POSITIVE EFFECTS OF FEMALE STEREOTYPES FUNCTIONING (ILLUSTRATED BY THE CASE OF THE UKRAINIAN MILITARY NON-INSTITUTIONAL DISCOURSE)

The abstract reveals effects of female stereotypes functioning. Studying the gender stereotype’s psychological and social functions, we have noted the following positive effects of female stereotypes functioning in the Armed Forces of Ukraine: 1) destruction of gender typology, overcoming polarization between femininity and masculinity as polar opposite genders; 2) changing the vector of gender priorities from the predominance of belonging to certain gender to the predominance of belonging to the corporate military culture; that makes it crucial to perceive and evaluate a woman, first of all, as a representative of military professional activity; 3) creation of psychological prerequisites for the prevalence of a positive emotional state in the military collective and formation of communication principles characterized by empathy.

Massively Parallel Selection of NanoCluster Beacons

NanoCluster Beacons (NCBs) are multicolor silver nanocluster probes whose fluorescence can be activated or tuned by a proximal DNA strand called the activator. While a single-nucleotide difference in a pair of activators can lead to drastically different activation outcomes, termed the polar opposite twins (POTs), it is difficult to discover new POT-NCBs using the conventional low-throughput characterization approaches. Here we report a high-throughput selection method that takes advantage of repurposed next-generation-sequencing (NGS) chips to screen the activation fluorescence of ∼40,000 activator sequences. We find the nucleobases at positions 7-12 of the 18-nucleotide-long activator are critical to creating bright NCBs and positions 4-6 and 2-4 are hotspots to generate yellow and red POTs, respectively. Based on these findings, we propose a “zipper bag model” that explains how these hotspots lead to the creation of distinct silver cluster chromophores and contribute to the difference in chromophore chemical yields. Combining high-throughput screening with machine learning algorithms, we establish a pipeline to rationally design bright and multicolor NCBs.

2. The physical environment

‘The physical environment’ describes the Arctic as the polar opposite of the Antarctic continent as it is an ocean semi-enclosed by land. The rocks of the Arctic record key periods in Earth history. The Arctic environment has had an interesting path of evolution. Why is the Arctic cold today? The polar latitudes actually receive less solar energy than the rest of the Earth's surface. What is the key role of sea ice in the Arctic climate system? How does sea ice decline impact upon the Arctic Ocean? The Greenland ice sheet, high latitude glaciers, and the importance of permafrost in the far north are also important topics related to the physical environment.

Entrepreneurial Orientation among Arts Managers in Western Australia

As a region, Western Australia is the largest and most isolated state in Australia, and supports a community of vibrant Arts Organisations. The Arts is widely recognised for its creativity and innovation, but what about the managers of these organisations, are they equally innovative, or entrepreneurial? Rusak (2016) explored this question and found that their Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) matched the three core dimensions of Innovativeness, Pro-activeness, and Risk-taking, but the study did not include the other two EO dimensions of Autonomy and Competitive Aggressiveness. It did however observe that "arts companies don’t generally try to take offensive postures or aggressive responses to competitive threats and rather work collaboratively, as this sample shows". This assertion was not the focus of the article, nor was it explored in any depth in that paper. There are at least two possibilities here: it could be a passive aversion to competitive aggression, or a more deliberate counter-behaviour of collaboration. Either of these would appear to contradict the EO construct, in particular the expectation that all EO dimensions covary, which makes it interesting from a theory perspective. This paper explores this challenge to the EO theory in some detail, using software-aided analysis to tease out the finer nuances in this dimension of Competitive Aggressiveness. While the sample size and its geographical confines limit the generalisations that can be made, there is solid evidence that in this sample of Arts Managers, the Arts acts as a powerful contextual modifier to the expectations of EO theory. The dimension of Competitive Aggressiveness has not simply been altered or toned-down by this context, it has been replaced by a polar opposite.

