From Collaborative Habituation to Everyday Togetherness: A Long-Term Study of Use of the Messaging Kettle

We present a long-term study of use of the Messaging Kettle, an Internet of Things (IOT) research prototype that augments an everyday kettle with both sensing and messaging capability and a beautiful light display in order to investigate connecting geographically distant loved ones to their family through the routine of boiling the kettle. Connection at a distance has been of sustained interest to the CHI community, and the social connection of older people is of increasing importance in recognition of ageing populations globally. However, very few novel designs in this domain have been investigated in situ or over the long term to examine whether their use sustains, and if so, how they impact communication in a relationship. The Messaging Kettle was trialled with four pairs of dispersed older mothers and adult daughters over timeframes that lasted between two months to more than two years. We observed the phenomenon of collaborative habituation wherein each party creatively made the technology work for them both through a combination of the gradual transformation of their everyday practices, arrangements, and living. Through developing these joint practices over time, participants expressed feelings of everyday togetherness that nurture their relationship at a distance. Three of the four couples continued to use the prototype for years, beyond the initial trial. We reflect on the artful integration of features of the Messaging Kettle and the way in which these features supported collaborative habituation . We also reflect on lessons and implications for the design of such relational technologies.

Prometheus bound? European initiatives and trends on Higher Education and their association with economic competiveness, skills and employability.

Globalization and increasing internationalization of Higher Education has clearly resulted in a persistent demand for the further transformation of Higher Education Institutes (HEIs), towards competitiveness and contribution to development. What is actually in stake is the employability, while another key issue is the harmonization with the economy and the labor market. That raises, of course, a lot of issues concerning the gradual transformation of the Higher Education and the relation between Higher Education and Society at Large. Globalization has affected all the abovementioned, which is crystal clear in large scale initiatives, in Europe, such as the “Bologna Process” and the subsequent development of the European Higher Education Area, in the case of Europe. Given all the abovementioned, the present article mainly focuses on the European trends, transformations and initiatives in Higher Education, related to HEIs’ active and potential contribution to economic development and the enhancement of graduates’ employability and skills.

The Transformation of the Idea of Internet Freedom in the XXIst Century

The article analyzes the theoretical approaches that have developed in relation to the issues of control and freedom of the Internet space, including copyright regulation and its gradual transformation as the digital environment develops and changes. Special attention is given to the values underpinning the principles of regulation are determined. If initially the dominant notion was that the Internet would ensure humanity a new free world, then later the discourse shifted to much less optimistic views and topics the issue of network regulation, technical and legal restrictions, censorship and data protection. Most recent academic literature is devoted to the practical side of the issue, and the issue of values has faded into the background. As a result, the discussion has lost significant context: issues of freedom and human rights in the Internet environment, discussion of what is really important for society - security or the absence of restrictions, the problem of users trust in the state and platforms.

Energy Portfolio of the Eastern Poland Macroregion in the European Union

The European Union’s New Green Deal generates changes in the socio-economic development of regions. An element of this change is the transformation of the regional profiles of the energy portfolio towards more pro-ecological ones. The aim of this article is to identify the conditions and reasons for the transformation of the energy portfolio of the Eastern Poland macroregion, and to define the directions of the energy portfolio evolution caused by the need to implement the goals of the European Green Deal by 2030, in order to consequently develop the forecast energy portfolio for the Eastern Poland macroregion. It has been assumed that the energy transformation of the Eastern Poland macroregion will be implemented through gradual transformation of the energy portfolio towards dispersed sources of local and civic energy. The research is based on both qualitative and quantitative approaches. The qualitative research was carried out on the basis of the diagnostic survey method with the use of the proprietary questionnaire as well as with the analysis of the content of strategic documents of the voivodships included in the Eastern Poland macroregion. The basis for the preparation of research questions was the extended PEST method which stands for: political, economic, socio-cultural, technological. Research efforts were focused on developing an energy portfolio for the region using the assumptions of the Boston consulting group matrix (a strategic planning tool). The originality of the conducted research consists in the adaptation of the BCG matrix to the development of the forecast energy portfolio and the preparation of a proposal for the aggregated energy portfolio of the Eastern Poland macroregion. The obtained results indicate that the macroregion’s energy portfolio is diversified, though with the key significance of conventional sources. It is predicted that by 2030, the following sources will change their positions within the portfolio for the Eastern Poland macroregion: solar energy, wind energy and bioenergy. However, it will retain the character of a “youth wallet”.

