Permanent Task Research Articles

ИНФОРМАЦИОННО-ИССЛЕДОВАТЕЛЬСКИЙ ЦЕНТР «ТАНЦСОЮЗ» КАК ПРИМЕР ЦИФРОВИЗАЦИИ РОССИЙСКОГО СОВРЕМЕННОГО ТАНЦА

The aim of the article is to cover the activities of the first state digital archive of Russian contemporary dance, the Information and Research Centre “Dance Union”. The article describes the tasks, goals, and specifics of the modern digital archive, and gives a brief historical overview of it as a place where a society’s memory of its past is formed. IRC “Dance Union” collects, processes, stores and distributes information about the groups participating in the “Dance Union” festival, which is held at the Innovation Cultural Center of Kaluga since 2023, as well as about all Russian groups and dance projects that have submitted information about themselves to the IRC “Dance Union”. The IRC provides bibliographic, information, methodological services and carries out research, cultural and educational activities. Its permanent task is to collect, process, distribute, research and store information about Russian modern dance in the professional and media field. Its goal is to systematically work with the target audience of the Russian contemporary dance community, to observe the dynamics of the creative growth of the groups’ choreographers, and to create an archive of media data. <br> The article gives an example of the dance laboratory “Soviet Gesture” (1915 – present) as a project for the creation of new artistic practices based on the archives of the choreographic laboratory of the State Academy of Art Sciences (1921–1931), stored in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art.

A dataset of mangrove forest changes on Hainan Island based on GF-2 data during 2015–2019

Mangrove forests are wetland ecosystems in the coastal zone with important ecological and eco-economic service values. At the same time, mangrove forests are vulnerable ecosystems, being under threat from both natural and anthropogenic forces, so mangrove monitoring is a permanent task. The development of remote sensing technology has provided an efficient and convenient means for mangrove monitoring. In this study, we adopted a support vector machine (SVM) classification method with Gaussian radial kernel function, penalty factor of 100 and Gamma function 0f 0.022 to obtain a dataset of mangrove forest changes on Hainan Island from 2015 to 2019 by using Gaofen-2 (GF-2) data in 2015, 2017 and 2019 in combination with field survey data. The overall classification accuracy of this dataset is more than 99%, and the data volume is 58.7 MB. It can be used as the basic data for the analysis of spatial and temporal changes of mangrove forests. It can also provide decision-making support for the restoration, protection and management of mangrove wetland ecosystems, and facilitate the ecological environment supervision in Hainan Province.

Improvement of the performance of a multi-blade tool based on selective equipment with cutting ceramics

The increasing pace of industrial production for the production of products and the widespread complexity of the designs of manufactured products, justified by scientific and technological progress, pose a permanent task to the metalworking industry to improve technological processes in order to reduce the time of manufacturing parts and material costs. These requirements lead to the desire of manufacturers to reduce traditional technological processes and significantly increase the processing speed. In such conditions, traditional tool materials are often not applicable, while some materials that were previously not in demand due to the lack of necessary technological conditions are becoming increasingly relevant. One of such materials is cutting ceramics – a material that has the highest efficiency at high cutting speeds, but due to the brittle nature of the fracture provides low stability when used in non-rigid technological systems, under high loads and insufficient attention to the equipment of the tool with ceramic cutting plates. The article is devoted to improving the performance of a multi-blade tool based on selective equipment with ceramic cutting plates during the finishing of the working surfaces of high-precision cast-iron body parts. In the course of this study, the problems of using a multi-blade tool for milling high-precision planes were identified, a way to solve the identified problems was determined, a device was created to determine the microstructural parameters of cutting ceramics based on the known dependence of microstructural characteristics on the electrical resistivity of oxidecarbide cutting plates, a method was developed for selectively equipping a multi-blade cutting tool with oxide-carbide ceramic cutting plates. The effectiveness of the proposed solutions is confirmed by experimental studies.

Direct Human-AI Comparison in the Animal-AI Environment.

