Interesting View Research Articles

Persistent and Resistant: Middle Class Advantage in Schooling

AbstractThis commentary applies Martin Thrupp’s long-term research interest in the practices of persistent middleclass advantage to a discussion of parents’ apparent freedom to choose the State school their child attends, and the effects of this parental choice on educational equality. In a highly unequal society such as Aotearoa New Zealand, parents’ capabilities to act, consume, self-maximise and choose freely in the schooling marketplace are also highly unequal. The commentary then draws on Axel Honneth’s version of recognition theory to examine underlying assumptions among advantaged groups that effectively frame parental choice as: (i) natural (i.e. all parents promote their own children’s best interests); (ii) unobjectionable (i.e. parents can choose or decide not to as they wish); and (iii) harmless to others (i.e. parents’ schooling choices affect only their own children). This family or household view of best interests is contrasted with one that focuses on the collective schooling interests of the neighbourhood.

The Second Karabakh War and the Dynamics of Relations Between the Republic of Armenia and the Russian Federation

The article examines the dynamics of development of relations between Armenia and Russia after the Second Karabakh War. Armenian-Russian relations are considered in the context of a comparative analysis of regional processes. In the context of the cooling of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Russia managed to implement a key policy of containment, as well as maneuver between Azerbaijan and Armenia. However, this policy became ineffective when Turkey actively intervened in the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. The article analyzes the factors that negatively influenced the revision of Russian foreign policy to the detriment of Armenia. The article substantiates the hypothesis that Russia was able to stop military operations in the Second Karabakh war in time to prevent the strengthening of Turkish influence in Azerbaijan. From the point of view of Russian interests, the most effective way to solve this problem was to deepen relations with Azerbaijan through a strategic alliance at the expense of Armenia.

Online paedophiles and the criminal justice experience: A qualitative perspective

BackgroundOnline forums provide a conduit for anonymous communication within deviant subcultures, such as online paedophiles. This helps to build virtual communities of support. ObjectiveThis study explores the experience of paedophiles in the criminal justice system as reported by those who experienced it on such a forum. By analysing and understanding the experiences disclosed by these individuals, we may be able to design more targeted prevention strategies and treatment options.Participants and Setting.Data are from one online forum discussion thread that includes 595 online forum posts by 212 unique usernames ranging over 11 years from 2012 to 2023. This forum claims to be an anonymous “therapeutic community” for paedophiles and does not allow the sharing of media (e.g., videos or images). MethodsThis study uses an inductive approach to analyse the posts and discover the perspective and concerns of users who have experienced or are faced with prosecution and punishment. ResultsSeven main themes emerged from the posts on this thread: support and praise, techniques of neutralisation, life in prison, anxiety and mental health, relationships, therapy, and difficulties post-prison. ConclusionsThe forum provided an important source of support among a virtual community of people who shared similar sexual interest in children and feel rejected and demonised by mainstream society. The thread functioned like an “echo chamber” that reinforced a positive view of users' deviant interest. Individuals who had been prosecuted for their offending were returning to the forum, which may encourage reoffending. Parole boards and probation officers may need to consider limiting or restricting access to the Internet, particularly the Tor network, when setting release conditions. Implications for treatment focus on challenging the justifications and excuses used by paedophiles.

BRICS enlargement: Benefits for Russia and priority areas for further cooperation

Aim. To identify the advantages of BRICS enlargement and justify the most priority areas of further cooperation from the point of view of Russia’s geopolitical and geo-economic interests. Objectives. To study scientific materials in the context of the research topic; to assess the impact of BRICS on the political situation in the world arena and identify promising areas of further cooperation; to assess the change in the balance of power in the global energy market; to identify the most effective areas of cooperation between the countries to ensure BRICS security; to specify the relevant interaction between the countries in the financial sphere; to assess the impact of BRICS on integration with African countries; to identify the most priority areas of further cooperation; to identify the most effective areas of cooperation between the countries of the BRICS and Russia.Methods. The study uses the methods of analysis, synthesis, generalization, and systematic approach.Results. The article assesses the advantages of the expansion of the association and the directions of further cooperation from the point of view of Russian geopolitical and geo-economic interests. The article substantiates that the most promising areas of cooperation are deepening the coordination of foreign policy of the BRICS countries, implementation of measures to ensure collective security, establishment of monopoly pricing in the energy market, introduction of a common settlement system and a single unit of account for the countries of the association, implementation of large-scale logistics projects. The author proposes a mechanism for pricing commodities in BRICS units of account, whereby the exchange market price in BRICS units of account is adjusted by the BRICS countries based on agreements between them.Conclusions. BRICS is changing the vector of global development from unipolar to multipolar. Russia, being in the center of these processes, increases its political weight due to the commitment of more and more countries to the ideas of changing the existing world order. The most priority areas for further interaction are the work in the direction of foreign policy coordination of the member countries, joint search for effective responses to the challenges and threats to international and regional security, closer cooperation in the field of pricing in the energy market, financial sphere, scientific and technical sector and high technology; implementation of global logistics projects.

