Past Ages Research Articles

Sulla dignità della vecchiaia - Attualità di una prospettiva ciceroniana

In the coming years old age will be more and more a central theme, because in the economically developed Western countries longevity is on the rise. As indicated by some international observers (ex. World Health Organization), along with longevity, however, abuses and maltreatment on older people are increasing. In Western society characterized by the myths of autonomy, individualism, youth and efficiency, old age does not seem to find social space and dignity. In this context, we propose to read the works of those thinkers who have considered the concept of old age within a social dimension of relationship in past ages. One of these authors was Marcus Tullius Cicero who in the treatise Cato maior de senectute, commonly known as De senectute, tried to restore social dignity to the old age.

Modelling individual tree diameter growth for Norway spruce in the Czech Republic using a generalized algebraic difference approach

Individual tree-based growth models precisely describe the growth of individual trees irrespective of stand complexity. These models are more useful than the stand-based growth models for effective management of forests. We developed an individual tree diameter growth model for Norway spruce (Picea abies /Linnaeus/ H. Karsten) using permanent research plot data collected from Krkonoše National Park in the Czech Republic. The model was tested against a part of the Czech National Forest Inventory (NFI) data that originated from the western region of the country. Among various models derived by a generalized algebraic difference approach (GADA), the GADA model derived from the Chapman-Richards function best suited to our data. Tree-specific parameters unique to each growth series, which describe tree-specific growth conditions, were estimated simultaneously with global parameters common to all growth series using the iterative nested regressions. The model described most of the variations in diameter growth for model calibration data (R<sup>2</sup><sub>adj</sub> = 0.9901, RMSE = 0.5962), leaving no significant trends in the residuals. A test against NFI data also confirms that the model is precise enough for predictions of diameter growth for ranges of site quality, tree size, age, and growth condition. The model also possesses biologically desirable properties because it produces the curves with growth rates and asymptotes that increase with increasing site quality. The GADA model is path-invariant and therefore applicable for both forward and backward predictions, meaning that the model can precisely predict diameter growth at any past ages of the trees.

IMAGE-BASED VIRTUAL TOURS AND 3D MODELING OF PAST AND CURRENT AGES FOR THE ENHANCEMENT OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL PARKS: THE VISUALVERSILIA 3D PROJECT

Abstract. The research project VisualVersilia 3D aims at offering a new way to promote the territory and its heritage by matching the traditional reading of the document and the potential use of modern communication technologies for the cultural tourism. Recently, the research on the use of new technologies applied to cultural heritage have turned their attention mainly to technologies to reconstruct and narrate the complexity of the territory and its heritage, including 3D scanning, 3D printing and augmented reality. Some museums and archaeological sites already exploit the potential of digital tools to preserve and spread their heritage but interactive services involving tourists in an immersive and more modern experience are still rare. The innovation of the project consists in the development of a methodology for documenting current and past historical ages and integrating their 3D visualizations with rendering capable of returning an immersive virtual reality for a successful enhancement of the heritage. The project implements the methodology in the archaeological complex of Massaciuccoli, one of the best preserved roman site of the Versilia Area (Tuscany, Italy). The activities of the project briefly consist in developing: 1. the virtual tour of the site in its current configuration on the basis of spherical images then enhanced by texts, graphics and audio guides in order to enable both an immersive and remote tourist experience; 2. 3D reconstruction of the evidences and buildings in their current condition for documentation and conservation purposes on the basis of a complete metric survey carried out through laser scanning; 3. 3D virtual reconstructions through the main historical periods on the basis of historical investigation and the analysis of data acquired.

Excremental Art: Small Wonder in a World Full of Shit

The representation of urinating and defecating people by artists is a rather old phenomenon, for they pop up in the work of, for instance, Rembrandt. For the twentieth century the same can be observed, however with this remarkable difference with past ages, that the number of artists (playwrights, painters and performance artists to mention only a few) working with shit (as well as with bodily fluids and matter) enormously increased. Especially in the second half of this century it became very popular to use shit in plays, paintings and performances. This paper deals with the question, whether the artworks of so-called shit artists working in the West generally speaking are just a kind of wild manifestations of decadence and the abject, as so many people claim, or that they are meant to bring across a particular message with regard to the society and culture in which they are produced. On the basis of the work of the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk and others the hypothesis will be launched that one cannot understand this remarkable blossoming of shit in the arts without taking into consideration the fact that we are living in an era of neo-capitalism, which implies a horrific transformation of consumption goods bought with the help of money (this eternal companion of shit) into all kinds of waste and ordure.

