The aim of the study was to assess the influence of corvid urban roosts on the abundance of two groups of soil mesofauna: mites and springtails. Two areas located in the city of Warsaw were taken into consideration, one subjected to winter roosting activity of corvids and the other not influenced by birds. The samples were taken three times, in May, July, and September of 2013. The results show a positive effect of corvid roosts on the density of soil mesofauna, especially in the top 0–5 cm soil layer. On each sampling date, we found more numerous communities of mites and springtails in the soil within the roosting area than in control. The average densities of mites ranged from 30×103 ind. m–2 to 200×103 ind. m–2 in the soil within the roost and from 6 ×103 ind. m–2 to 40×103 ind. m–2 in the control. In the case of springtails the average densities ranged from 9×103 ind. m–2 to 36×103 ind. m–2 in the roost and from 4×103 ind. m–2 to 8×103 ind. m–2 in the control. Among the two groups, mites prevailed over the springtails both in the soil of roost and control area. We inferred that the corvid roosting activity, involving mainly an excrement deposition on the soil surface, influences soil mesofauna indirectly through many related changes occurring in soil environment e.g. in nutrient availability, soil acidity, microbial communities.
During the long 19th century both the state and society underwent substantial changes that had signifi cant eff ects on the world of politics in Hungary. The transformations can be subsumed under such collective terms as passage from a social and economic structure based on privileges and orders to capitalism, the birth of the bourgeoisie and of the modern political system, the evolution of parliamentary institutions and the formation of a bourgeois legal system and public sphere. All these led to the transformation of the political culture and to the appearance of the modern techniques of power. During the second half of the nineteenth century in Hungary modernity and the structures surviving from the past lived side by side. In the world of politics after the Compromise of 1867 the rules of parliamentarism and modern public sphere commingled with the forms of behavior inherited from the political life of the noble orders and with the traditional norms of informal social and family connections. Th e fast economic development created a milieu full of new temptations for politicians. It seems that the Hungarian elite were not prepared for the moral challenges the rapidly changing political and economic environment posed. Th erefore the principal questions of this case study are which new and old legal, political and moral norms regulated the enrichment of politicians and where contemporary discourse posited the limits of corruption. The paper answers these questions through the analysis of the cases of some Hungarian government politicians. The author explores the varied sources available about the incriminating aff airs: archival materials, personal documents, parliamentary records and newspapers, together with a number of literary representations of the problem. Th e historical data serve to demonstrate that corruption is an elastic notion. Studying the discourse of corruption highlights that neither the seriousness of the deed nor the truth of the accusations was important, in fact political situation alone determined if the politicians would be blackened or not. Th e corruption accusations became a part of the political arsenal of the Hungarian public life. The Compromise Era off ers a number of examples of the establishment of this new form of political infi ghting and its fi rst successful application.
The article highlights the stages and content of research and experimental work on the realization of pedagogical conditions offormation in teenagers of the notions of happiness as personal self-realization. The essence of the concept “pedagogical conditions” is specified. Pedagogical conditions for the formation in teenagers ideas about happiness as personal self-realization are determined and theoretically grounded. The process of enriching the content of educational activity of teenagers’ educational material related to the coverage of the ways to achieve human happiness in life is reviewed. The list of educational disciplines in the process of studying of which the students’ interest in the problem of happiness has become more active is given in the article. It became possible to include additional materials on the named topic. The examples of questions and problems with the help of which it was established which basic ideas about happiness have pupils are given, what were the prevailing ideas about happiness at different stages of society’s development, what is the essence of the phenomenon of happiness from the position of modern science and with the support of concrete examples from the life of real people, the conditions and circumstances that contribute to a sense of happiness, as well as the ways to achieve it. The forms of work with sources of various information about happiness are described: preparation of reports, organization of discussions, round tables and game-discussions on the lessons of Ethics and Health Basics; reading and discussion of literary texts of different genres and types provided by the school curriculum in such disciplines as Ukrainian literature and Foreign literature; listening to classical music, singing songs in Ukrainian and English; enrichment of emotional and aesthetic experience during perception of the surrounding world, interpretation and evaluation of works of fine art and the like. The process of formation teenagers’ ideas of happiness as a personality’s self-realization continued during the realization of the second condition, aimed at organization of extracurricular cognitive activity with the purpose of forming in teenagers the notion of happiness as personal self-realization, as well as the third condition – attracting schoolchildren to communication and socially useful activities as a means of ensuring their personalization and stimulating their sense of happiness from the results of their work. It is proved that realization of certain and theoretically grounded pedagogical conditions contributes to the increase in the effectiveness of the process of forming in teenagers the notion of happiness as personal self-realization.
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