Artificial Intelligence is making rapid and remarkable progress in the development of more sophisticated and powerful systems. However, the acknowledgement of several problems with modern machine learning approaches has prompted a shift in AI benchmarking away from task-oriented testing (such as Chess and Go) towards ability-oriented testing, in which AI systems are tested on their capacity to solve certain kinds of novel problems. The Animal-AI Environment is one such benchmark which aims to apply the ability-oriented testing used in comparative psychology to AI systems. Here, we present the first direct human-AI comparison in the Animal-AI Environment, using children aged 6–10 (n = 52). We found that children of all ages were significantly better than a sample of 30 AIs across most of the tests we examined, as well as performing significantly better than the two top-scoring AIs, “ironbar” and “Trrrrr,” from the Animal-AI Olympics Competition 2019. While children and AIs performed similarly on basic navigational tasks, AIs performed significantly worse in more complex cognitive tests, including detour tasks, spatial elimination tasks, and object permanence tasks, indicating that AIs lack several cognitive abilities that children aged 6–10 possess. Both children and AIs performed poorly on tool-use tasks, suggesting that these tests are challenging for both biological and non-biological machines.

Military involvement in political disputesas a factor of institutional instability in Brazil

This paper reports how the recent military`s involvement in political disputes raises instability in Brazil. As the country will have a presidential election in October 2022, the research sheds light on how President Bolsonaro abuses the armed forces` prestige and power as an instrument of intimidation and political pressure, which includes pushing followers to call for military intervention against Congress and the Supreme Court. For this purpose, this study identifies some top military officials’ declarations and analyses how they explain Brazil’s political instability scenario that began in 2013 and how the other two Branches have been reacting to Bolsonaro`s moves. Despite no evidence that the armed forces are committed to any threat to democracy, it must be a permanent task to keep them as nonpartisan institutions. Shielding military commanders from domestic politics is part of this effort to be considered in the studies about the protection of the constitutional order.

The role of municipalities and landscape architects in the public involvement processes related to green infrastructure developments

Abstract While urban green infrastructure has a great importance with regard to the urban climate, human welfare and well-being due to the positive impact of ecosystem services, it also offers opportunities to practice democracy. The quality of a green infrastructure development process depends on the quality of the partnership between the many stakeholders. Municipalities have a permanent task and a role to play in building partnerships. Landscape architects often go beyond their engineering tasks to give priority to their professional vocations in public involvement processes. In our research, we examine the roles and responsibilities of these main stakeholder groups.

The role of mineral resources knowledge in the economic planning and development in Poland

Geological reconnaissance of the country and gathering knowledge on the occurrences of mineral deposits is a permanent task of geological survey carried out in cooperation with academia and mineral industry. In Poland, a fundamental role in this process is played by the Polish Geological Institute-National Research Institute (PGI-NRI) operating as the geological survey under the supervision of the Ministry of Climate and Environment. PGI-NRI creates concepts of geological structures of the country, conducts independent prospecting studies, archives geological documentations made by mineral companies and verifies geological forecasts. The results of these works carried out for over 50 years are periodically published in the form of scientific monographs entitled The balance of prospective mineral resources in Poland. Presented in The balance of prospective mineral resources in Poland data on prognostic and perspective areas, as well as on the documented deposits are indispensable for country planning of economic development through, among others, protection of mineral deposits in the process of spatial management of the country. Polish prospective mineral resource studies include archival geological data reprocessing, mineral deposit modelling and new geological exploration projects. The synthesis of this research is The balance of prospective mineral resources in Poland which is a unique publication in terms of scope and content, because such data are not published in similar form and with the same scope of geological information in other countries. Therefore, authors would like to familiar international geological opinion with Polish experience and to widespread knowledge about mineral resources in Poland. The last edition (2020) of The balance of prospective mineral resources in Poland was prepared, edited and written among others by the authors of this article. In agreement with the conclusions presented in The balance of prospective mineral resources in Poland, our country is still of high geological potential, especially as regards the deposits of Cu, Ag, Pb, Zn ores, chemical and rock minerals. Thanks to this information mineral companies can plan and realize projects to document deposits and then finally develop the deposits. It is necessary to underline that proved and prospective deposits should be protected against such land development which would limit or eliminate mining activity in the future. Unfortunately, the current legal protection of undeveloped deposits in Poland is insufficient and requires new legislative solutions.