The interno nell\u2019interno: some furnishing paradigms for an interior as interiority

This essay uses the Italian expression “l’interno nell’interno” to identify a specific case of the relationship between interior and interiority in the history of furnishing and interior design. From the Middle Ages to the twentieth century in Western culture various types of furniture locate a specific type of space—made of wood, curtains or masonry—within a previous domestic space. These new spaces are often bound up with the desires for privacy, well-being and concentration. They permit people to withdraw into themselves, to have more intimacy, or engage in a privileged dialogue with others. To demonstrate this close relationship between interior and interiority this essay chooses three typologies of the “interno nell’interno”: namely the studiolo, master bed and window. The first two are analysed as pieces of furniture, while the window is analysed as a space. The three typologies are selected for their special character as paradigms in the history of furnishing and interior design and their unique character as spaces of interiority. The essay analyses them by drawing on authors who write on the history of art, literature, philosophy, psychology, interiority, in addition to specialized texts on the history of interiors and architecture. In the conclusion, with the use of phenomenological and psychoanalytical approaches (especially Elvio Fachinelli’s claustrophilic interiorisation), the essay demonstrates that these three models were true rooms of interiority in past ages. The studiolo, master bed and window can be considered mediums of inner development and wellbeing. The purpose of the essay is to show that the history of furnishing and of interior design can be understood and interpreted in accordance with values complementary to those commonly used, values that adopt an interdisciplinary approach and problematicity as a method of study, in order to shed light on the actual relationship between interior and interiority. Although this relationship was more evident in past ages, rather than in the present, the interpretational method adopted here is also offered as a possible key to studies of contemporary interiors. This article is published as part of a collection on interiorities.

Why Roman Poets In Modern Guise? Reception Of Roman Poets Since World War I

Why Roman Poets In Modern Guise? Reception Of Roman Poets Since World War I THEODORE ZIOLKOWSKI Nietzsche once remarked that translations provide a key to a society’s values. “One can appraise the degree of historical sense that an age possesses by how that age makes translations and seeks to incorporate past ages and books into itself” (La gaya scienza, bk. 2, §83).1 It might be argued that his observation applies a fortiori to adaptations, which unlike translations belong to the very substance of a writer’s oeuvre, offering alternative identities—masks or personae in Ezra Pound’s vocabulary—as a vehicle for the expression of different aspects of the writer’s personality. Indeed, one might well claim that without a knowledge of the classics we are unable fully to grasp or appreciate the achievement of many modern poets in different national literatures —from Ezra Pound to Raoul Schrott, from Paul Valéry to Durs Grünbein. Even writers in whose works the classics play a less predominant role—Thomas Mann, for instance —classical allusions often have a surprising relevance. Reception and adaptation of the classics is to a considerable extent a generational phenomenon. Writers educated in the first half of the twentieth century, when Greek and Latin still commanded a central position in American and European schools and colleges—Ezra Pound, Robert Frost, Allen Tate, W. H. Auden, Rudolf Alexander Schröder, Bertolt Brecht, André Gide, Julien Benda—took the classics for granted, and received their training as a routine component of secondary and higher education, often as classics majors in college or university. They belonged to a generation for whom the classics , as E. H. Gombrich reminisced, had still been “profoundly arion 25.2 fall 2017 assimilated into the tradition of general knowledge.”2 Around the time of World War II the situation changed. “We are the first generation of poets not to study Latin,” observed Donald Hall (born 1928).3 Some writers of his and later generations, to be sure, such as Francesco Vagni in Italy and Raoul Schrott in Austria, and notably the novelists of Catullus—W. G. Hardy (The City of Libertines, 1957), Pierson Dixon (Farewell, Catullus, 1953), Benita Kane Jaro (The Key, 1988), Cornelius Hartz (Excrucior, 2008)—and Petronius —Volker Ebersbach (Der Schatten eines Satyrs, 1985), David Wishart (Nero, 1996), and Luis Antonio de Villena (La nave de los muchachos griegos, 2005)—studied classics, took degrees, and often taught in that field. Others, such as Durs Grünbein, got at least some Latin in secondary school and, while not pursuing it systematically, were motivated for various reasons to return to the classics. New York poet Estelle Gilson, who produced lively adaptations of Juvenal’s satires,4 reports that she was introduced to Juvenal by her husband, who was well read in the classics;5 James Wright came under the influence of John Crowe Ransom at Kenyon College; Donald Hall found in Horace the paradigm both for his practice of obsessive revision and for his discursive poems; Robert Pinsky devoted himself to the translation of Dante, whose own indispensable mentor was Virgil; Joseph Brodsky, even though he repeatedly claimed his Latin “stinks,” read Horace’s odes in bed at night.6 Even in the less classically oriented society and culture of the late twentieth century these writers, and others who depended heavily on translations, appreciated the value of the Roman model and used it in their writing. why this often compelling obsession with the Roman past? It is grounded in the Rome analogy that has long dominated the national consciousness in the United States and often in Europe.7 Initially the analogy arose from the belief, still prevalent in the poems of Allen Tate and the Southern Agrarians , that the westering trend of civilization and culture—the why roman poets in modern guise? 16 translatio imperii—that began in Troy and moved with Aeneas to Rome, then continued its trajectory and arrived with the earliest settlers in America. The concept of Romanitas that was common in France and Italy had much the same effect in those countries. (In Germany, dominated since the eighteenth century by what E. M. Butler termed “the tyranny of Greece...

