Autonomous Entities Research Articles

The evolution of scientific disciplines in applied sciences: dynamics and empirical properties of experimental physics

How do scientific disciplines evolve? This is one of the fundamental problems of the dynamics of science. This study confronts this problem here by investigating the evolution of experimental physics, which plays a vital role for the progress of science in society. In particular, the main aim of this article is to analyze the structure and endogenous processes of experimental physics to explain and generalize, whenever possible, the properties of the evolution of applied sciences in the phase of continuous expansion of the universe of science. Empirical analysis here suggests the following properties of the dynamics of science: (a) scientific fission, the evolution of scientific disciplines generates a process of division into two or more research fields that evolve as autonomous entities, creating new disciplines of scientific specialization; (b) ambidextrous drivers of science, the evolution of scientific disciplines by scientific fission is due to scientific discoveries or new technologies; (c) higher growth rates of the scientific production are in new research fields of a scientific discipline rather than old ones; (d) average duration of the growth phase of scientific production in research fields is about 80 years, almost the period of one generation of scholars. Overall, then, this study explains, whenever possible, the relationships that support scientific change of disciplines to develop comprehensive properties of the evolution of science directed to economic, technological and social progress.

Survey of entity encounter experiences occasioned by inhaled N,N-dimethyltryptamine: Phenomenology, interpretation, and enduring effects.

Experiences of having an encounter with seemingly autonomous entities are sometimes reported after inhaling N,N-dimethyltryptamine. The study characterized the subjective phenomena, interpretation, and persisting changes that people attribute to N,N-dimethyltryptamine-occasioned entity encounter experiences. Two thousand, five hundred and sixty-one individuals (mean age 32 years; 77% male) completed an online survey about their single most memorable entity encounter after taking N,N-dimethyltryptamine. Respondents reported the primary senses involved in the encounter were visual and extrasensory (e.g. telepathic). The most common descriptive labels for the entity were being, guide, spirit, alien, and helper. Although 41% of respondents reported fear during the encounter, the most prominent emotions both in the respondent and attributed to the entity were love, kindness, and joy. Most respondents endorsed that the entity had the attributes of being conscious, intelligent, and benevolent, existed in some real but different dimension of reality, and continued to exist after the encounter. Respondents endorsed receiving a message (69%) or a prediction about the future (19%) from the experience. More than half of those who identified as atheist before the experience no longer identified as atheist afterwards. The experiences were rated as among the most meaningful, spiritual, and psychologically insightful lifetime experiences, with persisting positive changes in life satisfaction, purpose, and meaning attributed to the experiences. N,N-dimethyltryptamine-occasioned entity encounter experiences have many similarities to non-drug entity encounter experiences such as those described in religious, alien abduction, and near-death contexts. Aspects of the experience and its interpretation produced profound and enduring ontological changes in worldview.

RESPONSES OF ACCOUNTABILITY TRANFORMATION PRACTICED IN MULTIPLE LEVEL OF INSTITUTIONAL LOGICS FOR BEING AUTONOMOUS STATE UNIVERSITIES IN INDONESIA

This study investigates accountability practices of Indonesian state universities during the reform implementation for being autonomous universites called as PTN Badan Hukum. Although the reform has been implemented based on government regulation, lack of empirical study can be viewed in published articles. For that reason, this study is addresed to filling the lack of accountability research in the reform of state universities in Indonesia. The context of the reform is the adoption of autonomous universities that are more close to the concept of privatisation affected by the internationalization objective of national agenda. Interpretive research approach is adopted to develop inductively a conceptual perspective based on central phenomenon. Moreover, the cases of the study are three Indonesian state universities which implement the form of autonomous state university with pseudo named as UG, UD and UA. Straussian grounded theory approach was adopted in data analysis and collection. The central phenomenon of substantive grounded theory is labelled as multiple accountability responses in various institutional logic during transformation process of state universities that have been transformed from fully governed by Indonesia government become autonomous entities. The main finding of the study explains the presence of various institutional accountibility logics practiced in the context of internationalization process of Indonesia higher education institutions. The various institutional logics arise from personal, professional, managerial and public accountability logics. The various accountability logics display from two different environmental background that are university with less and high internationalization. Less and moderate conflict are resulted from low and high internationalization achievement respectively. The practice of accountability seem displaying more emphasize on public accountability logic in social level, managerial accountability logic in organizational level, personal and professional in individual level. The contribution of this research relates to empirical findings that enrich higher education accountability research in developing countries, employs interpretive methodology and grounded theory, and provides incremental development of institutional logics theory in explaining organizational change in a specific context.