Water management load on water resources of the Volga reservoirs

Monitoring and assessment of anthropogenic load on water bodies is a permanent task of environmental protection. A complex parameter of water management load is suggested. It is calculated using the official water management statistics, and represented as a ratio of the utilization factor of river water runoff to the contribution of effluent treated to standard quality to the total amount that was required to be treated. Changes in the water runoff, water withdrawal and wastewater discharge in the sites of the Volga hydroelectric power stations by the periods from 1993 to 2018 were analysed. It is shown that the Ivankovo, Cheboksary and Gorky reservoirs experience maximum load on water resources. The first is due to the low river discharge and a high share of the withdrawal into the Moscow canal. Both others are due to poor wastewater treatment.

Airline revenue planning and the COVID-19 pandemic

PurposeThe static world of flight scheduling where schedules rarely change once published is becoming more responsive with schedule change updates leading up to the departure date due to demand volatility and unpredictable demand patterns. Innovation in cash flow generation will take center stage to operate the business in these uncertain times. Forecasting demand for future flights is a challenge since historical demand patterns are not meaningful which requires a new adaptive robust revenue management approach that monitors key metrics, detects anomalies and quickly takes corrective action when performance targets cannot be achieved.Design/methodology/approachThe novel COVID-19 pandemic decimated the travel industry in 2020 and continues to plague us with no end in sight. With the steep drop in revenues, airlines need to adapt to a new marketing planning process of scheduling, pricing and revenue management that is more nimble to adapt quickly to changing market conditions. This new approach will continue to be relevant in a post-COVID-19 world during and after economic recovery.FindingsA methodology for airline revenue planning: scheduling, airline pricing and revenue management, has been proposed that will also work in a post-COVID-19 era.Research limitations/implicationsThe limitation of the proposed model is that it needs to be applied in practice to determine the true benefits of this novel approach to airline revenue planning.Practical implicationsFlight scheduling will rely more on clean sheet scheduling, schedule revisions and close in refleeting to better match demand to supply. The office of the chief financial officer will have a permanent task force to monitor cash flow and come up with innovative solutions to generate cash flow for liquidity. Adaptive robust revenue management workflows will be integrated into traditional revenue management workflows in the future for competitive advantage.Social implicationsIn a post-COVID-19 world it is anticipated that airline business processes will transform to be nimbler and more proactive in making timely decisions at a greater velocity.Originality/valueThe approach to airline revenue planning for scheduling, pricing and revenue management is a new business process that does not exist today at scale in the airline industry.

Citizenship as a Form of Anticipatory Obedience? Implications of Preventive Health Policy in Germany

This article scrutinizes citizenship implications in the field of preventive health policy in Germany. While at first glance prevention policies seem fairly uncontroversial, they have intricate links concerning the impact on preventive policies to social citizenship and to the notion of the “good” citizen. I argue that prevention is a future‐oriented permanent task that requires constant alertness and the commitment of responsible citizens to being “ahead of time.” Although originally based on the principles of voluntary compliance and self‐responsibility in Germany, preventive policies are likely to become more compulsory in the aftermath of the COVID‐19 pandemic that has, in effect, been a collective crash course on the importance of prevention and its range of policy tools. Under the prevention paradigm, active citizenship requires anticipatory action—that may turn into obedience—due to the imminent danger of assumed health risks.Related Articles in this Special IssueBarrault‐Stella, Lorenzo, and Thomas Douniès. 2021. “Introduction to the Special Issue: Citizenship as a Tool of Government in Europe.” Politics & Policy 49 (4).Haapajärvi, Linda. 2021. “On the Importance of Playing House: Belonging‐Work and the Making of Relational Citizens in Finnish Immigrant Integration Policies.” Politics & Policy 49 (4).Mioni, Michele. 2021. “The ‘Good Citizen’ as ‘Respectable Worker:' State, Unemployment, and Social Policy in the United Kingdom and Italy, 1930 to 1950.” Politics & Policy 49 (4).

