Reasons Research Articles

Eurasian aspen (Populus tremula L.): Central Europe's keystone species 'hiding in plain sight'.

Knowledge of Eurasian aspen's (Populus tremula L.) ecological and growth characteristics is of high importance to plant and wildlife community ecology, and noncommercial forest ecosystem services. This research assessed these characteristics, identified aspen's habitat optimum, and examined causality of its current scarce distribution in central Europe. We analyzed a robust database of field measurements (4,656,130 stands) for forest management planning over 78,000 km2 of the Czech territory. Our analysis we used GIS techniques, with basic and multivariate statistics such as general linear models, ordination, and classification. Results describe a species of broad ecological amplitude that has heretofore attracted little research attention. Spatial analysis showed significant differences between aspen and other forest non-forest cover types. Additionally, we found significant association between the proportion of aspen in a stand, the size of forest property, and the forest category. The results demonstrate historic reasons for aspen's widespread presence, though contemporary occurrence is limited. This study advances the concept of a quantitatively based aspen ecological optimum (niche), which we believe may be beneficial for numerous aspen associates in the context of anticipated warming. Irrespective of local ecology (i.e., the realized aspen niche), the study confirms that profit-driven policy in forestry is chiefly responsible for historic aspen denudation in central Europe. Even so, we demonstrate that ample habitat is present. Further solutions for improving aspen resilience are provided to support these keystone systems so vital to myriad dependent flora and fauna.

Dezintegrarea URSS în istorigrafia rusă: impactul factorului politic

More than 30 years after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, there are still debates in the Russian Federation about whether the USSR collapsed (in Russian, raspalsea) or whether it was destroyed (in Russian, razvalili). Accepting one version or the other is trivially simple. So is rejecting them. To accept the destruction thesis is to fall for conspiracy theories, quite widespread in Russia: allegedly, organizations, such as the CIA, or individuals, such as M.S. Gorbachev or B.N. Yeltsin, deliberately imploded the Union. Relatedly, accepting that the USSR collapsed all by itself, for objective historical reasons, is seen as neglecting the role of personalities and their ability to react to the challenges of the times in which they lived. The article highlights the most widespread views in Russian historiography about on this debate. It also explores how political dynamics affected such historiographical discussions.

Exact ASP Counting with Compact Encodings

Answer Set Programming (ASP) has emerged as a promising paradigm in knowledge representation and automated reason- ing owing to its ability to model hard combinatorial problems from diverse domains in a natural way. Building on advances in propositional SAT solving, the past two decades have wit- nessed the emergence of well-engineered systems for solv- ing the answer set satisfiability problem, i.e., finding mod- els or answer sets for a given answer set program. In re- cent years, there has been growing interest in problems be- yond satisfiability, such as model counting, in the context of ASP. Akin to the early days of propositional model count- ing, state-of-the-art exact answer set counters do not scale well beyond small instances. Exact ASP counters struggle with handling larger input formulas. The primary contribu- tion of this paper is a new ASP counting framework, called sharpASP, which counts answer sets avoiding larger input formulas. This relies on an alternative way of defining answer sets that allows lifting of key techniques developed in the con- text of propositional model counting. Our extensive empirical analysis over 1470 benchmarks demonstrates significant per- formance gain over current state-of-the-art exact answer set counters. Specifically, by using sharpASP, we were able to solve 1062 benchmarks with PAR2 score of 3082 whereas using prior state-of-the-art, we could only solve 895 bench- marks with PAR2 score of 4205, all other experimental con- ditions being the same.

PENELUSURAN MAKNA, PERKEMBANGAN, DAN SUMBER PENAFSIRAN AL-QURAN DITINJAU DARI SUDUT PANDANG TEORITIS

The Qu’ran as a guide to human life contains global norms and rules so a study is needed to detail what is contained in it. Along with the development of the era, the study of the Koran has reached various scientific fields, including the field of study of Al-Quran interpretation itself. This research aims to explain the search for the meaning of interpretation, development, and sources of interpretation of the Al-Quran from a theoretical point of view. The method used is descriptive qualitative with a literature study approach technique. The research results show that tafsir is an effort to understand the holy verses of the Koran through several methodologies and has been started since the time of the Prophet, where he was the initial interpreter in explaining the contents contained in the word of Allah to his people. Then after he died, the interpretation of Al-Quran verses continued to develop and the relay of studying these verses continued to the companions, continued back to the tabi'in, and continued exponentially until the modern and digital era. The sources for interpreting the Koran include verses from the Koran, hadiths of the Prophet, or the atsars of friends, then it can also be done with the ability of human reason, and finally with selective Islamic stories

