Aesthetics and Creativity. Identity Configurations

Reflecting on human attitude towards reality, together with deciphering the emotional code that accompanies it, has configured - in time – the aesthetic universe, open to human reflection, creation, and evaluation. Aesthetics appears through the way in which consciousness reacts and capitalises upon things in nature and society, or which belong to human subjectivity, including on artistic work, which have an effect on sensitiveness due to their harmony, balance and grandeur. As a fundamental attribute of the human being, creativity is the engine of cultural evolution, meaning the degree of novelty that man brings in his ideas, actions, and creations. Aesthetical values, together with the other types of values, contribute to what society represents and to what it can become, hence motivating human action and creation. Their role is to create a state of mind that encourages the cohesion, cooperation, and mutual understanding of the society. Integrating a chronological succession of the evolution of the concepts that objectify its structure, its aesthetics and creativity, this article stresses the synergetic nature of the two dimensions of human personality, paving the way to beauty, as a form of enchantment of the human spirit.

Using a Selective Ensemble Support Vector Machine to Fuse Multimodal Features for Human Action Recognition

The traditional human action recognition (HAR) method is based on RGB video. Recently, with the introduction of Microsoft Kinect and other consumer class depth cameras, HAR based on RGB-D (RGB-Depth) has drawn increasing attention from scholars and industry. Compared with the traditional method, the HAR based on RGB-D has high accuracy and strong robustness. In this paper, using a selective ensemble support vector machine to fuse multimodal features for human action recognition is proposed. The algorithm combines the improved HOG feature-based RGB modal data, the depth motion map-based local binary pattern features (DMM-LBP), and the hybrid joint features (HJF)-based joints modal data. Concomitantly, a frame-based selective ensemble support vector machine classification model (SESVM) is proposed, which effectively integrates the selective ensemble strategy with the selection of SVM base classifiers, thus increasing the differences between the base classifiers. The experimental results have demonstrated that the proposed method is simple, fast, and efficient on public datasets in comparison with other action recognition algorithms.

FORMATION OF MORAL CONSCIOUSNESS PRIMARY SCHOOL CHILDREN BASED ON COMPETENCE APPROACH

The article examines some aspects of the formation of the moral consciousness of modern schoolchildren on the basis of one of the leading methodological principles - the competence-based approach. Large-scale changes taking place in various spheres of society, new social and economic reality, developing market relations, digitalization, modernization of Russian education require a revision of the strategy and tactics of educating the younger generation in terms of solving the problems of forming high moral qualities of the personality of students, including primary school age. But is a modern teacher competent enough to successfully cope with the multitasking of real pedagogical reality, including the moral education of schoolchildren? The study of the problem under consideration in theory and in practice shows that moral education is significant, first of all, because it permeates all aspects of education: mental, aesthetic, physical, labor, environmental, etc. Hence, its backbone nature is obvious. Any human action presupposes a moral aspect, including the regulatory function of morality. All of the above served as the basis for choosing the topic of the article. According to the authors, the results and conclusion of this article can, to a certain extent, actualize the problem of the formation of the moral consciousness of primary schoolchildren from the standpoint of the competence-based approach and outline ways to solve it.

Improving Crisis Communication Efficiency Through Nudging

Human action is not rational, and this irrationality manifests itself especially in decisions under uncertainty – the COVID-19 pandemic is one example of many in this respect. At the same time, various branches of research have been able to identify systematic patterns in irrational human behavior, and these have been attempted to be subsumed under the umbrella term of 'nudging'. Nudging describes the intentional change of decision architectures with the purpose of transforming irrationalities and/or distortions of human perception into predictable action. Thus, nudging represents a potent communication tool, especially in crisis communication scenarios. After presenting the basic theoretical assumptions of nudging, two examples of highly effective crisis communication strategies employed during the COVID-19 pandemic will be used to illustrate, contextualize, and reflect on central mechanisms and workings of nudging. This chapter ends with a summary of the most central findings as well as a critical reflection on potential future fields of action.

Re-Thinking the Sustainable Development Goals From the Point of View of Social Ecology and Environmental Law

This research tries to understand the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) from the perspective of social ecology and environmental law, away from the Darwinian theory of man dominating nature and more focused on rethinking the SDGs from the nature-society co-evaluation in the adaptive sense of society to the new reality of its physical-natural support and to the new legal system of human rights. Development with victims from biologically rich countries like Peru with paradoxical poverty is analyzed, and likewise, the collapse of society in the face of imminent climate change due to human action is analyzed, which requires climate justice for environmentally displaced people in the face of the violation of their human rights, especially of children at risk. Finally, a Latin American academic contribution is presented to rethink the SDGs, generating contributions to the later times of the social confinement of COVID-19, in the so-called new normal.