Relative Freedom Research Articles

Éilís Ní Dhuibhne’s Little Red and Other Stories and gerotranscendence on the page

Abstract Little Red and Other Stories is a collection of short stories that taps into many different dimensions of older women’s existence, exploring characters who are often bereft or in search of a more meaningful expression of their identity. Divided by physical and non-physical frontiers, gerontological challenges persist as much as the desire to live in spite of internal and external changes. The stories are shaped by mortality and by the subjective and imaginary discourses of culture, with the issues of autonomy, agency, intimacy and well-being remaining at their core. Little Red and Other Stories provides us with a multidirectional perspective on the aging process. It offers stories that see characters move towards a greater experience of agency and relational freedom. The internal interrogations and external interpellations present in the narratives are reinforced by the author’s use of metatextuality, bearing in mind her expertise in folk literature and mythology. She deliberately places her characters in unusual circumstances in order to convince her reader that if crossing of the real/fantastic worlds is possible, it is also possible to cross, or challenge, age definitions. If transgressions are possible on the page, we, too, have the capacity to create our own life-narratives and be agentic in our older age, a time conventionally seen as stagnant, limited and dominated by decline. Indeed, older people, mostly women in Ní Dhuibhne, have an extraordinary capacity to translate their experience into wisdom and possess the necessary stamina to rewrite their stories.

Freely Associated Production as a Political Ideal

Abstract This paper offers a brief account and defense of freely associated production as a political ideal. I discuss its conceptual structure, specifying what is meant by free association in terms of economic production, the sense in which it is a value for political order, and its approximate place in an historical lineage of reflection on freedom. Given that our economic arrangements are constitutively determined by law and public policy, and involve relations of governing power, the values that legal authority must subserve bear directly on the productive sphere. One of those values – arguably the highest – is relational freedom. Reigning structures of production violate its demands. Without understanding the ways in which that violation occurs, we cannot effectively address some of our most urgent social crises.

A moral freedom to which we might aspire

ABSTRACT Reflection on free agency has largely been motivated by perceived threats to its very existence, which, in turn, has driven the philosophical conversation to focus on the question of whether we have the freedom required for moral responsibility. The Stoics were early participants in this conversation, but they were also concerned about an ideal of inner moral freedom, a freedom over and above that required for responsibility, and one to which we might aspire over the course of our lives. Though some details of the Stoic ideal would be difficult for many of us to accept, I argue that it merits our attention for the way it focuses on the removal of inner obstacles to virtue, leading to improved moral vision and the willingness to follow that vision. I then show how we can harness resources from contemporary theorizing on responsible agency to capture the structure and scalar nature of such an ideal, thereby helpfully situating ideal moral freedom in relation to the freedom relevant to moral responsibility. I outline three possible contemporary versions of such an ideal, noting how each will be sensitive to related commitments in metaphysics, moral psychology, and normative theory.

Laser-Induced Transferred Antibacterial Nanoparticles for Mixed-Species Bacteria Biofilm Inactivation.

In the present study, copper and silver nanoparticles with a concentration of 20 µg/cm2 were synthesized using the method of laser-induced forward transfer (LIFT). The antibacterial activity of the nanoparticles was tested against bacterial biofilms that are common in nature, formed by several types of microorganisms (mixed-species bacteria biofilms): Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The Cu nanoparticles showed complete inhibition of the bacteria biofilms used. In the course of the work, a high level of antibacterial activity was demonstrated by nanoparticles. This activity manifested in the complete suppression of the daily biofilm, with the number of bacteria decreasing by 5-8 orders of magnitude from the initial concentration. To confirm antibacterial activity, and determine reductions in cell viability, the Live/Dead Bacterial Viability Kit was used. FTIR spectroscopy revealed that after Cu NP treatment, there was in a slight shift in the region, which corresponded to fatty acids, indicating a decrease in the relative motional freedom of molecules.

Constitutional Framework for Planning Acts as Legal Forms of Administration’s Activity in Environmental Protection (on the Example of Poland)

Planning acts constitute a very important instrument for conducting environmental protection policy in Poland. Despite the relative freedom of public authorities in shaping their provisions, these acts are adopted on the basis of explicit authorisations contained – in principle – in universally binding law, primarily in statutes. The aim of the article is to draw attention to the fact that a quite detailed normative framework for adopting environmental planning acts is also present at the level of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland. Determining its scope, however, requires defining the legal nature of the indicated acts, which is an issue that raises certain problems. They are visible especially in the context of the administrative law doctrine.

