The purpose of the article is the analysis of the causes of the systemic crisis that hit modern civilization through the description of its main structures, identifying the relationship between its elements, assessments of their heuristic potential. This will open up opportunities for finding ways to resolve this crisis, new directions of civilizational development. Theoretical basis of the research are the systems analysis, socio-philosophical and philosophical-anthropological approaches as well as the analysis of scientific developments in the field of global studies. (...) Originality lies in the fact that this article is the first to show the connection between the main structural elements of human civilization as a system. Change in one of the parameters leads to a change in all the others, together with a change in civilization as a whole. Conclusions. The reason for the deep crisis that hit modern civilization is its imbalance as a system. The most important elements of this system are population size, resources and technology, and the core is consciousness in its individual and collective forms. The perception, processing, and use of information, which is a defining civilizational resource, as well as the stability of the entire system depend on the state of consciousness. Consciousness, based on old, obsolete principles and stereotypes, is unable to cope with the most acute challenges of time. New consciousness, since it is formed, will mark the transition to a new theoretical picture of the world and a model of human behavior, in which people will act, driven by proven knowledge, and not willfulness and prejudice. The idea of forming a productive information environment where the ideas of constructiveness and creative work will dominate rather than consumerism and destruction, as is the case at present, must become the categorical imperative of the new consciousness. (shrink)

BackgroundThe potential contribution of community engagement to addressing ethical challenges for international biomedical research is well described, but there is relatively little documented experience of community engagement to inform its development in practice. This paper draws on experiences around community engagement and informed consent during a genetic cohort study in Kenya to contribute to understanding the strengths and challenges of community engagement in supporting ethical research practice, focusing on issues of communication, the role of field workers in 'doing ethics' on (...) the ground and the challenges of community consultation.MethodsThe findings are based on action research methods, including analysis of community engagement documentation and the observations of the authors closely involved in their development and implementation. Qualitative and quantitative content analysis has been used for documentation of staff meetings and trainings, a meeting with 24 community leaders, and 40 large public and 70 small community group meetings. Meeting minutes from a purposive sample of six community representative groups have been analysed using a thematic framework approach.ResultsField workers described challenges around misunderstandings about research, perceived pressure for recruitment and challenges in explaining the study. During consultation, leaders expressed support for the study and screening for sickle cell disease. In community meetings, there was a common interpretation of research as medical care. Concerns centred on unfamiliar procedures. After explanations of study procedures to leaders and community members, few questions were asked about export of samples or the archiving of samples for future research.ConclusionsCommunity engagement enabled researchers to take account of staff and community opinions and issues during the study and adapt messages and methods to address emerging ethical challenges. Field workers conducting informed consent faced complex issues and their understanding, attitudes and communication skills were key influences on ethical practice. Community consultation was a challenging concept to put into practice, illustrating the complexity of assessing information needs and levels of deliberation that are appropriate to a given study. (shrink)

The importance of communities in strengthening the ethics of international collaborative research is increasingly highlighted, but there has been much debate about the meaning of the term ‘community’ and its specific normative contribution. We argue that ‘community’ is a contingent concept that plays an important normative role in research through the existence of morally significant interplay between notions of community and individuality. We draw on experience of community engagement in rural Kenya to illustrate two aspects of this interplay: (i) that (...) taking individual informed consent seriously involves understanding and addressing the influence of communities in which individuals’ lives are embedded; (ii) that individual participation can generate risks and benefits for communities as part of the wider implications of research. We further argue that the contingent nature of a community means that defining boundaries is generally a normative process itself, with ethical implications. Community engagement supports the enactment of normative roles; building mutual understanding and trust between researchers and community members have been important goals in Kilifi, requiring a broad range of approaches. Ethical dilemmas are continuously generated as part of these engagement activities, including the risks of perverse outcomes related to existing social relations in communities and conditions of ‘half knowing’ intrinsic to processes of developing new understandings. (shrink)

The structural-parametric synthesis of neural networks of deep learning, in particular convolutional neural networks used in image processing, is considered. The classification of modern architectures of convolutional neural networks is given. It is shown that almost every convolutional neural network, depending on its topology, has unique blocks that determine its essential features, Residual block, Inception module, ResNeXt block. It is stated the problem of structural-parametric synthesis of convolutional neural networks, for the solution of which it is proposed to use a (...) genetic algorithm. The genetic algorithm is used to effectively overcome a large search space: on the one hand, to generate possible topologies of the convolutional neural network, namely the choice of specific blocks and their locations in the structure of the convolutional neural network, and on the other hand to solve the problem of structural-parametric synthesis of convolutional neural network of selected topology. The most significant parameters of the convolutional neural network are determined. An encoding method is proposed that allows to repre- sent each network structure in the form of a string of fixed length in binary format. After that, several standard genetic operations were identified, i.e. selection, mutation and crossover, which eliminate weak individuals of the previous generation and use them to generate competitive ones. An example of solving this problem is given, a database of patients with thyroid disease was used as a training sample. (shrink)

