Suchergebnisse

The situation associated with the growing number of Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections forced ongoing monitoring of the epidemic situation, which entailed an introduction of a number of restrictions and solutions intended to isolate the infected persons on the one hand, and to minimize the risk of development of an epidemic in Poland on the other. Activity of the Polish legislator is also essential, which tried to introduce solutions that would correspond with current expectations and needs. Given the multiplicity of the introduced regulations, interpretation of provisions of statutes has not always been easy. In this paper, the author points to the issues of communication with a public authority by specific reflections on the principles of serving documents on beneficiaries of EU programs under which they were awarded funding for their implementation on the basis of EU regulations addressing the use of the European Regional Development Fund, the European Social Fund and the Cohesion Fund for programs implemented as part of the cohesion policy (Regulations of the European Parliament and of the Council (EU) of 17 December 2013: no. 1303/2013, no. 1301/2013, no. 1304/2013, no 1300/2013, and no. 1299/2013). The author focuses on the issues of communication with an authority in a situation where administrative proceedings are initiated against a beneficiary of EU funds, e.g., for returning the granted funding. The author points to the dynamics of the legislator's work in this respect by analyzing the rules for serving documents by a public authority on beneficiaries who are public entities and those who are not. The author's main research aim is to analyze existing provisions establishing the possibility of electronic communication with a public authority, and also to assess them critically due to the extraordinary situation caused by Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). This is intended to verify the main research hypothesis focusing on the attempt to answer a question whether ...

Summary. This article starts by setting out the argument of L's anté-peuple, a novel published by Sony Labou Tansi in 1983. On that basis, he puts forward the view put forward by the author of the study throughout these pages: the work analysed shows the immutability of the political and social conditions experienced both in the Zaire and in the People's Republic of Congo and also reveals the transformation of its characters. The particularity of L's anté-peuple compared with the other novels of the Labou Tansi is what the body of observations made in this work gives rise to, since it is a fiction that has a more personal tone and, at the same time, is more distant from the aesthetic paradigms prevailing at the time than the other novels of the chosen author. The article is divided into two parts: the first is to show general aspects of the history of the countries mentioned above and then to see how the author reprepares them in his fiction; the second, on the other hand, shows the characters as fictional entities that change with the events of which they form part. Both paragraphs allow the conclusions to be drawn at the end of the text, in which L is presented as a literary production whose aesthetic is complex because of the way in which the aspects of fiction discussed in the analysis interact with each other. ; Resumen Este artículo inicia exponiendo el argumento de L'anté-peuple, novela publicada por Sony Labou Tansi en 1983. Sobre esa base, presenta la tesis que defiende el autor del estudio a lo largo de estas páginas: la obra analizada da cuenta de la inmutabilidad de las condiciones político-sociales vividas tanto en el Zaire como enla República Popular del Congo y también revela la transformación experimentada por sus personajes. La particularidad de L'anté-peuple con respecto al resto de novelas del Labou Tansi es lo que suscita el conjunto de observaciones que se realizan en este trabajo, pues es una ficción que tiene un tono más personal y, al mismo tiempo, más distante de los paradigmas estéticos ...

"This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Mathematische Nachrichten 293.6 (2020): 1074-1083, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1002/mana.201800541. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions. This article may not be enhanced, enriched or otherwise transformed into a derivative work, without express permission from Wiley or by statutory rights under applicable legislation. Copyright notices must not be removed, obscured or modified. The article must be linked to Wiley's version of record on Wiley Online Library and any embedding, framing or otherwise making available the article or pages thereof by third parties from platforms, services and websites other than Wiley Online Library must be prohibited" ; In [3] it was shown that when a three-dimensional smooth convex body has rotational symmetry around a coordinate axis one can find better bounds for the lattice point discrepancy than what is known for more general convex bodies. To accomplish this, however, it was necessary to assume a non-vanishing condition on the third derivative of the generatrix. In this article we drop this condition, showing that the aforementioned bound holds for a wider family of revolution bodies, which includes those with analytic boundary. A novelty in our approach is that, besides the usual analytic methods, it requires studying some Diophantine properties of the Taylor coefficients of the phase on the Fourier transform side ; The first author is partially supported by the grant MTM2014-56350-P and the MINECO Centro de Excelencia Severo Ochoa Program SEV-2015-0554. The second author has been supported by a "la Caixa"-Severo Ochoa international PhD programme fellowship at the Instituto de Ciencias Matemáticas (CSIC-UAM-UC3M-UCM). The second author is indebted to Corentin Perret-Gentil for the fruitful conversations at the MSRI leading to some of the ideas included in this article

