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A social reality (including social pathology) is constantly being constructed anew in the process of confrontation of perspectives and definitions of individuals, institutions and social groups. Therefore what interests the authors of the book more than the disputes on the right definition, is the understanding of social pathology phenomena - their causes, mechanisms, and social costs. Complex and multidimensional as it is, social reality is best described from various perspectives. For that reason, a potentially interesting and fruitful interdisciplinary approach characterises the book. It contains mainly texts of psychologists who work at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow. The articles of sociologists, lawyers, and one theoretician of education broaden the horizon and thus contribute new insights to the entirety of the book. The body of articles predominantly relates to Polish reality, as well as stems from the experience of the Polish society in the period of political transformation. No less interesting are the articles on the pathology of political discourse, community-policing problems in France, and issues of social concern (victims of violence, problems of the elderly, and collective behaviour). The volume is of interest for social scientists and professionals as well as for students

"Terrorism" is a contested concept. Social science theories of the causes of terrorism & counterstrategies are equally disputed. This article provides a survey of social science research on terrorism. It covers problems of concept formation, questions of theory building, & the development of diverging counterterrorism strategies. Finally, the most recent debate on the "new terrorism" is examined & a research approach is proposed that critically reflects the political context of social science research on terrorism. Adapted from the source document.

The author of the paper analyzes the parliamentary democracy in the Republic of Bulgaria and considers it to be the important factor of community development. The parliamentary system of Bulgaria depicts the idea of rational parliamentarianism, when the constitutional system has judicial techniques to keep stability and power of the government when there is no parliamentary majority. The relationship between the government and parliament is revealed in their cooperation in carrying out the functions of each other and controlling each other's work. The Bulgarian parliament controls the government's activity by means of classical techniques of requests and inquiries.

The progress of clinical, neuropsychological, and imaging diagnostics of degenerative dementia, the development of neurogenetics and neurobiochemistry, the elaboration of newer, more precise diagnostic criteria, have determined the increasing interest for research, diagnostics and seeking of effective treatment. Alzheimer's dis ease, the most frequent type of dementia, is a typical example for the importance of neuroepidemiology. For the first time in AD dependence was found between frequency and advanced age. Differences were also established between AD cases and people with normal cognition, despite their advanced age. Intense neuroepidemiological studies of dementia in different regions of the world have been published in the literature during the last years. The availability of information on prevalence, incidence, mortality, gives possibilities for further investigation of specific regularities in the apearance and the development of dementias. Neuroepidemiological studies have provided information used to determine the prognosis, and to set up the basis for medical, social and personal planning. Neuroepidemiology has to resolve numerous problems, including difficulties related to migration and instability of demographic data in modern world, difficult access to samples for large studies, lack of quick and easily applicable criteria for the establishment of a definite diagnosis. In regions of dominating economic and social difficulties, society and governments of ten under estimate the social importance of dementia and dementia research.Scripta Scientifica Medica 2008;40(1):79-80

Technology ownership and knowledge transfer aim at the dissemination of public research results, usually in one direction - from the university or public research organisation (PRO) that produced the results. However, the complementarities between these types of instruments are not clear compared to the bidirectional channels of knowledge exchange. We analyse one PRO in Spain, a country that is peculiar in terms of infrequent changes to the legislation on science and patents and a predominance of PRO-owned over PRO-invented patents, similar to the situation in the USA but different from that in most EU member states. Against this background, knowledge transfer (measured through PROinvented patents) increases faster than technology ownership (measured through PRO-owned patents). This situation may be damaging to knowledge exchange (measured through PRO co-owned patents). © Beech Tree Publishing 2011. ; Peer Reviewed

Until the twentieth century, U.S. drug abuse problems were not viewed as criminal, nor as a federal responsibility. It took the XVIII Amendment to outlaw liquor-drinking, while drug prohibition was undertaken, in the same era, with no authority but a modest federal tax. This latter usurpation was largely accomplished by inflammatory propaganda, most of it false. Politicians and empire-building bureaucrats have never let up. Beginning with the Kennedys, even Presidents joined in. Mr. Nixon was the worst, but Mr. Carter is also already personally in the act. Drug abusers have not had spokesmen; if they did, nearly everything the public accepts today about them and their problems would be given the lie.

In this paper we investigate the quantitative importance of collective agreements in explaining uctuations in Bulgarian labor markets. Following Maffezzoli (2001), we introduce a monopoly union in a real-business-cycle model with government sector. We calibrate the model to Bulgarian data for the period following the introduction of the currency board arrangement (1999-2016), and compare and contrast it to a model with indivisible labor and no unions as in Rogerson and Wright (1988). We find that the sequential bargaining between unions and firms produces an important internal propagation mechanism, which fits data much better that the alternative framework with indivisible labor.

