Trust in Institutions and the COVID-19 Threat: A Cross-Sectional Study on the Public Perception of Official Recommendations and of Othering in Switzerland

Objectives: To explore how perceived disease threat and trust in institutions relate to vaccination intent, perceived effectiveness of official recommendations, and to othering strategies.Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional survey of Swiss adults in July 2020. Outcome variables were vaccination intent, perceived effectiveness of official recommendations and othering strategies (labelling a given social group as responsible for the disease and distancing from it). Independent variables were perceived disease threat, trust in various institutions, perceived health-related measures, and sociodemographic variables. Linear and logistic regressions were performed.Results: The response rate was 20.2% (1518/7500). Perceived disease threat and trust in medical/scientific institutions were positively associated with vaccination intent and perceived effectiveness of official recommendations for coronavirus mitigation measures. Only disease threat was associated with a perception of effectiveness among othering strategies. Age and education levels were associated with vaccination intent.Conclusion: Reinforcing trust in medical/scientific institutions can help strengthen the perceived effectiveness of official recommendations and vaccination. It however does not prevent adherence to ineffective protecting measures such as othering strategies, where decreasing perceptions of epidemic threat appears to be more efficient.

Scientific Institutions Should Support Inclusive Engagement: Reflections on the AAAS Center for Public Engagement Approach

Scientists’ engagement with society on critical environmental and health issues is essential to reaching positive and equitable long-term outcomes. We argue that stronger institutional support for public engagement is necessary and that inclusive practices should be built into public engagement training and relationships. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)’s Center for Public Engagement with Science and Technology provides a model of support for scientists that we believe other scientific institutions can replicate and expand on. This model prioritizes representative and accessible science communication training, resources (e.g., funding and staff and peer support), opportunities to practice engagement, and rewards and incentives for doing engagement. We describe our programs in each of these areas and reflect on how well each builds scientists’ engagement skills and institutional capacity, and whether each embodies and models thoughtful, accessible, and representative engagement. Through these various approaches, the Center communicates to other scientific institutions that engagement by scientists should be valued, celebrated, and supported, and builds capacity for individual scientists to do effective engagement. We argue that these supports can be applied by other scientific institutions to reflect and incorporate society’s diverse needs and concerns, thus truly serving the public and making science and scientific institutions stronger for it.

Management of Astrakhan region development in conditions of digital economy formation

Digitalization of all spheres of the economy and social relations in the country sets the vector of changes in the management of regional economies. Having analyzed the most important directions for the domestic economy, enshrined in the national program Digital Economy of the Russian Federation, the absence of any significant references to the regions as subjects of the digital economy was revealed. It has been stated that for the effective transition to a digital economy the regions should independently develop and implement regional projects taking into account the risks of lagging behind, the potential of the region and available resources. There are considered the opportunities and threats for the regional economies during the transition to the digital economy. The analysis of the role of the state and regions in the formation of the digital economy is carried out. Examples of complex programs and concepts for the development of the digital economy in the regions of Russia are given, the main trends in the implementation of regional digital initiatives are listed. Structural changes in the economy are based on the internal technological and organizational modernization ensuring an increase in the efficiency of economic entities. The priority directions of digitalization of the most important industries and spheres for the Astrakhan region - agriculture, healthcare and city management - are substantiated. For the effective implementation of measures for the transition to the digital economy, it is proposed to create educational pools, taking into account the scientific and educational potential of the region. The formation of educational pools will increase the competitiveness of scientific institutions and educational organizations of region within the framework of training specialists in the above-mentioned industries and spheres.

