When young children learn to use language, they start to use their hands in co‐verbal gesturing. There are, however, considerable differences between children, and it is not completely understood what these individual differences are due to. We studied how children at 4 years of age employ speech and iconic gestures to convey meaning in different kinds of spatial event descriptions, and how this relates to their cognitive abilities. Focusing on spontaneous illustrations of actions, we applied a semantic feature (SF) analysis (...) to characterize combinations of speech and gesture meaning and related them to the child's visual‐spatial abilities or abstract/concrete reasoning abilities (measured using the standardized SON‐R test). Results show that children with higher cognitive abilities convey significantly more meaning via gesture and less solely via speech. These findings suggest that young children's use of cospeech representational gesturing is positively related to their mental representation and reasoning abilities. (shrink)

The gesture-as-simulated-action framework explains the occurrence of iconic gestures. Accordingly, simulated visual imagery gives rise to observer-viewpoint, whereas simulated motor imagery gives rise to character-viewpoint gestures. Because little is known about whether this relationship is either the product of becoming a competent speaker in different communicative tasks or exists from an early age, we investigated 4-year-olds. In the first session, 55 children performed three different communicative tasks. In the second session, we administered a SON-R non-verbal intelligence test to assess children’s (...) cognitive abilities. Results revealed a strong association between the frequency with which children used observer-viewpoints gestures and their scores in visual processing abilities. Because the association between gestures and visuospatial cognitive abilities was found across three communicative tasks, we can propose that it is a general ability rather than a phenomenon of task-specific discourse competence. We discuss these findings in terms of gestural threshold and cognitive offloading. (shrink)

This article discusses the function, development and maintenance of meaning and the importance of meaning-making from different perspectives, as it is based on a collaboration between professionals from health science and psychology. The aim is to discuss how meaning-making processes can be employed in the health context to enhance individuals’ well-being. Starting point is a description of the common basis of the understanding of meaning-making. Afterwards brief examples from the different professional areas will show how meaning-making can improve health care (...) practice. We will focus on the processual nature of meaning-making, its existential layers, as well as the ways in which meaning-making is at play in everyday activities and limit situations, such as illness or suicidality. (shrink)

Dans le champ de la linguistique francaise, Olga Galatanu est de ceux qui ont muni l'analyse du discours et des interactions verbales d'un modele semantique de description. La Semantique des Possibles Argumentatifs qu'elle developpe depuis une vingtaine d'annees adhere aux visions argumentative, stereotypique, referentielle, cognitiviste de la langue, et s'attache a rendre compte de la construction des representations en langue et en discours.<BR> Les articles que ses collaborateurs et amis lui offrent dans ce volume se rapportent de pres ou (...) de loin a la SPA. Certains en partagent les postulats: sens referentiel et denomination, interfaces semantique-syntaxe et semantique-pragmatique, construction discursive du sens, valeurs; d'autres reprennent et developpent des elements specifiques de la SPA: possibles argumentatifs, deploiements argumentatifs, modalites; d'autres encore montrent les convergences et complementarites entre la SPA et des theories voisines.<BR> Les analyses portent notamment sur l'attitude metalinguistique des locuteurs, la malleabilite semantique des mots, la negociation des sens et des valeurs, les principes et strategies discursives qui regulent la communication, l'heterogeneite discursive, la presentation de soi, la construction d'objets discursifs, les actes de langage indirects, etc.". (shrink)