World turbulence and Central Asia in the system of russian interests

The article examines the main trends in the domestic and foreign policy development of the Central Asian states in the current situation of increasing global geopolitical and geo-economic turbulence. The prospects for the short-term development of the states of the region in conditions changing from the beginning of 2022 are assessed. At the same time, this set of issues is analyzed from the point of view of the national interests of the Russian Federation. This option was chosen due to the special significance of the Central Asian region for maintaining stability not only of the Russian Federation, but also of the entire Eurasian space. Separately, the author considers the necessary measures required from Russia to support the Central Asian republics, preventing them from becoming a zone of the “second front” of the collective West against the Russian Federation and weakening continental stability.

Quantitative measurement of urban spatial vitality by integrating physical built environment and subjective perception dimensions

Urban space vitality is a critical indicator for supporting rational urban spatial planning and updating and formulating sustainable development strategies. However, in many areas (e.g., aging urban areas), there is often a mismatch between the conditions of the physical built environment and its spatial attractiveness. Traditional methods based on physical space design theory often fail to accurately measure the spatial vitality of these areas. Street view images directly reflect the actual construction situation and effectively compensate for the lack of visual, subjective, perception dimension information. This study proposes a novel method that integrates objective and subjective dimensions to measure urban vitality, which is captured by incorporating spatial data of points of interest, building outlines, road networks, and street view images. Then, taking mobile phone signaling data as a source of ground truth validation, we choose Nanjing as a case study to demonstrate that our multidimensional fusion method exhibits higher explanatory power and better alignment with actual conditions by comparing it against single-dimensional methods. The results underscore the importance of integrating subjective and perceptual dimensions in measurements of urban vitality. We believe that the localized samples of the subjective perception survey will further enhance the accuracy and generalizability of this method in the future.

Developmental milestones in captive Galago moholi.

Systems of the body develop in a modular manner. For example, neural development in primates is generally rapid, whereas dental development varies much more. In the present study, we examined development of the skull, teeth, and postcrania in a highly specialized leaping primate, Galago moholi. Eighteen specimens ranging from birth to adult were studied. Bones, teeth, and the cranial cavity (i.e., endocast) were reconstructed with Amira software based on microCT cross-referenced to histology. Amira was also used to compute endocast volume (as a proxy for brain size). Reconstructions of the wrist and ankle show that ossification is complete at 1 month postnatally, consistent with the onset of leaping locomotion in this species. Endocranial volume is less than 50% of adult volume at birth, ~80% by 1 month, and has reached adult volume by 2 months postnatal age. Full deciduous dentition eruption occurs by 2 weeks, and the young are known to begin capturing and consuming arthropods on their own by 4 weeks, contemporaneous with the timing of bone and ankle ossification that accompanies successful hunting. The modular pattern of development of body systems in Galago moholi provides an interesting view of a "race" to adult morphology for some joints that are critical for specialized leaping and clinging, rapid crown mineralization to begin a transitional diet, but perhaps more prolonged reliance on nursing to support brain growth.

RESPONSIBLE BUSINESS PRACTICE BY INSTITUTIONAL INVESTORS AS THE BASIC MEANS OF PREVENTING VIOLATIONS OF PUBLIC INTEREST OF CITIZEN INVESTORS

The article is devoted to the analysis of the concept of "responsible business conduct" from the point of view of public interest. It is noted that responsible corporate governance has its origins in the concept of "corporate social responsibility", which became widespread in the 1970s in the US and the UK as a result of increased public and consumer attention to the overall image of companies. At the international level, many documents have been adopted to regulate corporate social responsibility. However, not enough has been done in Ukraine to introduce this category into economic activity. The purpose of the research is to analyse the legal grounds and theoretical approaches to the formation of the concept of "responsible business conduct" and to present the author's approach to the essence of the concept of "responsible business conduct of institutional investors" from the point of view of the protection of the public interest. According to the purpose of the article, several scientific methods of modern epistemology were used in the scientific research. The methodological basis of the study was the theory of legal cognition developed by prominent experts in the field of investment law. In addition, special research methods were used, in particular: comparative – to compare the rules of international and national law; historical and legal – for retrospective analysis of the concept of social responsibility; special legal – for in-depth analysis of the regulations governing the procedure of investment; systematic approach and logical-legal method – to analyse the impact of some factors on the investment activity of individuals and some elements of the formation of logical and specific theoretical and applied conclusions. In conclusion, the authors define responsible business as a set of generally accepted norms, rules and principles that are voluntarily implemented by companies in order to achieve the goals of sustainable development of society; they are not part of the national legislation of Ukraine, but their observance indicates a certain business reputation of the business entity. For institutional investors, responsible corporate governance includes two main groups of activities of an institutional investor: "responsible attraction" of funds and "responsible investment" of funds of individual investors. The authors proposed to divide the responsible business conduct of an institutional investor to manifest its social responsibility into "responsible attraction" of funds and "responsible investment" of funds.

