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The problem of matter in philosophy has become relevant again. Nowadays, it does not resemble the crisis of the early XX century when a so-called "dissolution" of the matter in mathematical formulae was discussed. However, the emergence of term "dark matter" in physics, which is not clear how it differs from the well-known "light matter", is obscure and raises the question of the "matter doubling". This makes one remember that the current definition of matter in philosophy was developed as a result of a discussion concerning the ways of its existence between Vladimir Lenin and empiriocritics. Thus, all modern attempts to define matter cannot exist without a new view on the old discussion presented in the book "Materialism and Empirio-Criticism" by Lenin. The author of the article pays attention to the fact that during the discussion of "the main question of philosophy" a century ago, concerning the attitude of matter towards consciousness, it was considered by Lenin only in two aspects, specifically, ontological and gnoseological. At the same time, the principle of the identity of dialectics, logic and theory of knowledge proposed by him demands consideration of the arguments adduced in the discussion as well as the logical aspect. According to the author, the consecutive consideration of the main question of philosophy by means of logic, should result in a correction of Lenin's definition of matter.

Currently, Russia faces the problem of improving the state economy and its transition to an innovative development path. The achievement of strategic goals and objectives of socioeconomic development depends on the innovative and technological state of construction as a fundamental branch of material production. Innovative development of construction is associated with three key areas: technologies, materials, and processes. The study addresses the main factors of stimulating and limiting the sustainable growth of this type of activity, explore the main trends of innovative development of construction based on the analysis of domestic and foreign experience. The author analyzes the indicators of Russia's construction industry for 2014–2018 and identifies the main problems that negatively affect the consistency of the innovation process It is concluded that the need for intensive innovative and technological development of the Russian construction complex is due to the need to solve many important socio-economic problems, including: insufficient provision of affordable, comfortable and safe housing for the population; a high level of wear and tear of municipal infrastructure; low quality of housing and utilities; the negative impact of outdated technologies on the environment; low productivity growth in the construction industry. Finally, the author offers a model of innovative development of construction in Russia's regions based on qualitative feedback between different forms and levels of management for effective solutions and synergetic effect in the economy of the subjects of the Russian Federation.

PurposeThe purpose of this theoretical paper is to introduce a conceptual model to investigate e-learning persuasion through gamification elements using the social psychology theory of elaboration likelihood model (ELM).Design/methodology/approachThe author systematically reviewed several theoretical and empirical papers which applied the ELM in various settings. Based on the literature, the author identified six research prepositions which facilitate to investigate e-learning persuasion through gamification.FindingsThis study contributes to the existing literature by identifying an ELM-based conceptual model which can be used to empirically investigate the e-learning persuasion using gamification elements. Accordingly, the central route persuasion could be conducted through argument quality, demographic differences and technology context facilitated through gamification elements. The peripheral route persuasion could be conducted through variables such as source credibility, social presence and message content.Practical implicationsThis study contributes important findings to the e-learning research by introducing a conceptual model–based on the social psychology theory of ELM. Thereby, this study introduces a method for the future researchers, to investigate the e-learning persuasion using gamification elements. Further, future researchers can use this model to investigate the e-learning persuasion through gamification in different contexts including primary, secondary and tertiary educational levels.Originality/valueTo the best of the author's knowledge, this study can be considered as the first theoretical paper which developed an ELM-based conceptual model to investigate the e-learning persuasion through gamification in education context.

Rapid urbanisation and industrialisation have led to a huge increase in the generation of municipal solid waste (MSW) across the globe. The world's cities generate about 1.3 billion tons of solid waste per year and this is expected to increase to 2.2 billion tons by 2025. The most common method of waste management adopted by cities is to dispose of MSW in open dumps and oversaturated landfills. The improper management of MSW has become a threat to public and environmental health. However, this waste can also be perceived as an opportunity and a source of energy through Waste to Energy (WtE) technology. WtE technologies are used to produce various by-products like electricity, heat, biofuels and compost. In developed nations, it is primarily the non-organic elements of MSW that are used in WtE incineration. Developing nations are also investing heavily in WtE incineration, irrespective of the fact that their MSW consists primarily of biodegradables. The existing WtE incineration plants in India and China are not only causing heavy pollution but also posing a serious threat to the environment and human health. In this article, the author focuses on the current status and challenges of different WtE technologies used in Europe, US, China, Japan and India. Furthermore, the author recommends that waste incineration should not be treated as a source of renewable energy and suggests anaerobic digestion methods (biomethanation) as a solution for countries with more biodegradable waste.

