Behavioral responses of rural and urban greater white-toothed shrews (Crocidura russula) to sound disturbance

Urban Ecosystems - The development of urban areas imposes challenges that wildlife must adapt to in order to persist in these new habitats. One of the greatest changes brought by urbanization has...     

On the Complexity of Constructing Evolutionary Trees

In this paper we study a few important tree optimization problems with applications to computational biology. These problems ask for trees that are consistent with an as large part of the given data as possible. We show that the maximum homeomorphic agreement subtree problem cannot be approximated within a factor of , where N is the input size, for any 0 in polynomial time unless P = NP, even if all the given trees are of height 2. On the other hand, we present an O(N log N)-time heuristic for the restriction of this problem to instances with O(1) trees of height O(1) yielding solutions within a constant factor of the optimum. We prove that the maximum inferred consensus tree problem is NP-complete, and provide a simple, fast heuristic for it yielding solutions within one third of the optimum. We also present a more specialized polynomial-time heuristic for the maximum inferred local consensus tree problem.     

Women working in Poland: An overview

This paper presents a brief overview of the position of working women within the State-controlled economy of Poland. It examines the different factors which have influenced the increase in the numbers of women entering work, and considers what is known of their health and safety at work. It points up the progress that has been made in society's acceptance of women's work, and in establishing the rights of working women which help them to combine more easily the roles of mother and worker. It sets these developments in the context of the Polish approach to equality at work.     

Elderly Volunteering in Europe: The Relationship Between Volunteering and Quality of Life Depends on Volunteering Rates

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - This paper investigates the effect of volunteering on quality of life (QoL) in 50+ populations across European countries...     

The relationship between Mean Cost Rating (MCR) and Kendall's rank correlation coefficient tau

Mean Cost Rating (MRC) has been used extensively in criminology to measure the power of prediction instruments. This paper shows that MCR is closely related to Kendall's rank correlation coefficient tau and demonstrates, by means of this relationship, how the significance of MCR can be tested. An example of its calculation is given.     

Beyond dialogue and antagonism: a Bakhtinian perspective on the controversy in political theory

The aim of the article is to show that the contradiction between dialogue and antagonism can be overcome with the help of the idea of dialogue as developed by the Russian thinker Mikhail Bakhtin. The lack of such theory led to the rejection of liberalism or to the introduction of dialogical principle into the body of liberal politics. It was Jürgen Habermas who first understood the necessity of dialogical consensus as the basis of liberal democracy. On the other hand, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe developed the concept of agonistic democracy, claiming that conflict is inevitable in liberal democracy because consensual relations cannot harmonize contradictory political identities. The second part of the article is the elaboration of Bakhtin’s theory of dialogue and its relevance for political theory. The main point is that dialogue leads to better understanding but not necessarily to consensus. If this is so, then both conceptions of the political are moments in never-ending dialogical relations. The significance of Bakhtin’s idea of dialogue for political theory consists thus in the recognition of the inevitable dialogical nature of society. However, this dialogical concept also has a normative character. Society has to find a balance between two extremes: excessive dialogue, which leads to anarchy, and the lack of dialogue, which leads to totalitarianism.     

Women working in Poland: An overview

Abstract

This paper presents a brief overview of the position of working women within the State-controlled economy of Poland. It examines the different factors which have influenced the increase in the numbers of women entering work, and considers what is known of their health and safety at work. It points up the progress that has been made in society's acceptance of women's work, and in establishing the rights of working women which help them to combine more easily the roles of mother and worker. It sets these developments in the context of the Polish approach to equality at work.