Topos romano‑frankoński na przykładzie „Missa Claromontana” (2005) na chór, organy i kotły Mariana Sawy

Missa Claromontana jest ostatnim dziełem Mariana Sawy. Doskonale dostosowana do liturgii, respektuje jej rozmiary, a formalnie i stylistycznie spójna – potwierdza topiczny charakter kultury muzycznej Kościoła zachodniego. Wyczuwa się w niej wszystkie rodzaje wspólnoty kulturowej ze śpiewem gregoriańskim: idiom, inspiracje i fondamento. Warsztat kompozytora obfituje w celowe nawiązania do wieków minionych, co jest najlepszą gwarancją prawdziwej autentyczności muzyki sakralnej. Sawa wychował się na śpiewie gregoriańskim, który był nieodłączną częścią liturgii przed Soborem Watykańskim II. Udało mu się uchwycić intymny związek muzyki ze słowem. Słuchając utworu, ma się nieustanne wrażenie, że słowo tę muzykę determinuje, podporządkowując mu wszystkie parametry dzieła muzycznego. Missa Claromontana jest nie tylko ważnym elementem spuścizny kompozytora, ale należy do grona najwybitniejszych osiągnięć polskiej sakralnej XXI w.

Predictability of Business Environment within Budgeting Process – is it Connected with Fluctuations of Economy?

IntroductionTraditional annual budgets belong to the common managerial tools, which are used by majority of organizations for different purposes. These traditional budgets are mostly based on annual accounting periods and are connected with forecasting elementary financial indicators as far as evaluation of performance of decentralized business units and managers. (Drury, 2001; Garrison et al., 2012; Kemp and Dunbar, 2003). Budgeting is often connected with planning activities, which is defined as the design of a desired future and effective ways of bringing it about (Ostergren & Stensaker, 2011; Ackoff, 1981). Alternatively, budgets are considered as detailed plans (Drury, 2001), or as plans transformed into currency units (Kral, 2010). In budgets the strategic ideas are transformed into understandable operative actions (Hanninen, 2013).In literature we can find evidence that traditional budgeting is mostly based on mechanical transformation of a non-financial forecast into financial statements, without focus on real needs of an organization (Doyle, 2003). Doyle (2003) explains the problems with inflexibility of traditional budgets as the important limitation and an inability to take on board changes in a business environment that occur throughout a year. Strong criticism of problems related to the traditional budgeting mechanisms was presented by Hope and Fraser (2003). Their critique primarily focused on the inability of traditional budgeting to reflect the real performance of the organization and utilize the performance as the significant factor of employee evaluation. Other authors complement (Hanninen, 2013; Libby & Murray, 2007) that traditional budgeting is a relic of the past ages and cannot be useful in conditions of changes and requirements of today's business world.Traditional budgeting have been broadly criticised for various reasons and limitations. Stewart (1990) claimed that budgeting is inefficient, ineffective and incomprehensive. Drury (2001) explains how the budgets could get into conflict, if the organization uses general budget for several purposes, such as motivation and planning. Bourne (2005) refers to budgeting and planning as an annual ritual for numerous companies that do not consider adding significant value to the process. The solution proposed by Bourne (2005) is to understand the strengths and weaknesses of budgeting and use additional mechanisms, thereby eradicating such weaknesses. Managers in research generally agree that budgeting is inefficient and ineffective, even though the majority of respondents only estimate the volume of resources defined when budgeting. According to Lidia (2014), budgets represent one of the most controversial managerial tool. Budgets are also very often criticized for being time-consuming (Libby and Lindsay, 2010; Schmidt, 1992). Prendergast (2000) states that the budgeting process requires a lot of guesswork which takes up a lot of managerial time. Indeed, Neely et al. (2003) state that the budgeting process actually consumes up to 20% of all managerial time. Nazli Nik Ahmad et al. (2003) argue that budgets do not take into account the aspects of customers and quality, and prove ineffective in a changing environment. Neely et al. (2003) report on several limitations of traditional budgets, as identified in the analyzed studies. Similar limitations of the traditional budgets and it's linkage to the strategy in East European context had been voiced by Boiko (2013). Intensive discussion about the budget limitations involved, the different types of solutions. Bunce et al. (1995) noted that the alternative to traditional budgets is not budgetary improvement but an advanced management procedure.Wide discussion regarding the limitations of the traditional budgeting practices (Eckholm and Wallin, 2000; Hope and Fraser, 2003; Jensen, 2001; Schmidt, 1992; Luigi et al., 2014) involved the introduction of alternative budgeting methods, such as Activity-Based Budgeting (ABB) (Drury, 2000) and Beyond Budgeting (Hope and Fraser, 2003). …