Recently, three important rivers in Asia and Oceania were acknowledged as legal persons. Questions emerge, such as: Which motivation drives the people who urged the respective courts and governments to grant these rivers legal personhood, in other words, to create Rights of Nature? Do these events lead to transformative social innovation and change our perspectives of how we see nature? As methodology we employ doctrinal research, examining original legal documents and contemporary news sources concerning the three grassroots initiatives on the rivers. The analysis reveals that there are different reasons for proposing this innovative legal approach of creating Rights of Nature. They include: providing people access to clean rivers for drinking water, sanitation, transportation and agricultural purposes; preventing the river from disappearing; addressing the issue of pollution and toxicity of river water; acknowledging the divine status of the river; and honouring indigenous beliefs concerning the river. The research findings demonstrate transformative social innovation: in all three cases, grassroots initiatives led to a system change. Moreover, dissemination of information concerning individual cases inspires other societal groups to reconsider the situation of their own ecosystems and to develop innovative governance possibilities, thereby honouring an alternative worldview in which human beings see themselves as part of nature rather than owning it just for utilitarian purposes.

Recently, three important rivers in Asia and Oceania were acknowledged as legal persons. Questions emerge, such as: Which motivation drives the people who urged the respective courts and governments to grant these rivers legal personhood, in other words, to create Rights of Nature? Do these events lead to transformative social innovation and change our perspectives of how we see nature? As methodology we employ doctrinal research, examining original legal documents and contemporary news sources concerning the three grassroots initiatives on the rivers. The analysis reveals that there are different reasons for proposing this innovative legal approach of creating Rights of Nature. They include: providing people access to clean rivers for drinking water, sanitation, transportation and agricultural purposes; preventing the river from disappearing; addressing the issue of pollution and toxicity of river water; acknowledging the divine status of the river; and honouring indigenous beliefs concerning the river. The research findings demonstrate transformative social innovation: in all three cases, grassroots initiatives led to a system change. Moreover, dissemination of information concerning individual cases inspires other societal groups to reconsider the situation of their own ecosystems and to develop innovative governance possibilities, thereby honouring an alternative worldview in which human beings see themselves as part of nature rather than owning it just for utilitarian purposes.

Recently, three important rivers in Asia and Oceania were acknowledged as legal persons. Questions emerge, such as: Which motivation drives the people who urged the respective courts and governments to grant these rivers legal personhood, in other words, to create Rights of Nature? Do these events lead to transformative social innovation and change our perspectives of how we see nature? As methodology we employ doctrinal research, examining original legal documents and contemporary news sources concerning the three grassroots initiatives on the rivers. The analysis reveals that there are different reasons for proposing this innovative legal approach of creating Rights of Nature. They include: providing people access to clean rivers for drinking water, sanitation, transportation and agricultural purposes; preventing the river from disappearing; addressing the issue of pollution and toxicity of river water; acknowledging the divine status of the river; and honouring indigenous beliefs concerning the river. The research findings demonstrate transformative social innovation: in all three cases, grassroots initiatives led to a system change. Moreover, dissemination of information concerning individual cases inspires other societal groups to reconsider the situation of their own ecosystems and to develop innovative governance possibilities, thereby honouring an alternative worldview in which human beings see themselves as part of nature rather than owning it just for utilitarian purposes.

Recently, three important rivers in Asia and Oceania were acknowledged as legal persons. Questions emerge, such as: Which motivation drives the people who urged the respective courts and governments to grant these rivers legal personhood, in other words, to create Rights of Nature? Do these events lead to transformative social innovation and change our perspectives of how we see nature? As methodology we employ doctrinal research, examining original legal documents and contemporary news sources concerning the three grassroots initiatives on the rivers. The analysis reveals that there are different reasons for proposing this innovative legal approach of creating Rights of Nature. They include: providing people access to clean rivers for drinking water, sanitation, transportation and agricultural purposes; preventing the river from disappearing; addressing the issue of pollution and toxicity of river water; acknowledging the divine status of the river; and honouring indigenous beliefs concerning the river. The research findings demonstrate transformative social innovation: in all three cases, grassroots initiatives led to a system change. Moreover, dissemination of information concerning individual cases inspires other societal groups to reconsider the situation of their own ecosystems and to develop innovative governance possibilities, thereby honouring an alternative worldview in which human beings see themselves as part of nature rather than owning it just for utilitarian purposes.

AbstractMany problems arising in logistics and in the application of mathematics to industrial planning are in the form of constrained maximizations with nonlinear maximands or constraint functions or both. Thus a depot facing random demands for several items may wish to place orders for each in such a way as to maximize the expected number of demands which are fulfilled; the total of orders placed is limited by a budget constraint. In this case, the maximand is certainly nonlinear. The constraint would also be nonlinear if, for example, the marginal cost of storage of the goods were increasing. Practical methods for solving such problems in nonlinear programming almost invariably depends on some use of Lagrange multipliers, either by direct solution of the resulting system of equations or by a gradient method of successive approximations (see [5], Part II). This article discusses a part of the sufficient conditions for the validity of the multiplier method.