Ethical Dilemmas of Political Marketing. Polish Members of Parliament on Political Communication (analysis of survey results)

Marketing polityczny zmienił nie tylko sposób prowadzenia kampanii wyborczych, lecz również normy i zasady, na których budowany był przez lata liberalno-demokratyczny system polityczny. Na znaczeniu stracił przede wszystkim ideał racjonalnego wyborcy, który z obywatela przekształcił się w konsumenta. Równocześnie przeniesienie mechanizmów marketingu ekonomicznego do sfery polityki jawi się jako jeden z wyznaczników postępującej destrukcji ideałów i zasad demokracji liberalnej. Nie jest jednak łatwo zmierzyć skalę tych zmian. Niniejszy tekst przedstawia próbę nakreślenia skali internalizacji aksjologii rynku w sferze polityki przez polskich parlamentarzystów, w oparciu o wyniki badań ankietowych przeprowadzonych podczas trwania trzech kolejnych kadencji polskiego parlamentu (w latach 2004, 2006, 2008).Political marketing has changed not only the way election campaigns are conducted, but also the standards and principles that have lain at the foundations of the liberal-democratic political system for years. First and foremost, the ideał of the rational voter has lost significance as the Citizen has been transformed into a consumer. At the same time, the mechanisms of economic marketing have been transferred to the realm of politics, which seems to be one of the indicators of the ongoing destruction of the ideals and principles of liberał democracy. It is not an easy task to measure the scalę of these changes, though. This paper is an attempt to outline the degree to which the deputies to the Polish Parliament have intemalized market axiology in the realm of politics assessed on the basis of the results of surveys conducted during three consecutive terms of the Polish parliament (in 2004, 2006 and 2008)

Riding the Roller Coaster: Fiscal Policies of Nonrenewable Resources Exporters in Latin America and the Caribbean .

This paper analyzes recent fiscal policies of nonrenewable resource exporting countries in Latin America and the Caribbean in the context of sharp swings in resource prices. Fiscal policies were predominantly procyclical during the boom period 2003-08 but to significantly differing degrees within the sample. Countries that pursued more conservative fiscal policies during the boom were then able to implement countercyclical fiscal policies during the downturn; moreover, they reduced or maintained their fiscal vulnerability to resource shocks, while their long-term fiscal sustainability positions improved or were broadly unchanged. However, these dimensions of fiscal policy did not seem to be linked to fiscal rules or resource funds, as countries with such institutions displayed a broad range of fiscal responses to the recent cycle.

Surface properties of the clean and Au/Pd covered Fe3_3O4_4(111): a DFT and DFT+UU study

The spin-density functional theory (DFT) and DFT+$U$ with Hubbard $U$ term accounting for on-site Coulomb interactions were applied to investigate structure, stability, and electronic properties of different terminations of the Fe$_3$O$_4$(111) surface. All terminations of the ferrimagnetic Fe$_3$O$_4$(111) surface exhibit very large (up to 90%) relaxations of the first four interlayer distances, decreasing with the oxide layer depth. Our calculations predict the iron terminated surface to be most stable in a wide range of the accessible values of the oxygen chemical potential. The adsorption of Au and Pd on two stable Fe- and O-terminated surfaces is studied. Our results show that Pd binds stronger than Au both to the Fe- and O-terminated surface. DFT+$U$ gives stronger bonding than DFT. The bonding of both adsorbates to the O-terminated magnetite surface is by 1.5-2.5 eV stronger than to the Fe-terminated surface

Novel molecular insights about lactobacillar sortase-dependent piliation

One of the more conspicuous structural features that punctuate the outer cell surface of certain bacterial Gram-positive genera and species is the sortase-dependent pilus. As these adhesive and variable-length protrusions jut outward from the cell, they provide a physically expedient and useful means for the initial contact between a bacterium and its ecological milieu. The sortase-dependent pilus displays an elongated macromolecular architecture consisting of two to three types of monomeric protein subunits (pilins), each with their own specific function and location, and that are joined together covalently by the transpeptidyl activity of a pilus-specific C-type sortase enzyme. Sortase-dependent pili were first detected among the Gram-positive pathogens and subsequently categorized as an essential virulence factor for host colonization and tissue invasion by these harmful bacteria. However, the sortase-dependent pilus was rebranded as also a niche-adaptation factor after it was revealed that “friendly” Gram-positive commensals exhibit the same kind of pilus structures, which includes two contrasting gut-adapted species from the Lactobacillus genus, allochthonous Lactobacillus rhamnosus and autochthonous Lactobacillus ruminis. This review will highlight and discuss what has been learned from the latest research carried out and published on these lactobacillar pilus types.Peer reviewe

