Julkaisuarkisto

This article reconstructs the evolution of Austria’s relations with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s (DPRK, or North Korea) from 1960 – the year when the first Chamber-level trade agreement was signed – until formal recognition in 1974. Moreover, it discusses the Austrian government’s deliberations regarding its approach towards North Korea, especially the question of recognition. Against the background of normalisation of relations with the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the German Democratic Republic in 1972, this article also examines possible reasons for Austria’s decision to postpone the recognition of North Korea. More generally speaking, this study contributes to the emerging scholarship on the history of the DPRK’s relations with Europe’s neutral states during the Cold War period. The findings show that the Austrian government took a passive stance towards the DPRK’s diplomatic advances during the 1960s to avoid any actions that would have been construed as an implied recognition and, consequently, created irritation in the U.S. and also the Republic of Korea. From the late 1960s on and in light of a more favourable international environment, the Austrian government became apparently less concerned about the possibility that certain actions could be interpreted as a de facto recognition. Political and economic interests, especially the Austrian government’s close coordination with Switzerland on the question of establishing diplomatic relations with North Korea and growing trade with South Korea, led to the DPRK being recognised (only) in 1974. This study is primarily based on documents from the Austrian Ministry for Foreign Affairs. In addition, selected North Korean sources and archival material of the Austrian Parliament and the Swiss Federal Department for Foreign Affairs were used for the analysis.

Human Robot Collaboration in dynamic real world settings requires agents to perform high level intent inference without explicit rewards, rules, or corrective feedback. We present an Active Inference (AIF) framework formulated as a partially observable Markov decision process with discrete states. The method achieves self supervised goal recognition through minimization of variational free energy, enabling intrinsic inference of changing human intentions and autonomous action in non stationary environments.Intentions are treated as latent states. The agent integrates uncertain and noisy categorical observations that reflect human location, hand motions, and the fading of voice commands which serves as a proxy for changing trust. The model handles rapid learning of new transitions and effective reversal learning when context shifts abruptly. Simulation studies show that the approach maintains strong robustness. With both aleatoric and epistemic uncertainties the success rate is 79%. With only epistemic uncertainty the success rate reaches 86%.The method is further assessed on a physical Franka Emika Panda platform performing a dynamic handover task. Despite unmodeled noise and temporal ambiguity the robot reached approximately 68% accuracy. It shows that the AIF architecture can infer human intent from ambiguous and uncertain gestures in a manner similar to how people interpret each other, which in turn indicates that the framework can support adaptive and self supervised robotic partners.

Hypomanic traits are often assumed to enhance creative thinking, but empirical evidence is mixed. The present study assessed creativity in divergent thinking across a broad range of hypomanic traits. Participants (n = 468, including both healthy adults and individuals with bipolar disorder) completed Alternate Uses Tasks (AUT) in which they generated novel uses for common objects. Independent raters scored each response for creative quality, considering both originality and usefulness, yielding two metrics per participant: mean creativity (average idea quality) and maximum creativity (average of the most creative ideas). Inhibitory control was measured using a Stroop color-word task. Regression analyses showed that higher hypomanic traits predicted greater fluency (i.e., more uses generated) but lower creative quality in AUT (both lower mean creativity and lower maximum creativity). No evidence for a curvilinear (inverted-U) relationship was found. Moreover, higher hypomanic scores were associated with more interference errors in Stroop performance, and greater Stroop interference correlated with lower creativity. Mediation analysis indicated that Stroop interference partially accounted for the negative hypomania–creativity link. These findings suggest that individuals high in hypomanic traits tend to produce many ideas, but those ideas are, on average, less creative—partly due to diminished inhibitory control. The results underscore the importance of measuring creative quality, not only fluency or originality, and considering executive functions when studying creative thinking in bipolar-spectrum populations.

Background

Brown adipose tissue (BAT) activity has been suggested to play a role in cancer progression. Previous studies have shown that BAT activity is higher in patients with cancer, and that BAT volume is a predictor of tumour recurrence and mortality in patients with cancer, but the data on melanoma are limited.

Patients and methods

Here, we re-analysed 2-fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose positron emission tomography-computed tomography (FDG–PET–CT) images from 135 patients with cutaneous melanoma treated at Turku University Hospital between 2012 and 2021 to assess associations among BAT, melanoma progression, patient survival, and patient weight. We applied a three-stage universal BAT threshold definition using predetermined standardised uptake value thresholds of 0.8, 1.0, and 1.2 g/ml, given the retrospective nature of our study. Of the 135 patients (81 men and 54 women; median age 61 years, interquartile range 54-71), 40 (29.6%), 24 (17.8%), and 19 (14.1%) were BAT-positive at the 0.8, 1.0, and 1.2 g/ml thresholds, respectively.

Results

Our results showed that patients with active melanoma on FDG–PET–CT imaging were more frequently BAT-positive at the 0.8 threshold ( P = 0.026) and 1.0 threshold ( P = 0.016). We also found a significantly higher BAT volume among patients who survived the observation period (0.8, 1.0, and 1.2 g/ml thresholds; P = 0.018, P = 0.038, and P = 0.571, respectively) and those who did not relapse (0.8, 1.0, and 1.2 g/ml thresholds; P = 0.631, P = 0.012, and P = 0.030, respectively).

Conclusions

No association between BAT positivity and relapse-free survival or overall survival was observed at any threshold. Although higher BAT volumes were observed in subgroups of patients who survived or did not relapse, these findings were not supported by survival analyses and should be considered exploratory.