. Therefore, this paper proposes to construct a cooperative governance mechanism for water pollution in the Yangtze River Basin from three aspects: an efficient regulatory mechanism, a dynamic reward and punishment mechanism, and a multi-faceted incentive mechanism, with a view to promoting a higher-quality development of the ecological environment in the Yangtze River Basin. Full article

There is a clear target and roadmap for the peaking of carbon emissions and achievement of carbon neutrality, and prior to this target being reached, penalties have been formulated to supervise enterprises and prompt green innovation. This study aimed to investigate the transmission mechanism between environmental penalties and green innovation using an empirical econometrical model and two sets of samples—punished firms and heavily polluting listed firms—amounting to 520 punished firms and 6043 firm-year observations. The main conclusions were threefold. Firstly, regarding the panel data, of the three parameters, namely, the times of penalties, the number of penalty fines, and the intensity of the penalty, only the number of penalty fines were statistically significant in terms of green innovation, indicating that only the hypothesis that, the higher the number of environmental penalties, the greater the green innovation that could be supported. Secondly, from a longitudinal perspective, there was one spontaneous effect on green patents, but the effect faded quickly in the second year after the punishment, indicating that firms did not seek green innovation as the solution for environmental penalties from a long-term perspective. Thirdly, the case number of external penalties in a province was significantly statistically associated with green innovation under an intertwined effect of the actual controller and shareholders. Therefore, there was a spillover of the deterrence effect from external penalties, with a higher number of penalty cases in a province corresponding to greater green innovation but with a very subtle coefficient. In addition, taking the median as the benchmark for group division, the group smaller than the median was statistically significant, while the group with a higher number of external penalties was not statistically significant, suggesting that firms were used to the penalties issued by environmental authorities. Full article

With the increasingly serious problem of global climate change, many countries are positively promoting carbon-emission-reduction actions. In order to deeply explore the interaction between enterprises’ carbon-emission reduction and governments’ regulation, this paper builds evolutionary game models between governments and enterprises under the reward-and-punishment mechanism. The peer-incentive mechanism is introduced to incentivize enterprises to reduce carbon emissions and coordinate governments and enterprises. The evolutionary-stability strategies are obtained by solving the evolutionary game models. The stability of equilibrium points under different situations is theoretically and numerically studied. The results show that the existence of peer incentives makes enterprises more inclined to positively reduce carbon emissions and governments more inclined to positively regulate. A sufficiently large peer fund can always encourage enterprises to choose positive carbon-reduction emission strategies, while governments choose positive regulation strategies. Not only the increasing rewards and fines but also lowering regulatory costs will promote carbon-emission-reduction behaviors of enterprises. Peer incentives are more effective in promoting positive emission reduction of enterprises compared with rewards and punishments. This study can provide important guidance for governments to formulate regulatory strategies and for enterprises to formulate emission-reduction strategies. Full article

As China’s urbanization process continues to accelerate and the price of traditional commercial property continues to rise, a number of small property rights houses without construction permits and approvals have appeared on rural land. Although small property rights housing does not have the validity of property rights or the legal attributes of ordinary commercial housing, and the Chinese government has repeatedly introduced corresponding laws and regulations to regulate its purchase and sale, small property right housing is still purchased by many consumers because of its price advantage, and the number of disputes arising from its purchase and sale is on the rise every year. In addition, the phenomenon of developers building on rural land in violation of the law and real estate agents guaranteeing property without authorization has led to a waste of judicial resources and the infringement of property rights. This paper analyzes the actual situation and the main problems surrounding the governance of small property rights housing and constructs a quadrilateral evolutionary game model with the government, consumers, developers, and real estate agents as the main players. By analyzing various equilibrium points corresponding to different stages of small property rights housing governance, a simulation analysis is conducted using Matlab2016a software to examine the strategic choices of each stakeholder. By adjusting and simulating various parameters, this study investigates the key factors influencing the governance of small property rights housing. This study revealed the following points: (1) at different stages in the governance of small property rights housing, the choice of a strategy by each subject is affected by the expected benefits and costs; (2) the relevant government fines will regulate the strategic choices of developers and real estate agents; (3) consumers’ purchasing tendency is affected by the price of small property rights housing and the risk estimation; (4) the governance of small property rights housing needs a long-term standardization of practice, and the government not only needs to improve the reward and punishment mechanism but also needs to provide positive guidance to the consumers. Through numerical simulation, we explore the impact of the main parameters of the current small property rights housing governance process on the strategic selections made by the game players, which is of great significance for the current policy and future governance of small property rights housing. This paper contributes additional insights to the existing body of theoretical literature through quantitative analysis. Nonetheless, there is a need for the further refinement of the parameter settings used in the study. Additionally, while the simulation analysis provides valuable perspectives, it is somewhat subjective and possesses certain limitations. Full article