The article is devoted to the formation and development of the community of Tajik migrants in the Post-Soviet period in the South Urals. The source database was made up of archival documents from the archive of the Chelyabinsk region, data on international migration and field materials of the author. Using this set of sources, the author reconstructs the quantitative and qualitative parameters of cross-border movements from Tajikistan, shows the time and circumstances of arrival migrants, reveals the participation of Tajiks in internal Russian and cross-border migrations. In total, the author collected 56 interviews with immigrants from Tajikistan, implemented 115 hours of included observation. The sample of objects for observation and establishment of contacts with informants included: cafes, "points" selling clothes in the markets "Chinese", "Vostochnyi Gorod" and "Kashirinsky" in Chelyabinsk, residential buildings and schools near them, as well as public transport. The methodological basis of the research is transnationalism. The use of transnational optics made it possible to see the life of migrants simultaneously in two contexts – "there" and "here". In the structure of Central Asian migration to the South Urals since the 1990s Tajiks predominated. Against their background, the Kyrgyz were small and "invisible" for the host country; Uzbeks joined labor migration only relatively recently. Dynamic movements from Tajikistan have led to the formation of stable transnational ties, connected, first of all, with the supply and sale of fruits and vegetables, seasonal work at construction sites, etc. People from the Khatlon and Sughd regions come to the South Urals. At the same time, Tajik migrants demonstrated a high level of mobility within Russia already in the 1990s, they actively moved around Russian cities (Moscow, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk) in search of work, higher earnings, and prospects for starting a business. Labor migration from Tajikistan is due to steady population growth in the country of origin, combined with low rates of economic development, unemployment, and low incomes. According to informants' estimates, in the coming years, one should hardly expect a significant reduction in migration from Tajikistan to the Chelyabinsk region.

The article is devoted to the currently little-studied topic which is the influence of the political and socio-economic processes of the final stage of the World War II on the activities of the Khabarovsk Krai NKVD organs. The study was based on the archival documents related to the work of the NKVD organs of the Far East in the second half of 1945. The collections of documents stored in the departmental archive and information center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Khabarovsk Krai constituted the source base of the research. Most of the archival sources used by the author are being introduced into scientific circulation for the first time. The techniques of historical criminological analysis were applied in the process of research. The author considered the peculiarities of the transition of law enforcement agencies of Khabarovsk Krai to work under martial law connected with the events of the Soviet-Japanese war; structural transformations of the first post-war period, including the formation of new territorial bodies in South Sakhalin; activities in combating crime and protecting public order. It is concluded that the geopolitical events in the region and the internal social processes of the period under study demanded that the NKVD of Khabarovsk Krai not only strengthen the traditional activities to combat crime and protect law and order but also organize work in a number of new areas. The study of archival documents showed that the internal affairs bodies paid considerable attention to the organization of civil defense and the protection of population from possible attacks by Japanese aircraft during that period. Assessing the effectiveness of the activities of the territorial bodies of the Khabarovsk Krai NKVD in the period between June and December of 1945, the author concludes that despite a number of difficulties which were largely caused by the problems connected with personnel and logistics, the internal affairs bodies managed to ensure public safety and law and order in the front-line region and to prevent criminal excesses (outbreaks of banditry, group escapes or prisoner riots, etc.) and sabotage at strategically important facilities.