Collector`s Works of Nina Kerimova

Documentation of ethnomusic (which is at the same time the first stage of its research) forms the base of sources of musical folklore (ethnomusicology), which creates the very possibility of all subsequent explorations. Ethnic music, as a whole, is formed by the totality of its regional manifestations, each of which must be recorded in sufficient completeness. However, some territories for various reasons even at the end of the twentieth century, were represented on the Ukrainian ethnomusical map very sparsely. It’s a paradox, but Kirovohrad region, located in the center of Ukraine, remained one of the least explored regions. Being a region of relatively late settlement, it was practically ignored by researchers (including ignored by the relevant scientific institutions) as an uninteresting periphery. One of those who in the late 1980s gave the start of the modern stage of documenting the musical folklore of the Kirovohrad region, its systematic professional recording, was a graduate of the Kiev Conservatory Nina Kerimova. For ten years of active field work, the collector has recorded nearly 7000 units of musical and ethnographic information from 80 settlements. These materials today make up nearly one third of the twenty-thousand regional audio archive, collected over the past 35 years by the joint efforts of folklorists, professionally engaged in field survey of the presteppe Right Bank and its adjacent steppe and eastern Podolian territories within the Kirovohrad region and the border areas of Cherkasy, Vinnytsia and Dnepropetrovsk regions. The purpose of this article is to summarize and make public the information about the nature and results of N. Kerimova’s collector`s activity. A systematized, meaningful, structured, concentrated and formalized approach makes it possible to include materials from her archive into the all-Ukrainian ethnomusical and ethnomusicological information field. Methods used in the article correspond to its set goal: factographic and factological, statistical, analytical and synthetic (the latter reveals patterns in the correlation of elements of an integral system). The article provides: a brief overview of the history of collecting musical folklore in the region; basic biographical information about the researcher; statistical data on the number and geography of her expeditionary records, specified to the culture-genre content of the materials recorded in each locus; data on respondents (their number, age, origin). The methods and preferences of the field work are described. The professional level of the work is attested, the high degree of scientific value of the collected materials is argued. The audio and musical publications, which include materials from the archive of N. Kerimova are listed. The materials collected by N. Kerimova are characterized (a) as a separate hermetic collection-archive, (b) as an important component of the cumulative array of records made in the region and (c) in the context of a holistic view of the region's traditional ethnomusical culture that has been effectively formed nowadays. Along the way, the author of the article deals with the issues of cultural-genre classification / attribution of folk musical works, archiving field materials (in particular, methods of passportization and codification of records), as well as the problems of documenting and statistical processing of materials recorded from migrants (local, intraregional, interregional), that were incorporated by the new folklore environment to a greater or lesser extent

The Importance of Stakeholders in Managing a Safe City

Contemporary cities are complex systems in which there are many interactions and dependencies in relation to the environment. Currently, the development of cities and their safety are among the most important international socio-economic processes. The movement of people to larger agglomerations from smaller towns creates a variety of relationships between actors and often leads to very complicated lives in urban space. Features of contemporary cities include urbanization, personal development opportunities, labor markets, and infrastructure, as well as technological and cybernetic networks that optimize all the processes taking place in agglomerations. It should be emphasized that the main goal of public management in urban space is to create various solutions in the field of safety and thus to improve the quality of. In this respect, the role and influence of stakeholders on the processes of smart and safe city development are important. At each stage of activity, the City Council, local communities, economic entities, scientific institutions, and municipal enterprises are important for a city’s safety. This article emphasizes the importance of stakeholders in the process of managing a safe city. The article presents a literature review, as well as research results based on the example of Polish cities, presenting the importance of stakeholders in managing safe cities.

TWO UNUSUAL EXPEDITIONS OF THE INSTITUTE OF OCEANOLOGY RESEARCH VESSEL "DMITRY MENDELEEV" (6TH AND 18TH CRUISES)

50 years ago, in 1971, an expedition of RV “Dmitry Mendeleev” (her 6th cruise) departed to the islands of Oceania. The voyage was timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the first trip to island New Guinea by Nikolai Nikolaevich Miklukho-Maclay, a famous russian explorer, antropologyst, and ethnographers, and, simultaneously, with the 125th anniversary of his birth. Scientists 19 scientific institutions of the USSR, specializing in biological, geological and ethnographic research took part in the 6th cruise of R/V “Dmitry Mendeleev”, and the continuing expedition to the same area during her 18th cruise. Besides the ship crew and the scientific team, there were cameramen from Soviet state cinematography corporation Goskino, members of the Union of Artists of the USSR and other cultural and artistic figures were aboard the ship during both voyages. Nowadays, in 2021, in honor of the 175th anniversary of the birth of N.N. Miklukho-Maclay, a new exhibition named "Oceania distant and close" was opened in the Museum of the World Ocean in city of Kaliningrad. Among other artifacts, it includes photographs from the 18th cruise of the R/V “Dmitry Mendeleev” and paintings dedicated to Miklukho-Maclay's expeditions.