Comparative cognition in three understudied ungulate species: European bison, forest buffalos and giraffes

BackgroundComparative cognition has historically focused on a few taxa such as primates, birds or rodents. However, a broader perspective is essential to understand how different selective pressures affect cognition in different taxa, as more recently shown in several studies. Here we present the same battery of cognitive tasks to two understudied ungulate species with different socio-ecological characteristics, European bison (Bison bonasus) and forest buffalos (Syncerus caffer nanus), and we compare their performance to previous findings in giraffes (Giraffa camelopardalis). We presented subjects with an Object permanence task, Memory tasks with 30 and 60 s delays, two inference tasks based on acoustic cues (i.e. Acoustic inference tasks) and a control task to check for the use of olfactory cues (i.e. Olfactory task).ResultsOverall, giraffes outperformed bison and buffalos, and bison outperformed buffalos (that performed at chance level). All species performed better in the Object permanence task than in the Memory tasks and one of the Acoustic inference tasks (which they likely solved by relying on stimulus enhancement). Giraffes performed better than buffalos in the Shake full Acoustic inference task, but worse than bison and buffalos in the Shake empty Acoustic inference task.ConclusionsIn sum, our results are in line with the hypothesis that specific socio-ecological characteristics played a crucial role in the evolution of cognition, and that higher fission-fusion levels and larger dietary breadth are linked to higher cognitive skills. This study shows that ungulates may be an excellent model to test evolutionary hypotheses on the emergence of cognition.

Analysis of road tax in the international context

Research background: Reducing the costs of transport companies is a permanent and important task for the sustainability of the company's development. The operation of transport companies brings externalities, which ultimately burden the company, which creates pressure to eliminate them by those who cause them. This pressure increases costs for transport companies, so they often try to avoid responsibility for environmental pollution. The European Union supports the creation of legislative instruments that would favor transport companies that give preference to greener and more fuel-efficient vehicles when operating. However, the modernization of the vehicle fleet also brings with it increased costs for investments in fixed assets. Purpose of the article: The aim of this article is to analyze the real tax burdens in the individual Member States and to point out that rates within the European Union are not uniform and represent a space for speculative behavior by transport operators. At the same time, it should be pointed out that the motivation of carriers to reduce transport externalities is insufficient if Member States are left a large margin of manipulation. Methods: We obtained data on road tax rates from the laws in individual countries. We used Scania truck data to analyze the impact of rates. Findings & Value added: When creating the price, it is necessary to consider all costs related to the implementation of transport. One of these costs is the motor vehicle tax. This tax represents a fixed cost for the carrier, which burdens the vehicle regardless of whether the vehicle is in operation or in technical readiness. We found that the adjustment of road tax resp. motor vehicle taxes has significant shortcomings in the EU. Not only do some countries do not favor the use of clean vehicles, but tax rates also vary greatly from one Member State to another.

Assessment of the Energy Trade Scope and Directions within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization

An interesting picture has emerged in the region of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. On the one hand, there are states included in the list of the world’s largest importers of energy resources — India and China. On the other hand, the Central Asian countries, including Russia, are net exporters of energy resources, and this type of export is extremely important for their macroeconomic stability. It is not surprising that the problems of organizing mutually beneficial trade in energy resources within the SCO are among the most urgent for the Organization’s agenda. Nevertheless, there are many disagreements on this issue, some of which have appeared recently, so the analysis and assessment of the energy component of cooperation between the SCO member states is in the focus of this article. It is also obvious that the current practice of multilateral participation in the energy dialogue can also be of great importance in the geopolitical context — as a factor of either additional cohesion or an increase in contradictions within the SCO. A certain role in this sense is also played by external regional actors such as Japan, which faces the permanent task of diversifying the directions of energy imports. Naturally, the SCO member states rich in oil, coal and natural gas (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Russia) are at the forefront of Tokyo’s energy diplomacy and determine the development of new concepts for promoting Japan’s energy interests in the region of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

Performance of horned puffins (Fratercula corniculata) on an object permanence task