EFFECT OF JOB SATISFACTION ON MOONLIGHTING INTENTION

Relevant factors that support the creation of moonlighting intention among the young working professionals has been related to the impact of job satisfaction. Background information related to moonlighting and its definition was explained. The individuals who work for multiple jobs developed interest towards moonlighting due to different logical reasons that had been listed. Literature review section had covered the relation of job satisfaction with moonlighting by exploring the different issues and implications of moonlighting. The needs of the individual professionals belonging to the lower income sectors could be linked to the wishes of the individual professionals who fall under the higher income sector. The gap in research was addressed. The concept based framework could link up the core theme with the subsidiary ideas of the topical elements. Primary data was collected and analyzed by conducting quantitative survey analysis for developing the standardized outcomes related to the topic of research study. Graphical representations were designed and the discussion of the topic based elements was explained logically for examining and understanding the effect of job satisfaction on moonlighting intention. Key words: Moonlighting, job satisfaction, employees, effect, intention.

Regulation of the PFK1 gene on the interspecies microbial competition behavior of Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a widely used strain for ethanol fermentation; meanwhile, efficient utilization of glucose could effectively promote ethanol production. The PFK1 gene is a key gene for intracellular glucose metabolism in S. cerevisiae. Our previous work suggested that although deletion of the PFK1 gene could confer higher oxidative tolerance to S. cerevisiae cells, the PFK1Δ strain was prone to contamination by other microorganisms. High interspecies microbial competition ability is vital for the growth and survival of microorganisms in co-cultures. The result of our previous studies hinted us a reasonable logic that the EMP (i.e., the Embden-Meyerhof-Parnas pathway, the glycolytic pathway) key gene PFK1 could be involved in regulating interspecies competitiveness of S. cerevisiae through the regulation of glucose utilization and ethanol production efficiency. The results suggest that under 2% and 5% glucose, the PFK1Δ strain showed slower growth than the S288c wild-type and TDH1Δ strains in the lag and exponential growth stages, but realized higher growth in the stationary stage. However, relative high supplement of glucose (10%) eliminated this phenomenon, suggesting the importance of glucose in the regulation of PFK1 in yeast cell growth. Furthermore, during the lag growth phase, the PFK1Δ strain displayed a decelerated glucose consumption rate (P < 0.05). The expression levels of the HXT2, HXT5, and HXT6 genes decreased by approximately 0.5-fold (P < 0.05) and the expression level of the ZWF1 exhibited a onefold increase in the PFK1Δ strain compared to that in the S. cerevisiae S288c wild-type strain (P < 0.05).These findings suggested that the PFK1 inhibited the uptake and utilization of intracellular glucose by yeast cells, resulting in a higher amount of residual glucose in the medium for the PFK1Δ strain to utilize for growth during the reverse overshoot stage in the stationary phase. The results presented here also indicated the potential of ethanol as a defensive weapon against S. cerevisiae. The lower ethanol yield in the early stage of the PFK1Δ strain (P < 0.001) and the decreased expression levels of the PDC5 and PDC6 (P < 0.05), which led to slower growth, resulted in the strain being less competitive than the wild-type strain when co-cultured with Escherichia coli. The lower interspecies competitiveness of the PFK1Δ strain further promoted the growth of co-cultured E. coli, which in turn activated the ethanol production efficiency of the PFK1Δ strain to antagonize it from E. coli at the stationary stage. The results presented clarified the regulation of the PFK1 gene on the growth and interspecies microbial competition behavior of S. cerevisiae and would help us to understand the microbial interactions between S. cerevisiae and other microorganisms.Key points• PFK1Δ strain could realize reverse growth overshoot at the stationary stage• PFK1 deletion decreased ethanol yield and interspecific competitiveness• Proportion of E. coli in co-culture affected ethanol yield capacity of yeast cells

Concentration units used to report blood- and breath-alcohol concentration for legal purposes differ between countries which is important to consider when blood/breath ratios of alcohol are compared and contrasted.

