Сборник материалов международной научной конференции студентов, магистрантов, аспирантов

К.Ю. Зинчук

Республика Беларусь, Брест, БрГУ имени А.С. Пушкина

Научный руководитель – Л.М. Калилец

THE NATURE OF MODERN TERRORISM

Though there are too many problems in the modern world, such as global warming, environmental issues, shortage of natural resources, earthquakes, floods and other disasters terrorism is one of the most dangerous.

People need to understand the full implications of modern terrorism. The reason is simple. Methods for engaging in political violence have changed, and multiple forms of terrorism will probably dominate the “battlefields” of the twenty-first century. In fact, the future probably will not bring many battlefields, but it will involve increasing amounts of subnational and individual political violence.

Although the term terrorism has been around since the French Revolution and it has been used to describe a variety of differing activities over the past two hundred years, modern terrorism is a new phenomenon. It requires supporting systems from the technological world. First, to be effective, terrorism must be seen and heard. As one terrorist commander summarized, it is better to kill one person in front of a camera than to kill a hundred in a secret location. Terrorists need an audience.

The second aspect of modernity’s impact on terrorism involves mobility. This can be done locally or globally. The goal is to get to the target and get away. An attack can originate in the hills of South Waziristan and be carried out in London, or can be launched from a local neighborhood in Boston because the supplies needed for an attack can be gathered from a distance.

Finally, the modern world provides weapons or materials that can be turned into weapons. These devices, in turn, are more powerful than instruments of the past. They can be used to kill a relatively large number of people. The destructive power of weapons-grade or homemade explosives have only increased since the Second World War.

Terrorism is commonly defined as violent acts (or the threat of violent acts) intended to create fear, perpetrated for a religious, political, or ideological goal, and which deliberately target or disregard the safety of non-combatants.

There are different classifications of terrorism and it is defined according to the following considerations:

1. 
   By the nature of the subject of terrorism activities:
   
   1. 
      unorganized or individual (terrorism of singles) – in this case the attack (rarely, a number of terrorist attacks) makes one or two people, for whom it is not necessary any organization;
      
   2. 
      organized, collective – terrorist activities planned and implemented by some organizations to organize terrorism – the most common in the modern world.
      
2. 
   By the aims terrorism shares on:
   
   1. 
      nationalist pursues separatist or national liberation purposes;
      
   2. 
      religious can be connected with battle of religionists between themselves and pursues purposes to undermine the secular power and to approve authority religious;
      
   3. 
      ideologically defined, social is aimed at indigenous or partial changes in the economic or political system of the country, attracting public attention to a serious challenge. Sometimes this kind of terrorism is called revolutionary.
      

Terrorism is a huge threat to all mankind. Today we hear more and more news on TV about terrorist attacks. All magazines and newspapers write about this problem. Each year different countries face terrorism. A lot of people suffer from terroristic acts. Some die, some get wounded, others lose their loved ones.

It is especially sad when children become the target of terrorists. There was once such attack in south part of Russia, in Beslan. It was a terrible tragedy for the families of these school children and for the whole country.

Terrorist act took place in Minsk metro station “October” April 11, 2011. 15 people were killed and 203 injured. This is the only terrorist attack in the history of Minsk subway and a second in Minsk during the history of independent Belarus since 1991.

Several fundamental concepts should guide anti-terrorist policies. There is no psychological pattern of a terrorist and no single path to radicalization. Rather, all types of people follow multiple trails to terrorism. One of the best tools in the anti-terrorist arsenal is to develop law enforcement agencies that act as extensions of neighborhoods. These agencies can root out all types of problems before they happen, including terrorism. Finally, it would be helpful if the mass media, especially cable news, would spend time explaining the complex background of modern terrorism. This would be much more responsible than breathlessly awaiting the next stage in a terrorist drama.

В статье речь идёт о современном терроризме, о том, как изменения в современном мире повлияли на терроризм.

Ю.Л. Зубик, Е.О. Войцехович

Республика Беларусь, Брест, БрГУ имени А.С. Пушкина

Научный руководитель – П.Н. Резько

ANDERS CELSIUS AS A CREATOR OF TEMPERATURE SCALE

Anders Celsius was a Swedish astronomer, physicist and mathematician who proposed the Celsius temperature scale and founded the Uppsala Observatory. Born in Sweden, he was raised in the shadow of his father, an astronomy professor. Anders showed an extraordinary talent in mathematics from childhood and after completing his education, decided to become an astronomer. He made earlier observations concerning aurora borealis (northern lights) and is regarded as the first astronomer to suggest a connection between aurora borealis and changes in the Earth’s magnetic field. He also assessed the brightness of stars with measuring tools. Later, he participated in an expedition which proved the Newton’s theory that the Earth has the shape of an ellipsoid, flattened at the poles. After succeeding in the expedition, he laid the foundation of Uppsala Astronomical Observatory, the oldest astronomical observatory in Sweden. However, he is most famous for the temperature scale he proposed based on the boiling and freezing points of water. Later on, a reversed form of his original design was adopted as the standard and used in almost all the scientific works.

