EQUAL ACCESS FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES TO EMPLOYMENT IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION – REAL POSSIBILITY OR FICTION?

The aim of the article is to try to evaluate actions taken by the country, which are supposed to change the image of public administration perceived as an employer, who refuses to employ people with disabilities or whose only motivation is to avoid being charged with contribution to PERON. An evaluation will be based on further answers to some essential questions. In the first place, the author will try to establish whether the actions taken by the country in order to remove barriers to employing people with disabilities were also effective with organs, which are its emancipation. It will require referring to many normative regulations in force in RP; both these which are the results of actions of national legislator and those, which result from Poland making commitments in the international arena. Subsequently one must be considered if actions of specific public administration body are taken for the employment of people with disabilities, may be considered as effective and whether the rights of people with disabilities were there respected. This thought in turn will require referring to how institutions responsible for increasing the employment of people with disabilities in public administration work in practice.

Perspectives on Open Science and The Future of Scholarly Communication: Internet Trackers and Algorithmic Persuasion

The current digital content industry is heavily oriented towards building platforms that track users’ behaviour and seek to convince them to stay longer and come back sooner onto the platform. Similarly, authors are incentivised to publish more and to become champions of dissemination. Arguably, these incentive systems are built around public reputation supported by a system of metrics, hard to be assessed. Generally, the digital content industry is permeable to non-human contributors (algorithms that are able to generate content and reactions), anonymity and identity fraud. It is pertinent to present a perspective paper about early signs of track and persuasion in scholarly communication. Building our views, we have run a pilot study to determine the opportunity for conducting research about the use of “track and persuade” technologies in scholarly communication. We collected observations on a sample of 148 relevant websites and we interviewed 15 that are experts related to the field. Through this work, we tried to identify 1) the essential questions that could inspire proper research, 2) good practices to be recommended for future research, and 3) whether citizen science is a suitable approach to further research in this field. The findings could contribute to determining a broader solution for building trust and infrastructure in scholarly communication. The principles of Open Science will be used as a framework to see if they offer insights into this work going forward.

Resiliency in numerical algorithm design for extreme scale simulations

This work is based on the seminar titled ‘Resiliency in Numerical Algorithm Design for Extreme Scale Simulations’ held March 1–6, 2020, at Schloss Dagstuhl, that was attended by all the authors. Advanced supercomputing is characterized by very high computation speeds at the cost of involving an enormous amount of resources and costs. A typical large-scale computation running for 48 h on a system consuming 20 MW, as predicted for exascale systems, would consume a million kWh, corresponding to about 100k Euro in energy cost for executing 1023 floating-point operations. It is clearly unacceptable to lose the whole computation if any of the several million parallel processes fails during the execution. Moreover, if a single operation suffers from a bit-flip error, should the whole computation be declared invalid? What about the notion of reproducibility itself: should this core paradigm of science be revised and refined for results that are obtained by large-scale simulation? Naive versions of conventional resilience techniques will not scale to the exascale regime: with a main memory footprint of tens of Petabytes, synchronously writing checkpoint data all the way to background storage at frequent intervals will create intolerable overheads in runtime and energy consumption. Forecasts show that the mean time between failures could be lower than the time to recover from such a checkpoint, so that large calculations at scale might not make any progress if robust alternatives are not investigated. More advanced resilience techniques must be devised. The key may lie in exploiting both advanced system features as well as specific application knowledge. Research will face two essential questions: (1) what are the reliability requirements for a particular computation and (2) how do we best design the algorithms and software to meet these requirements? While the analysis of use cases can help understand the particular reliability requirements, the construction of remedies is currently wide open. One avenue would be to refine and improve on system- or application-level checkpointing and rollback strategies in the case an error is detected. Developers might use fault notification interfaces and flexible runtime systems to respond to node failures in an application-dependent fashion. Novel numerical algorithms or more stochastic computational approaches may be required to meet accuracy requirements in the face of undetectable soft errors. These ideas constituted an essential topic of the seminar. The goal of this Dagstuhl Seminar was to bring together a diverse group of scientists with expertise in exascale computing to discuss novel ways to make applications resilient against detected and undetected faults. In particular, participants explored the role that algorithms and applications play in the holistic approach needed to tackle this challenge. This article gathers a broad range of perspectives on the role of algorithms, applications and systems in achieving resilience for extreme scale simulations. The ultimate goal is to spark novel ideas and encourage the development of concrete solutions for achieving such resilience holistically.