This historical essay presents an analysis of the origins and development of modern pharmacognosy in Ukraine and explores the founding and development of the Department of Pharmacognosy at the National University of Pharmacy (NUPh, Kharkiv), providing an overview of the department`s history, a framework of its educational and methodological processes, primary research directions, and its main achievements. The paper also includes biographical data and outlines the main scientific and pedagogical achievements of prominent individuals who made a significant contribution to the (...) development and formation of pharmacognostic and pharmaceutical science and education in Ukraine. Over the years, the staff of the pharmacognosy department has authored and published 14 monographs, 8 standard training programs, 25 textbooks, practical guides, and training manuals, 47 lecture notes, and 103 educational and methodological developments. Furthermore, 16 doctoral and 77 candidate theses have been defended at the Department of Pharmacognosy. The staff has also secured 63 author’s certificates and 171 patents, and published about 1,050 articles, 1,060 abstracts, and 16 monographs. In addition, the department has developed numerous medicinal products and therapeutic as well as preventive items that have been introduced into medical practice. These achievements create a solid background for the department’s fruitful development and future success. (shrink)

In recent years attention to the philosophical and literary production of P. A. Florenskii has become commonplace. The thinker's intellectual legacy is very great. In September 1919, Florenskii wrote a prospectus for a collection of his own writings, which would have amounted to nineteen volumes. The collection was not published, for a number of reasons; nonetheless, many of the philosopher's works did come out during his lifetime. Florenskii's writing, published in small editions and scattered among various journals, are still quite (...) inaccessible to readers. (shrink)

RESUMO O Discourse Diversity Database (3D) é um corpus desenvolvido para a pesquisa em linguística clínica. Ele consiste de amostras de fala oral de três gêneros diferentes: narrativas induzidas por imagens, histórias pessoais e instruções baseadas em imagens. As subdivisões do 3D incluem gravações de falantes de russo de três grupos independentes: pessoas com tumores cerebrais antes e depois da remoção do tumor, pessoas com esquizofrenia e indivíduos neurologicamente saudáveis. O presente artigo é dedicado à descrição do procedimento de coleta (...) de dados, do esquema de anotação e das características específicas de cada subdivisão do corpus. (shrink)

The article deals with the socio-cultural nature of information and studies its role in increasing global turbulence. Based on the methodological grounds put forward by A. Toffler, S. Moscovici, N. Chomsky, R. Patzlaff, O. Aronson, dialectical and systemic methods, the authors argue that the infodemic roots in stereotypical thinking generated by mass culture, as well as informatization and computerization of social relations. Mass culture contributed to a decrease in the level of critical thinking and caused the so-called ‘clip consciousness’. The (...) paper substantiates the idea that the infodemic became most evident during the coronavirus pandemic, and the spread of hybrid and information wars within the world scale. The infodemic organically correlates with the world of post-truth, where a person does not seek the truth but up-to-date information. The fact of whether the information is true or not in such a context becomes secondary to the cliché of the stereotypical consciousness of an individual, social group, or society as a whole. (shrink)

High-frequency oscillations (HFO) are a promising biomarker for the identification of epileptogenic tissue. While HFO rates have been shown to predict seizure outcome, it is not yet clear whether their morphological features might improve this prediction. We validated HFO rates against seizure outcome and delineated the distribution of HFO morphological features. We collected stereo-EEG recordings from 20 patients (231 electrodes; 1,943 contacts). We computed HFO rates (the co-occurrence of ripples and fast ripples) through a validated automated detector during non-rapid eye (...) movement sleep. Applying machine learning, we delineated HFO morphological features within and outside epileptogenic tissue across mesial temporal lobe (MTL) and Neocortex. HFO rates predicted seizure outcome with 85% accuracy, 79% specificity, 100% sensitivity, 100% negative predictive value, and 67% positive predictive value. The analysis of HFO features showed larger amplitude in the epileptogenic tissue, similar morphology for epileptogenic HFO in MTL and Neocortex, and larger amplitude for physiological HFO in MTL. We confirmed HFO rates as a reliable biomarker for epilepsy surgery and characterized the potential clinical relevance of HFO morphological features. Our results support the prospective use of HFO in epilepsy surgery and contribute to the anatomical mapping of HFO morphology. (shrink)