The article discusses the issue of social exclusion of elderly people in rural areas during the COVID-19 pandemic. The author relies on the concept that defines social exclusion as a mechanism for separating a certain group of people from an integral community. Using the example of several respondents, the article examines the effects that social exclusion of elderly people creates in rural areas, as well as possible ways of their adaptation that can minimise it.

The empirical basis of the work is collected by the author 20 semi-structured interviews with elderly people living in rural areas in the Republic of Karelia and 20 diaries of their observations. When analysing interviews and diaries, a thematic method was used. The main result of the study is the identification of various fears and characteristics of the perception of social exclusion as a condition associated with changes in the habitual everyday life, as well as the lifestyle of respondents due to isolation.

The main conclusion highlights the various fears presented in the perceptions of social exclusion by elderly people associated with changes in the usual everyday life due to isolation.

The study also identifies the most effective ways for adaptation of elderly people to minimise their social exclusion: expanding communication with neighbours, translating communication into digital format. The data obtained by the author also allow us to draw a conclusion about changes in the sociological consideration of ageing. It becomes not a state of inclusiveness and activity, integration of elderly people into society, as modern concepts and approaches denote it (for example, the concept of active longevity), but a state that is primarily determined by physical weakness. The need for isolation, as well as limitation of activity, is becoming a forced measure that negatively affects older people and the characteristics of their perception of their age and the situation of a pandemic. This work contributes to the latest research into the understanding of ageing in the context of forced social exclusion in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Non-religious diversity is growing in the world nowadays. In the current context it is understood not as a diversity of faiths, religions, non-religions, etc., but as a variety of types of non-religious consciousness and categories of non-religious identity. The article covers only a few aspects of this vast topic. First, the theoretical prerequisites and substantiations for the change in the Western non-religious identity taking place during the transition from the Westphalian to the post-Westphalian system of religious governance and the emergence of a special type of pluralism that is formed in the process of dedifferentiation of religion, globalization and the transformation of the "religion of place and nation" into a transnational religion "without place and nation", when the ratio of religious, spiritual and secular in the mind of a postmodern person changes. Second, the author analyses the origins and causes of this transformation of non-religious consciousness in the "long 1960s". Third, the author traces the evolution of such types of non-religious diversity as "spiritual but not religious", "none" and "post-protestants" and the concept of "spirituality" that connects them. The category "spiritual but not religious", sometimes perceived as dubious and unconvincing, appearing in the context of countercultural spirituality, in the author´s opinion, is very important for understanding Western, especially American irreligiousness in general and the processes taking place today in particular. The processes that are associated with the growth of "none" and the proliferation of "post-Protestants" related to the Woke culture, who claim the role of "saviours of humanity", attaching more importance to the "new post-Protestant ethics" (rather than religion and tradition), seeking to politicise religion, to sacralise politics, race and gender relations. Rejecting the "old religion" and proclaiming a "new ethics", moving from the ideals of diversity, universal tolerance and political correctness to "militant moralism and cruel dogmatism", they confirm the idea of "complex irreligiousness" in the era of "late modernity", that seems to be a sign of the times and requires close attention of scientists.

The article discusses the correlation between structured extracurricular activities and the performance of children with disabilities. This interrelation is theoretically substantiated and studied in various social sciences, including sociology. The positive relationship of these variables can be explained through the prism of sociological theories, thanks to the scientific work of sociologists Coleman, Bourdieu and Portes. The author provides an overview of the theoretical rationale for the positive impact of extracurricular activities on student performance at school: "development models", Coleman's hypothesis "on leadership in the crowd", the concept of "social capital". The correlation between structured extracurricular activities and academic achievement is also supported by empirical research around the world. However, at the moment, insufficient attention has been paid to studying this issue on groups of children with disabilities, for whom additional classes are an important resource for adaptation to social life, including after receiving secondary education. The discussion about the interconnection of these parameters is rarely traced in the field of the social sciences either. The sample of the field study carried out by the author included students from correctional programmes at a boarding school in a Russian city with a population of one million. Using the method of linear regression analysis, models were built in which the students average score in school subjects was predicted based on data on the duration of their studies in additional programmes in art and sports. The results of the analysis showed that the duration of classes in art sections is positively associated with the school performance of children with mental disorders both in primary and secondary school, that indicates the importance of such classes for achieving success in learning and, as a result, for successful adaptation to life after school. Activities in sports clubs do not significantly affect the school performance of children from this sample, but neither they have a negative impact. The conclusions obtained by the author are of practical importance for the heads of Russian correctional schools, who make decisions on the need to develop additional education for students on the basis of their educational institutions and for the state authorities supervising these institutions.