Class A PBPs have a distinct and unique role in the construction of the pneumococcal cell wall

In oval-shaped Streptococcus pneumoniae, septal and longitudinal peptidoglycan syntheses are performed by independent functional complexes: the divisome and the elongasome. Penicillin-binding proteins (PBPs) were long considered the key peptidoglycan-synthesizing enzymes in these complexes. Among these were the bifunctional class A PBPs, which are both glycosyltransferases and transpeptidases, and monofunctional class B PBPs with only transpeptidase activity. Recently, however, it was established that the monofunctional class B PBPs work together with transmembrane glycosyltransferases (FtsW and RodA) from the shape, elongation, division, and sporulation (SEDS) family to make up the core peptidoglycan-synthesizing machineries within the pneumococcal divisome (FtsW/PBP2x) and elongasome (RodA/PBP2b). The function of class A PBPs is therefore now an open question. Here we utilize the peptidoglycan hydrolase CbpD that targets the septum of S. pneumoniae cells to show that class A PBPs have an autonomous role during pneumococcal cell wall synthesis. Using assays to specifically inhibit the function of PBP2x and FtsW, we demonstrate that CbpD attacks nascent peptidoglycan synthesized by the divisome. Notably, class A PBPs could process this nascent peptidoglycan from a CbpD-sensitive to a CbpD-resistant form. The class A PBP-mediated processing was independent of divisome and elongasome activities. Class A PBPs thus constitute an autonomous functional entity which processes recently formed peptidoglycan synthesized by FtsW/PBP2×. Our results support a model in which mature pneumococcal peptidoglycan is synthesized by three functional entities, the divisome, the elongasome, and bifunctional PBPs. The latter modify existing peptidoglycan but are probably not involved in primary peptidoglycan synthesis.

Распад Югославской Федерации – исторические уроки для Украины

The paper discusses the historical experience of the disintegration of the Yugoslav Federation in terms of the possibility of using it for resolving the conflict in Ukraine. The background of tension in the Balkan Peninsula related to the inability of authoritarian regimes to solve the pressing problems of social development, the gradual development of social self-organization structures, the arrival of new gen-erations, the needs of national minorities for self-determination and independence in decision-making has been studied in detail. Also, parallels were drawn with the current situation in Ukraine, which made it possible to identify common and distinctive features in the development and resolution of the crisis in two countries. Certainly, similar prerequi-sites for the emergence of conflicts are internal fac-tors: economic instability, violation of basic human rights, stable crisis phenomena in all spheres of life, the emergence of autonomous separatist entities. In addition, the levers and mechanisms that were acti-vated by the new Balkan countries – the republics of the former Yugoslavia to overcome the consequenc-es of the conflict are highlighted. According to the results of the study, priority actions were identified that Ukraine should take to overcome the systemic crisis of power-public relations, stop violence, restore sustainable economic growth and respect the rights of peoples to a free choice of language, conditions of existence and development.

The Integration of Health and Education Services: the power of COAPES for Medical Education

This article was migrated. The article was not marked as recommended. The 2014 National Curricular Guidelines (DCN), which indicate the integration between education and services as a critical path in professional training, imputed to schools some curricular reforms aimed at early and effective introduction of students into the SUS health care network, which meant a fundamental advance in the educational process. Several teaching-service integration experiences have promoted advances in the approximation between universities and health services. However, the level of integration required between public health care and human resources training policies, both highly complex internal systems, entails new challenges to the establishment of management tools capable of sustaining this process. Therefore, this work mainly aims to share our experience with a medical school in the Education-Health Public Action Organizational Contract (COAPES) and the potential of this process for the medical course of the Federal University of Latin American Integration (UNILA). To date, this experience has resulted in significant gains in the development of curricular educational activities, such as establishing learning objectives based on local reality, opening the entire care network in the region covered from school to teaching, advancing the placement of the students with relevant attributions in the service chain and the approach with the other health IES that are part of the contract, enabling the development of collaborative skills of future physicians with other health professionals, empowering them to collaborative practice. Some constraints must be satisfied so that this process effectively serves the construction and maintenance of the national health system, such as revision of the school calendar, the involvement of teachers in care and management processes and the construction of instruments that explicit rules and represent clear agreements that support these inter-organizational relationships resulting from the unification of actions and public services in a single system, to be executed by many political and autonomous entities.

