Key words: Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), agriculture, modeling

Abstract

In the process of integration with European structures, agricultural extension in Poland is facing extremely demanding challenges, since its functions, responsibilities and organisation, and consequently directions of development, are strictly connected with the development of the whole economy. An experience from European Union member countries shows that agricultural extension has been the driving force of modernisation-oriented transformations in agriculture. The study presents results of research on the current scope of agricultural extension, its degree of convergence with the needs and expectations of farmers, assessment of extension forms and methods; some directions for extension development are also proposed. The AHP mathematical and psychological method, applied for the first time in extension studies, has permitted different qualitative forms of extension to be examined in a mathematical model. On this basis, priorities have been proposed for the developed extension variants, the highest of which were noted for: autonomous extension, partially autonomous and state extension.

INTRODUCTION

Every human activity consists of examining alternatives and making decisions. With changes in the surrounding environment, growth in living standards, broad dissemination of information and new technologies, economic development, growth in education levels, law improvements, development in agriculture, agricultural extension, etc., it is more and more necessary to make attempts to scientifically approach the process of decision making, in other words rational problem solving. The science of decision making is also required in agricultural extension to pursue its goals – greater agricultural effectiveness and profitability, its better measurability in a very competitive environment. The number and type of organizational, economic and managerial decisions has dramatically grown with economic development and progress in preparation for the integration with the European Union. Decision making is scientific transformation and a relation of data about the world to our system of values, in a way letting us take necessary action to satisfy our needs and aspirations. Intellectually, it is a huge package of information and knowledge collected from experience and from simple observations, how to creatively think about the surrounding world.

Kings striving to make a strong presence in their subjects' daily life were a characteristic feature of the Hellenistic period. Such presence had impact on how the king was perceived by his subjects and assured him a more or less permanent place in social awareness and memory. Therefore, every ruler tried as best he could to publicize and perpetuate the memory of his name and acts, and especially his image. Its use on a wide scale and in a variety of forms became common practice. Portraits of rulers were omnipresent: on coins, in public places, temples, and homes. Multiplied in innumerable copies, such portraits made the ruler almost physically present wherever they were found. The phenomenon was characteristic of all rulers and even usurpers.

Nor were the Hasmoneans averse to the idea of promoting their name, even though their nation's cultural and religious traditions posed some obstacles in this respect that hindered no other contemporary monarch. Clearly the greatest difficulty stemmed from the rigorously observed Jewish prohibition to make or display images of people and animals. The prohibition robbed the Hasmoneans of a chance to use their own images as a propaganda tool. Out of respect for tradition, they made no attempt to circumvent the ban; instead they were compelled to seek other means to present themselves to subjects. Available historical evidence allows the conclusion that their activity in this field was not without certain achievements and took on various forms.

Introduction

The late 1980s and early 1990s brought a substantial shift in the views on the role of structures and derivations in phonology. The 1985 and 1990 papers by Kaye, Lowenstamm and Vergnaud postulated a static view that underlined the role of the lexicon and the structural relations between the segments of phonological representations. The aim of this paper is to present the main tenets of the continuation of the approach proposed in the above-mentioned works: CVCV Phonology presented in Scheer (1998, 2004). The paper is structured as follows: section 2 is devoted to the introduction of the syllabic constituent structure in CVCV. Section 3 is a presentation of the Empty Category Principle (ECP), which constitutes the very essence of the approach in question. The aim of section 4 is to present a brief typology of phonological processes within CVCV, with emphasis on their motivation. Section 5 gives a short summary of the facts presented in this paper.

The post 1945 world is divided into sectors, each supervised by one of five nations that holds a seat on the United Nations Security Council with unilateral right of veto (P5 Powers). Conflict over borders, for control of international organisations, and for economic and military hegemony arises from “A Clash of Expectations.” This became exacerbated by the dilemma over where East meets West in the aftermath of “The Polish Missile Crisis” of 2009.

The current boundaries of Poland, both Eastern and Western, are artificial, drawn by The Alliance arbitrarily at Yalta in 1945. The Russian Federation is expected by the West to vacate its air and naval bases on the Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula by the year 2017, but refused to go, and Ukraine extended Russia's Crimean leases for another 25 years without public preconditions. Russia should stay on the Crimea, but as a condition should withdraw from Kaliningrad. It may have one or the other, but not both. An armed presence on the Crimea better serves Russia's task of protecting its sector in Eurasia. Poland should have the return of Galicia, along its prewar Eastern boundary.

This means that the United Nations should “move Poland East” the way the Three Powers resolved to “move Poland West” at Yalta. Pomerania should have return of its sovereignty along Poland's prewar Western border. Kaliningrad, or Königsberg as it was known prior to 1945, should become independent or be united with Lithuania, Poland, or Pomerania following return of Pomeranian sovereignty.