The international activities of governments at the subnational level have become widespread practice. Cooperation between local authorities, which began in Europe with the aim of promoting peace, international understanding, and reconciliation between peoples in the post-war period, has spread throughout the world over time. International cityto- city partnerships, also known as sister cities, have become an instrument for promoting economic development. The movement of sister cities is considered not only as a form of cross-border intermunicipal cooperation, but also as one of the aspects of paradiplomacy. One of the consequences of regionalization that swept post-Soviet Russia in the 1990s was the growth of foreign economic activity, international contacts of both Russian regions and cities. This is reflected in the signing of intermunicipal agreements. This research is aimed at determining the factors on which the international activity of Russian cities depends. The theoretical and methodological basis of the work was the concept of paradiplomacy in general and city diplomacy in particular. The author put forward several hypotheses in the framework of the approaches to high international activity of cities existing in the scientific literature. The database was a list of sister cities, including 150 Russian municipalities compiled by the International Association of Related Cities. Statistical calculations were performed by multiple linear regression. As a result of the study, it was found that a large number of sister cities are observed in Russian cities, which can be attributed to megacities and large cities. It was revealed that a high level of international activity of Russian cities is characteristic of municipalities located in border regions. It is shown that economic characteristics directly affect the number of contracts. The author came to the conclusion that the status of the administrative center of Russian regions positively affects on the number of sister cities. The article emphasizes the influence of the historical heritage of territories on the development of inter-municipal cultural cooperation. In conclusion, it is noted that the influence of demographic, geographical, economic, political, legal, and cultural-historical features of municipalities on the number of sister cities does not explain all cases. The author believes that the political factor has a certain explanatory power.

In academic discourse, public diplomacy is often regarded as an instrument of foreign policy most suitable for small states, which enables them to compensate for the lack of military and economic capabilities. Paradoxically enough, studies on public diplomacy usually focus on the activities of the leading actors of world politics. However, it is exactly the case of small states that, according to the author, allows better understanding of the role of public diplomacy in the contemporary foreign policy agenda. The author examines the evolution of the Slovak public diplomacy, and distinguishes two stages in it. The firststage (from 1993 to 2004) was characterized by the establishment and consolidation of the Slovak system of public diplomacy, aimed primarily at promoting the main goal of the government — the country's integration into the European Union. By means of advocacy and cultural diplomacy, in particular through the system of Slovak Institutes, Slovakia tried to convince politicians, journalists, members of the academic and business communities, and non-governmental organization activists in Europe that the country was ready to join the EU. During the second stage (from 2005 to the present day) a national branding, aimed at promoting a positive image of the country has come to play (along with cultural diplomacy) one of the key roles within the Slovak public diplomacy. It was at this time that the government initiated the National Scholarship Program of the Slovak Republic and launched an information campaign with the slogan 'Slovakia is a Good Idea', which had made a significant contribution to the dissemination of accurate information about the country and strengthened relations with the neighboring states and trade partners. The author concludes that in nearly three decades Slovakia has managed to establish a modern competitive system of public diplomacy, which possesses the following characteristics: a high level of coordination between the key actors, a wide range of working methods, and an effective dialogue with the people of the country on the main foreign policy objectives (domestic public diplomacy).