Catherine of Siena and the New Evangelization

AbstractThis article shows the relevance of past ages to the current project of the new evangelization. In particular, it presents St. Catherine of Siena as an example of the intuition that saints throughout the history of the Church have had regarding how to undertake the process of evangelization. The concept of the “new evangelization” is outlined by referring to the writings and speeches of Pope St. John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis. While covering the basic features of the new evangelization, Saint Catherine's life and insights are presented as an example of how to accomplish the project of the new evangelization.

GPS-Based Augmented Reality System of Past Topography Using Antique Maps

Although it has been considered that antique maps have significant means in the field of liberal arts and are of important cultural heritage that contains valuable scientific signals of past ages, available foundational technologies that analyze such signals and use these for further study are scarce. For this reason, the technology which allows comparisons between past and present topographies and structures of the same area was developed using GPS and constructing systemized databases for both antique and current maps. For the development, a GPS-based augmented reality has been employed to schematize topographies and features described on an antique map. For the calculations and estimations, reference points have been created. This application is written with Java Android and can be installed on Smart Phones and GPS. More subtle geographical elements or features are expected to be found with this proposed technology which supplements modern surveying techniques. The costs involved in the analysis process will be reduced despite of its precision results. Moreover, the commercial value of the proposed technology will be increase widely once it has been improved for an introduction to market.