This technical note reviews the plethora of concentration units used to report blood-alcohol concentration (BAC) and breath-alcohol concentrations (BrAC) for legal purposes in different countries. The choice of units sometimes causes confusion when scientific papers originating from a certain country might be introduced into evidence via expert testimony, such as when alcohol-related crimes are prosecuted. The concentration units are also important to consider when blood/breath ratios (BBRs) of alcohol are calculated and compared between countries. Statutory BAC limits for driving in most nations are reported in mass/volume (m/v) units, such as g/100 mL (g%) in the United States, mg/100 mL (mg%) in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland, or g/L (mg/mL) in many EU nations. By contrast, Germany and the Nordic countries report BAC as mass/mass (m/m) units, hence g/kg or mg/g, which are ~5.5% lower than m/v units, because whole blood has an average density of 1.055 g/mL. There are historical reasons for reporting BAC in mass/mass units because the aliquots of blood analyzed were measured by weight rather than volume. The difference between m/m and m/v is also important in postmortem toxicology, such as when distribution ratios of ethanol between blood and other biological specimens, such as urine, vitreous humor, and cerebrospinal fluid, are reported.

Contrasting Conceptions of Teshuvah: Between “Repentance” and “Atonement”—A Case Study of the Beta Israel Community (Ethiopian Jews)

The Ethiopian Jews of the Beta Israel community are unique in the annals of Jewish history. The community maintained its Jewish identity and devotedly upheld observance of the mitzvot, even in the face of grave physical and spiritual difficulties and unrelenting attempts to persuade them to abandon their religion. Yet, their traditions diverge significantly from the accepted Rabbinic halakhic tradition that is the norm in Israel. This paper examines Yom Kippur observances and describes key differences between the Beta Israel tradition, which reflects the centrality of atonement, and the Rabbinic tradition, which reflects the centrality of repentance. These distinctions stand as manifestations of a set of profound differences within the very consciousness that animates the two traditions. Discussion, using the works of thinkers like Rabbis Joseph B. Soloveitchik, his disciple, Prof. Rabbi David Hartman, and Ethiopian sages, will focus on the more theocentric Beta Israel tradition, in which individuals are perceived, and perceive themselves, as a part of a collective, in contrast to the Rabbinic tradition, which places a greater emphasis on the agency of the individual and human reason. We will highlight the difference between the concepts of “repentance” and “atonement” that are at the root of the two communities’ theologies.

Evolving indications for partial knee replacement : New aspects

Partial knee replacement has proven to be an effective therapy for advanced unicompartmental arthrosis of the knee. Despite continuous advancements in implants and surgical techniques over the past decades, the global preference for total knee arthroplasty still persists for historical reasons. This report aims to illuminate advantages and disadvantages of partial knee replacement considering long-term results, the evolution of indication criteria over recent decades and new aspects in patient selection with potential improvements through emerging technologies. The analysis involves the examination of long-term results from clinical studies and registry data, highlighting the risk factors for potential failures and their influence on the development of indication criteria. Present-day long-term results demonstrate excellent prosthetic survival, aligning with outcomes from total knee arthroplasty. New perspectives for expanding indication criteria are discussed, including the possible application of partial knee replacement in cases of severe varus deformity > 15°, anterior cruciate ligament insufficiency, young active patients, anterior knee pain, and/or patellofemoral arthritis, as well as mild radiographic arthritis with degenerative medial meniscus root tear and meniscal extrusion. Indication criteria have consistently expanded in recent years, taking into account modern insights, and the application of advanced technologies can enhance precision and minimize surgical errors. Furthermore, this report emphasizes that revision rates are not the sole criterion for success and underscores the necessity for acomprehensive examination of clinical results.

Quality of Life Dependence on Public Transport Accessibility

Purpose. Article present the survey on dependency of quality-of-life indicators with transport accessibility. Specific focus is on rural areas. There was hypothesis to prove, that inhabitants of low population density rural areas are facing poor quality-of-life. Design/Methodology/Approach. A representative survey of the population was chosen as the research method. The study area was divided into transport districts, and the representativeness of the survey was ensured in each transport district. Transport districts are divided according to the criterion of travel time and public transport supply. The survey included questions that allowed checking whether and which quality of life parameters correlate with the quality of public services. Findings and implications. The research found that public transport accessibility is closely related with such attributes as education, employment rate and closely related to such attributes of life quality as change of clothes more often or having the proper shoes more often as well as having Internet access. Limitations. The study was conducted in just one country with a very high level of car ownership, which is still growing. Another limitation is that the public transport supply in this country is insufficient due to historical reasons. For a long time, public transport was unsubsidized or weakly subsidized in this country. Originality. The originality of the paper is based on a representative survey conducted by the authors, the results of which linked quality of life indicators with public transport availability indicators. The originality of the work is based on a representative survey conducted by the authors, the results of which linked quality of life indicators with public transport availability indicators.