Introduction. Among the materials of the Belgorod Stol of the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts (RGADA), there is an extensive set of documents related to disputes over peasants who fled to the South of Russia from uyezds of other regions of the state. These are "cases of peasants" which were created in the 1620s. They are an important episode of the overall picture of the economic development of Southern Russia in the 17th century. These documents are of great interest for the study of the Russian peasantry.

Methods. The author uses the problem-historical method and traditional methods of working with historical sources. The focus of the article is an attempt to comprehend this vast complex of records management materials. These important materials are connected with the peasant issue in uyezds of Southern Russia in the 1620s. The question is how peasants, who did not have freedom, could move to the South. Unfortunately, this topic was hardly a subject of study in historiography. However, historian Novoselsky showed the importance of studying "cases of peasants". In the course of the article, the author shows that peasants did not have legal grounds for the resettlement to the southern outskirts. In the last two decades of the 16th century, peasants were attached to the land. This is a wellknown and proven fact. However, in the Time of Troubles, many peasant families fled to the South. It was a time of anarchy. In the 1620s, the flight of peasants continued and was numerous. This triggered the emergence of "cases of peasants". The author has studied 58 cases of this kind.

Results. The study of these documents shows that the governmental policy regarding the flight of peasants was not harsh. The state allowed the possibility of the flight of peasants. The authorities did not consider landowners who accepted fugitives to be lawbreakers. The rules prohibiting the transfer of peasants began to act only if a landowner found his peasant and filed a lawsuit about his return.

The development and implementation of the Marshall Plan has been studied quite thoroughly in both Russian and foreign academic literature. Nevertheless, certain aspects of this problematique require further examination, particularly the reaction of the Western European countries to the initiative of the Secretary of State G. Marshall, as well as the impact of the Plan on the process of the European integration in general. The paper demonstrates that this reaction was far from simple and often contradictory since the key Western states had very different views on the future of mutual relations, as well as on the prospects for post-war recovery and development of Europe. The paper examines the evolution of the French and British leaders' views on these issues from the first discussions of the projects to provide US aid to Western Europe to the implementation of the Marshall Plan. The negotiations revealed significant points of disagreement among the parties particularly regarding the relations with the USSR, the German question, and conditions for receiving assistance from the United States. The author stresses that the need to defend their interests during the course of negotiations with the US representatives contributed greatly to the rapprochement of Britain and France and, at the same time, catalyzed debates on the integration of Western Europe. In this regard the author emphasizes that the idea of regional economic integration received mixed reaction in the American elites. While some considered this process as an effective means of bringing the Western countries together, particularly, over the German question, others feared that integration of Western Europe could potentially lead to the emergence of a new competitor to the USA. The author concludes that the growing popularity of integration projects in Europe in 1947–1948 stemmed from a range of factors, including both a combination of internal European political processes and short-term and long-term consequences of the Marshall Plan. Whereas in terms of economic development of Western Europe the latter were rather ambiguous and are still the subject of controversy, in terms of world politics the Marshall Plan exacerbated block-to-block confrontation in Europe, characteristic of the Cold War period.

The paper examines how military and political leaders of the Soviet Union, the United States and Great Britain assessed in the first post-war years and in the face of emerging bipolar world order the lessons of World War II, how the latter influenced their strategic planning and forecasts with the emergence of nuclear weapons. The author outlines the key features of this period (1945–1949), including still fresh memories of the unprecedented destruction and losses of the past war, the US 'nuclear monopoly', and the absence of a system for nuclear deterrence. The paper provides a systematic comparison of lessons from the past war, learnt by the Soviet, the US and British establishment, identifies similarities and differences between them. The author concludes that WWII was perceived by the political and military leaders of that time as a model of the eventual 'great war' in the future, which almost certainly would be 'total' and 'global' in scope and would demand both thorough preparations during the peacetime and the militarization of civil life. Indeed, the experience of WWII had greatly influenced the strategic and operational planning in the USSR, the USA and Great Britain in 1945–1949. Moscow prepared to face the potential aggression on its Western borders or in the Far East in order to avoid the mistakes of 1941. In Washington the decisionmakers acknowledged the Soviet superiority in conventional weapons and didn't exclude the possibility that the Soviet Army could quickly establish control over the Western Europe and that the US military would have to retake it in a 'new Operation Overlord'. The pessimistic outlook of the 'defense of the Rhine' was also shared in London, and the British military planned to evacuate the troops to the British Isles ('shadow of Dunkirk') and to focus on strategic bombing of the USSR and its allies. Even the appearance of nuclear weapons, that would dramatically alter the strategic context in the following years, played a relatively minor role in 1945–1949. The author concludes that the shadow of World War II and its lessons had a long-lasting effect on the post-war international relations.