Since the return of the direct elections of the heads of the Russian regions in 2012, the terms of service of 143 regional leaders have expired. 66 leaders received an extension, while 77 did not. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the heads of the regions, supported by the federal center and the president in particular, are re-elected. What motivates the federal center's decisions to support the governor's nomination for a new term? What are the reasons why the Kremlin approves the regional governors' re-election? This article is devoted to finding answers to these questions. The study uses data on 104 governors, whose terms of service ended in 2012—2019, and employs the method of a binary logistic regression. The author tested several hypotheses elaborated within the framework of the political, economic and social approaches. On the basis of the regression analysis the author rejected the hypothesis that the political survival of governors depends on the regional electoral performance of the United Russia and Vladimir Putin in the federal elections. The hypothesis about the connection between the economic growth of the region and the governor's retention of the post was not corroborated. The only factor that appeared to be statistically significant for the re-election of an incumbent was the socio-economic situation in the region, which indicates that the political longevity of regional leaders is primarily determined by their ability to maintain socio-economic stability.

The article considers the system of information documents of the executives. It is shown that genre forms used in public administration for the purpose of informing are numerous. Many of these forms lack clear genre nominations, which explains the fact that researchers substitute genre nominations by names of the issues in which the informative documents are published. The author characterizes the information genres, which are in major demand with state administration: public report, press release and briefing materials. The article reveals that public report reflects information about the officials' actions or about the actual state of affairs with the relevant government agency; by its structure, it is a standardized text with language units typical of business communication. Press release is a short message about productive work of the authorities, aimed at shaping their positive image; its distinguishing feature is the use of emotionally and expressively colored lexical units and stylistic expressive means. The genre of briefing materials, along with the key objective – to inform, employs an additional setting for popularization of legal information, and hence a wide range of visual tools (tables, charts, flowcharts, fonts, colours, etc.). The author assumes that the contents and the instructive appeal of certain fragments of information genres make them close to the enacting documents genres, although their means of expressing style features are different.

The nation-state is one powerful entity that makes race. For instance, the mid-twentieth-century South African apartheid racial state cultivated a triracial hierarchy through officially naming three groups into law: White, Black (native African), and Coloured, with Coloured being defined and situated in the "racial middle" as neither White nor Black African. Yet because race is a social construction that is adaptive and dynamic, the state's role in making race is also malleable and changing. This study offers a case study of how modern racial states re-make racial categories by focusing on the potential for re- or de-formation of the Coloured racial category since the end of apartheid in 1994 and 25 years into democracy. In conducting a critical race discourse analysis of official state forms and laws, the author finds that the post-apartheid nation-state challenges Coloureds' racial categorization and position in the racial middle. It does this by simultaneously supporting nonracialist (i.e., color-blind racist) strategies and rewriting Coloured as Black as a means for racial redress. Moreover, the author argues that contemporary South Africa practices coloured blindness through both de-formation and then re-making of the Coloured racial category, thus contributing to the potential shift to a dichotomous racial hierarchy. This project demonstrates how the racial middle can be re-made to uphold state racial projects transformed by changes in the sociopolitical context.