Cognition influences how individuals interact with the environment, affecting the ecology of species. Gaining insight into the proficiency of relevant cognitive abilities provides an indication of the processes necessary for a species’ survival and reproduction. Many birds have “slow” life-histories and complex social environments suggestive of high cognitive ability. Little, however, is known about the cognition of most birds with these traits, thus studying cognition in seabirds with these traits provides insight into how slow life-histories and complex social environments relate more generally to predicting cognitive ability. Object permanence is a cognitive ability shared by highly intelligent animals and could be an ecologically relevant ability for many seabirds. I used a simple experimental setup in a semi-controlled environment to test object permanence in captive horned puffins (Fratercula corniculata) by hiding a reward to be retrieved, first partially and then completely. I discovered that the horned puffins performed poorly on the object permanence task when the reward was hidden completely. I discuss briefly how the slow life-histories of many seabirds probably evolved due to the stochastic conditions associated with their marine environment, which in turn may cause an energetic bottleneck that limits the allocation of resources to certain cognitive abilities.

DC breakdown voltage of natural ester oil-based Fe3O4, Al2O3, and SiO2 nanofluids

The research of new insulating liquids having high dielectric strength, good heat transfer, and eco-friendliness is a permanent task for the designers of oil-filled high-voltage equipment. With the development of new energy sources, this equipment must operate under DC. The interest for nanofluids (NFs) is their exceptional cooling property. Recent works showed that the addition of certain nanoparticles (NPs) improves the AC withstand voltage of insulating liquids. This paper investigates the influence of magnetic (Fe3O4) and insulating (Al2O3 and SiO2) NPs on DC breakdown voltage (DC-BDV) of MIDEL 1204 natural ester. The experimental values are analysed using both normal and Weibull probabilistic functions. The 1% and 50% DC-BDVs are also deduced. Experimental findings show that the effect of NPs on DC-BDV depends on both their kind and concentration. However, for the concentration of 0.05 g/L, the DC-BDV decreases irrespective of the type of NP. The best improvements are obtained with 0.2 g/L of Fe3O4 (50 nm) and with 0.3 g/L of Al2O3 (50 nm); these improvements are approximately 10.6% and 9%, respectively. The highest DC-BDV improvement with Al2O3 (13 nm), which is 7.6%, is observed with 0.4 g/L. However, the DC-BDV decreases irrespective of the concentration using SiO2.

Trialling Meta-Research in Comparative Cognition: Claims and Statistical Inference in Animal Physical Cognition.

Scientific disciplines face concerns about replicability and statistical inference, and these concerns are also relevant in animal cognition research. This paper presents a first attempt to assess how researchers make and publish claims about animal physical cognition, and the statistical inferences they use to support them. We surveyed 116 published experiments from 63 papers on physical cognition, covering 43 different species. The most common tasks in our sample were trap-tube tasks (14 papers), other tool use tasks (13 papers), means-end understanding and string-pulling tasks (11 papers), object choice and object permanence tasks (9 papers) and access tasks (5 papers). This sample is not representative of the full scope of physical cognition research; however, it does provide data on the types of statistical design and publication decisions researchers have adopted. Across the 116 experiments, the median sample size was 7. Depending on the definitions we used, we estimated that between 44% and 59% of our sample of papers made positive claims about animals' physical cognitive abilities, between 24% and 46% made inconclusive claims, and between 10% and 17% made negative claims. Several failures of animals to pass physical cognition tasks were reported. Although our measures had low inter-observer reliability, these findings show that negative results can and have been published in the field. However, publication bias is still present, and consistent with this, we observed a drop in the frequency of p-values above .05. This suggests that some non-significant results have not been published. More promisingly, we found that researchers are likely making many correct statistical inferences at the individual-level. The strength of evidence of statistical effects at the group-level was weaker, and its p-value distribution was consistent with some effect sizes being overestimated. Studies such as ours can form part of a wider investigation into statistical reliability in comparative cognition. However, future work should focus on developing the validity and reliability of the measurements they use, and we offer some starting points.