Shear Wave Velocity Prediction Based on the Long Short-Term Memory Network with Attention Mechanism

Shear wave velocity (VS) is a vital prerequisite for rock geophysics. However, due to historical, cost, and technical reasons, the shear wave velocity of some wells is missing. To reduce the deviation of the description of underground oil and gas distribution, it is urgent to develop a high-precision neural network prediction method. In this paper, an attention module is designed to automatically calculate the weight of each part of the input value. Then, the weighted data are fed into the long short-term memory network to predict shear wave velocities. Numerical simulations demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed method, which achieves a significantly lower MAE of 38.89 compared to the LSTM network’s 45.35 in Well B. In addition, the relationship between network input length and prediction accuracy is further analyzed.

The cognitive and psychological mechanism of Chinese oxymoron “tough women”

Oxymoron refers to juxtaposing two words that are semantically contradictory to each other in language communication, which makes them have rhetorical connection, and achieves the modification effect of binary opposition through the antonym relationship in semantic components, and which makes the expression profound and more tense. Based on the theory of cognitive linguistics, this study analyzes the formation mechanism of the oxymoron “tough women” from the perspective of “reality-cognition-language” and discusses the cognitive and psychological mechanism of its formation. Conceptual blending theory is used to form the oxymoron conceptual integration prominent model of “tough women”. It is found that the formation of the word “tough women” has a long historical reasons. From ancient times to modern times, because women’s social status changes with the changes of objective social forms, based on physical experience and psychological perception of different times, people form their concepts about the “tough women”. Dynamic cognitive processing of “female” is carried out to form an abstract image schema of modern “tough women”, which integrates the traditional weak characteristic domain of women and the strong male characteristic domain in psychological space, and a theoretical model of conceptual integration of oxymoron is put forward.

The Reasonable Content of Conscience in Public Bioethics.

Bioethicists aim to provide moral guidance in policy, research, and clinical contexts using methods of moral analysis (e.g., principlism, casuistry, and narrative ethics) that aim to satisfy the constraints of public reason. Among other objections, some critics have argued that public reason lacks the moral content needed to resolve bioethical controversies because discursive reason simply cannot justify any substantive moral claims in a pluralistic society. In this paper, the authors defend public reason from this criticism by showing that it contains sufficient content to address one of the perennial controversies in bioethics-the permissibility and limits of clinician conscientious objection. They develop a "reasonability view" grounded in public reason and apply it to some recent examples of conscientious objection.

Criminal Behaviors Among Minorities: A Social Resistance Perspective

The social resistance framework offers an explanation for high-risk and criminal behaviors among non-dominant minority groups. The study explores the generalizability of the framework to minority groups which are marginalized for different reasons, such as immigration, and deep historical national conflicts, and across several criminal behaviors, by surveying a representative sample of more than 1,000 participants from Israel's majority population and four minority groups—Muslims, Jews of Ethiopian origin, immigrants from the former Soviet Union, and ultra-Orthodox Jews. Negative binomial regressions show that social resistance is positively associated with criminal behaviors, controlling for exposure, demographic characteristics, and previous explanations. Additionally, both levels of social resistance and its association with criminal behaviors vary between the different non-dominant minority groups. The study supports the premises of the framework, showing that social resistance plays a role in criminal behaviors among minority groups which are marginalized for different historical reasons.

National Minorities in the Odesa Oblast – Applying the European Model to Ensure Peaceful Coexistence

Abstract The article deals with the situation of national minorities living in the Odesa oblast and in the town of Odesa with the main focus before the Russian war against Ukraine started on 24 of February 2022 but using also the relevant events happened afterwards. It explains what are the historical reasons that made Odesa a region so diverse from the national identity perspective, with a lot of national minorities living here from centuries. Although there are a significant number of studies on the issue of the national minorities in this region, none of them captured, so far, the complex relationship of Ukraine with the kin-states – Romania, Bulgaria and in some extent Turkey. The number of idp s in Ukraine was already high before the war started, with an important impact on the relationship of the Ukrainian majority with the national minorities and it will certainly be much higher after the war. The article takes into account this situation particularly for the Odesa oblast. The article examines how the institutions and the religious actors have influenced this relationship but how the war will shape it remains an open question. The article offers a perspective on the 2017 Ukrainian law in education, how it was applied until 24 of February 2022 and also on the 2022 Law on minorities, in order to find an answer to the question why a new framework for the national minorities in Ukraine after the end of the war is very important.