AbstractPriority in "discovery," which sometimes leads to eponymy, is a highly prized form of reward in the scientific community. Recognition of priority is a norm whose violation will bring opprobrium (e.g. suspicion of plagiarism) upon the offender. But in order for an idea to receive an attribution of novelty, and its author to be acknowledged, it must first be noticed. This essay is a case study of an innovation (formulas related to stratified sampling) in the field of mathematical statistics that was "overlooked" for many years by many. Unknowingly, Jerzy Neyman (1894‐1981) "refound" these formulas a decade later (1933). When a statistician in 1950 uncovered the original idea and its author (A.A. Chuprov, 1874‐1926), he contacted Neyman who promptly published a "Recognition of priority" (1952). The study examines the perplexing situation in which some results become known to and recognized by the statistical community, while others, originating from the very same paper, were "overlooked" by sampling statisticians (among others) who, unlike Neyman, had access to the paper and thus had ample opportunity to identify Chuprov's formulas as relevant to their work. Chuprov was well‐known in the statistics world, and the publication in which he published his ideas (1923) was a respected statistical journal (Metron). How is it that it took nearly 20 years for someone in the statistics community to notice that Chuprov had anticipated Neyman in deriving the formulas in question?

This article discusses the collective fears peculiar to people of the third generation and associated with consumer practices. The author analyses various methodological approaches to the study of fears of Russian and Soviet society. The author draws attention to the fact, that behavior of people of the third age is influenced by various groups of factors. A sociological study was conducted in the period from November 2017 to February 2019. The research method was an interview. The materials of the interview allowed to group consumer fears into three groups. The first group of fears is related to credit practices and banking products. The second group of fears is related to modern technologies. The third group of fears is related to food. The potential danger of food is a constant concern for the third age people. They are convinced that a modern man consumes substandard and harmful products, which provoke the development of many serious diseases and reduce life expectancy. Fears have a multi-layered nature. Pensioners are afraid not only of the toxicity of products, but also of unreliability of the information provided about these products. Consumer fears express deep-rooted attitudes and stereotypes in relation to all new and alien things: fear of new social conditions and norms, fear of market mechanisms of production and distribution of goods, alien forms and symbols of social and cultural life. Fear of all the new finds its continuation in consumer fears.

This article attempts to rethink the understanding of language as a "set of words" that correspond to the "objects" of external reality, which is characteristic of Western philosophy and lay perception. The following arguments are offered against this approach: the concept of "word" (like the actual division into morphology and syntax) has no metalinguistic status; the classification of parts of speech is languagespecific, so that the prototypical referential function of a "noun" cannot lay claim to the status of a universal linguistic function; and the idea of language as a "set of words" only reflects the specific metapragmatic awareness of speakers of European languages. Through examining the facts of linguistic diversity and linguistic functions in light of grammatical typology, the author shows that the most adequate interpretation of the relationship between language and reality is an understanding that characterizes language as a large-scale device for forcing its users towards a specific depiction of events. The author also emphasizes the fundamental specificity of the grammatical structure and usage models of each concrete linguistic system. In order to promote a philosophical understanding of language, it is necessary to move from a naïve model that operates with "word – reference – object" to a more realistic model involving "language (as a set of morphosyntactic patterns of conceptualization) – correspondence – event (as a complex situation involving meaning)."

Media environment, emerged from the traditional system of mass communications and enriched with new opportunities for the community, is intensively developing in the modern society. Scientists' research shows that media defines modern existence, consciousness and values of anindividual and social groups. Media environment acts as the place of human existence and means of influencing his consciousness. The author characterizes the media environment as the social space for the library institution, reveals the possibilities of the public library as the leader of public opinion and identifies technological features of introducing information influence into the library media communications. With the development of the Internet technologies, mass communication has become open and accessible to the library community. Modern library simultaneously acts as an active user ofmedia content and as an actor creating its own media products for a wide audience. However, these opportunities are mainly used for internal purposes: to reflect the life of the institution and to disclose its information resources. The article justifies the possibility of strengthening the social position of the library by assuming the role of the local community information leader. The author comes to the conclusion, that social effectiveness of the library actor behavior in the media environment will be determined by two factors: the correspondence of the communication product to social demands and the power of information influence of the message and social consequences (actions).