The Privileges of Bulgarian Writers at Bulgarian Resorts during the Second Half of the 20th Century: Literary Interpretations and Contextualizations

The article examines the formation of the special resort as a topos in which the pro-cesses of construction and functioning of literary texts were activated in the time of social realism, when privileges and benefits were created for special category of writ-ers. The process began with the formation of the Union of Fighters Against Fascism and Capitalism and grew with the special writers' awards given out on various occa-sions. The preferential use of recreational areas in Bulgaria also creates a kind of zoning - Borovets, Sozopol, Hisarya (Villa "Petrovich"), Varna, "Golden Sands" and others are assigned to Union of the Bulgarian Writers. In this context, literary collec-tions of short stories, novels, literary legends, etc. are compiled. The main thesis of the research is that resort-themed works combine ideology and literature while seemingly maintaining their tolerance for dominant socio-ideology. At the same time, they form a layer of relative freedom and are a peculiar escape from the cruel reality of the totali-tarian state. For the purpose of the report, the normative base (laws, rules, regula-tions, etc.) for the period 1944-1965, as well as memories, letters, journalistic materi-als, archives, works of fiction, are studied.

(Re)conceptualizing movement behavior in sport as a problem-solving activity.

The use of the term problem-solving in relation to movement behavior is an often-broached topic within kinesiology. Here we present a clear rationale for the concept of problem-solving, specifically pertaining to the skilled organization of movement behaviors in sport performance, and the respective processes that underpin it, conceptualized within an ecological dynamics framework. The movement behavior that emerges in sport can be viewed as a problem-solving activity for the athlete, where integrated movement solutions are underpinned by intertwined processes of perception, cognition, and action. This movement problem-solving process becomes functionally aligned with sport performance challenges through a tight coupling to relevant information sources in the environment, which specify affordances offered to the athlete. This ecological perspective can shape our lens on how movements are coordinated and controlled in the context of sport, influencing practical approaches utilized towards facilitating dexterity of athletes. These ideas imply how coaches could set alive movement problems for athletes to solve within practice environments, where they would be required to continuously (re)organize movement system degrees of freedom in relation to dynamic and emergent opportunities, across diverse, complex problems. Through these experiences, athletes could become attuned, intentional, and adaptable, capable of (re)organizing a behavioral fit to performance problems in context-essentially allowing them to become one with the movement problem.

US state‐level economic freedom during the COVID‐19 pandemic

AbstractThe COVID‐19 pandemic led to extensive new government regulations and lockdown policies that significantly reduced economic freedom across US states. Many of these new pandemic‐related regulatory restrictions on economic freedom varied significantly from state to state but are largely missed by the existingEconomic Freedom of North America Report(EFNA). This paper adjusts the Our World in DataCOVID‐19 Stringency Indexinto a state‐level measure oflockdown regulatory freedomand then merges it into the EFNA index to better measure relative economic freedom across US states in 2020. We find significant differences in the relative ranking of economic freedom between states once we adjust for lockdown regulatory restrictions.