Using the traditional microscope for mineral grain orientation determination: A prototype image analysis pipeline for optic-axis mapping (POAM).

This paper reports on the development of an open-source image analysis software 'pipeline' dedicated to petrographic microscopy. Using conventional rock thin sections and images from a standard polarising microscope, the pipeline can classify minerals and subgrains into objects and obtain information about optic-axis orientation. Five metamorphic rocks were chosen to test and illustrate the method. Thin sections were imaged using reflected and cross- and plane-polarised transmitted light. Images were taken at different angles of the polariser and analyser (360° with 10° steps), both with and without the full-lambda plate. The resulting image stacks were analysed with a modular pipeline for optic-axis mapping (POAM). POAM consists of external and internal software packages that register, segment, classify, and interpret the visible light spectra using object-based image analysis (OBIAS). The mapped fields-of-view and grain orientation stereonets of interest are presented in the context of whole-slide images. Two innovations are reported. First, we used hierarchical tree region merging on blended multimodal images to classify individual grains of rock-forming minerals into objects. Second, we assembled a new optical mineralogy algorithm chain that identifies the mineral slow axis orientation. The c-axis orientation results were verified with scanning electron microscopy electron backscattered diffraction (SEM-EBSD) data. For quartz (uniaxial) in a granite mylonite the test yielded excellent correspondence of c-axis azimuth and good agreement for inclination. For orthorhombic orthopyroxene in a deformed garnet harzburgite, POAM produced acceptable results for slow axis azimuth. In addition, the method identified slight anisotropy in garnet that would not be appreciated by traditional microscopy. We propose that our method is ideally suited for two commonly performed tasks in mineralogy. First, for mineral grain classification of entire thin sections scans on blended images to provide automated modal abundance estimates and grain size distribution. Second, for prospective fields of view of interest, POAM can rapidly generate slow axis crystal orientation maps from multiangle image stacks on conventionally prepared thin sections for targeting detailed SEM-EBSD studies.

The socio-political situation in Greece according to the report of the Swedish diplomatic mission from Constantinople (August 1916)

The subject of the study is a report from the Swedish diplomatic mission in Constantinople, transmitted to the envoy of the Swedish Kingdom in St. Petersburg, considered as an important source on the socio-political situation in Greece with an assessment of possible prospects for its development. The report contains information concerning the most serious disagreements and irreconcilable contradictions between supporters of the Germanophile position led by King Constantine and supporters of the prominent liberal politician E. Venizelos, who repeatedly headed the Greek government. The latter openly advocated cooperation with the Entente countries, primarily Great Britain, for the landing of a contingent of allied troops in Greece to help the Serbian army and prevent the troops of the central powers. The period of the beginning of a series of uprisings in continental Greece and on the Greek islands of the king's policy is described. Based on the methods of historicism and systematic research, the issues of the very complicated situation around Greece as one of the most important players in the Balkans, the problems of the Thessaloniki Front, the military and diplomatic actions of the Entente allies in the region, the assessment of the situation by Swedish diplomats and their forecasts are considered. The analysis of the considered source allows us to draw the following conclusions. The materials of the report under study, together with other information, created a three-dimensional picture of events in Greece for the Swedish government in order to take any measures and take the necessary position from the point of view of the country's interests. This report was also important for our military and diplomatic authorities to understand the Swedish side's reaction to the events in Greece, to see their objective assessment of the outcome of this situation, and of the entire world war as a whole. The information obtained from this source gave Russian diplomacy the opportunity to use them in its relations with partners and have an idea of the prospects for the development of the situation in the Balkans.