The non-fungible tokens trading of digital content works, as an emerging business model, has rapidly developed while also posing challenges to current copyright protection. The NFT infringement incidents in recent years have exposed many issues, such as lack of government regulation, imperfect copyright protection mechanisms, and illegal profits from service platforms. Considering the collusive behavior during the NFT minting process, this study uses evolutionary game theory to model a game composed of three populations: digital content creators; NFT service platforms; and government regulatory agencies. We derived and analyzed the replication dynamics of the game to determine the evolutionary stability strategy. In addition, combined with numerical simulations, we also analyzed the impact of individual factors on the stability of system evolution. This study identifies that the incentives and fines set by the government must be above a certain threshold in order for game results to develop toward an ideal equilibrium state, and the government can try to improve the efficiency of obtaining and updating market information and set dynamic punishment and reward mechanisms based on this. This study also found that excessive rewards are not conducive to the government fulfilling its own regulatory responsibilities. In this regard, the government can use information technology to reduce the cost of regulation, thereby partially offsetting the costs brought about by incentive mechanisms. In addition, the government can also enhance the governance participation of platforms and creators to improve the robustness of digital copyright protection by strengthening media construction and cultivating public copyright awareness. This study helps to understand the complex relationship between NFT service platforms, digital content creators, and government regulatory authorities and proves the practical meaning of countermeasures and suggestions for improving government digital copyright regulations. Full article

This study aims to provide useful insights for the Chinese government in dealing with healthcare fraud by creating an evolutionary game model that involves hospitals, third-party entities, and the government based on the government reward and punishment mechanism. This paper analyzes the evolutionary stability of each participant’s strategy choice, discusses the influence of each element on the tripartite strategy choice, and further analyzes the stability of the equilibrium point in the tripartite game system. The results show that (1) the government increasing fines on hospitals is conducive to compliant hospital operations, and the incentive mechanism has little effect on such operations; (2) the lack of an incentive mechanism for third parties results in false investigations by third parties; and (3) rewards from higher levels of government promote strict supervision by local governments, but that the high cost of supervision and rewards for hospitals inhibits the probability of strict supervision. Finally, Matlab 2020a is used for simulation analysis to provide a reference for the government to improve the supervision of healthcare fraud. Full article

In environmental authoritarian countries, environmental pollution control relies on government environmental regulation. Theoretically, the certainty and severity of environmental regulation are the key factors in achieving its political goals. According to regulatory space theory, an effective regulatory system needs regulatory power and resources. However, the effectiveness of regulation may be decreased by the desperate need for resources, and the regulated enterprises can also affect environmental regulation through their information advantage and social networks. This paper focuses on how local environmental regulation can be achieved under these conditions. The analysis is conducted from two perspectives: the deterrence effect of punishment and the political connections maintained by enterprises. An empirical test was conducted by analyzing the research data from the 12th China Private Enterprise Survey in 2016. The study found that the severity of punishment is a mediator of environmental regulation in the promotion of enterprises’ investment in pollution control, and that it is moderated by the political relationships of enterprise managers. Compared with counterparts that have a less substantial political network, enterprises with more political networks may feel more pressure from environmental regulation policies, which leads to higher pollution fines. However, the promotion effect of environmental fines on an enterprise’s investment in pollution control is weakened due to its political relationships, thus weakening the effectiveness of the punishment. This paper clarifies the mechanism through which political connections weaken the effect of environmental regulation: political connections encourage firms to avoid real harm and do false good. Regulation is supposed to use fines as an incentive to improve the environment, but politically connected companies are more willing to pay fines (doing false good), than to invest in cleaning up pollution (avoiding real harm). Full article

