NEW EVIDENCE OF JEWELRY PRODUCTION IN STARAYA RYAZAN

Статья посвящена уникальным находкам из раскопок на Южном городище Старой Рязани в 2020 г. На территории городской усадьбы конца XII - начала XIII в. были обнаружены следы ювелирного производства, в том числе матрицы для тиснения украшений и их деталей, иной ремесленный инвентарь. Ряд предметов, в том числе матрица с изображением кентавра, костяная шахматная фигура из арабо-персидского набора, глиняные игрушки, свидетельствуют о широких торговых и культурных связях средневекового ювелира, о характере его разнообразного и изысканного быта и досуга. The article is devoted to unique finds from the excavations at the Southern Hillfort in Staraya Ryazan carried out in 2020. Traces of jewelry production, including die blocks for embossing jewelry pieces and their details as well as some other craftsman's tools were discovered in the grounds of an urban mansion dating to the late 12th - early 13th centuries. A number of items including a matrix picturing a centaur, a bone chess piece from an Arab-Persian set, and clay toys suggest broad trade and cultural links of a medieval jeweler and characterize his varied and refined way of life and leisure.

Steganography Technique Inspired by Rook

A steganographic technique inspired by rook is presented in this paper to ensure privacy and secrecy. In this approach, the cover image is partitioned into n × 1 pixel blocks and converted equivalent n × 8 binary bit planes. Then the functional output of each block is calculated on the basis of the number of rook positions, which are attacked by opponent rooks. The rook is a chess piece that moves only forward and backward in a straight line. In binary bit plane, 0 and 1 are considered as a black and white opponent rook, respectively. The secret information is considered as stream of binary bits. The binary bits of secret information are compared with the functional output of the corresponding block. If it is equal to the functional output of the corresponding block, then nothing needs to be done. In case of inequality, the small number of bits needs to be flipped in such a way that the functional output of the corresponding block becomes equal to the corresponding secret binary bits and the distortion of the cover is minimized.

Chessboard and Chess Piece Recognition With the Support of Neural Networks

Chessboard and chess piece recognition is a computer vision problem that has not yet been efficiently solved. Digitization of a chess game state from a picture of a chessboard is a task typically performed by humans or with the aid of specialized chessboards and pieces. However, those solutions are neither easy nor convenient. To solve this problem, we propose a novel algorithm for digitizing chessboard configurations.We designed a method of chessboard recognition and pieces detection that is resistant to lighting conditions and the angle at which images are captured, and works correctly with numerous chessboard styles. Detecting the board and recognizing chess pieces are crucial steps of board state digitization.The algorithm achieves 95% accuracy (compared to 60% for the best alternative) for positioning the chessboard in an image, and almost 95% for chess pieces recognition. Furthermore, the sub-process of detecting straight lines and finding lattice points performs extraordinarily well, achieving over 99.5% accuracy (compared to the 74% for the best alternative).

Learning Chess at Primary School by Game

This work presents a game dedicated to children from the primary cycle through which they will acquire the elementary knowledge of chess. The game can be conducted with two teams, each team consisting of one to eight children. The basic principle is that of performing the specific movements of each chess piece through a cube, used as a dice. Each child will throw the cube on the surface of the game marked on the ground in the form of a chess table and will perform the specific movement of the chess piece drawn on the top of the cube. The player who will first reach the end of the route will be declared winner and will receive a number of points equal to the number of players. The game proposed by us to learn chess, blends very well learning the correct removal of chess pieces with carrying out motor activities.

Chess Piece from Gorodishche near Novgorod

В 2000 г. на территории Рюрикова городища на северном берегу Сиверсо-ва канала был обнаружен фрагмент костяной шахматной фигуры, представляющий собой гладкий миндалевидный щит. На внутренней стороне щита остались сжатые в кулак, хорошо проработанные пальцы левой руки. В древних городах России, кроме Новгорода, археологические находки шахматных фигур встречаются редко. Хронологические рамки находок - XII-XIII вв. Большинство из них относятся к XIII-XIV вв. Средневековые шахматные фигуры делятся на две группы: фигуративные и абстрактные. Найденный на территории Рюрикова городища фрагмент относится к разряду фигуративных шахмат. Судя по скудности их находок в России (всего 9 экземпляров), они, в отличие от Западной Европы, не получили широкого распространения. Фигурку из городища можно датировать второй половиной XIII в. In 2000, on the territory of Ryurik gorodishche on the northern shore of Seversov channel a fragment of a bone chess piece was found, which is a smooth almondshaped shield. On the inner side of the shield there remained clenched into a fist well-researched fingers of the left hand. In the Ancient cities of Russia, except Novgorod, archaeological finds of chess pieces are rare. The chronological framework of the findings is the 12-13 centuries. The Majority of them belong to the 13-14 cc. Medieval chess pieces are divided into two groups: figurative and abstract. The fragment found on the territory of Ryurik ancient settlement belongs to the category of figurative chess. Judging by the scarcity of their finds in Russia (there are only 9 copies.) they, unlike Western Europe, were not widely distributed. The figurine from the Gorodishche can be dated to the second half of the 13 century

Symmetric Evaluation of Multimodal Human–Robot Interaction with Gaze and Standard Control

Control of robot arms is often required in engineering and can be performed by using different methods. This study examined and symmetrically compared the use of a controller, eye gaze tracker and a combination thereof in a multimodal setup for control of a robot arm. Tasks of different complexities were defined and twenty participants completed an experiment using these interaction modalities to solve the tasks. More specifically, there were three tasks: the first was to navigate a chess piece from a square to another pre-specified square; the second was the same as the first task, but required more moves to complete; and the third task was to move multiple pieces to reach a solution to a pre-defined arrangement of the pieces. Further, while gaze control has the potential to be more intuitive than a hand controller, it suffers from limitations with regard to spatial accuracy and target selection. The multimodal setup aimed to mitigate the weaknesses of the eye gaze tracker, creating a superior system without simply relying on the controller. The experiment shows that the multimodal setup improves performance over the eye gaze tracker alone ( p < 0.05 ) and was competitive with the controller only setup, although did not outperform it ( p > 0.05 ).

’Belarus – a significant chess piece on the chessboard of regional security

Belarus is often considered as ‘the last authoritarian state in Europe’ or the ‘last Soviet Republic’. Belarusian policies are not a popular research topic. Over the past years, the country has made headlines mostly as a regime violating human rights. Since the Russian aggression on Ukraine, Belarus has been getting renewed attention. Minsk was the scene of a series of talks that aim at stopping the ongoing war in Ukraine. Western media, scholars and society got a reminder that Eastern Europe was not a conflict-free zone. This article puts military security policy of Belarus into perspective by showing that Belarus ‘per se’ is not a threat for neighboring countries; Belarus dependency towards Russia is huge; thus, Minsk has a small capability to run its own independent security policy; military potential of Belarus is significant in the region, but gap in equipment and training between NATO and Belarus is really more; it is in the interest of Western countries to keep the Lukashenko’s regime in Belarus.