The concept of interpretation is applicable to any forms of knowledge, including systems of religious knowledge, designing the ideal model of the subject of religious veneration. The author analyzes the epistemological features of theology as a form of spiritual culture, its formation in ancient culture. It is shown that the epistemological basis for overcoming mythological consciousness was the decentralization of thinking, i.e. development of the ability of consciousness in the construction of the image, the picture of the world to correct (...) the position of the subject, to take into account the relativity of the reference system, from the standpoint of which the subject perceives the object and transforms it into an operational system of thinking. Decentration of thinking provided the overcoming of the subjective mental boundaries of the field, giving the thinking nature of universality. Historical stages and moments of this process - the transformation of mythology into forms of folk art, mythopoetic epic, in the form of religious consciousness. In line with such transformations of archaic consciousness, cultural and historical prerequisites of theology emergence were formed. They are represented in mythopoetic art, ancient mythography, early traditions of critical and rationalistic interpretation of the myth, etc. The article shows the formation of allegorical theology, which became possible in the era of individualization of artistic creativity, when the visible was the difference between the motive and the purpose of activity, creative idea and its embodiment, figuratively-poetic and rationally-conceptual ways of reflecting the world, when the image of reality and its personal meaning began to be realized as different States of consciousness. The main function of any theology is the interpretation of abstract models of the subject of religious veneration. (shrink)

The present revolution in science and technology poses complex tasks in the sphere of management of production, tasks determined by the development of technology and technological communications. The essence of these tasks is determined primarily by objective technological and not by subjective organizational factors. The overall complexity of these tasks depends in the first place on the complexity of the development of production and not on the form of control of production adopted. The complexity of present-day production is such, however, (...) that the total mental capacity of the entire adult population would be insufficient to control it effectively. The solution of the problem lies in raising the productivity of labor in control systems, and this is impossible without employment of modern equipment, above all computers. (shrink)

The problem of the electromagnetic coupling for spin-3/2 particles is discussed. Following supergravity and some previous researches in the field of classical supersymmetric particles, we found that the electromagnetic coupling must not obey a minimal coupling in the sense of coupling the electromagnetic potential, but some kind of an electromagnetic field strength.

Questions pertaining to socialist democracy and human rights and freedoms have now been advanced to the front lines of the ideological struggle between the forces of socialism, peace, and democracy, on the one hand, and those of imperialism, war, and reaction, on the other. This is due to the content and features of the worldwide development of societies today, one direction of which is a universal increase in the political self-awareness and social activity of the working class and the entire (...) mass of the toiling population. The final document of the 1976 Conference of Communist and Workers' Parties of Europe emphasizes: "The historical necessity of replacing capitalist society with a socialist society established in accordance with the will of each people is becoming evident to ever broader strata of the public." The great achievements of socialism and the successes of socialist democracy serve as an inspiring example in the heroic struggle of the working class and its allies for peace and social progress. (shrink)

Man's relation to culture is not limited simply to knowing it. There are other modalities of this relationship. For one, man in some way lives in culture, he exists in it, even if for some time he does notwardrealize this. Second, he participates in one way or another in the process of forming it, he creates it. Only later does culture become an object of knowledge for him. What makes him study and understand culture if previously he had gotten along (...) without it? Why, in general, does knowledge of culture appear? It is necessary to distinguish between the history of culture, the roots of which are in the distant past, and the history of the knowledge of culture, the source of which is man's discovery of culture. Why and when did this discovery occur? (shrink)

Ideas of activity are widely used in the contemporary literature on psychology and methodology. It seems that everyone understands well what is being said. Nevertheless, one can claim that there is a methodological problem in connection with the idea of activity. Various researchers not only interpret activity differently but, what is more important, assess of the place of this category in knowledge differently. From the perspective of some researchers, activity is one way of describing and explaining reality. Others believe that (...) the category of activity presents reality itself, that there is nothing but activity. If we adhere to the former point of view, we can raise the question, for example, of studying certain types of activity, as V.V. Davydov does. (shrink)

The constructions of sequential calculi are based on the idea of application to the deduction process not only single logical constants but complexes of them as well. Surely, making use of this idea is not obligatory in paraconsistent logic. Nevertheless, using it in this field gives us a convenient tool for seeking proofs in formulation of many paraconsistent logics. Each of sequential propositional logics discussed in this paper is obtained as a result of a transformation of a starting calculus GCL (...) – one of sequential formalizations of classical propositional logic. Let α be a standard propositional language with a vocabulary {p1, p2, p3, . . . , −,∨, &, ⊃,¬,), we shall denote any formulas of α and by the letters Γ,∆, Σ, Θ finite sets of α-formulas. (shrink)