On Some Regularities of the Transformation of the Civilizational Idea in Modern Russia

The paper analyzes the changes in the content of the civilizational idea in modern Russia. It is shown that the substantive changes concern both the traditional fluctuations between the orientation to the European and Eurasian development path, and the emergence of new features, in particular related to environmental and economic issues. At the same time, there is a reconfiguration of the civilizational idea regarding economic and political discourses. There is a fusion of civilizational identity with political identity, which manifests itself in the form of active use of national-state resources for the formation of national-civilizational identity. It is concluded that at the state level, civilizational identity is supported by political and economic discourses, and the Russian-Eurasian discourse itself is being transformed, turning from a discourse about the integration of cultures into a discourse about the integration of economies based on the integration of cultures.

An Empirical Study on the Main Determinants of Recycling Plastic Waste in Tunisia

Over the past fifteen years, numerous policies for recycling and recovering waste have been implemented throughout the world. Tunisia is among the countries considering recycling as a sustainable development path. This empirical study aimed to investigate and examine the influence of financial determinants measured by the price of waste disposal (PDI), institutional determinants measured by the collection of waste (CW) and the number of drop-off recycling centers, and ordinance and demographic determinants measured by the population density and the recycling rate for plastic as a domestic waste based on a panel of 24 Tunisian governorates over the 2001–2020 period. It is concluded from the empirical findings that all exogenous variables except population density have a significant effect on the recycling rate.

How to Evaluate the Green and High-Quality Development Path? An FsQCA Approach on the China Pilot Free Trade Zone

In today’s world, green development has become an important trend, and many countries regard the development of green industry as an important measure to promote economic restructuring. Green development is consistent with sustainable development in ideology. China’s economy is in the stage of high-quality development. As an important foundation for China’s external economic development, the free trade zone can play a good role in promoting its green and high-quality development. Based on the data of 18 free trade zones in China in 2020, this paper explores the green and high-quality development path of the China Pilot Free Trade Zone. Firstly, the green development index is constructed according to the existing research and experience, and then the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis method is used to evaluate the green and high-quality development path. The results show that the development of pilot free trade zones is not the result of a single condition but the result of a combination of green policy effectiveness, foreign investment participation, green production growth rate, and other conditions. Combined with the green and high-quality development path, this paper further provides enlightenment for the development of the China Pilot Free Trade Zone.

The Phenomenon of the 18th Century Institutional Printing House of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: The Case of the Franciscans

Many of the printing houses in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania that operated during the 17th-18th centuries belonged to institutions the biggest part of which consisted of Catholic monk monasteries. Despite belonging to one group, the development path of each printing house and its contribution to book culture has unique features. Of the four institutional prin­ting houses operating in the 18th century in Vilnius, the printing house of the Franciscan Conventuals Monastery was the first to be closed and its operations terminated. The purpose of the article is to identify the following causes behind the issues and eventual closure of this printing house. Based on the expenses and income book of this printing house for the period 1752–1769 (it is preserved at the Department of Manuscripts of Vilnius University Library,) this paper examines various aspects of the Vilnius Franciscan Conventuals monastery printing house: funds, sources of equipment and paper, building location, relations with employees and hired craftsmen, orders, sources of income, profitability. In order to better understand the specificity of the institutional press, an effort was made to establish a link between the research outcome and the wider context by addressing the question of the impact of both the society of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Franciscan Order itself on the destiny of the printing house. In addition, the book of expenses and income reveals new biographical data about Vilnius engraver Franciszek Balcewicz.

Exploring the Promotion Path of Urban Reading from the Perspective of Urban Cultural Soft Power

As a form of urban culture, urban reading plays an important role in the improvement of the citizens’ quality, urban quality, and urban spirit. In the new era, there are imbalances in the supply and demand, content construction, regional structure, and ecological structure of urban reading. It is necessary to analyze and grasp its development trend, optimize the development path of urban reading, and promote the improvement of urban cultural soft power.

Perspectives of brain imaging with PET systems

In this partial review and partial attempt at vision of what may be the future of dedicated brain PET scanners, the key implementations of the PET technique, we postulate that we are still on a development path and there is still a lot to be done in order to develop optimal brain imagers. Optimized for particular imaging tasks and protocols, and also mobile, that can be used outside the PET center, in addition to the expected improvements in sensitivity and resolution. For this multi-application concept to be more practical, flexible, adaptable designs are preferred. This task is greatly facilitated by the improved TOF performance that allows for more open, adjustable, limited angular coverage geometries without creating image artifacts. As achieving uniform very high resolution in the whole body is not practical due to technological limits and high costs, hybrid systems using a moderate-resolution total body scanner (such as J-PET) combined with a very high performing brain imager could be a very attractive approach. As well, as using magnification inserts in the total body or long-axial length imagers to visualize selected targets with higher resolution. In addition, multigamma imagers combining PET with Compton imaging should be developed to enable multitracer imaging.

Motivational Essay - A Useful Tool in Career Choice?

The proposed study is based on a double causality, such as: the need to improve the counselling tools for high school students for the appropriate choice of a career development path; the existence of the category of disadvantaged students from an economic perspective, whose difficulties in choosing a training path for their career have been augmented during the pandemic. Our research provides an analysis of how the motivational essay can be substantiated as a useful tool in career counselling activities, as well as how it can be integrated into counselling approaches for the economically disadvantaged teenagers to choose the academic development path. We have used a mixed research methodology, which complements the peer review approach with the qualitative analysis of a set of motivation essays developed by the 11th and 12th Grade students. The research aims to identify the level of development of self-analysis, self-reflection and self-assessment of motivational factors, which may be decisive in choosing a future career. The essay analysis highlights a series of elements, which reflects the dynamics of the change of motivational resources in the context of the digitalisation acceleration, of the upheavals on the labour market generated by the new social and economic context. The obtained results allow the formulation of conclusions: confirming the need for such an approach; certifying the possibility and usefulness of integrating the motivational essay into the career counsellor’s methodological portfolio and professional counselling approaches; illustrating useful effects and limits of the reflective effort generated during the essay.