Italicization of Translated Korean Literature and Korean Diasporic Literature

The present study takes a corpus-based approach to compare ten Korean novels translated into English with another ten Korean diasporic authentic novels written in English to explore differences in the use of italics between translated and non-translated literary texts. The focus is placed on how foreign words are italicized, since they represent the identity, history, and collective memories of Koreans as the interface between translated Korean literature and Korean diasporic literature. Especially since italics as a typographical device is seldom used in the Korean language, the italicization of foreign words also serves to reveal the style and decision of translators and their differences with original writers. Against this backdrop, the present study aims to see (a) if translated Korean literature and Korean diasporic literature exhibit significant differences in the use of italics; and (b) how the choices of original authors and translators differ in italicizing culture-specific and other foreign words. The present study employs Newmark’s (2001) typology to categorize culture-specific items (CSI) of foreign origin into six subcategories, while adopting Nord’s (2018, 1997) notion of phatic and expressive functions and developing other emerging categories to explain the italicized use of foreign words whose meaning is rather culturally universal but whose direct transfer in italicized form do convey cultural connotations. The results of the analysis show that the most italicized category among all categories of italicization is foreign words, while the most notable difference is observed in emphatic italics. In the italicization of foreign CSIs, no significant difference is found except in one subcategory, while the lack of consistency in Romanization is noticeable in both corpora. As for non-CSIs, the use of phatic/expressive and foreignizing italics is significantly predominant in the non-translated corpus, reflecting the relative freedom of original authors to express a sense of otherness and diasporic identity. The present study provides unique insight on how the use of italics in foreign words elucidates the different styles and decisions of translators and original authors, but it will need to be complemented with a closer look into sentences containing these instances and a further review on the original texts of the translated corpus.

Keeping Order - Theft, Sex, and Vagrancy

In recent decades, historians working on crime and gender have been focusing on the interplay between female crime and the urban setting. Subsequently, migration has become increasingly important within the research field. While this has led to new findings regarding women’s participation in crime in early modern metropolises, in contrast, little is known about prosecuting patterns in smaller urban centres in predominantly rural regions. This is particularly true for less urbanized territories, such as the geographical area of the Swiss Confederation. It is often assumed that women in big cities led more mobile and independent lives than their counterparts in smaller towns. This socio-economic difference in female profiles is used as the main explanation for the disparities in gendered patterns in the registration of criminality. By analysing the records of the criminal court of seventeenth-century Protestant Bern, this article aims to contribute to the understanding of women’s crime in early modern urban territories. The findings demonstrate that smaller towns could also show high levels of female defendants. However, the city of Bern was not a place of relative freedom for women. Rather, the opposite is true: the authorities’ control, focusing on an ordered society and household, led to strong formal control of mobility and (im)morality, which had a lasting impact on the prosecution of women. This policy, the article argues, is the main explanation for the high percentage of recorded female delinquency.

MAIN CHARACTERISTICS OF TRAVEL NOTES AS A TEXT TYPE (BASED ON GERMAN TEXTS)

The article presents travel notes in German and their linguistic and stylistic features within the context of a typological analysis based on the approach of the German textological school which studies the diversity of text types.
 The purpose of the study is to determine the main features of travel notes as a text type.
 Research material: travel notes in German published in the press, as well as posted on Internet portals. As part of the study methods of comparative and descriptive analysis were used, which included classification, interpretation, and generalization. The study also involves elements of etymological, definitional, component and contextual analysis.
 Results. The texts of travel notes perform both informative and appellative functions, which make it possible to define travel notes as the transitional type of texts. Despite the relative freedom that the author has in creating texts, travel notes still have a certain structure. The definition of the main characteristics of travel notes as a type of text allows us to conclude that they are a specific phenomenon that combines not only various speech components, but also other types of texts.
 Practical implications. The theoretical significance lies in the study and description of travel notes as a text type, analysis of their characteristics and linguistic and stylistic features. The research material can be used for further study of this type of text. The data obtained can be used in theoretical courses and seminars on lexicology and stylistics when teaching the German language.

Better Than Ice: Advancing the Technology of Donor Heart Storage With the Paragonix SherpaPak.

Better Than Ice: Advancing the Technology of Donor Heart Storage With the Paragonix SherpaPak.

Beyond Negative Freedom and the Working Class Subject: Another Kind of Madness

Abstract Presented with the (non) choice of either assimilating into bourgeois society and, thus, annihilating themselves, or being annihilated by society, the working class subject may choose, neither, engaging, instead, in an act of negative freedom. By engaging in an act of negative freedom, the working class subject destroys all possibility of rehabilitation, thus, determining their fate. The act alone provides a means by which to mark the outer limits of what they are willing to tolerate. Through the act, the subject is altered, their world is changed. Furthermore, before engaging in the act, they do not know what will happen to them. They are, in other words, stepping into the abyss of unknowing. In this article, I will explore the concept of negative freedom in relation to the working class subject: how engaging in such an act marks their fate, separating them from bourgeois society while, also, setting them free. At the same time, due to its inherent withdrawal from civil society, negative freedom veers dangerously near nihilism, thus, reducing their act to one without meaning.