Virtualising Space – New Directions for Applications of Agent-Based Modelling in Spatial Economics

Due to enormous technological progress, socio‑economic science has gained new possibilities of investigating complex and not well‑known socio‑economic phenomena. One of the recent promising research approaches is agent‑based modelling (ABM) with connection to geographical (GIS) data. ABM is a bottom‑up research method concerning individuals that live and interact in the artificial environment. In this type of simulation, evolution of the whole system and macro‑level patterns results from individual behaviour of autonomous entities. Combining ABM with GIS data moves the simulation into the real geographical space. Applying this approach provides powerful possibilities of more realistic socio‑economic simulations concerning urban and spatial economics, sociology and psychology. Geosimulation also helps to answer questions about dependencies between geographical space and economic performances of modern cities. In this paper, a closer look at this topic is presented. We deal with the problem of implementation of GIS data into agent‑based modelling software. In the first step of our research procedure, we compare ABM programming platforms, then we chose three of them which provide GIS data support. In the second step, we implement OpenStreetMap GIS data for one of the districts of Poznań into these programming platforms. Finally, we compare the performance of ABM platforms regarding three major criteria: difficulty of programming, GIS data compatibility and available technical support. Our research is the first step in developing a comple Xsocio‑economic urban system under the ABM paradigm.

Fiction and Social Knowledge: Towards a Strong Program in the Sociology of Literature

Following the strong program in cultural sociology, I propose a strong program in the sociology of liter-ature, which treats literary pieces rightly as relatively autonomous cultural entities and “independent var-iables”. To outline the epistemological foundations of the new research program, I compare how social knowledge comes into existence through the sociological text and the text of literary fiction. I discuss the representation of social reality in interpretive research, with Isaac Reed’s book Interpretation and Social Knowledge as a starting point. To claim literary autonomy, I outline some of the aspects which social the-ory shares with literary fiction. I am mainly interested in how social theory and literary fiction mediate social knowledge to their readers via the aesthetic experience. I identify two main categories of social knowledge mediated by literature: existential understanding and Zeitgeist. Discussing the sociological treatment of several novels, I look at how these two categories intertwine and support each other to create colorful, sensitive, but also robust and deep social knowledge, which condenses aesthetic, existential, and non-discursive aspects of social experience together with the “big picture” of whole societies. I argue that only by overcoming the often-assumed inferiority of literature in sociological research can sociology real-ize its full potential in understanding the meanings of social life.

Rama jako granica obrazu

The aim of the article is to explain the meaning of a frame as a painting border. Its explanation will be presented on two levels. By taking the first level into consideration I indicate the special place of a frame as a border between entity (reality itself) and non-entity (a painting). The last one is here understood as an object that does not exist in the strict sense of the word “exist”. It means that its frame is the phenomenally given sign of existential negation. As far as the second level is concerned other meaning of a frame will be taken into account: as a border between autonomous and primary entity and an “entity” whose being is secondary and derivative.

Whatever happened to multiple complex developmental disorder?

Multiple complex developmental disorder is characterized by early-onset combined impairment in the regulation of affective states, in the social behavior, and in the thought processes. First described in the Eighties, so far multiple complex developmental disorder has so far not found recognition as an autonomous nosographic entity in international classifiers. In the past, the most common diagnosis for patients presenting with this clinical picture was that of ‘pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified,’ due to the early-onset impairment in various development areas, including the social functioning, with pervasive characteristics. Over recent years, based on literature data, the interest in multiple complex developmental disorder has seemed to decline. Yet, several clinical and neurobiological findings emerging from the literature seem to support the nosographic autonomy of multiple complex developmental disorder. The correct recognition of this clinical picture appears to be of considerable importance because children who are affected seem to be predisposed to develop a schizophrenia spectrum disorder during their lifetime. Multiple complex developmental disorder could be a very interesting entity, being a possible kind of “bridge” condition between autism spectrum disorder and childhood-onset schizophrenia. However, there is a lack of findings of the real recurrence, neurobiologic background, and course of this clinical picture.

