Recognition and Redistribution in Aristotle’s Account of Stasis

In Politics 5.1–3, Aristotle sees different conceptions of proportional equality and justice as the fundamental causes of stasis and metabolē (constitutional change). His account shows what happens to notions of ‘particular’ justice when they become causes of individual and collective action in pursuit of moral and political revolution. The whole discussion of the causes of stasis should be read through the filter of individual/group motivation – as a reflection of what goes on in the heads of those who engage in stasis. Movements towards political change are motivated by ingrained conceptions of proportional equality and fair distribution of honour and wealth. Aristotle’s approach, therefore, may be compared to Axel Honneth’s, that social justice should be seen in terms of the distribution of dignity and respect as well as of material resources.

Implementation of the PointPillars Network for 3D Object Detection in Reprogrammable Heterogeneous Devices Using FINN

In this paper, we present a hardware-software implementation of a deep neural network for object detection based on a point cloud obtained by a LiDAR sensor. The PointPillars network was used in the research, as it is a reasonable compromise between detection accuracy and calculation complexity. The Brevitas / PyTorch tools were used for network quantisation (described in our previous paper) and the FINN tool for hardware implementation in the reprogrammable Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC device. The obtained results show that quite a significant computation precision limitation along with a few network architecture simplifications allows the solution to be implemented on a heterogeneous embedded platform with maximum 19% AP loss in 3D, maximum 8% AP loss in BEV and execution time 375ms (the FPGA part takes 262ms). We have also compared our solution in terms of inference speed with a Vitis AI implementation proposed by Xilinx (19 Hz frame rate). Especially, we have thoroughly investigated the fundamental causes of differences in the frame rate of both solutions. The code is available at https://github.com/vision-agh/pp-finn.

COVID-19 Infodemic: A New Historicist Analysis of Atwood’s Oryx and Crake

This research intends to explore the current calamitous situation of Covid-19 in the context of <i>Oryx and Crake</i>, mirroring how Covid-19 and <i>Oryx and Crake</i> are linked through the perception of unification and the consciousness of the world as a whole by holding the entire world hostage. It vigorously examines the disease being presented as a weapon of mass destruction, followed by a conspiracy theory, the reality of the present and fancy of the future, generating a feeling of mingled contradiction, a psychological aspect, and stout human response to the unpredicted as some shared themes between the two. The potential strength of the New Historicism was found applicable in contextualizing COVID-19 and <i>Oryx and Crake</i>, which explore and project forward the biotechnological, social, political, cultural, economic, and climatic givens of the pandemic ridden world. It involves a parallel study of a literary work, interpreting events as the products of time. The textual interpretation was based on observation of historical context to see how following pandemics of the past may allow today’s world to detect the fundamental causes of such diseases. Understanding the pandemic through intellectual history highlighted the consequences of unscrupulous exploitation of bio-engineering threats, a sense of uncertainty, fear, and insecurity, biotech corporations, and marketing genetically engineered life forms.

COVID-19 Infodemic: A New Historicist Analysis of Atwood’s Oryx and Crake

This research intends to explore the current calamitous situation of Covid-19 in the context of <i>Oryx and Crake</i>, mirroring how Covid-19 and <i>Oryx and Crake</i> are linked through the perception of unification and the consciousness of the world as a whole by holding the entire world hostage. It vigorously examines the disease being presented as a weapon of mass destruction, followed by a conspiracy theory, the reality of the present and fancy of the future, generating a feeling of mingled contradiction, a psychological aspect, and stout human response to the unpredicted as some shared themes between the two. The potential strength of the New Historicism was found applicable in contextualizing COVID-19 and <i>Oryx and Crake</i>, which explore and project forward the biotechnological, social, political, cultural, economic, and climatic givens of the pandemic ridden world. It involves a parallel study of a literary work, interpreting events as the products of time. The textual interpretation was based on observation of historical context to see how following pandemics of the past may allow today’s world to detect the fundamental causes of such diseases. Understanding the pandemic through intellectual history highlighted the consequences of unscrupulous exploitation of bio-engineering threats, a sense of uncertainty, fear, and insecurity, biotech corporations, and marketing genetically engineered life forms.