Evolution of Concept VIRTUAL PERSONALITY in Digital Age (a Sociolinguistic Study based on Russian Texts)

The evolution of the concept of “virtual personality” relevant for the digital age (from diffuse to terminological) is considered. The means of its expression are analyzed. Research sources: personal websites and blogs of contemporary Russian authors, prose and philosophical texts. Electronic search databases were also involved: Russian National Corpus, the media bank “Integrum”. The objectives of the study are to define and describe the semantic structure of the term virtual personality; identify semantic connections with related nominations (network personality, digital personality; real personality); to establish possible transformations of the concept of “personality” in the digital age. The study was carried out using the methods of cognitive science and functional sociolinguistics. As a result: a model of a dictionary entry for the term virtual personality is presented (for the forthcoming dictionary of digital society terms). For the first time, a comparative analysis of the concepts of “virtual personality” and “digital personality” was carried out according to such criteria as intentional / unintentional, activity / passivity, subject / object of influence, presence / absence of (relative) freedom. A conclusion is proposed about the expansion of the semantics of the word personality in the context of digital technologies of the information society due to a new lexical-semantic variant: ‘a set of user data presented on the Web in digital format; digital footprint.

Axicon lenses with chiral-focusing properties modeling by means of analytical functions

Axicon lenses exhibit a large focal depth that generates an energy distribution, resulting in non-diffracting beams’ generation. These light structures are called Bessel beams and show numerous important applications in optical signal processing, imaging, transparent material processing, and even in metal drilling/cutting manufacturers. Asymmetrical and twisted axicon-lenses are boundary conditions on the Maxwell equation able to generate complex-structured light fields with specially designed intensity, phase, and polarization distributions. This paper presents a set of analytical functions that allows the definition of such surfaces with absolute freedom in relation to the lens profile. Obviously, before manufacturing any lens, it is necessary to compute its electromagnetic output in order to save resources. In this sense, we have studied some of these lenses by simulation using the well-known finite difference method in the time domain. Some necessary verification related to conservative magnitudes, such as the Poynting vector, have been done analytically and numerically. The numerical results show the distribution of iso-values corresponding to the electric field and 3D-vectorial representation of the chirality flux and the Poynting vector. Finally, by means of discrete fast Fourier transform, it is shown the field distributions as well as the power before and after the lens per frequency.

Of freedom and literature in Africa and the diaspora

This introduction to a special issue on freedom presents a set of original essays that reflect critically on the idea of freedom in relation to specific literary texts from Africa and the African diaspora. Read together, the essays presented in this introduction make up a rich tapestry, offering a set of reflections that map out the complex geo-histories of freedoms in Africa and an array of creative representations of this generative idea across the continent and in the diaspora. This diversity of texts and contexts allows for a wide-ranging critical exploration of a variety of genres, languages, cultures and historical periods. Areas of common ground across the ten essays include literature as a form of protest, creative ways of resisting repression, sidestepping to get around constraints, efforts to build networks of solidarity within and across communities and exploring what it means to be human within these reclaimed spaces.

ДОКТРИНАЛЬНИЙ ПІДХІД ДО ВИЗНАЧЕННЯ ЕКОЛОГІЧНОЇ ШКОДИ В ЄВРОПЕЙСЬКОМУ СОЮЗІ ТА УКРАЇНІ

The article examines the study of the foundations of environmental law of the European Union, the determination of its influence on national legislation, and a generalization of the features of the practical implementation of the obligations of our state. Today, humanity has already clearly realized the need for careful treatment of the environment. The unsatisfactory state of the natural environment has long acquired a transnational status, therefore there is an urgent need to unite the efforts of the population of the entire planet in the implementation of all possible and effective measures to restore a favorable ecological situation. Currently, the protection of the natural environment is one of the priority directions of the European Union, which determines the competence of the EU in the field of environmental protection and conditions the adoption of a significant number of pan-European normative acts. Pan-European nature protection institutions play a significant role in solving environmental problems in the EU. This is due to their relative freedom from everyday problems inherent in each member state, and the right of initiative to harmonize legislation in the environmental sphere. Among the global problems of our time, one of the most urgent are undoubtedly environmental problems, the immediate solution of which depends on the future life and health of a person. The formation of the regulatory framework of the European Union in the field of the natural environment is determined by a number of economic, technological and political factors and processes taking place in Europe. Thus, areas of regulation are created and developed in close connection with the emergence and aggravation of certain environmental problems: a certain environmental problem appears – new normative legal acts are created, or the content of legal regulation of an already existing subject area is expanded. At the same time, reforms related to the integration of Ukraine into the European socio-economic space significantly increased the role of law as a regulator of social relations. Inclusion in the circulation of natural resources determines the relevance of studying the role, functions and capabilities of the legal mechanism in the field of environmental protection and compensation for environmental damage.