“Modern-Antiques,” Ballad Imitation, and the Aesthetics of Anachronism

Rubbishy seems the word that most exactly would suit it. All the foolish destructions, and all the sillier savings, All the incongruous things of past incompatible ages, Seem to he treasured up here to make fools of present and future. --Arthur Hugh Clough, Amours de Voyage Writing to the Irish poet and ballad anthologist William Allingham in the summer of 1855, Dante Gabriel Rossetti explained that he was underwhelmed by the former's poem, Music Master, as it lacked the enticements he expected of ballads: [O]ne can only speak of one's own needs & cravings: & I must confess a need, in narrative dramatic poetry ... of something rather exciting, indeed I believe something of the element, to rouse my mind to anything like the moods produced by personal emotion in my own life. That sentence is shockingly ill-worded, but Keats's narratives would be the kind I mean. (1) One is struck both by the aesthetic feeling that Rossetti attempts to discriminate-the connection he draws between romance narrative and personal emotion-and by the hesitation with which he does so: before he wrote romantic, Rossetti wrote schoolgirl, then crossed it out. The strikethrough has the force of an embarrassed admission about the appeal of ballads to an otherwise high-minded literary reader, particularly when the ballad in question is neither antiquarian artifact nor popular street song but artfully contrived pastiche. This self-conscious mode of genre performance had its roots in such eighteenth-century ballad scandals as Lady Elizabeth Wardlaw's Hardyknute. (2) Ballad forgeries turned eventually to avowed imitations, and, after picking up sentimental, romance, and gothic elements from Thomas Chatterton, Sir Walter Scott, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, and many others, the literary ballad had thoroughly saturated the literary field by the early decades of the Victorian period. This essay explores the ballad aesthetics inherited by Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelites and, more particularly, those of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, a less-remarked influence on Pre-Raphaelite medievalism. The ballad in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was less a stable form than an evolving discourse-an overlapping assembly of ballad collections and antiquarian scholarship that gathered together metrical romances, broadside ballads, ballad romances, hymns, lays, ballad parodies, and lyrical ballads that variously expanded and chastened the idea of the ballad. The ballad's prominence as cultural form has been given considerable attention, though recent work has focused primarily on antiquarianism, popular balladry, or the ballad's significance within print culture and romantic nationalism. (3) Turning to the relatively neglected form of the literary ballad, I am interested less in specifying what this genre was than in exploring what we might call the historical aesthetics of genre-the kinds of feelings and judgments that get attached to a given genre and their role in its style, rhetoric, and form. (4) What language did nineteenth-century readers use to distinguish their impressions of poetic genres, and what relationship can we see in this language between aesthetic judgment and poetic form? How do aesthetic categories shore up, innovate, or otherwise inflect categories of genre? In particular, my discussion aims to uncover the aesthetic and affective dimensions of the stylistic anachronism-Rossetti called his poems, after Walter Scott, modern-antiques-that characterizes the literary ballad in its tendency to evoke without fully inhabiting the conventions of traditional songs and ballads (Correspondence, 1: 389). (5) The subgenre of the literary ballad represents an important aspect and outgrowth of what Albert Friedman has termed the ballad's museum-life, its abstraction within the discourses of antiquarian revival, sophisticated poetry, and historical scholarship (p. …

Radiocarbon Dating of Marine Shells from the Gulf of Cadiz: The marine radiocarbon reservoir effect, its variability during the Holocene and palaeoenvironmental inferences.

The ocean reservoir is deficient in radiocarbon compared with the atmosphere and, consequently, an offset in 14C age exists between coeval samples containing marine carbon versus those containing terrestrial carbon. A record of past reservoir ages is preserved in the 14C ages of contemporary marine and terrestrial material. The quantification of the marine radiocarbon reservoir effect (ΔR) is of crucial importance to the correct calibration of the 14C ages of marine samples. For the southern Atlantic Iberian coast, for the last 3000 yr, ΔR takes the following values +69±17 14C yr (Barlavento coast), -26±14 14C yr (Sotavento coast), and -108±31 14C yr (Andalusian coast), which are in accordance with the oceanographic conditions present in each area. Results also suggest that during the 5th millennium cal BP very different oceanographic conditions (high positive ΔR values) prevail in the Barlavento and in the Atlantic Andalusian coastal areas and, consequently, in all the northern Gulf of Cadiz region, perhaps due to the extension of the Azores Front eastward along the Azores Current penetrating into the Gulf of Cadiz.

A PWM Based Fully Integrated Digital Transmitter/PA for WLAN and LTE Applications

In this paper, we present a 23 dBm PWM based fully digital transmitter designed in standard 45 nm CMOS process. The digital transmitter utilizes sigma-delta modulation and pulse-width modulation to convert high resolution baseband I and Q signals into 3-level switching signals, thereby allowing efficient Class-D PA stages to be used. In addition, cascaded sigma-delta stages and switched-capacitor combining are incorporated into the architecture to significantly reduce the out-of-band quantization noise while maintaining excellent efficiency. The proposed transmitter is fully digital from baseband to RF and can be used to replace the entire analog/RF signal chain in a traditional transmitter. It achieves peak output power of 23 dBm with 47% power-added efficiency (PAE). For an 20 MHz OFDM signal with 8.2 dB peak-to-average power ratio (PAR), the PAE is 23%. The linearity of the digital transmitter meets WiFi spectral mask without any digital predistortion.

The origin of the zero-degree meridian used in facial aesthetic analysis.