The Opening Phase of the Science Wars

Kuhn’s monograph fed into the broad antiestablishment spirit of the 1960s and elicited polar-opposite responses, from the defense of objectivity and realism within scientific knowledge to an enthusiastic embrace of the view of scientific knowledge as ineluctably subjective interpretations of experience. The philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend aggressively attacked the rationality of scientific reasoning and eventually rationality itself. Kuhn’s new image of science fed into the emerging postmodernist critique of reason and truth as rhetorical devices wielded for political ends. Jacques Derrida’s “deconstruction” swept the humanities and social sciences, concluding that there could not be a single correct meaning of any text, including scientists’ “reading” of the “book” of nature. Concurrently, philosophers of science, among them Israel Scheffler, Imre Lakatos, and Karl Popper, began a counterattack against Kuhn, defending the rationality and objectivity of scientific knowledge and reason generally.

Meaning and Anti-Meaning in Life and What Happens After We Die

The absence of meaningfulness in life is meaninglessness. But what is the polar opposite of meaningfulness? In recent and ongoing work together with Stephen Campbell and Marcello di Paola respectively, I have explored what we dub ‘anti-meaning’: the negative counterpart of positive meaning in life. Here, I relate this idea of ‘anti-meaningful’ actions, activities, and projects to the topic of death, and in particular the deaths or suffering of those who will live after our own deaths. Connecting this idea of anti-meaning and what happens after our own deaths to recent work by Samuel Scheffler on what he calls ‘the collective afterlife’ and his four reasons to care about future generations, I argue that if we today make choices or have lifestyles that later lead to unnecessarily early deaths and otherwise avoidable suffering of people who will live after we have died, this robs our current choices and lifestyles of some of their meaning, perhaps even making them the opposite of meaningful in the long run.

Christian Nation in Zambia: from Proclamation to Reset

December 2021 marks the 30th anniversary of the proclamation of Zambia a Christian nation. The leader of the Movement for Multi-party Democracy (MMD) party who came to power in 1991, a convinced Christian F. Chiluba, declared Zambia a Christian nation, arguing that Christianity was then professed by more than 70% of the population and that this was supposed to help the country to get rid of corruption and contribute to its prosperity. The article analyzes the reasons of decision to declare Zambia a Christian nation. It is emphasized that political goals prevailed then over religious ones, since the issue of preserving and strengthening power was high on the political agenda of the ruling MMD party. The economic background is also touched upon: as a pragmatic president Chiluba pursued a policy of economic liberalization and counted on financial assistance from Western countries and international donors. The following Christian presidents L. Mwanawasa, R. Banda and M. Sata used limited Christian rhetoric, but they collaborated with the Church with varying degrees of intensity. At the same time, the provision on the Christian nation in the Constitution was preserved. It is noted that the role of the religious factor in politics increased in the early 2010s. The politicization of religion, primarily Christianity, became apparent during the struggle for power led by the leader of the opposition Patriotic Front party Michael Sata, who was supported by some religious leaders. After Edgar Lungu (party Patriotic Front) came to power in 2015, Zambia was re-proclaimed a Christian nation, which was enshrined in the new edition of the 2016 constitution. At the same time, the country began the political rehabilitation of F. Chiluba, who, after leaving the presidency in 2001, was persecuted for corruption. The campaigns for the 2015 presidential elections and for the 2016 general elections have shown the relevance of the discourse on religion and politics in the political process, primarily in its aspect of the multiple relationships between religion, ethnicity and politics. The article shows that the issue of the proclamation of Zambia a Christian nation remains relevant in Zambian society and among African and Western theologians and researchers whose judgments and conclusions are often polar opposite. The author notes that the realities of the socio-political, socio-economic and cultural life in Zambia do not yet indicate the existence of the declared Christian nation. The high level of corruption, poverty, limited rights of some groups of the population do not correspond to Christian ideals and values and have become serious challenges for the modern Zambian society. The article emphasizes that, unlike a number of other countries south of the Sahara, where competition between Christianity and Islam has intensified in recent years, leading, among other things, to bloody conflicts, Zambia survives this conflict along the axis of competition between different directions of Christianity. The ruling PF’s manifesto for the August 2021 general election contains Christian rhetoric. The document states the PF’s commitment to partnership with the Church, which it recognizes as a key partner in the conversion of Zambians into a Christian nation. Further peaceful development of Zambia depends on a balanced internal policy of the authorities aimed at solving complex socio-economic problems in cooperation with representatives of all religions and their confessions.