Naturally FIV-infected cats exhibit a higher risk of age-related visuospatial working memory impairment compared with cats without FIV disease

Visuospatial working memory performance was examined in a cohort of twenty naturally infected cats with feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) and twenty uninfected controls. We used a simple object permanence task where cats needed to recall the encoded spatial information from their working memory after a limited period to locate the indicated container. After the exclusion criteria, the cats were grouped based on their age and FIV status and the total number of correct choices was recorded for each participant. The groups were then compared with each other on the basis of median group performance to evaluate any notable difference in the median number of correct choices between groups. Results of the present study revealed a significant difference in median group performance between the young and the old FIV-infected group (P = 0.002) as well as the young FIV-negative compared with the old FIV-negative group (P = 0.003). Similarly, the old FIV-negative group performed better than the old FIV-positive group (P = 0.048). Nevertheless, the young FIV-positive and -negative cats did not appear to be any different in their median group performance (P = 0.29). Collectively, these findings suggest that FIV infection is associated with an age-related decrement in visuospatial working memory efficiency of naturally infected cats. However, an evaluation of different cognitive domains in a larger study population is needed to see whether FIV infection is likely to accelerate age-related cognitive impairments in naturally FIV-infected cats or not.

SOME ASPECTS OF DEFINING THE ESSENCE OF CHALLENGES AND THREATS TO RUSSIA'S ECONOMIC SECURITY IN THE CONTEXT OF DIGITALIZATION

Improving the legal regulation of the mechanism for ensuring economic security is an important permanent task. The variability of external and internal factors, the formation and development of the digital economy necessitates the timely development and implementation of a set of adequate measures to ensure the economic interests of the society, the state and its citizens. Purpose: to characterize legally established challenges and threats to Russia's economic security, to determine their essence, meaning, forms and degree of influence on the state of protected interests in the process of digitalization of economic relations. Methods: the research is based on empirical methods of analysis, comparison, description, interpretation; theoretical methods of formal and dialectical logic. Special scientific methods are used: legal-dogmatic and method of interpretation of legal norms. Results: the study allows us to determine the essence, meaning and role of threats and challenges to economic security, to determine the prerequisites for their occurrence and the forms existing in the digital environment, to formulate generalizing conclusions and proposals aimed at reducing the negative impact of threatening factors.

The involvement of TRP channels in memory formation and task retrieval in a passive avoidance task in one-day old chicks.

An increase in the intracellular Ca2+ level in neurons is one of the main steps in the memory formation cascade. The increase results from extracellular Ca2+ influx by activation of ionotropic glutamate receptors and release from intracellular stores by the stimulation of IP3 receptors (IP3Rs) via group I metabotropic glutamate receptors (mGluR1/5). Recent data indicate an additional mechanism resulting in Ca2+ influx into neurons, triggered by intracellular signals that are directly connected to the activation of group I mGluRs. This influx occurs through transient receptor potential (TRP) channels, which are permeable to Na+, K+ and, mainly, Ca2+. These channels are activated by increases in intracellular Ca2+, diacylglycerol (DAC) and inositol 1,4,5-triphosphate (IP3) level resulting from a group I mGluR activation. The aim of the present study was to investigate the participation of TRP channels, especially from TRPC and TRPV groups, in memory consolidation and reconsolidation and memory retrieval processes in a passive avoidance task in one-day old chicks. TRP channels were blocked by the injection of the unspecific channel modulators SKF 96365 (2.5µl 30µM/hemisphere) and 2-APB (2.5µl 10µM/hemisphere) directly into the intermediate medial mesopallium (IMM) region of the chick brain immediately after initial training or after a reminder. The inhibition of specific TRP channels (TRPV1, TRPV3 or TRPC3) was achieved by the application of selective antibodies. Our results demonstrate that the inhibition of TRP channels by the application of both modulators disrupted memory consolidation, resulting in permanent task amnesia. The inhibition of the TRPV1, TRPC3 and TRPV3 channels by specific antibodies resulted in similar amnesia. Moreover, the inhibition of TRP channels by SKF 96365 and 2-APB at different time points after initial training or after the reminder also resulted in amnesia, indicating the role of TRP channels in memory retrieval. The inhibition of calcium influx through these channels resulted in permanent memory disruption, which suggests that the calcium signal generated by TRP channels is crucial for memory formation and retrieval processes. For the first time, the important role of TRPV3 channels in memory formation was demonstrated.

Biologické zbrane a bioterorizmus - permanentná úloha pre verejné zdravotníctvo

Biologické zbrane a bioterorizmus - permanentná úloha pre verejné zdravotníctvo