Health Power Resources Theory: A Relational Approach to the Study of Health Inequalities

Link and Phelan’s pioneering 1995 theory of fundamental causes urged health scholars to consider the macro-level contexts that “put people at risk of risks.” Allied research on the political economy of health has since aptly demonstrated how institutions contextualize risk factors for health. Yet scant research has fully capitalized on either fundamental cause or political economy of health’s allusion to power relations as a determinant of persistent inequalities in population health. I address this oversight by advancing a theory of health power resources that contends that power relations distribute and translate the meaning (i.e., necessity, value, and utility) of socioeconomic and health-relevant resources. This occurs through stratification, commodification, discrimination, and devitalization. Resurrecting historical sociological emphases on power relations provides an avenue through which scholars can more fully understand the patterning of population health and better connect the sociology of health and illness to the central tenets of the discipline.

Health inequalities between Roma and non-Roma populations in Europe: A study of 118,834 individuals combining the UNDP Roma and the EU-SILC surveys

Aims: This study aimed to compare the self-rated health status of the Roma and of the general population by gender and educational level in six Central and Eastern European countries. Methods: We analysed the United Nations Development Program Regional Roma Survey and EUROSTAT’s European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions surveys from 2011 for Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia. Using logistic regression, predicted probabilities of good or very good self-rated health were estimated for the Roma ( n=11,401), Roma neighbours ( n=5857) and the general population ( n=101,579) stratified by gender, and adjusted by age, country and educational level. Results: There was a distinctive social gradient in self-rated health between the groups among both men and women, and a gap between primary versus secondary or tertiary education among all three groups, but Roma (men) and their neighbours with secondary or higher education had significantly worse predicted self-rated health compared to the general population with similar qualifications. Conclusions: These results strongly suggest that ethnicity and gender should be considered as fundamental causes that explain structural health inequalities. Consequently, future research and policy initiatives to reduce health inequities should acknowledge the impact of ethnic minorities and how these fundamental causes extend the general population’s social gradient in health. Study designs enabling direct comparisons between ethnic groups and the general population should be applied. More and better data about ethnic minorities are needed to document and monitor existing health inequalities.

Development of Domestic Industry as a Tool for Overcoming the Crisis

The author presents generalized results of the study and theoretical and methodological approaches in anti-crisis management in industrial companies during and after the pandemic. The assessment of the causes and factors of the economic crisis have been analyzed. The article depicts peculiar features of modern institutional transformations which involve decreasing number of business entities accompanied by a shortage of highly qualified labour force in the industry. The author examines alternative scenarios which can be applied during the postcrisis period. When considering these scenarios, he proves that it is essential to take into account fundamental causes of the crisis as well as the ones connected with the functioning mechanism and the motives of economic agents’ behavior.

American-Chinese Confrontation from the Perspective of Thucydides Trap

War is an inevitable companion of human history. Therefore, from a scientific point of view, as well as from a practical and applied point of view, the identification of the fundamental causes that give rise to this phenomenon continues to be an urgent problem. It was made an attempt to explain a new research method along with class and geopolitical approach assigning reasons of great military conflicts. The purpose of this article is to evaluate the method called the Thucydides trap. The object of the study is the deterrence strategies used by the main actors of world politics. The subject of the study is the modification of the Thucydides trap in relation to the US-China confrontation.

Edge Control in the Computer-Controlled Optical Surface

The computer-controlled optical surface (CCOS) can process good optical surfaces, but its edge effect greatly affects its development and application range. In this paper, based on the two fundamental causes of the CCOS’s edge effect—namely the nonlinear variation of edge pressure and the unreachable edge removal—a combined polishing method of double-rotor polishing and spin-polishing is proposed. The model of the combined polishing method is established and theoretically analyzed. Combined with the advantages of double-rotor polishing and spin-polishing, the combined polishing process can achieve full-aperture machining without pressure change. Finally, the single-crystal silicon sample with a diameter of 100 mm is polished by the combined polishing process. The results show that, compared with the traditional CCOS polishing, the residual error of the sample after the combined polishing process is more convergent, and the edge effect is effectively controlled.