Evolution of the Roman Republican Senate: Composition, Election, and Judicial Functions (Part 2)

The paper deals with the Roman senatus in the period from 5th to 3rd century BC, from the point of view of its composition, completion and selected competences. As to its composition, in the most arcaic times of the Roman state, the senate was an assembly of the heads of clans (patres gentium), who represented the ideas of patricians. The autor presents gradual transformation of the composition of the senate and switch towards the inclusion of the plebeians. It describes also the process of the cooptation of the members, rules of which incurred fundamental changes from the hereditary principles to the regulation given by statutes. A significant part of the article is devoted to the judicial functions of the Senate and the relationship between the iudicium senatus and the iudicium populi, the transformation of the Senate court from a regional body to the highest, global court of the entire Mediterranean. It’s noted that if the original Roman Senate de iure was the judicial authority only one of the Latin Confederation, later after 338 BC, it becomes the Supreme court of the Latin Union, and by the end of the Republic is transformed into the «Supreme Council of the world».

Inter-artistic theory of modernism: reflections on the book by Elena Korchova "Musical modernism as terra cognita"

The purpose of the article is to analyze the theoretical aspect of the concept of musical modernism O. Korchova, to identify debatable aspects important for the creation of the inter-artistic theory of modernism. Methodology: used historical, cultural, and comparative methods, with the involvement of philosophy and psychology. The scientific novelty of the study is that the musicological concept of modernism is compared with the literary, which proves the need to create an inter-artistic theory of modernism, necessary in the practice of stylistic analysis of modernist works. Conclusions. An important achievement of O. Korchova's research is the search for a "stylistic formula" of each composer of the epoch. The artist is looking not just for a consonant style or form, but for himself and his style. Individual style does not arise from simple combinations of borrowed. Styles of modernism conflict with each other, to combine them, to avoid eclecticism, you need to find a way and a reason to combine. The way to find your style is never purely artistic, it is always vital. Modernists, putting art in the first place in aesthetics, discovered the concept of life creation, which distinguishes the modernist from the artists of previous eras. Life-creation is a special way of an artist into art, movement simultaneously in two dimensions, external and internal, their constant coordination and gradual transformation of oneself, with life and works together, into a cultural phenomenon. And if this happened - then something unique was formed, unique, completely individual, and at the same time universal, something original and holistic, something that will become a value for contemporaries and descendants, that is, the author's style. Just as it is not easy for every artist to find his style, so it is not easy for a researcher to find a formula for this style. But without such a goal, the study of creativity will be historiographical, descriptive, and rhetorical. It is important for every scholar who studies specific texts of culture to understand the trends of the era and the psychology of the creative process, all the laws that unite.

The Discipline «Russian Patrology»: A Historical Review

В статье делается обзор становления дисциплины «русская патрология» в дореволюционной России, Советском Союзе, в западной науке (в том числе в среде русской эмиграции), а также в постсоветской России. Обозначается сравнительно малая изученность богословской составляющей русской литературы, что делает её исследование перспективным и актуальным. Недавнее выделение дисциплины русской патрологии из истории русской литературы соотносится с постепенным преобразованием патрологии в историю христианской литературы в западной науке, ставится вопрос о методе патрологии как науки. The article observes the history of patrology research in pre-revolutionary Russia, Soviet Union, in western science including russian emigrants and in post-soviet Russia. Author concludes that currently theological thought in Russian literature is insufficiently explored and that Russian patrology is a perspective direction in modern theology. Author correlates the recent separation of the discipline of Russian patrology from the history of Russian literature with the gradual transformation of patrology into the history of Christian literature in Western science. Article raises of the method of patrology as a science.

Russia and the EU foreign trade in the XXI century: traditions and modernity

The article presents an analysis of the foreign trade of the Russian Federation and the European Union in the XXI century, especially in terms of Russian exports to the EU. The purpose of the article is to study the dynamics and structure of Russian exports and to identify both absolute and relative, as well as quantitative and qualitative changes in this process. The author comes to the conclusion that the EU as a market for Russian goods, while maintaining a generally traditionally high degree of importance, is becoming more and more unstable and therefore less and less attractive. The EU's role as Russia's leading export partner tends to decline – influenced by a number of factors that are largely objective for Russia, but not always and not fully so for the EU. In modern conditions, there is a gradual transformation of the commodity structure of Russian exports to the EU in the direction of reducing the share of raw materials. The study was conducted for the period 1995–2019 on the basis of data from the international statistical database of UNCTAD to ensure the reliability and comparability of the data. In the course of the research, the author used the following methods: analytical, statistical, scientific abstraction, induction and visualization method.