There is no doubt that Thurayya Al-Baqsami is a writer through and through. This is shown by her constant passion for writing since she was a child, as well as her personal attitude. This is the attitude of a person who is open to the formulation artistically of the generality of the problems surrounding human life, as well as being embracing their individual elements of time and place. Her characteristic formulation of utterance is the self-recognition of herself as a competent and just witness of the world, though equally as a polemist gifted with the ability to perceive reality in a non-superficial and artistic way. The writer allows herself to be presented as an accuser and guide, a sensitive reporter and desperate participant in the life that surrounds. Thurayya Al-Baqsami, in directing attention to the problem matter of the human personage, comes across the common aspirations of philosophy and European literature. Due to the place in which her style is created there arises the need for a wider meaning and more artistic conception of known and created values. There is evident in her writing the tendency for a forced and speedy rescue from oblivion of the old images of Kuwait, as equally a defensive attitude as well as non-conformist in the face of the advancing autonomy of contemporary individuals, behind which there starts to gather the anonymous and culturally faceless ‘mass’, known from the warnings of Elias Canetti.

Key words: Paired Comparisons, Relative Weights, Multiple Attribute Decision Making, AHP, Rank Preservation

Abstract

Paired comparisons method is used to rank decision variants in multi-attribute decision-making problems and is based on comparisons of particular decision variants between each other. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the properties of the logarithmic least squares method (also called geometric mean method) which is commonly applied in calculation of the weight vector in paired comparisons evaluation. The geometric mean method gives a unique, geometrically normalized solution independent on the scale inversion.

INTRODUCTION

Paired comparisons method is used to rank decision variants in multi-attribute decision- making problems and bases on comparing particular decision variants. In a decision process an expert or experts are asked to associate to each pair of variants a number chosen from a given scale. The number, called judgement, express a relative preference of one variant in a pair over the second one. Basing on expert judgements a square judgement matrix is created. An evaluation of decision variants ranking leads to an approximation of a judgement matrix by a matrix of weight ratios and a normalization of the obtained solution. In order to calculate weight vector mainly two methods are applied: maximal eigenvalue and logarithmic least squares one (Saaty, 1980). In this paper, the analysis of properties of the latter method (also called geometric mean one) is performed.

PAIRED COMPARISONS

Assume that there are n variants F1, F2, …, Fn, and an expert is asked to provide his opinions concerning each pair of them, expressing intensity of importance of one factor in a pair over the second one with a use of the preference scale from the Table 14.1. Thus a judgment matrix R can be created where rij is an estimate for the relative significance of the factors (Fi, Fj), provided by the expert.

During Hasmonean rule, their state's borders frequently changed. The first alteration was made already during the rule of Jonathan. Rather than through conquest, it was by administrative decision of king Demetrius I of Syria, who added to Judea three districts he removed from Samaria: Aphairema, Lydda, and Ramathain (cf. 1 Macc 10:30. 38; 11:34; Jos. AJ 13.50. 127) The first to enlarge Judea by force of arms was Simon. Although his gains were little, embracing Joppa with the area connecting it to the rest of Judea and Gezer (1 Macc 13:43–48; 14:5), their capture marked the beginning of gradual Judean expansion. The process gained momentum under John Hyrcanus, who conquered Idumea and Samaria, and small parts of Galilee with the city of Scythopolis (Beth-Shean). During the reign of Aristobulus I, Hasmonean rule was extended to more lands in Galilee and a part of southern Lebanon. Judea reached its greatest territorial expansion under Alexander Jannaeus. At the end of his reign, he controlled, in addition to lands mentioned above, a coastal strip from Gaza as far as Strato's Tower (except for Askelon), the Golan Heights, and large areas across Jordan in what had been biblical Gilead and Moab.

Efficient government of a steadily growing state required organization of territorial administration and appropriately staffing it. Neither element of the Hasmonean state is clearly confirmed in sources. It should be expected that the groundwork for this administration began to be laid with the first successes in fighting the Seleucids, and that its creator could be Jonathan.

The present volume contains selected contributions to the First Conference of Young Linguists in Dialogue held at the Jagiellonian University of Kraków in April 2008. The conference was initiated by the Linguistics Section of the Jagiellonian University Students' English Society in close co-operation with the Gavagai Student Society at the Chair of the English Language and Applied Linguistics of the University of Łódź and it is planned to take place annually in different universities across Poland. The aim of the Young Linguists in Dialogue series is to bring together students from various departments of English in Poland and present their research in linguistics.

The papers in this volume were chosen as a result of a selection process in which they were reviewed by specialists in the fields to which the topics that they address pertain. Of eleven presentations given at the conference, nine are included in this volume.

The contributions discuss a wide range of issues, embracing formal aspects of the theory of language as well as topics of interest in applied linguistics, in particular in foreign language teaching, translation theory and linguistic stylistics. They proffer advances in two directions: either the papers provide an up-to-date resource on current research on the chosen topic intended for beginners in the specialist area, or they contribute to the understanding of particular problems in the description and theory of language that may be of interest both for beginners and for specialists in the chosen domain of inquiry.

Introduction

Building on the ideas of Gutt (1998, 2000, 2004), this paper makes use of the advances of Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson 1986) to accommodate selected issues in Translation Studies. It attempts to demonstrate the impact that the consideration of relevance might have on the decision-making process of translation. A further matter considered here is whether translation is always to be seen as governed solely by the principles of intralingual communication.