Prinsip Keadilan dan Kebebasan dalam Pemikiran Ekonomi M. Umer Chapra

This research was motivated by researchers' interest in the figure of Umer Chapra as one of the leading figures in Islamic economics and finance. One of Chapra's deep and critical ideas is about usury or bank interest which he put into a small book entitled "Prohibition of Interest: Does it make sense?". This work was quite "impressive" for Chapra because it was written at the request of many people who wanted to see Chapra's critical review regarding bank interest. This research aims to examine various main ideas that dominantly exist in Chapra's economic thinking in the book "The Prohibition of Interest". This research is a study with a qualitative paradigm and is also included in library research. The primary source for this research was obtained from Chapra's original work, while the secondary source came from the works of other people who studied Chapra's thinking, both from research, book reviews and other articles. There are various interesting views discussed by Chapra on economic problems. However, overall, it is revealed that Chapra's thinking in an economic context basically carries the principles of justice and freedom, as part of the principles of Islamic economics.

Designing an immersive visit for public space assessment

The assessment of the quality of public spaces is crucial for fostering community well-being and urban development, contributing to the creation of inclusive, vibrant, and sustainable urban environments. It is possible to forecast the feeling imprinted in people by a future streetscape using virtual reality. Immersive visits are the best technological solution, given that a virtual environment of quality is provided with high quality resolution and urban details. The Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) professionals involved in a large-scale real estate project under construction provided us with access to the BIM (Building Information Model) architectural plans of the entire infrastructure in the future district. A part of the neighborhood has already been built and is studied in this experiment: a public place with a tram station, a typical shopping street, and a pedestrian way, mainly a public place for leisure activity. These three points of view of interest will be studied with two modalities: real video showing the actual state of the built environment, and immersive visits using head-mounted devices, enabling virtual reality exploration of these public places. This article explains the practical construction of the 3D city model, and characterize the quality of the immersive visits through the use of questionnaires submitted to laypersons (non-expert participants).

Unraveling potential phase transition mechanism of NBT-based systems: From an interesting view to survey ferroelectric loops

As for assessing strain performances of Na0.5Bi0.5TiO3-based systems, the driving field level is a critical parameter. Currently, both current density and strain rate evaluation methods have been utilized to characterize the driving field. However, we find that some discrepancies indeed exist between these two evaluation methods, especially for the highly ergodic condition. By means of the typical ferroelectric theory, the initial analysis for discrepant current density and strain rate loops reveals that the relaxor-ferroelectric transition is likely to be a multi-step transition process. Dynamic dielectric loss/permittivity evolution further confirms the speculation and suggests that partial transition steps may be consisted of successive transition events. Ferroelectric and dielectric loops not only provide a fantastic view to unravel the multi-step relaxor-ferroelectric transition process, but also guides to regulate the strain appraisal system.

马克思主义与中华优秀传统文化相结合研究——基于利益观视域的解读

马克思主义与中华优秀传统文化相结合研究——基于利益观视域的解读

Қытайдың Батыс өңірді игеру бағдарламасы және оның Қазақстанға саяси-экономикалық ықпалы

The article will pay special attention to the so-called Western region of China and will also highlight the reasons for the emergence of the strategic plan for the development of the Western region, the conditions for its implementation and its impact on the minorities of the Western region. Also, within the framework of the program of the Western Region of China, we are talking about the political, socio-economic situation of the population of the Western region, China's strategic plan of international importance “One Belt, One Road”. The purpose of the work is to analyze the causes and implementation of the plan for China's development of the Western region, which turned out to be too mysterious for us, to analyze its policy from the point of view of national and state interests, as well as to analyze the impact of this plan on Kazakhstan.

Southeast Asia in the context of the rivalry between the USA and China

The article examines the specifics of the situation in Southeast Asia (Southeast Asia) from the point of view of military security issues and in connection with the situation in the Indo-Pacific region (ITR). The author proceeds from the fact that a serious destabilizing factor in the region remains the presence of intraregional contradictions - political, territorial and ethno-confessional, which are used by extra-regional actors under the auspices of the United States. Having identified China and Russia as the main rivals, Washington improved its Indo-Pacific strategy, activated the activities of existing ones and began to form new military-political alliances, on the basis of which it is envisaged to create an Asia-Pacific branch of NATO to contain them. The author believes that Washington's policy in Southeast Asia is opposed by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which proceeds from its central role in the evolution of the regional security architecture. In the context of the escalating rivalry between the United States and China, ASEAN sees a way to overcome the complex of regional contradictions in creating a security system based on mechanisms associated with ASEAN. In the ASEAN concept, the ITR appears as a region of dialogue and cooperation, not competition, open to China and other interested states to participate in the project. The author comes to the conclusion that such a statement of the question is justified both from the point of view of the strategic interests of the Southeast Asian countries themselves, and in general of the entire ITR. Analyzing the strategy adopted by Washington, the author believes that it becomes a long-term factor of strategic planning in the Pentagon. Its main goal will be to forcefully counter China's policy and put pressure on Russia and ASEAN, which seek to resist the dominance of the United States in the IT. In his opinion, in the current conditions of the situation, it is necessary to further strengthen the comprehensive strategic partnership between Russia and China and deepen cooperation with ASEAN on the basis of common interests in order to ensure regional security and stability.