The article considers the legality of mass surveillance and protection of personal data in the context of the international human rights law and the right to respect for private life. Special attention is paid to the protection of data on the Internet, where the personal data of billions of people are stored. The author emphasizes that mass surveillance and technology that allows the storage and processing of the data of millions of people pose a serious threat to the right to privacy guaranteed by Article 8 of the ECHR of 1950. Few companies comply with the human rights principles in their operations by providing user data in response to requests from public services. In this regard, States must prove that any interference with the personal integrity of an individual is necessary and proportionate to address a particular security threat. Mandatory data storage, where telephone companies and Internet service providers are required to store metadata about their users' communications for subsequent access by the law enforcement and intelligence agencies, is neither necessary nor proportionate. The author analyses the legislation of some countries in the field of personal data protection, as well as examples from practice. Practice in many States is evidence of the lack of adequate national legislation and enforcement, weak procedural safeguards and ineffective oversight, which contributes to widespread impunity for arbitrary or unlawful interference with the right to privacy. In conclusion, we propose a number of measures aimed at improving the level of personal data protection in accordance with the international standards. In order to provide guarantees and a minimum level of adequate data protection in the face of new challenges to human rights in an ever-changing digital environment, the author proposes to solve a number of pressing issues. Firstly, States should not have the right to ask companies for and have absolute access to user data without a court order. Secondly, the process of sending a request and receiving data from a telecommunications company should be regulated in detail and transparent. The availability of specialized judges with technical expertise shall be valuable

PurposeThere is a dearth of empirical research on the impact of external knowledge search on innovation performance in different categories of service firms. This study explores the effectiveness of the breadth of external search on product and process innovations in German firms. In particular, the author modelled a non-linear relationship between the breadth of knowledge and product and process innovations.Design/methodology/approachDrawing on the Mannheim Innovation Panel (MIP) data for the German service firms in the period 2014–2016, the author reported findings from a bivariate probit model which took into account mutual interdependence between product and process innovations. Moreover, the model was separately estimated for knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) and other services. For comparative purposes, the author also estimated the model for manufacturing firms.FindingsEmpirical findings uniformly indicated an inverted U-shaped effect of the breadth of knowledge on both product and process innovations. Furthermore, the results demonstrated that using up to three knowledge sources increases the probability of a joint implementation of product and process innovations. These findings hold for both KIBS firms and other services. However, those service firms that focussed on a single type of innovation experienced diminishing returns to external knowledge when exploiting more than one source of knowledge. These results indicated that a simultaneous introduction of different types of innovation required diverse knowledge sources. In contrast, when focussing on a single type of innovation, service firms experienced diminishing returns when multiple sources were used. However, this finding was only partially found for manufacturing firms. Accordingly, this study's findings provided support for the demarcation approach, insofar as the breadth of knowledge had a heterogenous impact on innovation in manufacturing relative to service firms.Originality/valuePrevious studies on the breadth of knowledge search mostly examined its influence on innovation performance without separately analysing manufacturing and service firms. The present study focussed on service firms that were further divided into KIBS and other service firms. By investigating potentially non-linear relationships between knowledge breadth and product and process innovations, it illustrated how different innovation strategies were affected by a diverse pool of external knowledge sources.