The Islamization of Knowledge and Its Efforts to Neutralize The Idea of Liberal Islām: A Descriptive Study

This study deals with the conflict between the Islamization of knowledge and the liberalism of Islam. The necessity of the project of Islamization of knowledge is to be purifying from Western influences and elements in thought and human sciences because they do not suitable the Islamic world view. The phenomenon of liberal Islam became one of the challenges of Islamization of knowledge to reach its goals. The study aims to present the efforts that have been made to neutralize the idea of liberal Islam. The study was based on the descriptive approach by studying the concept of Islamization of knowledge and liberal Islam and tracing the history of them in Indonesia and Malaysia. From the results of the study: The researchers concluded that the Islamization of knowledge project has exerted its efforts in various activities to implement the neutralization of the elements that are affected by the Western world view in science and thought generally. Most of the activities revolved around editorial and publishing activities, discussions, lectures and scientific debates, and the establishment of social and scientific institutions or organizations.

Agroecological Accounting Issues in the Aspect of the Interaction of Agriculture with the Environment

The subject of this study is agroecological activity that combines the goals of agricultural production with maximum consideration of the tasks of environmental protection and rational use of natural resources, as well as the corresponding indicators that allow tracking the process and the main results of the considered integrated activity. A comprehensive comparative analysis of the conceptual apparatus and main definitions defining the sphere of interests of agroecology, agroecological accounting and statistics, used by various scientific institutions and individual scientists in specialized international organizations, primarily FAO, OECD, European Association for Agroecology, Eurostat and some other similar structures, in the CIS countries, Spain, Brazil and a number of other states, as well as in the French Ministry of Agriculture and the US Department of Agriculture. The objects of the analysis were mainly the approaches of various international organizations to defining the scope and structure of agroecological measures and individual actions, including the proposed accounting and statistical indicators. Particular attention is paid to the problem of organic agricultural production, i.e. the release of organic agricultural products and its place in the composition of agroecological statistics.

Cooperation of enterprises in innovative activities on the example of Polish regions

Research background: Cooperation is an indispensable element of innovation activities of enterprises. Undertakings in innovation, by nature, require not only significant expenditures or creative human capital, but also cooperation with other enterprises, scientific institutions, and the business environment. Cooperating companies have a greater chance to compete in the international arena while building the innovative potential of the regional environment. Stimulating the permanent cooperation of enterprises operating in the region, in its various forms, is a key challenge for central government authorities, local government authorities, and other actors in social and economic life. The existing literature on the cooperation of enterprises focuses on the motives of cooperation and their effects, but to a lesser extent on the spatial similarity of these processes, i.e. in individual regions of the country. Purpose of the article: The purpose of the article is to diagnose and evaluate regional differences in the level of cooperation between companies conducting innovation activities in Poland. The study used data on innovation activities published by Statistics Poland and data on enterprises participating in cluster cooperation published by the Polish Agency for Enterprise Development. Methods: The cluster analysis was used, allowing to identify voivodeships that are similar to each other in terms of the analyzed phenomenon. The spatial classification of voivodeships was performed using the Ward method, which is classified as hierarchical and is often used to group objects. The result is a hierarchical tree that groups the regions in increasingly larger clusters. Findings & value added: The results indicate a low level of cooperation and the existence of significant differences in the cooperation of enterprises as part of innovation activities in Polish regions. The low level of cooperation between companies in individual regions corresponds to the number of marketed innovations. There are similarities between some regions in terms of cooperation on innovation activities. The results of the analysis may provide an indication for national and European Union economic policy entities in the field of creating instruments to support the cooperation of companies on innovation activities.