Into the Grey Zone. What Do We (Don’t) Know About Types of Concentrations Between Undertakings Under EU law After Austria Asphalt?

In Austria Asphalt, the Court of Justice issued the first preliminary ruling related to the EU merger control regime. In Advocate General Kokott’s words, the Austrian Supreme Court asked the Court of Justice to answer the fundamental question of what constitutes a concentration between undertakings within Article 3 of the EUMR. The Court of Justice held that Article 3 of the EUMR must be interpreted as meaning that a concentration is deemed to arise upon a change in the form of control of an existing undertaking which, previously exclusive, becomes joint only if the joint venture created by such a transaction performs on a lasting basis all the functions of an autonomous economic entity. Although the ruling was rendered in the context of a specific transaction scenario, the underlying reasoning could shed new light on how to assess transactions that fall between acquisition of control and creation of a joint venture. However, this reasoning is incompliant with the purposes and economic foundations of the EU merger control regime. This can be proven both in relation to the transaction scenario directly covered by the question for a preliminary ruling and, if extrapolated, in relation to other transaction scenarios.

Г. Д. Гурвич и С. И. Гессен о возможности формирования социального единства

The early decades of the last century saw European philosophical thought becoming increasingly interested in the sociological extension of the idea of law. From the viewpoint of the sociology of law, law is formed in the process of social interactions and is not sanctioned by the state. Sergey Hessen and Georges Gurvitch base their conceptions of social law on the sociology of law in the 1920s and 1930s. They start a polemic in the pages of the journal Sovremenniye zapiski (Contemporary Notes). Although they differ radically in their definitions of the status of the state they concur in defining society as a set of social institutions and communities existing as instruments for expressing personal freedom. The social regulations they propose are already legal situations. Hessen and Gurvitch believe that the individual can fully exercise his/her freedom only in conditions of such legal pluralism. However, the concept of legal pluralism involves an inherent problem of preserving social unity: why is it that society does not fall into a range of autonomous social entities, each offering the individual its own legal order for actualising freedom? To solve this problem the philosophers use the concept of “the general will”. General will is an instrument of correlation between individual freedom and the development of society and culture as a whole. The object of philosophical dispute is how the general will is formed: 1) in the process of social self-organisation according to Gurvitch; 2) in the operation of the suprafunctional organisation (the state) according to Hessen. The difference in the grounding of the general will leads to a difference in the concepts of social unity: 1) sobornost according to Gurvitch and 2) solidarity according to Hessen. Analysis of the dispute between Gurvitch and Hessen brings out not only the differences in the interpretation of social unity but also the fundamental problems with the conceptions of social law.

Diakonie and Caritas as civil law nonprofit performers in kind within the public warranted system in Germany

Diakonie and Caritas in Germany are mainly run by more than ten thousand autonomous nonprofit legal entities of private law nature. They are constitutionally considered as part of the protestant and the catholic church. The public opinion is interested in tangible medical, nursing and social results for all local residents in Germany. Multiple interdisciplinary quality is as important as the fact that these services are performed on a local level. Moreover people also care about the underlying motive and the attitude of humanity that guides such professional services. The charity service by Diakonie and Caritas in Germany is almost entirely financed by public social insurances. The human services are performed in kind (Sachleistungen) by a variety of different groups of actors. The services are also financed by public tax funds. Hence the work of Diakonie, though performed in private law structures, is as a matter of fact overlapped by planning and financial resources of public law origin. As such Diakonie must be judged and accepted from individual customers and the individual citizens who engage with the Diakonie by civil contract and tort law. In order to maintain its unique position in Germany, Diakonie must permanently adapt with transparence their own governance structures by dialogue with the church and with the society as a whole.