The roots of clinical facial aesthetic analysis stem from the theoretical musings of pioneering artists and sculptors, stretching back to antiquity. The use of such analyses in clinical practice has been modified in accordance with changing cultural perceptions and better understanding of age-, sex-, and ethnicity-specific anthropometric and cephalometric normative data for various craniofacial parameters. Nevertheless, the work of the great artists and sculptors of past ages remains inherent in our ability to accurately diagnose variations in facial appearance. The objective of this letter is to delve into the origin of one of the most widely used facial aesthetic analyses, the zero-degree meridian of the facial profile, based on 2 images recently detected within the Leonardo da Vinci archives of the Royal Collection (Windsor Castle, England), which is the largest Leonardo da Vinci collection in the world. The zero-degree meridian was described and named by the Mexican plastic surgeon Mario Gonzalez-Ulloa as a …

Private and Domestic Devotion in Early Modern Britain. Edited by Jessica Martin and Alec Ryrie. St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History. Surrey, U.K.: Ashgate, 2012. xi + 285 pp. $134.95 cloth.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Private and Domestic Devotion in Early Modern Britain . Edited by Jessica Martin and Alec Ryrie . St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History. Surrey, U.K. : Ashgate , 2012. xi + 285 pp. $134.95 cloth.Book Reviews and NotesThis collection of essays is second produced by an interdisciplinary research network that Jessica Martin and Alec Ryrie, along with Judith Maltby and Natalie Mears, have assembled for purpose of examining the whole question of worship and devotion in early modern (3). The first, Worship and Parish Church in Early Modern Britain (Surrey, U.K: Ashgate, 2008), centered on devotion in public sphere. This one addresses spiritual habits of individuals, families, and small group gatherings. Martin and Ryrie refer to early modern period as and in their introduction (3), and indeed, a theme running through these twelve articles is shifting and fluid quality of private and domestic devotion in Britain following Reformation. Leaders of every major confession and persuasion sought to influence religious habits of faithful at home, as with public worship. Catholics were forced to adapt traditional practices to constraints of a new status quo, while Protestants sought a thoroughgoing reformation of early modern household, breaking new and uncertain ground in process.Accessing private devotional experiences of past ages is a formidable research task, editors acknowledge. This explains why there have been relatively few attempts, and why a volume like this one is needed. While majority of contributors are scholars of English--only four of history--literary criticism plays a minor role in articles presented. Most are historical surveys of primary written material: godly living manuals, prayer collections, religious poetry, sermons, diaries, commonplace books, and biographies. The authors make an effort to compare what was taught formally with what was actually received and appropriated, as indicated in biographies and personal writings left behind. One methodological exception is Tara Hamling's essay (Old Robert's Girdle: Visual and Material Props for Protestant Piety in Post-Reformation England), which explains how Protestants used various images and objects for devotional purposes in private and domestic settings, despite their iconoclastic approach to public worship spaces.In first two chapters, Ian Green and Jane Dawson present a bird's-eye view of topic, describing various early modern attempts at reformed devotion in England and Scotland, respectively. While manuals such as Richard Rogers's Seven Treatises and Daniel Featley's Ancilla Pietatis held considerable sway in shaping private and domestic spirituality in Scotland's course is notable for authoritative role its Kirk played in reforming both public and private worship--something Dawson says became one of distinctive aspects of Scottish Presbyterianism to end of eighteenth century (34). Both of these well-organized essays affirm importance of clerical initiative, but also highlight fervent piety many lay men and women demonstrated in their homes and prayer closets. Sometimes they were deemed too fervent: In a later chapter, Kate Narveson discusses Clerical Anxieties about Lay Scripture Reading in Early Modern England, pointing out dilemma of ministers who sought to promote diligent Bible reading in home without also cultivating what they considered a dangerous sense of lay independence. …

The Health Consequences of Retirement

Abstract This paper examines the impact of retirement on individuals’ health. Declines in health commonly compel workers to retire, so the challenge is to disentangle the simultaneous causal effects. The estimation strategy employs an instrumental variables specification. The instrument is based on workers’ self-reported probabilities of working past ages 62 and 65, taken from the first period in which they are observed. Results indicate that the retirement effect on health is beneficial and significant. Investigation into behavioral data, such as smoking and exercise, suggests that retirement may affect health through such channels. With additional leisure time, many retirees practice healthier habits.