Metaphysics of the History of Music in the Scientific Area: Challenges of the Time

The relevance of the article is determined by the desire to consider the understanding of the scientific discipline “The History of Music” in its metaphysical dimension. “Metaphysics of the History of Music” appears as a modern discipline that opens new layers of meaning. It deals with problems that combine the musical art with philosophy, anthropology, culturology, aesthetics, but its foundation is determined by the musicological view on the musical artifacts. Scientific novelty. For the first time, the principles of Aristotle's teaching appear as the methodological foundation of the new discipline “Metaphysics of the History of Music”. This allows us to consider the history of music as a special way of understanding existence. The intersections of synchronous and diachronic parameters of understanding musical texts open new horizons of awareness of his “I” to the man of the 21st century. The purpose of the article is to substantiate the essential characteristics of the metaphysics of the history of music as a new scientific discipline and to determine the peculiarities of the implementation of synchronous and diachronic dimensions of musical texts in a given problem field. The research methodology includes the use of metaphysical, historical, comparative methods. Main results and conclusions. The history of music gives man endless opportunities to ask himself about the essential principles of existence, so at the present stage he is looking for ways in a new direction, which could be called “Metaphysics of the History of Music”. “Metaphysics of the History of Music” establishes the connection of phenomena each time in a new way, which reveals incomprehensible (to the superficial view of) the laws of the musicaltemporal spiral. Then each fact doesn’t remain a part of the information “herbarium” but is clarified by a living perception of “here and now”. Due to this context, it is necessary to emphasize that the main factor in making such connection is the live reproduction of all possible combinations. The history of music must unfold in such way as to enable modern man not only to feel the true “taste” of musical events, but also to illuminate them by itself, that is, to create an act that M. Mamardashvili calls the “fullness of interaction”. Such direction of everyone's spiritual efforts corresponds to the acute challenges of the time. It defines a new position of a human being at the intersection of what is fixed in the narrative about what has “already happened” and what is unfolding through the meanings of the “here and now”. So, it’s established when nothing exists in the automatic mode of perception. In a model of linear coupling that is fundamentally not amenable to horizontal configuration, it is important to have a vertical dimension, which creates Homo Metafisicus as a person who asks essential questions.

Dissecting genetic trends to understand breeding practices in livestock: a maternal pig line example

Background Understanding whether genomic selection has been effective in livestock and when the results of genomic selection became visible are essential questions which we have addressed in this paper. Three criteria were used to identify practices of breeding programs over time: (1) the point of divergence of estimated genetic trends based on pedigree-based best linear unbiased prediction (BLUP) versus single-step genomic BLUP (ssGBLUP), (2) the point of divergence of realized Mendelian sampling (RMS) trends based on BLUP and ssGBLUP, and (3) the partition of genetic trends into that contributed by genotyped and non-genotyped individuals and by males and females. Methods We used data on 282,035 animals from a commercial maternal line of pigs, of which 32,856 were genotyped for 36,612 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) after quality control. Phenotypic data included 228,427, 101,225, and 11,444 records for birth weight, average daily gain in the nursery, and feed intake, respectively. Breeding values were predicted in a multiple-trait framework using BLUP and ssGBLUP. Results The points of divergence of the genetic and RMS trends estimated by BLUP and ssGBLUP indicated that genomic selection effectively started in 2019. Partitioning the overall genetic trends into that for genotyped and non-genotyped individuals revealed that the contribution of genotyped animals to the overall genetic trend increased rapidly from ~ 74% in 2016 to 90% in 2019. The contribution of the female pathway to the genetic trend also increased since genomic selection was implemented in this pig population, which reflects the changes in the genotyping strategy in recent years. Conclusions Our results show that an assessment of breeding program practices can be done based on the point of divergence of genetic and RMS trends between BLUP and ssGBLUP and based on the partitioning of the genetic trend into contributions from different selection pathways. However, it should be noted that genetic trends can diverge before the onset of genomic selection if superior animals are genotyped retroactively. For the pig population example, the results showed that genomic selection was effective in this population.