The strictness of legal liability for the marine environment protects the marine space of China. Designed to impose the most severe punishment for polluting marine environmental violations, the use of a daily penalty system in maritime legislation has been developed from scratch and from the national to the local levels. Based on Article 73 of The Marine Environment Protection Law, the introduced factors, application, and innovative regulations of the daily penalty system are also hereby discussed. Although substantial progress has been made, the daily penalty system still faces two major obstacles, i.e., shortcomings in The Marine Environment Protection Law and the imperfection in the marine supporting laws, regulations, and local legislation. To this end, to provide an effective guarantee for marine administrative law enforcement and fundamentally solve the problem of the low law-breaking cost, the liability design of the daily penalty system should be improved by expanding the application scope, increasing the daily fine quota, and formulating specific applicable standards adaptable to the marine environment. In this case, a reference can also be provided for the revision of The Marine Environment Protection Law in China. Additionally, it is also suggested to enhance the relevant provisions of marine supporting laws, regulations, and local legislation. Full article

Pollution and carbon reduction is a key strategic direction for ecological civilization in China, and a hot issue of concern for the government and the whole society. The main goal of this paper was to consider the regional externalities of traffic emissions and clarify the relationship between provincial and central government strategies under the government reward and punishment mechanism. This paper considers the unevenness of regional transportation emissions, constructs a three-party evolutionary game model among transportation carbon deficit provinces, transportation carbon surplus provinces, and the central government, discusses the evolutionary stability of the game under different strategies of the three parties, and analyzes the influence of each element on the game structure. The study shows that: Environmental losses can increase the evolutionary speed of active emission reduction in transportation carbon deficit provinces, and the probability of supporting cross-regional carbon emission reduction in transportation carbon surplus provinces decreases slightly with the increase and the probability of central government regulation increases. The central government has a certain binding effect on transportation carbon deficit provinces and carbon surplus provinces through fines, and cross-zone cooperation subsidies are conducive to promoting carbon deficit provinces to actively reduce emissions. The cross-region compensation of carbon deficit provinces can promote the governments of carbon surplus provinces to support cross-region carbon emission abatement, and the cost of regulation will reduce the probability of central government regulation. Finally, Matlab simulation is used to verify the conclusions and provide countermeasures and suggestions for cross-regional abatement of regional transportation emissions by the central government. Full article

The #MeToo movement, from its creation by activist Tarana Burke back in 2006 to its explosion on social media during the 2017 Harvey Weinstein sexual assault allegations, has continuously propagated images of gendered resistance from around the globe. In South Korea, Poland, Mexico, Bangladesh, and more, large numbers of women protest a variety of gendered topics: from unjust rulings in cases of domestic violence, to the lack of reproductive rights, to femicide, to inaction by law enforcement on cases of stalking, harassment, or sexual assault, and more. These images clearly demonstrate that public resistance is dominated by women, even in societies that are seen to traditionally subjugate women—though this is not new, and women have always been involved in resistance even when there was no way to document their participation. However, in countries where conservative institutions, public opinion, and government policy that contribute to gender inequality are paired with punitive action for opposition, women face a higher risk of being punished, ostracized, or brutalized for their resistance. In Thailand, a military state with perhaps the strictest lèse majesté laws in the world, activists are frequently fined, imprisoned, kept under surveillance, disappeared, or forced to flee. Despite this, Thailand experiences frequent surges of public resistance, dominated by youth and overwhelmingly by women. Since February 2020, a large portion of the Thai population, consisting primarily of students, has taken to public demonstrations demanding a fair democracy and constitutional reform, joined together in exasperation over an uncertain future, a crippling economy, an untouchable elite, and a rigged election. In this now years-long movement, fueled by global support and sophisticated protest tactics learned from watching Hong Kong, we observe the inclusion of gendered protest topics and demands by Thai women and girls. This paper demonstrates how Thai women utilize the movement to demand progress in gendered areas by examining examples taken throughout the 2020 pro-democracy protest movement, with the overall objective of contributing to understanding the relationship between public resistance and feminism. Full article