Research Performance: A View of Research Self-Efficacy, Interest, and Gender

There is great interest in promoting research in academic institutions and a need to understand the various factors influencing it. The main goals of this study are to investigate the factors that predict academic research outcomes and how gender and research authority (RA) support programs affect the relationship between research self-efficacy and research interest. The participants included 143 faculty members who completed a questionnaire, 19 of whom were interviewed. The results indicate that the faculty members’ research interests and the RA’s support significantly predicted academic research outcomes. A positive and significant correlation was found between research self-efficacy and research interest. Gender and RA support were found to significantly moderate this relationship. Research self-efficacy had almost no effect on research interest among female faculty members and among faculty members who had received support from the research authority. In contrast, among male faculty members and among those who did not receive support from the research authority, the higher the research self-efficacy, the higher the research interest. An analysis of faculty members’ perceptions points to four factors that can advance research outcomes: support from the RA, mentoring, collaboration among researchers, and allotting time for research. Understanding the moderating role of gender is important to reveal the underlying mechanism of a gender gap in research interest and consequently in academic performance, considering the increased recognition that universities worldwide are male dominated and that women are underrepresented in senior positions in academia.

Opaque Grounding and Grounding Reductionism

AbstractThis article aims to contribute to the largely neglected issue of whether metaphysical grounding – the relation of one fact’s obtaining in virtue of the obtaining of some other (or others) – can be given a reductive account. I introduce the notion of metaphysically opaque grounding, a form of grounding which constitutes a less metaphysically intimate connection than in standard cases. I then argue that certain important and interesting views in metaphysics are committed to there being cases of opaque grounding and demonstrate that four representative accounts of grounding available in the literature are unable to accommodate such cases. This is argued to constitute a problem for those accounts that is likely to extend to other possible reductive accounts of grounding that employ the popular strategy of explaining grounding in terms of other hyperintensional phenomena. Unless the reductionist is willing to opt for some sophisticated modalist account, the possibility of opaque grounding cases thus provides indirect support for primitivism about grounding, a view that has previously been widely embraced but rarely supported by argument.

Studying the novel "Celestina" in Spanish classes at the university

The subject of the study is the novel "Celestina" ("Tragicomedy of Calisto and Melibea") by Fernando de Rojas. The author examines in detail the introduction of this literary work into the process of teaching Spanish as a foreign language at a university. The methods used in the course of our work are the analysis of literary, historical and pedagogical literature on the problem of studying the novel "Celestina" in the process of teaching Spanish, and the synthesis of the knowledge gained in order to form the concept of working with the novel in the university audience of future translators. Research objectives: - to analyze the "Tragicomedy of Calisto and Melibea" from the point of view of potential interest for Spanish classes not only at the text level, but also from the standpoint of a deeper acquaintance of students with the history, cultural and social features of the country of the end of the XV century. - to present the author's approach of introducing the literary text "Celestina" into the process of teaching Spanish to students – future translators; to highlight the basic principles that allow to work productively with this text in the classroom. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the fact that the author has proposed a new approach to work with a book widely known in Spain, but not used in the Spanish teaching in Russia. The argumentation of the need to include the novel "Celestina" in the process of teaching Spanish based on the analysis of its deep meanings in the historical and social context, contains recommendations that may be useful to fellow Hispanists. The result obtained in the course of the research was the opportunity to use the text of the late XV century "Tragicomedy of Calisto and Melibei" in the process of teaching Spanish as a foreign language at the university.

Remembering The Independent Shavian

ABSTRACT A brief history of The Independent Shavian, the journal of The Bernard Shaw Society, a forum for varying points of view and items of interest revolving around Bernard Shaw. Both the journal and society are now defunct. The history, as recounted by longtime Vice President Sally Peters, is followed by three articles using her writing as examples of published pieces, presented chronologically as they appeared in the last six years of the journal. The first was an immediate response to Peter Tompkins and his claim concerning his mother, Molly Tompkins, and Shaw. The second was drawn from Eric Bentley’s personal correspondence with Thornton Wilder, concerning both Brecht and Shaw, the latter negatively viewed by Wilder. The third piece—literally the final piece ever to be published in The Independent Shavian—circles back as Shaw mourns William Archer, learns the tango, and describes his experience of the dance to Molly Tompkins.