From Bauhaus to Dada, from Virginia Woolf to John Dos Passos, the Modernist movement revolutionized the way we perceive, portray, and participate in the world. This landmark anthology is a comprehensive documentary resource for the study of Modernism, bringing together more than 150 key essays, articles, manifestos, and other writings of the political and aesthetic avant-garde between 1840 and 1950. By favoring short extracts over lengthier originals, the editors cover a remarkable range and variety of modernist thinking. Included are not (...) just the familiar high modernist landmarks such as Gustave Flaubert, Ezra Pound, and James Joyce, but also a diverse representation from the sciences, politics, philosophy, and the arts, including Charles Darwin, Thorstein Veblen, W. E. B. Du Bois, Isadora Duncan, John Reed, Adolf Hitler, and Sergei Eisenstein. Another welcome feature is a substantial selection of hard-to-find manifestos from the many modernist movements, among them futurism, cubism, Dada, surrealism, and anarchism. (shrink)

Theories related to cognitive sciences, Human-in-the-loop Cyber-physical systems, data analysis for decision-making, and computational ethics make clear the need to create transdisciplinary learning, research, and application strategies to bring coherence to the paradigm of a truly human-oriented technology. Autonomous objects assume more responsibilities for individual and collective phenomena, they have gradually filtered into routines and require the incorporation of ethical practice into the professions related to the development, modeling, and design of algorithms. To make this possible, it is pertinent and (...) urgent to bring them closer to the problems and approaches of the humanities. Increasingly transdisciplinary research must be part of the construction of systems that provide developers and scientists with the necessary bases to understand the ethical debate and therefore their commitment to society. This article considers two theories as articulating axes: Blumenberg’s, coming from the field of philosophy, for whom the process of technification and especially the implementation of mathematical models in their algorithmic form leads to an emptying of meaning and therefore makes programmers who implement their functions to be alien to the concerns that gave them origin; Daston’s, belonging to the field of the history of science and according to which the division of labor in the processes of technification of the calculation implies a kind of subordination in which those who implement the inventions of a small group of privileged mathematicians ignore the procedures that put them into operation. Given these two theories, the black box models prevalent in AI development, and the urgency of establishing explanatory frameworks for the development of computational ethics, this article exposes the need to give a voice to the cultural history of consciousness for promoting the discussions around the implementation of mathematical algorithms. The paper takes as a reference the different points of view that have emerged around the study of technological ethics, its applicability, management, and design. It criticizes the current state of studies from a humanistic perspective and explains how the historical perspective allows promoting the training of software engineers, developers and creators so that they assume intuitions and moral values in the development of their work. Specifically, it aims to expose how cultural history, applied to the study of consciousness and its phenomena, makes those involved in this technological revolution aware of the effect that they, through their algorithms, have on society in general and on human beings in particular. (shrink)

This collection, the first of its kind, brings together specially commissioned academic essays to mark fifty years since the death of John Kennedy Toole.

The article is devoted to the little-studied component of architectural creativity - architectural graphics. At the same time, the purpose of the article is three-dimensional: to consider the categorical, historical and postmodern problems of architectural graphics, which will allow to outline a holistic picture of this cultural phenomenon. The article uses the methods of typological, historical and synchronous-cult analysis of both specific architectural artifacts and trends in the development of architectural graphics in general. It has been proven that architectural graphics, (...) as a unique type of graphics, are a means of expressing the creative ideas of an architect. They define, define and correct the direction of his professional searches. Graphics influence the creativity of a design as it serves as a graphical visualization of an architecture. Architectural graphics are the line between the design calculation and the creative imagination of the author. He performs artistic and engineering tasks at the same time. The article deals with the problem of architectural graphics as a specific creative activity, which, as a result of historical development, has formed into a separate genre direction. A number of conceptual and terminological issues are touched upon, including the definition of the very concept of «architectural graphics». The priority features of architectural graphics and variants of its stylistic solutions by different architects and designers have been identified. (shrink)