Fundamental detectability of Raman scattering: A unified diagrammatic approach.

Both spontaneous Raman scattering and stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) are cornerstones of modern photonics, spectroscopy, and imaging. However, a unified understanding of the ultimate detectability of Raman scattering is lacking, due to both historical and technical reasons. Starting from quantum electrodynamics, we formulate the fundamental detectability for both spontaneous Raman scattering and SRS. The key concept is recognizing spontaneous Raman scattering as stimulated Raman process driven by vacuum field fluctuation. A simple and unified expression, Eq. (17), is derived, which can be depicted on a two-dimensional phase-diagram-like graph with inherent symmetry. It turns out that the particle nature of light dictates the ultimate detectability of spontaneous Raman scattering, which can be represented by a line on this detectability diagram. Importantly, if provided with a reasonably strong Stokes photon flux, SRS can breach this fundamental limit and open uncharted territory of drastically accelerated measurement speed and much lower detection concentration relevant to biological imaging. Such new territory in the detectability diagram is otherwise forbidden by the spontaneous counterpart. Diagrammatical analysis explains the empirical observations, provides quantitative insights, and makes new predictions. Notably, recent experimental applications of SRS microscopy can almost entirely be captured by this diagram, further supporting the explanatory power of the theory. Thus, this unified diagrammatic approach outlines a framework to understand all Raman-based measurement and provides a theoretical explanation for the remarkable utility of the emerging SRS microscopy.

Desire, Reason, and Intellect in Nicomachean Ethics 6

Abstract: This article proposes a via media between intellectualism and nonrationalism on the question of how, according to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics , a virtuous person determines the goal ( telos ) for action ( praxis ). The author argues that, according to Aristotle, the goal is set neither by discursive reasoning nor by well-formed nonrational desires but, rather, by practical intellect ( nous ), which is a capacity for nondiscursive perception ( aisthēsis ) of a singular action as choiceworthy in itself. He argues that for Aristotle the activity of nous completes and perfects the operation of prudence ( phronēsis ) or excellent practical thinking, and that this operation essentially includes a distinctively intellectual desire, which is required both for the correct perception of final actions and for the movement of the deliberating agent to act.

The Revolt against Humanity: Imagining a Future without Us

The Revolt against Humanity: Imagining a Future without Us

The Revolt against Humanity: Imagining a Future without Us

The Revolt against Humanity: Imagining a Future without Us

Идея «творящей формы» в эстетике русского авангарда 1920-х годов

The Russian avant-garde of the 1920s was a time of a utopian thinking crisis in theoretical aesthetics and in art. The utopianism of the avant-garde project consisted in the impracticability of the mission of art to totally transform reality and man through aesthetic means. The key idea of the avant-garde aesthetic concepts was the effectiveness of the creative form building the integrity of the life creative matter. The concept of the “creative form” was developed in different directions: from the concept of a single style in all spheres of life and the theory of synthesis of arts to the aesthetics of functionally appropriate forms of the objective environment. The symbolic language of style was a universal aesthetic translation of metaphysical ideas into sensual ontological image of the wholeness of being; synthesis of arts was seen as a means of expressing the initial wholeness of cosmic being; and a functionally appropriate form of the objective environment was understood as a means of direct involvement of man, spontaneously causing his active creative response. The utopianism of the idea of the “creative form” determined its rapid demise, which had a complex of philosophical, social, political and human reasons. The major of them included the totality of the wholeness project, the undervaluation of the individual artistic subject’s creative freedom, the rejection of a substantial spiritual and value-based interpretation of culture, the hope that the aesthetic influence might transform the masses into creative subjects, the narrowing of the potentialities of the utopian project by the attempt to turn it into a methodology of action, the pursuit of realization that limited the growth of its inner potential, and the undervaluation of the real conditions for its implementation.