The main traits of the Hungaro-Taiwanese economic relations with special focus on the trade with agricultural products

This paper provides the reader with a thorough insight into the bilateral economic relationship between Hungary and Taiwan. Due to the One-China policy Hungary – and most countries in the world – do not have formal diplomatic or political contacts with Taiwan, however Taiwan as an autonomous economic entity seems to be a promising partner for Hungary and other European countries, even though due to the huge geographic distance and to the relative less-known market environment the amounts of trade turnover and investments have still been modest. Taiwan, due to its natural and social endowments cannot produce enough food for its population, therefore it is merely reliant on imports. Due to the mentioned distance and being closely embedded into the European economic integration, Hungary definitely cannot be among the main food suppliers of Taiwan, but still there are market segments (like chilled poultry) in which Hungarian companies can be successful, if they focus not only on the product quality but also on the marketing promotion. The paper makes mention about some additional ideas of joint co-operation in the food production, like potentials in Mangalica breeding, as it has also started in Taiwan a few years ago.

ГЛАВНЫЕ НАПРАВЛЕНИЯ ДЕЯТЕЛЬНОСТИ ЕВРОПЕЙСКОГО СОЮЗА В СФЕРЕ КУЛЬТУРЫ И ИХ ИЕРАРХИЯ

Based on the analysis of official documents of the European Union, the article considers the lat-est trends in determining the main directions of the EU's activities in the field of cultural policy. It is established that despite the absolute importance and attention to the classical European cultural herit-age, the information age makes significant adjustments to management paradigms that today require innovation even in the most traditional areas. It is shown that the heritage of classical culture today exists and develops as a contradictory unity of traditional and innovative, and the role of the latter is steadily growing, obeying the logic of the development of information society. In the process of achieving these goals, economic benefits be-come inseparable from social benefits, primarily aimed at improving the quality of life. The author argues that the phenomenon of heritage, which is the Foundation of the EU's cultural policy, is still a system-forming one, but the post-industrial society certainly makes adjustments to the approaches that have been established for decades. And today, the European Union's activities in the field of cultural policy are no longer possible outside of digitalization. The latter, on the one hand, appears as a completely Autonomous entity, but in relation to cultural heritage, it undoubtedly acts as a means for preserving and expanding the latter in the context of information realities. The scale of the use of digital processes to optimize the functioning of the European classicist heritage is currently so large that there is every reason to assert that the basic direction of the European Union's cultural policy has been differentiated into heritage as such and its digitalization. The study reveals that in the process of its non-existence in the space of cultural heritage, digital-ization itself has acquired new functions, becoming a kind of intermediary between the presentation of new forms of vision of European classics and modern culture in its innovative and industrial hyposta-ses. Digitalization equalizes and unites heritage and cultural industries on a new level, as well as pro-moting modern creativity and stimulating innovation in this area. The legacy of classical culture today exists and develops as a contradictory unity of traditional and innovative, and the role of the latter is steadily growing, obeying the logic of the development of information society. It is established that if today in the official documents of the European Union heritage and digi-talization are postulated as the main directions of the cultural policy of the Association, then there are good reasons to believe that in the future, initiatives to promote the dynamics of cultural industries and expand innovations in the field of culture will take their proper place in the system of basic manage-ment actions of the EU. In conclusion, the author emphasizes that this will in no way detract from the role and place of traditional European cultural heritage, but will only expand the space of its potential possibilities.

Questioning the implied autonomy of machine state in Putnam's computational hypothesis of the mind

What appears as the main issue of debate between Putnam’s computational hypothesis and Searle’sChinese room experiment is whether or not machine state is sufficient to account for the nature of humanmental state. Putnam argues that the nature of machine states is synonymous to the nature of the mentalstates. For him, it follows that an understanding of the nature of Machine states is adequate to understandingthe nature of the mental states. Searle’s challenge against Putnam’s computational hypothesis isanchored upon the popular Chinese Room Experiment. The experiment shows that it is possible to satisfyPutnam’s requirements for having a particular mental state without actually having the mental states inquestion, although Boden to the contrary. However, the debate is built upon an implied autonomy ofmachine state. That is, it is assumed that machine state has an independent existence from the mentalstate. Correspondingly, it is argued that for machine state to be used as an analogy in understanding thenature of mental state, it must be autonomous to mental state. The question which is being engaged inthis paper is whether machine state is actually autonomous. For instance, how much can we understandby using the nature of the (mechanical) state of a wrist watch to study the nature of the mental state of thewatch maker? The paper maintains that this autonomy of machine states from mental state is questionable.This is because, (1) There is yet no self-created/programmed computer machine, (2) Machine stateis created or designed by human mental states and, (3) Only the nature of an autonomous entity couldsufficiently be used to study the nature of another autonomous entity. The paper further argues that ifan extreme position of the computational functionalism is maintained, then it raises more challengingquestions and leads to more complicated problems. The paper, therefore, concludes that the view thatintends to use the nature of machine state to study the nature of mental state is circular and the view thatequates machine state with mental state is trivial.Key words: Chinese room, Computational Hypothesis, autonomy, Symbols and Codes, Computermachine, Machine table.