The role of bacterial variation in the waxing and waning of epidemics was a subject of lively debate in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century bacteriology and epidemiology. The notion that changes in bacterial virulence were responsible for the rise and fall of epidemic diseases was an often-voiced, but little investigated hypothesis made by late nineteenth-century epidemiologists. It was one of the first hypotheses to be tested by scientists who attempted to study epidemiological questions using laboratory methods. This paper examines how (...) two groups of experimental epidemiologists, the British group led by W. W. C. Topley and Major Greenwood, and an American group directed by Leslie T. Webster at the Rockefeller Institute, studied the role of variations in bacterial virulence in the course of laboratory epidemics of mouse typhoid. Relying on Ludwik Fleck’s concept of thought styles and thought collectives, the paper analyzes the fundamental conceptual differences between these two groups of researchers and analyzes the kinds of innovations they introduced as they attempted to integrate bacteriological and epidemiological approaches. The paper shows that the stylistic differences between the two groups can be understood better in the context of the institutional histories and disciplinary relations of epidemiology and bacteriology in the two countries. (shrink)

This book analyzes unobvious relations between historical definitions of the face and its contemporary usage in popular culture and social media, like Facebook or Instagram. Bringing together a wide range of methodologies, it includes essays from manifold disciplines of the humanities such as philosophy, literary and art criticism, media and television studies, game studies, sociology and anthropology. The authors focus on both metaphorical and material meanings of the face. They grapple with crucial questions about modernity, modern and postmodern subjectivity, as (...) well as with origins of certain linguistic terms and popular, colloquial phrases based on the concept of the face. (shrink)

Confronted with an unprecedented scale of human-induced environmental crisis, there is a need for new modes of theorizing that would abandon human exceptionalism and anthropocentrism and instead focus on developing environmentally ethical projects suitable for our times. In this paper, we offer an anti-anthropocentric project of an ethos for living in the Anthropocene. We develop it through revisiting the notion of sustainability in order to problematize the linear vision of human-centric futurity and the uniform ‘we’ of humanity upon which it (...) relies. We ground our analyses in posthumanism and material feminism, using works by posthumanist and material feminist thinkers such as Stacy Alaimo, Rosi Braidotti, Donna Haraway and Jane Bennett, among others. In dialogue with them, we offer the concept of posthuman sustainability that decenters the human, re-positions it in its ecosystem and, while remaining attentive to difference, fosters the thriving of all instances of life. (shrink)

Increasingly, the private sector is playing a greater role in supporting peace building efforts in conflict and post-conflict areas by providing critical expertise, know-how, and capital. However, reports of the corrupt practices of both governments and businesses have plagued international peace building efforts, deepening the distrust of stricken communities. Businesses are perceived as being selfish and indifferent to the impact their operations may have on the social and political development of local communities. Additionally, the corruption of local governments has been (...) cited as interfering with the creation of stability in conflict areas. Within this framework, multinational Public-Private Partnerships can exert two forms of influence: they can either exacerbate these problems, or they can become part of the solution. Without a relationship of trust among local businesses, government, and the private sector, peace building efforts will at best be mixed, and could possibly perpetuate violence in fragile states. Public and private interests are better served when Public-Private Partnerships are based upon collaboration and assist in establishing principles of good governance in conflict areas. This in turn can help build trust and regain the credibility of both sectors among local communities, which are essential in making Public— Private Partnerships more effective. (shrink)

Since the beginning of signed language research, the linguistic units have been divided into conventional, standard and fixed signs, all of which were considered as the core of the language, and iconic and productive signs, put at the edge of language. In the present paper, we will review different models proposed by signed language researchers over the years to describe the signed lexicon, showing how to overcome the hierarchical division between standard and productive lexicon. Drawing from the semiotic insights of (...) Peirce we proposed to look at signs as a triadic construction built on symbolic, iconic, and indexical features. In our model, the different iconic, symbolic, and indexical features of signs are seen as the three sides of the same triangle, detectable in the single linguistic sign. The key aspect is that the dominance of the feature will determine the different use of the linguistic unit, as we will show with examples from different discourse types. (shrink)