In China, there are currently different degrees of arbitrariness in setting environmental administrative fines, and in many areas the faults are not equal to the penalties. To construct a more reasonable and feasible environmental punishment strategy where violators are fined in accordance with the severity of their actions, we use mathematical models to determine the specific range of environmental administrative fines based on the idea of realizing the appropriate balance between the interest of the violators and those of the public, meanwhile, law enforcement officers are allowed to use their discretion within a certain range. We use an example to prove that the punishment scheme provided by our models can be used to more effectively supervise violators’ illegal behaviors than the penalty clause prescribed by law, and through sensitivity analysis and comparison, we prove that the described models are stable and feasible, and provide advantages over the existing methods. We hope our approach provides intellectual support for maintaining legal order, regulating the environmental administrative fine process, guiding business behaviors, and, most importantly, achieving the goal of protecting the environment. Full article

Animal welfare legislation in South Australia underwent amendments in 2008, where all the maximum penalties for animal welfare offences were doubled. This commitment to increased penalties arguably provides evidence of the legislature’s intent with respect to penalties. Studies have speculated that the legislative intent behind the increased penalties is not being reflected in the courts. This interdisciplinary research sought to gain evidence to confirm or disprove these speculations, by quantifying the average custodial sentence and monetary fine handed down in court before and after the 2008 amendments. Furthermore, trends relating to the species of animal affected and the demographics of the offender were identified. A total of 314 RSPCA (SA) closed case files from 2006 to 2018 were converted into an electronic form. Since the amendments, the average penalties have doubled in magnitude; fines have increased from $700 to $1535, while prison sentences have increased from 37 days to 77 days. Cases of companion animal abuse were most common (75% of all cases) and the location of the offence was found to influence offending. These findings suggest that the 2008 amendments have caused the average penalties to increase. However, it is debatable whether these increases are enough to effectively punish animal abusers. Full article

The public-private-partnership (PPP) is a new mode for the government and social capital to jointly invest in public infrastructure projects. In particular, PPP projects for new energy power construction have been strongly supported in some countries in recent years, because it can not only reduce financial pressure on the government, but also promote the development of new energy. Current scholars study the economic benefits of PPP projects for new energy power construction from a macro perspective, and they rarely study behavioral strategies of the government and social capital as a game process of project construction from a micro perspective. This paper will fill this gap. This study firstly built an evolutionary game model of the government and investors based on new energy power construction PPP projects. Secondly, taking China’s typical new energy power construction PPP project–waste incineration power generation as an example, the system dynamics (SD) model was proposed to simulate the evolutionary process of game players’ behavioral strategies. Finally, the effects of key factors in the construction of PPP project on the strategies’ stability were studied. The results show that: (1) there is no evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) in the game system between the government and investors, and system evolution is characterized by periodic behavior. (2) When the government implements dynamic bounty measures, the system evolution process is still a closed loop with periodic motion. However, when the government implements dynamic punishment measures, there is a stable ESS in the hybrid strategy of the game system. (3) The government can increase unit fines when making dynamic strategic adjustments, which will not only promote the active cooperation of investors, but also reduce the probability of government supervision, thereby reducing costs. Full article