Sustainability and Agricultural Regeneration in Hungarian Agriculture

Generational renewal is a core issue in European agriculture. Despite the continuous efforts of governments and the EU Council, the ageing of farmers seems an unstoppable process, accompanied by land concentration, the decrease in agricultural activity and the transformation of the European countryside. Consequently, there is a very rich scientific literature analysing the problem; a great part of it argues that the young farmer problem consists, in fact, in a number of different problems, with these problems showing huge regional differences. Hungary, as a new member state, with a heterogeneous (both fragmented and concentrated) land-use structure offers a good field to analyse generational renewal. Our paper is based on the first results of an ongoing Horizon 2020 project analysing rural regeneration. As a part of the research study, 48 semi-structured interviews were conducted with young farmers, successors of farmers and new entrants into farming. In our paper, we explore how education, access to land and family traditions influenced generational renewal and how it impacts sustainability practices.

Chemical Differentiation of Planets: A Core Issue

By plotting empirical chemical element abundances on Earth relative to the Sun and normalized to silicon versus their first ionization potentials, we confirm the existence of a correlation reported earlier. To explain this, we develop a model based on principles of statistical physics that predicts differentiated relative abundances for any planetary body in a solar system as a function of its orbital distance. This simple model is successfully tested against available chemical composition data from CI chondrites and surface compositional data of Mars, Earth, the Moon, Venus, and Mercury. We show, moreover, that deviations from the proposed law for a given planet correspond to later surface segregation of elements driven both by gravity and chemical reactions. We thus provide a new picture for the distribution of elements in the solar system and inside planets, with important consequences for their chemical composition. Particularly, a 4 wt% initial hydrogen content is predicted for bulk early Earth. This converges with other works suggesting that the interior of the Earth could be enriched with hydrogen.

‘Sake’

‘Sake’ tackles some problems to which the book’s analysis of Final Goodness and Final goodness-for gives rise. A core issue concerns how to understand the so-called sake-attitudes. The idiom ‘for someone’s sake’ plays a central role in the explanation of the distinction between impersonal and personal values—that is, between what is valuable (or good), period, and what is valuable (or good) for someone. There is a simple, in many ways naïve, objection to the involvement of ‘sake’ in the analysis. According to this, the ‘untranslatability objection’, the word ‘sake’ is, in many languages, untranslatable, and this ought to make us suspicious of its use in an analysis of ‘good for’. The objection is rejected, though. ‘Sake’ also identifies an ambiguity in fitting-attitude analysis (FA) deriving from the fact that ‘sake’ may be used either evaluatively or non-evaluatively (descriptively). This chapter culminates in a discussion of how ‘sake’ should be interpreted in FA analysis.

A Manufacturing SCOS Model (MSCOS) Based on the Similarity of Parameter Sequences Between Tasks and Service Composition

Service composition and optimal selection (SCOS) is a core issue in cloud manufacturing (CMfg) when integrating distributed manufacturing services for complex manufacturing tasks. Generally, a set of recommended task parameter sequences (Tps) will be given when publishing manufacturing tasks. The similarity between the service composition parameter sequence (SCps) and Tps also reflects the rationality of the service composition. However, various evaluation models based on QoS have been proposed, ignoring the rationality between the Tps and SCps. Considering the similarity of the Tps and SCps in an evaluation model, we propose a manufacturing SCOS framework called MSCOS. The framework includes two parts: an evaluation model and an algorithm for both optimization and selection. In the evaluation model, based on the numerical proximity and geometric similarity between the Tps and SCps, improving the technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution (TOPSIS) with the grey correlation degree (GC), we propose the GC&TOPSIS (GTOPSIS). In the optimization and selection algorithm, an improved flower pollination algorithm (IFPA) is proposed to achieve optimization and selection based on polyline characteristics between the fitness values in the population. Experiments show that the MSCOS evaluation effect and optimal selection offer better performance than commonly used algorithms.