Genre poetics of R. Wagner’s “Parsifal” in the context of Gesamtkunstwerk idea

Background. Over the course of the last decades, musicology was marked by a revival of interest in the phenomenon of artistic synthesis. This paper considers it in view of “general unity” as one of techniques of understanding the 19th century culture. Such a mindset can be defined by various terms, including Gesamtkunstwerk. The scholars today do not narrow this term down to a mere synthesis of arts, but add immersion into cultural history to it. This allows us to view Gesamtkunstwerk as a way of cultural memory existence, and genre poetics of R. Wagner’s musical drama as a bearer of this memory. In this context, special place belongs to “Parsifal”, which in this article is presented as an absolute embodiment of the idea of Gesamtkunstwerk. The aim of the article is to reveal compositional devices, through which references of “Parsifal” poetics and other genres of different arts create “general unity” under the sign of “Gesamtkunstwerk”. A genre method, a systematic method based on interdisciplinary approach, and a comparative one are chosen as methods of research. Research materials used in the paper relate to different branches of Humanitarian knowledge, including theatre arts (S. Mokulsky), literature (M. Bakhtin), medievistics (A. Gurevich), musicology (M. Veremiova, N. Vieru, E. Makhrova, K. Richter, A. Philippov etc.). It is noted that the definition of “Bühnenweihfestspiel” indicated in the score speaks of the relatedness of this work to the genre of medieval mystery. We have detected some common features of “Parsifal” like slow-paced events, their rather low concentration in time and meticulous development of verbally-acoustic matter. In the musical drama under consideration both a word and a system of leitmotifs function as an instrument for the above-mentioned scrupulosity; thus, poetics of a mystery is transformed into poetics of musical drama. The references of “Parsifal” to medieval epics are noted. Its plot contains only essential for the main storyline events. Cumulative method is chosen as the basic one which defines the algorithm of compositional movement, making it somewhat discrete. At the same time, the continuous flow of leitmotif development contributes to endless disclosure of the sense and its symbolization. Duality of time contributes to appearance of spatiality in genre poetics of “Parsifal”, which also corresponds to the epic poetics. There are some references between genre poetics of “Parsifal” and such types of novel as “Erziehungsroman” and “adventure novel”. The features of “Erziehungsroman”, based on a choice of constantly evolving protagonist as a plot-creating device are embodied to the fullest extent in a presentation of the main hero of “Parsifal”. In the work he passes the way from a naïve youth to the saviour of The Holy Grail, doing the deed of all-embracing love, thus the portrayal of his image is done according to the principle of development. At the same time, there have been revealed differences between the last work of the composer and “Lohengrin”. Unlike Elsa, with her gradual transformation, Parsifal undergoes this process almost instantly. But R. Wagner, using leitmotiv system, reveals subconscious psychological development, thus using it as a nonverbal explanation of one of the essential plot events in the work. The links between “adventure novel” and “Parsifal” lie in the type of intrigue, localization of space-time, due to which it is differentiated into adventurous, legendary, psychological etc. The hero, shifting into another spacetime dimension, transforms his image. This paper shows it on example of Kundry. This heroine in her cyclic “death – resurrection” transformations completely belongs to poetics of the myth, although the composer here does not use it as an example, as he fills musical characteristics of Kundry with all the traits of opera character. The article explores references of “Parsifal” to Passions by J. S. Bach. It is pointed out that in this case R. Wagner does not follow their specific traits, as he chooses the most essential features of poetics of this genre. A сonclusion is made that genre poetics of “Parsifal”, reflecting the features of poetics of another genres, incorporates their essential traits, which are then intertwined into general texture of musical drama, creating inseparable fusion, according to the Gesamtkunstwerk idea.

Licorice Germplasm Resources Identification Using DNA Barcodes Inner-Variants

Based on the gradual transformation from wild growth to artificial cultivation, the accurate authentication of licorice seeds contributes to the first committed step of its quality control and is pivotal to ensure the clinical efficacy of licorice. However, it is still challenging to obtain genetically stable licorice germplasm resources due to the multi-source, multi-heterozygous, polyploid, and hybrid characteristics of licorice seeds. Here, a new method for determining the heterozygosity of licorice seed mixture, based on the various sites, and finding the composition characteristics of licorice seed is preliminarily designed and proposed. Namely, high-throughput full-length multiple DNA barcodes(HFMD), based on ITS multi-copy variation exist, the full-length amplicons of ITS2, psbA-trnH and ITS are directly sequenced by rDNA through the next-generation sequence(NGS) and single-molecule real-time (SMRT) technologies. By comparing the three sequencing methods, our results proved that SMRT sequencing successfully identified the complete gradients of complex mixed samples with the best performance. Meanwhile, HFMD is a brilliant and feasible method for evaluating the heterozygosity of licorice seeds. It shows a perfect interpretation of DNA barcoding and can be applied in multi-base multi-heterozygous and polyploid species.