AbstractThis paper will take the film The Rules from Ancestors as the basis to discuss the "writing" process of ethnographic film, addressing how a contemporary visual ethnography can be realized through the presentation of a film on ethnic culture.The Rules from Ancestors is an anthropological film about the Traditional Customary Law of the Yi people in China, produced by the author of this paper in 2006. As an integrated anthropological film, its theoretical basis is the "holism" and "legal pluralism" of legal anthropology, and its stories are narrated through objective observation and interactive collaboration. The author attempted to construct an "intermediary context" within the film's narrative structure. The aim was to establish an experimental visual ethnographic expression that progresses from "complicity" to "sharing", to replace the traditional ethnographic mode of expression, localized fieldwork. In so doing, I hoped to explore the possibilities of collaborative knowledge production between the photographer, the subject, and the audience, as well as a non-unidirectional methodology for the flow and transfer of knowledge.Through the exploration described above, this paper attempts to respond to the ongoing debate on the relationship between visual anthropology and written anthropology. Is anthropological film a "self-contained system reaching the same goal with different methods", or simply an "auxiliary tool" of written anthropology? Based on an ethnographic introspection on anthropological filmmaking practices, this paper will provide explicit support to the former standpoint, as well as a discussion on methodology.

The article is devoted to the analysis of the problem issues of the Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) through the prism of international standard of access to justice in civil matters. The first part of the article refers to terminological inconsistency, which is connected with using of three synonyms refering to IT-technologies in the area of civil justice, in particular cyberjustice, digital justice and e-justice. The author proposes to use term "e-justice", which involves e-filing, electronic systems of assignment of cases, e-case-management, eDiscovery, ODR, electronic systems of court practice, using of Artificial Intelligence in civil proceedings. In the second part of the article the narrow and wide approach to the ODR are described. According to narrow approach ODR is described as online ADR. Wide approach to ODR includes online ADR as well as online courts. Today wide approach is more valid taking into account recent developments in the field of online courts in foreign countries. The third part of the article describes different types of online courts, in particular, online Civil Resolution Tribunal (British Columbia, Canada), Online Solutions Court (Great Britain) etc. The author analyzes current innovations in the structure of online courts, connected with integration of information systems and online ADR into the online courts platforms. Special attention is paid to the use of Artificial Legal Intelligence in courts with references to advantages and challenges of such innovations.

In the article geopolitical strategy of North Atlantic Treaty Organization in the Black Sea pool is examined. An author examines instruments and mechanisms of policy of NATO. The special attention is spared the problem of increase of military-strategic pressure from the side of evroatlantic structures. The «ukrainian», «georgian», «romanian», «turkish» factors is examined in the article.Attempts from the side of NATO to use these factors for strengthening of pressure on opponents having no prospects and do damage international relations. Interests of policy of neighbourliness suffer. Thus expressing interests of transnational soldiery, financial and industrial structures, the USA and their allies intrude in other civilization and politic space.An author comes to the conclusion, that experience of the last decade testifies with all evidence about strategic absence of any prospect of attempts of the use of the Black Sea area as a buffer area of isolation and inhibition of Russia. Exactly after the foreign-policy going of Russian diplomacy near development of the Black Sea region is the future.Changing of accents from a geopolitical rivalry and fight for the «spheres of influence» to mutually beneficial partnership and clear distributing of mutual spheres of responsibility for maintenance of international stability opens on principle new prospects and for a wide collaboration in the field of ecology, rational use of natural resources, development of rekreacionnoy infrastructure.

Introduction. The article covers history waypoints of the corporate culture, tradition, emblems of Volgograd State University, its corporate ideology and the role of the University in the regional community. The author enlightens the activity and responsibility of the rector department and faculties in terms of the development of the University as region's leader of science, education and culture.

Methods and materials. The principles of historicism and objectivity were used as a methodological base of the research. The study is based on scientific papers on the role of university education in modern society and corporate cultural space in the university community.

Analysis. The core activity and focused informational work of the University has allowed to form its positive image. Special attention is paid to the appearance of higher education institutions in the region and the establishment of Volgograd State University. The author studies the contribution of the University to the social-economic, public and cultural sphere of region's life.

Results. The main conclusion of the article is that nowadays classic university education leads to forming the social elite, increases the level of education and culture in the regional community. The program of transforming Volgograd State University into the University Centre of innovative, technological and social development of the region allows to reach success for not only the University, but for the whole region.