Our analysis in this paper unfolds on two levels: a critique of the ‘realities’ of graduate nursing education and an argument to sustain its ‘ideals’. We open for discussion an aspect of graduate nursing education dominated by instrumental reason, namely the research industry, using an internal critique approach developed by Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno of the Early Frankfurt School. As we explain, internal critique arises out of, and relies on, the mismatch between goals, or ‘ideals’, and existing realities. Thinking (...) about ‘ideals’ of the academy, we draw on Hans-Georg Gadamer's view of the university as a place to think freely, creatively, and critically. The contemporary realities of the university, on the other hand, that emphasize the market values of the research industry forcefully shape nursing academic scholarship in a particular direction. In our attempt to recognize and disrupt the forces of the research industry with its instrumental reason, we consider Judith Butler's writings on how norms operate in society. We show that our growing involvement in the research industry makes it very difficult to disentangle ourselves from that situation. The values of the research industry actually suppress the very ideals of education and scholarship that we would like to uphold. As a contra-force, the internal critique of the ‘existing realities’ in the graduate nursing education unmasks the tyranny of the research industry and makes visible the importance of sustaining the higher goals and ideals in nursing scholarship. (shrink)

The purpose of the study is to analyze accounting and legal approaches to the definition of the term "accounts receivable" and to justify the need for its clarification to be fixed in regulatory documents. Scientific novelty: the definition of the term "accounts receivable" has been clarified using accounting and legal approaches, where it is proposed to understand the obligations of other legal entities and individuals to this economic entity for contributions to the authorized capital, for advances issued, for bills of (...) exchange receivable, for goods sold, monetary amounts issued under the report, arising on the basis of a law, contract or civil situation. As a result, the updated definition will make it possible to supplement Article 307 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, art. 3 of the Federal Law "On Accounting", Article 7 of the draft Federal Tax Service "Accounts Receivable and Payable ". (shrink)

Populations have different percents on different history realms regarding baths and fountains. A constant historical issue of such places is related with constant use and adore. Therefore we find ourselves in time where they where more used and ages where they where less used. On our paper we analyse from a sociological perspective the use of such spaces, mainly associated with social interaction and sociability. At the end of our paper, we are going to analyse both issues directly linked with (...) tourism perspective in terms of health and care on the so called “Postindustrial Society”. (shrink)

El Programa de Termalismo del IMSERSO, perteneciente al Instituto de Mayores y Servicios Sociales del Gobierno de España, se encuentra englobado dentro de de las políticas y actuaciones públicas de carácter social y económico que tienen como objetivo favorecer la salud e integración social de las personas mayores y su envejecimiento activo. Este artículo estudia, desde el año 2010 hasta el 2013, la evolución de las plazas adscritas al programa y hace una prospección para 2014-2015. Los resultados revelan una disminución (...) generalizada del número de plazas, tendencia que se mantendrá en los próximos años. (shrink)

The summary focuses on topical educational and methodological issues discussed at the meeting of the presidium of the Federal Educational and Methodological Association held in November 2019 in Saint Petersburg. The authors reviews the process of realization of new federal educational standards. Special attention is paid to applied ethics education, the specifics and current problems of teaching it in Russia. The authors also discuss the current state of philosophical education in Belarus, its current problems and possible ways for further development. (...) In addition, the summary outlines various issues related to the work of higher education institutions in Russia. (shrink)