The COVID-19 wicked problem in public health ethics: conflicting evidence, or incommensurable values?

While the world was facing a rapidly progressing COVID-19 second wave, a policy paradox emerged. On the one side, much more was known by Autumn 2020 about the mechanisms underpinning the spread and lethality of Sars-CoV-2. On the other side, how such knowledge should be translated by policymakers into containment measures appeared to be much more controversial and debated than during the first wave in Spring. Value-laden, conflicting views in the scientific community emerged about both problem definition and subsequent solutions surrounding the epidemiological emergency, which underlined that the COVID-19 global crisis had evolved towards a full-fledged policy “wicked problem”. With the aim to make sense of the seemingly paradoxical scientific disagreement around COVID-19 public health policies, we offer an ethical analysis of the scientific views encapsulated in the Great Barrington Declaration and of the John Snow Memorandum, two scientific petitions that appeared in October 2020. We show that how evidence is interpreted and translated into polar opposite advice with respect to COVID-19 containment policies depends on a different ethical compass that leads to different prioritization decisions of ethical values and societal goals. We then highlight the need for a situated approach to public health policy, which recognizes that policies are necessarily value-laden, and need to be sensitive to context-specific and historic socio-cultural and socio-economic nuances.

The history of the Imyaslav polemic in the context of foreign Church journalism

In the history of the holy Mount Athos, there were not so many bright historical events, one of them was the dispute about the Name of God and the Name of Jesus. Having arisen among the Russian monks of Mount Athos in 1912 – 1913, the dispute did not attract the active participation of representatives of other nationalities. One of the features of this phenomenon was that from the very beginning it received a categorically negative definition from the Patriarchate of Constantinople. This definition has not undergone a significant revision among foreign ecclesiastical and secular historians and publicists over the past hundred years. At the same time, in Russia, the topic of the history and essence of imyaslaviya since its appearance and still continues to be debatable. The author of this publication separately examines the position that prevailed among the Greek monks and clergy on Mount Athos in relation to the Imyaslav dispute. It is also noteworthy that both sides (both opponents and supporters of imyaslavy), arguing their polar opposite points of view from the very beginning of the Imyaslavsky discourse, appeal to the same sources – the Holy Scripture and the works of the Holy Fathers of the Church, especially to the theological heritage of Gregory of Nyssa, Basil the Great, Dionysius the Areopagite, Gregory Palamas. However, certain statements are sometimes quoted tendentiously selectively outside the entire context of the source. This is especially true for authors whose works criticize and refute the Imyaslav teaching. Without setting a task to consecrate all aspects of this topic, which in itself is worthy of a separate study, the author of the publication tries to show the general history of the discussion, as well as how objective were the assessments about the Imyaslav teaching itself, expressed from the very beginning of its appearance, and how these assessments influenced the further course of the Imyaslav process as a whole.

Dietary Treatment for NAFLD: New Clinical and Epidemiological Evidence and Updated Recommendations

The key factor in preventing and treating nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a holistic lifestyle modification approach, encompassing diet based on healthy eating patterns of unprocessed foods, exercise, balanced drinking, and smoking habits. The Mediterranean diet and other healthy dietary patterns can reduce liver fat and may be related with lower disease progression. The type of diet should be tailored to the patient's cultural and personal preferences. Changing dietary composition without reducing caloric intake may offer an additional and sometimes more feasible alternative, so that the nutritional treatment incorporates, but is not focused on, weight reduction goals. The growing global consumption of ultra-processed foods, which is the polar opposite of the Mediterranean diet and its concept of home-based cooking, poses a great challenge in the prevention of NAFLD and probably hepatocellular carcinoma.This review will cover the most updated clinical and epidemiological evidence for lifestyle treatment in NAFLD and provide practical treatment tools.