Protection and Revealing of Traditional Settlements and Cultural Assets, as a Tool for Sustainable Development: The Case of Kythera Island in Greece

Preserving and highlighting cultural heritage is directly related to sustainable development. The adaptive reuse of cultural heritage buildings and traditional settlements can be a core issue in the implementation of a circular economy strategy, especially in remote areas. In this framework, the current study focuses on Kythera, an isolated Greek island. For the analysis of the study area, research in local archives and communication with the municipality and local stakeholders was conducted, while questionnaires addressed to Kythera’s residents and visitors were developed and processed. Thus, both the special features of the island and the needs of the local community were identified, leading to the proposal of three adaptive reuse schemes at a different scale and within a different management model. The first scheme is focused on the institution of “Eghorios Periousia” and proposes the adaptive reuse of the island’s English Schools as focal points for the promotion of Kythera’s identity. The second scheme focuses on the smaller declared traditional settlements and proposes the adaptive reuse of their housing stock as an affordable permanent residence solution. The third scheme focuses on the abandoned neighborhood of Mavrogiorgiannika in the traditional settlement of Karavas and proposes its adaptive reuse as agritourism accommodation facilities.

Automatic Manipulator Tracking Control Based on Moving Target Trajectory Prediction

The core issue of automatic manipulator tracking control is how to ensure the given moving target follows the expected trajectory and adapts to various uncertain factors. However, the existing moving target trajectory prediction methods rely on highly complex and accurate models, lacking the ability to generalize different automatic manipulator tracking scenarios. Therefore, this study tries to find a way to realize automatic manipulator tracking control based on moving target trajectory prediction. In particular, a moving target trajectory prediction model was established, and its parameters were optimized. Next, a tracking-training-testing algorithm was proposed for manipulator’s automatic moving target tracking, and the operating flows were detailed for training module, target detection module, and target tracking module. The proposed model and algorithm were proved effective through experiments.

Discussion of the Relationship between Fairness and Efficiency ——Based on Rawls' “A Theory of Justice”

Since China’s reform and opening up, from the Third Plenary Session of the 14th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China that put forward "efficiency first and fairness" to the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, "first distribution and redistribution must deal with the relationship between fairness and efficiency, and redistribution pays more attention to fairness" Distribution policy, in 2021, the tenth meeting of the Central Finance and Economics Committee clearly stated that it is necessary to promote common prosperity in stages. The relationship between fairness and efficiency has always been the basic principle and standard for the country to formulate policies, and it is also the core issue discussed by scholars. Both utilitarianism and Rawls' two principles of justice provide us with different perspectives to explore the relationship between fairness and efficiency. This article focuses on Rawls's critique of utilitarianism and the specific content of the two justice principles, and makes a simple discussion on the relationship between fairness and efficiency and its enlightenment on the formulation of distribution policies in our country.

Dismantling the Chinese Room with linguistic tools: a framework for elucidating concept-application disputes

Imagine advanced computers that could, by virtue merely of being programmed in the right ways, act, react, communicate, and otherwise behave like humans. Might such computers be capable of understanding, thinking, believing, and the like? The framework developed in this paper for tackling challenging questions of concept application (in any realm of discourse) answers in the affirmative, contrary to Searle’s famous ‘Chinese Room’ thought experiment, which purports to prove that ascribing such mental processes to computers like these would be necessarily incorrect. The paper begins by arguing that the core issue concerns language, specifically the discourse-community-guided mapping of phenomena onto linguistic categories. It then offers a model of how people adapt language to deal with novel states of affairs and thereby lend generality to their words, employing processes of assimilation, lexemic creation, and accommodation (in intersense and intrasense varieties). Attributions of understanding to some computers lie in the middle range on a spectrum of acceptability and are thus reasonable. Possible objections deriving from Searle’s writings require supplementing the model with distinctions between present and future acceptability, and between contemplated and uncontemplated word uses, as well as a literal-figurative distinction that is more sensitive than Searle’s to actual linguistic practice and the multiplicity of subsenses possible within a single literal sense. The paper then critiques two misleading rhetorical features of Searle’s Chinese Room presentation, and addresses a contemporary defense of Searle that seems to confront the sociolinguistic issue, but fails to allow for intrasense accommodation. It concludes with a brief consideration of the proper course for productive future discussion.

International crisis in the midst of civil war

This article examines the nexus between international crises and civil wars. Based on the premise that not all simultaneous civil and international conflicts are related, the study aims to explore the circumstances in which civil wars affect violent escalation in international crises. The study identifies ‘composite’ crises – where the civil war is the core issue of the international dispute – as a unique subset of international crises. These crises are distinguished from ‘unrelated-civil war’ situations, in which the issues in the internal and international conflicts are separate. Using data from the ICB, COW, and UCDP/PRIO datasets, the article tests a dual-conflict argument, positing that interconnected issues and interactions between actors in composite situations inhibit moderate crisis management and aggravate interstate behavior. The findings show that while civil war in composite situations has a negative impact on crisis escalation, unrelated-civil war has an inverse impact on interstate relations in crisis.