This article examines the discourse competence of high-functioning children with autistic spectrum disorders to participate in narrative introduction sequences with family members. The analysis illuminates the children’s own efforts to launch narratives, as well as their ability to build upon the contributions of others. Ethnographic, discourse analytic methodology is integrated with the theory of discourse organization and the weak central coherence account of autism. Introductions of both personal experience narratives as well as fictional narratives are examined. The children were especially (...) competent in the use of stable introductory practices when launching fictional narratives, pre-organized by the media of expression. Their challenge was not in the introduction, but in the narrative co-telling, which often was not globally organized over an extended course of propositions. The heterogeneity of the ASD children’s discourse competence and its implications for discourse analysis are discussed. (shrink)

I would like to begin with the role of philosophy in solving ecological problems, emphasizing two aspects of its role: the struggle against hostile ideology and the organizing and guiding of activity in the sphere of the development of science and the shaping of its problems. This role of Marxist-Leninist philosophy clearly appears in the complex interdisciplinary problem of the interaction between nature and society.

Philosophizing at Russian theological academies is a complex and ramified cultural-historical formation that developed within the Orthodox confession and goes back to the earliest stages of Russian religious-philosophical culture. The formal content of this concept consists of the philosophy courses taught at the Russian theological academies, established on the basis of the 1809 Charter of Theological Academies, and of the philosophical works of the professors and lecturers at these academies, mostly the philosophical articles in the theological journals published by the (...) academies. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show that the calculi described by Anshakov and Rychkov are algebraizable in the sense of Blok and Pigozzi. As a consequence, a proof of the strong completeness of these calculi is obtained.

BackgroundCurrent preimplantation genetic testing (PGT) technologies enable embryo genotyping across the whole genome. This has led to the development of polygenic risk scoring of human embryos (PGT-P). Recent implementation of PGT-P, including screening for intelligence, has been extensively covered by media reports, raising major controversy. Considering the increasing demand for assisted reproduction, we evaluated how information about PGT-P is communicated in press media and explored the diversity of ethical themes present in the public debate.MethodsLexisNexis Academic database and Google News were (...) searched to identify articles about polygenic embryo screening. This led to 535 news articles. 59 original articles met the inclusion criteria. Inductive content analysis was used to analyse these articles.Results8.8% of articles gave embryo polygenic scoring a positive portrayal, while 36.8% expressed a negative attitude. 54.4% were neutral, mostly highlighting limited practical value of the technology in in vitro fertilization settings. We identified five main ethical themes that are also present in academic literature and the broader debate on reproductive technologies: a slippery slope towards designer babies, well-being of the child and parents, impact on society, deliberate choice and societal readiness.ConclusionsImplementation of embryo polygenic profiling engenders a need for specific recommendations. Current media analysis discloses important ethical themes to consider when creating future guidelines for PGT-P. (shrink)

In Spain, the introduction of the new Diploma in Nursing in 1977 saw the role of nurses shifting from that of medical assistants with technical skills to being independent members of the healthcare team with specific responsibility for providing professional nursing care. Here, we analyse the evolution of the nursing profession in Spain following the transfer of nurse education to universities, doing so through interviews with the first generation of academic tutors. This was a qualitative study using the method of (...) analytic induction and based on the principles of grounded theory. Participants were selected by means of theoretical sampling and then underwent in‐depth interviews. Steps were taken to ensure the credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability of data. The main conclusion of the analysis is that there is a gap between a theoretical framework borrowed from the Anglo‐American context and a nursing practice that, in Spain, has traditionally prioritised the application of technical procedures, a role akin to that of a medical assistant. It is argued that a key factor underlying the way in which nursing in Spain has evolved in recent decades is the lack of conceptual clarity regarding what the role of the professional nurse might actually entail in practice. (shrink)