Professionalism vs. Ideologization in the Hungarian Candidate Dissertations in Educational Science in the 1970s

After World War II, the Soviet model was introduced in the countries of the Eastern Bloc, including Hungary, not only in the political, economic, and social spheres, but also in the field of science, and within it, in the system of qualification. The system introduced – which remained in place until 1993 – was aimed at creating a new intellectual class, so candidates had to meet political as well as professional requirements. In a pilot study on the process of knowledge construction in the next generation of scientists, we analyzed reviewers’ opinions on doctoral dissertations in the 1970s. The theoretical framework was provided by Stichweh and Becker’s notion of discipline and Bourdieu’s field theory on the functioning of scientific disciplines. Qualitative content analysis was used to process 20 reviews. Although the candidates had to meet both professional and political criteria, the referees put more emphasis on professionalism. The analyzed reviewers’ opinions of the show, that those within the scientific field already had more flexibility than those wishing to enter it, but that this meant only relative research freedom.

Wyższe Kursy Ziemiańskie im. Jerzego Turnaua we Lwowie w latach 1919–1939 i ich geneza

At the turn of the 20th century, agricultural education developed in the Polish lands under Austrian rule, thanks to relative political freedom. The enlightened strata realized that one of the methods of work was to directly influence farmers, that is: showing model farms, providing advice and examples of good management, organizing apprenticeships for young farmers, organizing and being active in agricultural associations. Increasing the agricultural culture of the manors was a prelude to starting educational work among peasants. Thus, agricultural education was supported by organizing agricultural schools and courses, and libraries and reading rooms were established. The forms of activity were: visiting the farms of the members of the circles, conducting agricultural experimental stations and exchanging experiences. Trips were also organized, 1–2 times a year, to further destinations, mainly in Greater Poland (under the Prussian partition) in order to learn about the agricultural culture there standing at a higher level. In 1911, agricultural apprenticeships were launched on their own farms for pupils and students of agricultural schools. In 1919, 2-year Higher Land Courses were opened in Lviv with a higher level than in high schools. In 1938, the JCCs were granted the status of a non-academic university with a 3-year study period and the right to confer the title of agricultural engineer. During its 20 years of operation, 457 students studied there, including 306 men and 151 women.

Was the Constitution of 3 May 1791 a Source of Inspiration for 19th Century Polish Constitutional Drafts? The Problem of Using Polish Constitutional Heritage in the Congress Kingdom of Poland in 1815 and 1831

The article focuses on the problem of using legal heritage based on the example of the Constitution of 3 May 1791. This issue is considered in relation to two selected moments in the history of the Congress Kingdom of Poland – 1814/1815 and 1831. What connects them and, at the same time, makes them unique periods in the political and constitutional history of Polish territories under the partitions is the relative freedom the Polish elites had in their right to decide on the constitutional foundations of their own statehood. In 1814/1815, Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski was granted the emperor’s consent to prepare a draft which, after corrections, became the basis of the Constitutional Act granted by Alexander I on November 27, 1815. Similarly, in 1831, after the dethronement of Tsar Nicholas I, the insurgent elites were free to embark on an unfettered constitutional debate on the systemic reform of the state. Both in 1814/1815 and in 1831, Polish political and intellectual elites faced a dilemma as to whether the Constitution of 3 May could serve mainly as a monument to and symbol of Polish history, or whether it still had the potential to be directly applied; and if so, then to what extent and under what conditions? The publication is devoted to exploring the answers to these questions.