Relevance: contextual effects vs. processing effort

Relevance Theory offers a novel cognitively-oriented theoretical foundation to account for the rules underlying human communication. Sperber and Wilson (1986: 122) state that “an assumption is relevant in a context if and only if it has some contextual effect in that context.” Yet, as they go on to expound, relevance is a matter of degree which generally depends upon a trade-off between the contextual effects obtained by processing an input and the effort spent in the process.

The cognitive principle of relevance, one of the central tenets of Relevance Theory, holds that “human cognition tends to be geared towards the maximisation of relevance” (Sperber and Wilson 1986: 260). Thus, the addressees expect the stimuli produced by the sender to provide them with positive contextual/cognitive effects without forcing them to spend more energy than is necessary on processing the stimuli. This suggests that, if acquiring a piece of information is too costly compared to the cognitive benefits it brings, the audience should be spared any effort whatsoever.

The art of decision making is the process of selecting the proper alternative under the condition of uncertainty and with limited resources. While taking any decision, we concentrate on weighting alternatives that fulfil a set of desired goals. The problem is to select the alternative that meets all the goals to a maximum level. In the strong competition and complexity of decision problems, there is an increasing need for methods that allow making rational decisions. Managers, who solve multifaceted problems, try to grasp them at once using only one criterion that would aggregate all important consequences of a given problem. In such case, they deal with only one-criterion analysis, in which all potential variants are judged against one, selected a priori criterion, i.e. the company's profit. There is an array of methods to solve such a problem, including linear programming, parametric, stochastic, non-linear, margin analysis, econometric methods, theory of games, to name but a few examples. Such procedure is reasonable only in certain cases.

One has to realize, however, that the one-criterion analysis is neither fully reliable, acceptable nor exhausted. In other words, it does not possess characteristics that a common group of criteria should p. Multicriteria decision making remains therefore in contrast with the one-criterion analysis, in the sense that it aims at expressing the common group of goals as an instrument of understandable, acceptable and exhausted communication, which should enable to create, substantiate and transform preferences in decision making process. In the field of solving multicriteria problems, there is a variety of methods described in the literature. Among these methods, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Analytic Network Process (ANP) are the most widely applied, and in our opinion, the best ones. Although they are not perfect, no better methods have been created so far.

Both AHP and ANP were developed by professor Thomas L. Saaty from the University of Pittsburg in early 70's. Professor L. Saaty developed the AHP based on his work at the U.S. State Department's Arms Control and Disarmament Agency during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. He recognized that the current techniques for resolving problems were deficient in both mathematical logic and relevance to real world decision making.

It is no easy task to write about the poetry of Thurayya Al-Baqsami, it constituting no mean challenge. Thurayya has been writing poetry almost since childhood. During her period of study in Moscow she even wrote poetry in Russian, and upon returning to Kuwait she had her own poetry column entitled Nuqush (Sketches) within the pages of the ‘Al-Watan’ newspaper. Since 1994 she has published her texts in the journal ‘Al-Qabas’ in a column entitled Nusus wa risha (Texts and Brush). She herself illustrates her poetry with drawings. The verse that is found in the daily press is hugely popular because of its specific and symbolic vision of feelings and human desires as well as for the criticism of Kuwaiti and Arab society that it contains.

Thurayya Al-Baqsami, so it appears, has yet to develop a definite attitude towards the phenomenon of her own poetical creativity. These works can be neither considered poetry nor prose. The matter is left open for the reader. It seems that they are works written in poetical prose in which one may perceive the beauty of poetic language, while the author herself feels herself a poet. Thurayya writes as such in the forewords to her first volume of poetry published in Kuwait in 1999 and entitled Fikaffi ‘usfura zarqa’ (The Blue Sparrow on My Palm):

Introduction

Reading literature in the foreign language may be seen as dialogic interaction between reader and text as well as between two cultures – the target culture and the students’ culture – within the foreign classroom situation. Due to its dialogic nature, literature corresponds with the need to mediate meanings and interpretations, to establish an exchange of ideas – a dialogue – which lends itself well to the task of raising learners’ critical awareness. In Bakhtin's words, dialogue may be defined as follows: “To live means to participate in dialogue: to ask questions, to heed, to respond, to agree, and so forth” (Bakhtin, 1984: 293). It is this type of dialogue that is required in the foreign language classroom if critical reading skills are to be developed.

The present article will first discuss the essence of critical reading through the perspective of dialogic interaction, offering a checklist of critical reading strategies. Secondly, the results of a questionnaire study as well as coursebook evaluation will be analysed about the role of critical reading in foreign language instruction as seen by Estonian teachers of English at upper-secondary school level. Finally, the article offers an inventory of activities that may be employed to enhance critical reading in a foreign language classroom in upper-secondary education.

The essence of critical reading in a foreign language classroom

In foreign language learning (FLL), reading is frequently used for study purposes in order to broaden students’ knowledge of the target language as well as their cultural understanding of the target language community.