In common law jurisdictions, legal professionals cite facts and legal principles from precedent cases to support their arguments before the court for their intended outcome in a current case. This practice stems from the doctrine of stare decisis, where cases that have similar facts should receive similar decisions with respect to the principles. It is essential for legal professionals to identify such facts and principles in precedent cases, though this is a highly time intensive task. In this paper, we present (...) studies that demonstrate that human annotators can achieve reasonable agreement on which sentences in legal judgements contain cited facts and principles. We further demonstrate that it is feasible to automatically annotate sentences containing such legal facts and principles in a supervised machine learning framework based on linguistic features, reporting per category precision and recall figures of between 0.79 and 0.89 for classifying sentences in legal judgements as cited facts, principles or neither using a Bayesian classifier, with an overall κ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\kappa$$\end{document} of 0.72 with the human-annotated gold standard. (shrink)

The main indicators of assistance activity in the insurance market in Ukraine have been analyzed. Beneficial and negative trends of its development have been shown. The dynamics of the insurers' liquidation expenses structure and the payment of services expenses of the assistance establishments have been highlighted. Their structure has been shown due to the types of voluntary and compulsory insurance. The main problems hindering the effective development of the assistance services market have been characterized and the prospects of its development (...) have been offered. The aim of the research is to carry out comprehensive analysis of the current market of assistance services, to identify the main problems of their implementation and to point out the prospects of insurance market development. The dynamics of insurance bonuses and benefits including insurance compensation and services and the insurers' operating expenses concerning the payment of services of the assistance establishments has been analyzed on the basis of a sample survey of the main indicators of insurance market development due to the statistic data of National Committee of Financial Services. It has been revealed that majority of the insurance services provide settlement of insurance claims by offering assistance service. Alongside increasing of the share of insurance payment due to the contract providing the insurance service, allows the majority of insurance claims to be settled due to the payment of insurance compensation. Expenses on assistance services were the highest and the court expenses were the lowest in the structure of the insurer's liquidation expenses during 2011-2014. Expenses on services of the non-residential assistance establishments are low but they are increasing. It shows that emergency assistance to our citizens in the country and outside is being increased. Structure of assistance services in the voluntary and compulsory insurance market has been analyzed; main trends of assistance activity development according to the separate insurance services have been highlighted. In particular it was found out that the greatest amount of assistance services were provided due to the voluntary medical insurance, medical costs insurance, land transport insurance and compulsory insurance of civil liability of the owners of vehicles. On the basis of conducted analysis, we can draw a conclusion about the low level of assistance services market development. It is affected by negative trends of economic and political crisis, low solvency of insurers and the quality of insurance services, a lack of guaranties to provide emergency assistance in time, imperfect state regulation of assistance services provision, and a low level of institutional support. We offer to intensify the interaction between the insurers and assistance companies while providing insurance services including additional ones, insurance compensation, and settlement of insurance claims by ensuring emergency assistance in monetary and natural-material form. This will promote the increasing of quality of the insurance protection. (shrink)

Boghossian’s (2003) proposal to conditionalize concepts as a way to secure their legitimacy in disputable cases applies well, not just to pejoratives – on whose account Boghossian first proposed it – but also to thick ethical concepts. It actually has important advantages when dealing with some worries raised by the application of thick ethical terms, and the truth and facticity of corresponding statements. In this paper, I will try to show, however, that thick ethical concepts present a specific case, whose (...) analysis requires a somewhat different reconstruction from that which Boghossian offers. A proper account of thick ethical concepts should be able to explain how ‘evaluated’ and ‘evaluation’ are connected. (shrink)

An analytical scheme that differentiates among the various types of cognitive and social functions of citations is used as the basis for an analysis of the results of a questionnaire designed to probe the citing behavior of a group of scientists who had cited one of four papers originating from a single biochemical laboratory. Even when papers fall within a relatively well-defined research area and are based on research conducted within a single lab, groups of scientists to which a given (...) paper is of relevance can have quite distinct internal structures. We argue that the scientists'subjective reasons for citing a given work do not correspond with the actual argumentative uses of cited articles in citing texts. Scientists appear to regard the papers they cite as having a rather generalized significance even if in their citations they refer to very specific claims made in the original texts. The consequences of these findings for a theory of citation and for the use of citations in science studies are discussed. (shrink)