The Health Consequences of Retirement

This paper examines the impact of retirement on individuals' health. Declines in health commonly compel workers to retire, so the challenge is to disentangle the simultaneous causal effects. The estimation strategy employs an instrumental variables specification. The instrument is based on workers' self-reported probabilities of working past ages 62 and 65, taken from the first period in which they are observed. Results indicate that the retirement effect on health is beneficial and significant. Investigation into behavioral data, such as smoking and exercise, suggests that retirement may affect health through such channels. With additional leisure time, many retirees practice healthier habits.

Abstract 267: Assessing Public Perceptions of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation and Bystander Willingness to Act in Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest: A Qualitative Study

Background: Bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) improves the odds of survival from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA). Despite this, bystander CPR rates are considerably lower in most Canadian communities compared to their international counterparts. Lay public understanding of OHCA and willingness to perform CPR remains poorly understood within a Canadian context. Objectives: 1)To explore public knowledge and perceptions of OHCA and CPR. 2)To identify barriers and enablers to engaging community members in performing CPR. 3)To better understand experiences with CPR education. Methods: 21 semi-structured interviews were conducted with members of the general public. Sampling was purposeful using a maximum variation technique. A range of past CPR training experiences, ethnicities and ages were represented in the sample. Interviews were audio-taped and transcribed verbatim for analysis. An inductive thematic analysis of the data was undertaken and a coding framework developed. Codes were grouped into themes and a concept map was elucidated. Analysis occurred alongside data collection to monitor emerging themes. Results: 5 themes were identified: 1) knowledge 2) barriers 3) lack of social obligation and responsibility 4) psychological factors and implications and 5) education. Participants frequently wrongly conflated the symptoms of OHCA and those of heart attack; they also overestimated survival rates from OHCA. Many participants articulated the steps of CPR, yet said they would look to others to help first. Concerns about inadequate knowledge/training, causing harm, being watched by others or doing something wrong/missing a step were expressed. Personal safety and concerns about mouth-to-mouth breathing were common. Altruistic values such as a desire to save another person’s life seem to be the primary motivator to providing help. Participants called for simplified education regarding recognition and basic science of OHCA, AEDs and hands-on CPR practice. Conclusion: This study illuminates important issues surrounding the performance of bystander CPR. This work informed a larger survey to investigate these phenomena at the national level, with a view towards launching new or tailoring existing community interventions.

Simulations Strengthen Earth’s Magnetic-Field/Climate Connection

Simulations support the idea that during past ice ages, a slightly faster rotation rate for the Earth could have increased its magnetic field.

ФЕНОМЕН АРХИТЕКТУРНЫХ РУИН

Modern academic research has a large area of behaviorist and environmental studies focusing on the spatial factor employed to explain the reality. The concept of understanding ruins as monuments of the past dates back to the days of the Renaissance. Exposed to destruction in the past ages, they have acquired numerous meanings, thus, becoming a source of ideas about the past. It is appropriate to speak about “historic” and “modern” ruins. In the first case, the time distance between the moments of construction and perception of ruins is quite large. In the second case, ruins comprise the outcome of inaccurate design, construction or maintenance of buildings, natural disasters or wars. They also have a symbolic and semantic content. The interest in the phenomenon of ruins has brought forth the notion of«false ruins» (in landscape parks) and «future ruins» (paintings and fiction). The spatial and time scale of the urban environment (including ruins) generates a powerful symbolic content. Ruins often symbolize a pathological state of the society that strives to minimize the presence of such objects in the everyday life. Developing culture prefers creative motives and tends to replace destructive ones. Since the 1980s, the phenomenon of architectural ruins has been rapidly expanding its presence in the virtual space due to:1) the complexity of visual assessments because of the lack of familiar structural elements to be employed to estimate the size of buildings; 2) the violation of the balance of space, mass, shape, typical of architectural creations; 3) the dominance of the deaf mass (remains of columns, walls, etc.); 4) the lack of spatial reference, volume, symmetry, reinforcing irrationality in perception of ruins (the loss of the original image destroys the unity of form and content); 5) the loss of opinions on the functional purpose of buildings; 6) exclusive picturesque ruins; 7) background lighting, colour and texture of surfaces.The complexity of experiences related to the perception of ruins is determined by many circumstances. Special attention should be paid to: a) the presentation of ruins as a particular case of the architectural sphere; 2) the development of typology of ruins, important for the understanding of the phenomenon as a whole; 3) the study of particular architectural ruins in the virtual reality; 4) the objective of identifying the potential impact that the phenomenon of architectural ruins may produce on the mankind.