A survey on distributed mobile agents' system security

A multi-agent system (MAS) is a system in which there is a cooperation of autonomous entities called 'agents', with intelligent behaviour, and have the power to coordinate their goals and action plans to solve a problem or achieve an objective. They are widely applied in telecommunications and e-commerce. In this paper we investigate the security of the distributed mobile agents' system. We also discuss the problem of availability of a mobile agent while exposing an overview about the DDoS which is the major attack that threatens the availability in a system. Furthermore, we establish a method to guarantee the confidentiality and secure mobility of a mobile agent during its migration in a distributed system by combining the principle of serialisation and cryptography.

Multi-agent approach for data mining-based bagging ensembles to improve the decision process for big data

Today, data growth is accelerating to create a big data in various fields, such as social media, websites, e-mails, finance, and medicine. It needs analysis and knowledge extraction. In addition, data mining is a technology whose purpose is to promote information and knowledge extraction from a big data. In this paper, a multi-layered approach based on agents is proposed to extract knowledge from big dataset with bagging algorithm. To achieve this, we call the paradigm of a multi-agent system in Hadoop to distribute the complexity and processing of large datasets across several autonomous entities called agents. The goal is to predict the target class or value for each case in the data using the bagging technique that is dedicated to the task of classification or regression. This proposition will help decision-makers to take right decisions and provide a perfect response time by the use of the multi-agent system in Hadoop. Therefore, to implement the proposed architecture, it is more convenient to use the Apache Hadoop framework, Apache Spark MLlib framework for building scalable machine learning algorithms and JADE platform which provides a complete set of services and agents.

Multi-agent approach for data mining-based bagging ensembles to improve the decision process for big data

Today, data growth is accelerating to create a big data in various fields, such as social media, websites, e-mails, finance, and medicine. It needs analysis and knowledge extraction. In addition, data mining is a technology whose purpose is to promote information and knowledge extraction from a big data. In this paper, a multi-layered approach based on agents is proposed to extract knowledge from big dataset with bagging algorithm. To achieve this, we call the paradigm of a multi-agent system in Hadoop to distribute the complexity and processing of large datasets across several autonomous entities called agents. The goal is to predict the target class or value for each case in the data using the bagging technique that is dedicated to the task of classification or regression. This proposition will help decision-makers to take right decisions and provide a perfect response time by the use of the multi-agent system in Hadoop. Therefore, to implement the proposed architecture, it is more convenient to use the Apache Hadoop framework, Apache Spark MLlib framework for building scalable machine learning algorithms and JADE platform which provides a complete set of services and agents.

Non-territorial autonomy and gender equality: The case of the autonomous administration of north and east Syria - Rojava

The Kurdish-led autonomous entity called Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (NES) - also known as Rojava - considers women?s liberation an imperative condition for shaping a democratic society. The practice of autonomy in NES shares strong resemblances with Non- Territorial Autonomy (NTA) models; however, it introduces a novelty in the role of women as active agents in building a plurinational democracy. This paper examines (1) the intellectual and political origins of the political role ascribed to women in autonomous administrations and (2) how the practice of autonomy in Rojava has advanced women?s rights by shedding light on both institutional implementation of women?s rights, as well as the creation of (non)-territorial spaces of women?s emancipation within the autonomous model. The argument made is that the conceptual framework of the Rojava model goes beyond the Kurdish question and can be considered an attempt to resolve a democratic deficit of liberal democratic nation-states through bringing together solutions that address the intertwined subordination of minorities and women.