New requirements for training personnel for railway transport

The problem of vocational training of specialists is one of the most essential questions in vocational education.Industrial enterprises (and not only railway transport), are currently forced to spend much money and time on additional training of their new employees (specialists), who experience serious difficulties when working. The theoretical training of a young specialist even he (or she) is hardworking, discipline and pass in for his work sometimes doesn't correspond to the real facts at works. The change in the system of the vocational education is necessity now days. These changes are connected with the necessity to improve the training of the students.In the conditions when reform of the system of the vocational education is full speed and the teachers are in search of new educational models the problem of the trained skilled workers claimed in the labor market is in great need. It must be an energetic, curious, creative person capable to show his skill and to react quickly on the changes in the society especially in the professional and social sphere. The main task of the contemporary educational institution is training of such graduating students.Modernization as being an important reserve for the reorganization and renovation of the education system in accordance with the contemporary demands puts the task: to bring in accordance with the social and economical needs of the country to establish communication with the works.The improvement of the vocational education will be of great importance not only for the development of the railway transport but for the whole country, it will give a push to the positive changes in the others branches of industry.

Essential Questions and Data Sources for Continuous Improvement of Undergraduate STEM Teaching and Learning

Essential Questions and Data Sources for Continuous Improvement of Undergraduate STEM Teaching and Learning helps member campuses track the progress of their reform efforts. This resource complements the Framework and provides a set of key questions designed to engage institutional leaders and faculty members in discussions about teaching and learning. The report also provides data sources and analytical tools available to answer these questions and inform decision-making, as well as provides guidance to address common challenges in evaluating the quality and effectiveness of undergraduate education.

Outer limits of the continental shelf beyond CLCS recommendations and Article 76(8) of UNCLOS: With reference to Japan’s Cabinet Order No. 302

In 2014 Japan’s Cabinet Order No. 302 declared the outer limits of its continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles (OL) to the west and north of Oki-no-Tori Shima (Area 302). Oki-no-Tori Shima consists of two small, barren, and uninhabitable rocks in the West Pacific. The northern part of Area 302 is broader than what the 2012 recommendations of the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) specify. A question arises whether Order No. 302 violates Article 76(8) of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which provides that the OL established by a coastal state ‘on the basis of’ the CLCS recommendations shall be final and binding. Another question is the role played by the CLCS in ‘assisting’ the coastal states to delimit their national jurisdiction so as to know where the Area (i.e., the Common Heritage of Mankind under UNCLOS Articles 1(1)(1) and 136) begins. The essential questions arising from Area 302 concern how well the UNCLOS mechanism can perform to safeguard the Common Heritage of Mankind through preventing encroachment thereupon by individual coastal states. This article looks at the context and explores the obligations implied by Article 76(8) for coastal states to ‘follow’ the recommendations in establishing the OL, with special reference to the northern part of Area 302. The article also examines legal consequences arising from a breach of these obligations.

The Birth of a Successful Prayer Book

The vast project to reconstruct a history and geography of the spread of the Dalāʾil al-Khayrāt necessarily involves looking into the beginnings of the prayerbook’s manuscript transmission. Composed in Morocco before 869/1465, the prayerbook was already known in the Eastern Maghreb from the mid-11th/17th century. It then reached Turkey and the rest of the Mashriq. After that it found its way to Central, South and Southeast Asia. Returning to the core of the book’s diffusion, this article questions the existence of an autograph copy of Dalāʾil al-Khayrāt. How was the manuscript tradition of one of the most copied religious books in pre-modern times established? This article also poses essential questions about the work of the actors (copyists, illuminators) responsible for the diffusion of the book in its early days.

How Can I Integrate STEM with Music?

This chapter demonstrates each of the sixteen components used in creating an instructional plan for a lesson that integrates STEM with Music. Each component is placed and developed in a particular way to achieve efficiency in the reading and executing of the overall instructional plan. These components consist of Lesson Title, Duration, Lesson Description, Listing Integration of Contents, Cognitive Demand Using Bloom’s Taxonomy, Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences, 21st-Century Skills, Content Standards and Arts Standards: Assessed vs. Addressed, Key Vocabulary, Arts Concepts Based on the National Core Arts Standards, Materials, Essential Questions, Lesson Sequence and Corresponding Assessments, Summary Activity, Extension Activity, and Adaptations for Grade-Level Bands (K–2, 3–5, 6–8, 9–12). All foundational information and concepts presented in previous chapters are illustrated in the presentation of a sample lesson, Wearable Circuits for Piano Performance: Sustain Pedal.