Knowledge Modelling in Multiagent Systems: The Case of the Management of a National Network

This paper presents the knowledge model of a distributed decision support system, that has been designed for the management of a national network in Ukraine. It shows how advanced Artificial Intelligence techniques (multiagent systems and knowledge modelling) have been applied to solve this real-world decision support problem: on the one hand its distributed nature, implied by different loci of decision-making at the network nodes, suggested to apply a multiagent solution; on the other, due to the complexity of problem-solving for local network administration, it was useful to apply knowledge modelling techniques, in order to structure the different knowledge types and reasoning processes involved. The paper sets out from a description of our particular management problem. Subsequently, our agent model is described, pointing out the local problem-solving and coordination knowledge models. Finally, the dynamics of the approach is illustrated by an example

Agent-Based Aplications for the Smart Grid--A Playground for Agreement Tecnologies

Agreement Technologies (AT) refer to computer systems in which autonomous software agents negotiate with one another, typically on behalf of humans, in order to come to mutually acceptable agreements. The talk first briefly delineates the emerging field of AT, and then points to several case studies showing how findings from the field of AT can be used for building advanced applications for the Smart Grid.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Engineering Agent Systems for Decision Support

This paper discusses how agent technology can be applied to the design of advanced Information Systems for Decision Support. In particular, it describes the different steps and models that are necessary to engineer Decision Support Systems based on a multiagent architecture. The approach is illustrated by a case study in the traffic management domain

Navier–Stokes problems with random coefficients by the Weighted Least Squares Technique Stochastic Finite Volume Method

The main aim of this article is numerical solution to the Navier–Stokes equations for incompressible, non-turbulent and subsonic fluid flows with Gaussian physical random parameters. It is done with the use of the specially adopted Finite Volume Method extended towards probabilistic analysis by the generalized stochastic perturbation technique. The key feature of this approach is the weighted version of the Least Squares Method implemented symbolically in the system MAPLE to recover nodal polynomial response functions of the velocities, pressures and temperatures versus chosen input random variable(s). Such an implementation of the Stochastic Finite Volume Method is applied to model 3D flow problem in the statistically homogeneous fluid with uncertainty in its viscosity and, separately, coefficient of the heat conduction. Probabilistic central moments of up to the fourth order and the additional characteristics are determined and visualized for the cavity lid driven flow owing to the specially adopted graphical environment FEPlot. Further numerical extension of this technique is seen in an application of the Taylor–Newton–Gauss approximation technique, where polynomial approximation may be replaced with the exponential or hyperbolic ones

Partially-shared zero-suppressed multi-terminal BDDs: concept, algorithms and applications

Multi-Terminal Binary Decision Diagrams (MTBDDs) are a well accepted technique for the state graph (SG) based quantitative analysis of large and complex systems specified by means of high-level model description techniques. However, this type of Decision Diagram (DD) is not always the best choice, since finite functions with small satisfaction sets, and where the fulfilling assignments possess many 0-assigned positions, may yield relatively large MTBDD based representations. Therefore, this article introduces zero-suppressed MTBDDs and proves that they are canonical representations of multi-valued functions on finite input sets. For manipulating DDs of this new type, possibly defined over different sets of function variables, the concept of partially-shared zero-suppressed MTBDDs and respective algorithms are developed. The efficiency of this new approach is demonstrated by comparing it to the well-known standard type of MTBDDs, where both types of DDs have been implemented by us within the C++-based DD-package JINC. The benchmarking takes place in the context of Markovian analysis and probabilistic model checking of systems. In total, the presented work extends existing approaches, since it not only allows one to directly employ (multi-terminal) zero-suppressed DDs in the field of quantitative verification, but also clearly demonstrates their efficienc