Anders Celsius was born in Uppsala, Sweden on 27 November 1701. His family originated from Ovanåker in the province of Hälsingland. Their family estate was at Doma, also known as Höjen or Högen. As the son of an astronomy professor, Nils Celsius, and the grandson of the mathematician Magnus Celsius and the astronomer Anders Spole, Celsius chose a career in science. He was a talented mathematician from an early age. Anders Celsius studied at Uppsala University, where his father was a teacher, and in 1730 he became a professor of astronomy there.

In 1730, Celsius published “Nova Methodus distantiam solis a terra determinandi” (New Method for Determining the Distance from the Earth to the Sun). His research also involved the study of aurora phenomena, which he conducted with his assistant Olof Hiorter, and he was the first to suggest a connection between the aurora borealis and changes in the magnetic field of the Earth [1]. He observed the variations of a compass needle and found that larger deflections correlated with stronger auroral activity. At Nuremberg in 1733, he published a collection of 316 observations of the aurora borealis made by himself and others over the period 1716–1732 [2].

Celsius traveled frequently in the early 1730s, including to Germany, Italy and France, when he visited most of the major European observatories. In Paris he advocated the measurement of an arc of the meridian in Lapland. In 1736, he participated in the expedition organized for that purpose by the French Academy of Sciences, led by the French mathematician Pierre Louis Maupertuis (1698–1759) to measure a degree of latitude. The aim of the expedition was to measure the length of a degree along a meridian, close to the pole, and compare the result with a similar expedition to Peru, today in Ecuador, near the equator. The expeditions confirmed Isaac Newton’s belief that the shape of the earth is an ellipsoid flattened at the poles [1].

In 1738, he published the “De observationibus pro figura telluris determinanda” (Observations on Determining the Shape of the Earth). Celsius’ participation in the Lapland expedition won him much respect in Sweden with the government and his peers, and played a key role in generating interest from the Swedish authorities in donating the resources required to construct a new modern observatory in Uppsala. He was successful in the request, and Celsius founded the Uppsala Astronomical Observatory in 1741. The observatory was equipped with instruments purchased during his long voyage abroad, comprising the most modern instrumental technology of the period.

In astronomy, Celsius began a series of observations using colored glass plates to record the magnitude (a measure of brightness) of certain stars. This was the first attempt to measure the intensity of starlight with a tool other than the human eye. He made observations of eclipses and various astronomical objects and published catalogues of carefully determined magnitudes for some 300 stars using his own photometric system (mean error = 0.4 mag) [1].

Celsius was the first to perform and publish careful experiments aiming at the definition of an international temperature scale on scientific grounds. In his Swedish paper “Observations of two persistent degrees on a thermometer” he reports on experiments to check that the freezing point is independent of latitude (and of atmospheric pressure). He determined the dependence of the boiling of water with atmospheric pressure which was accurate even by modern day standards. He further gave a rule for the determination of the boiling point if the barometric pressure deviates from a certain standard pressure. He proposed the Celsius temperature scale in a paper to the Royal Society of Sciences in Uppsala, the oldest Swedish scientific society, founded in 1710. His thermometer was calibrated with a value of 100° for the freezing point of water and 0° for the boiling point. In 1745, a year after Celsius’ death, the scale was reversed by Carl Linnaeus to facilitate more practical measurement [3]. Celsius originally called his scale centigrade derived from the Latin for “hundred steps”. For years it was simply referred to as the Swedish thermometer.

In 1725 he became secretary of the Royal Society of Sciences in Uppsala, and served at this post until his death from tuberculosis in 1744. He supported the formation of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm in 1739 by Linnaeus and five others, and was elected a member at the first meeting of this academy. It was in fact Celsius who proposed the new academy’s name [2].

He started many other research projects but died unexpectedly before he could complete most of them. He was an extraordinary astronomer, and as a tribute to his accomplishments, the standard unit on the temperature scale, “Celsius”, is named after him.

1. 
   Anders Celsius [Electronic resource] – Mode of access: http://www.as tro.uu.se/history/Celsius_eng.html. – Date of access: 26.09.2014.
   
2. 
   Anders Celsius Swedish astronomer [Electronic resource] – Mode of access: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/101683/Anders-Celsius. – Date of access: 12.02.2015.
   
3. 
   Linnaeus’ thermometer [Electronic resource] – Mode of access: http://www.linnaeus.uu.se/online/life/6_32.html. – Date of access: 22.12.2014.
   

Cтатья посвящена известному шведскому астроному и математику Андерсу Цельсию. Он предложил шкалу измерения температуры, которой мы пользуемся по сегодняшний день. Цельсий также участвовал в экспедиции с целью измерения отрезка меридиана в 1 градус в Лапландии. Аналогичная экспедиция была организована на экватор, на территории нынешнего Эквадора. Сравнение результатов подтвердило предположение Ньютона, что Земля представляет собой эллипсоид, сплюснутый у полюсов. Он сделал правильное заключение, что природа Северного сияния связана с магнетизмом.