Candidate States Research Articles

Agentic but not Aggressive: Assessing the State of Televised Debate Styles in Latin America

This study assesses the state of political candidates’ verbal and nonverbal expressive behaviors during televised debates in four Latin American countries (Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Argentina), a region largely overlooked in debate studies where uncivil behavior driven by populism and related ideologies is on the rise. Utilizing human annotation for both descriptive analysis and training and validation of machine learning classifiers, we analyzed 900 ten-second segments from recent debates in each country to detect behaviors associated with a populist style, including adversarial rhetoric and verbal attacks, an aggressive or threatening tone, angry facial expressions, and defiant gestures. We also identified agentic behaviors characterized by assertive, dynamic, and physically energetic actions, lacking the aggressive or threatening markers. Findings reveal distinct communication styles across countries coalescing around a core tendency. While aggressive and adversarial behaviors were anticipated, the predominant style observed was agentic, characterized by assertive and dynamic gestures absent displays of anger, defiance, or hostility. Agentic behavior was common despite the diversity in debate formats and party systems. The study underscores the importance of multimodal analysis in understanding political communication cross-nationally and provides insights into the political styles and performative strategies employed by Latin American candidates in the countries observed.

Psychological evaluation of candidates for the uterus transplantation French trial.

Since 2017, women with absolute uterine infertility due to Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome have been eligible to participate in a uterine transplantation clinical trial conducted by Foch Hospital in France. The aim of this study is to assess the psychological state of potential candidates, including recipients, their partners, and their living-related donors. Sixteen potential uterus transplant candidates, including recipients, partners, and living-related donors, participated in the study. The psychological evaluation of these candidates was conducted using three validated questionnaires: the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS-16), the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), and the Fertility Quality of Life (FertiQoL) questionnaire. No depression symptoms were observed in any participant according to the HADS. Most recipients did not exhibit signs of anxiety; however, three partners and three donors reported moderate to high anxiety levels. A positive correlation was found between the recipient's psychological distress related to infertility (FertiQoL) and the anxiety scores of their donors. The emotional aspect of infertility was identified as the most distressing factor for the recipients. While the overall psychological state of the participants was generally good, anxiety was notably present among donors and partners. Therefore, providing psychological support throughout the uterine transplantation process is essential for not only the recipients but also their partners and donors.

Legal Regulation of Extradition of Persons for Criminal Prosecution or Execution of a Sentence in the BRICS Member States and Candidate States

This article analyzes the legal regulation of the extradition of persons for criminal prosecution or execution of a sentence in the BRICS states. The legal and technical features of the national legal regulations governing extradition in Brazil, India, China and South Africa are analyzed. It is noted that each of these nations (with the exception of Russia) has adopted a special law on extradition, which regulates in detail all procedural aspects of international cooperation in the field of the extradition of criminals. In addition, the legal regulation of the extradition of persons for criminal prosecution or execution of a sentence in the BRICS candidate states is also analyzed. In particular, this study provides both a general description of the countries’ legislation (the different legal systems) and an assessment of the national legal regulations governing extradition in each of the BRICS countries, including such countries as Iran, Argentina, Algeria, Bahrain and the UAE. The mechanisms of interstate and interdepartmental cooperation are deeply described. Furthermore, the prospects of international legal integration of the BRICS states in the field of extradition are assessed, taking into account the possible entry of the candidate states into the BRICS group. Following an analysis of the national legislation of both the BRICS member states and the BRICS candidate states, the idea of creating and adopting a “BRICS Convention on Extradition” is proposed.

Tetraquarks from intrinsic heavy quarks

A number of new tetraquark candidate states containing from one to four charm or anticharm quarks have been observed recently. Many of these new states have been discovered at the LHC. The production of these states via intrinsic charm in the proton is investigated. The tetraquark masses obtained in this approach, while dependent on the internal transverse momenta of the partons in the state, are shown to agree well with the measured masses. These calculations can provide some insight into the nature of the tetraquark candidates, whether as a bound meson pair or as a looser configuration of four individual partons. The kinematic distributions of these states as a function of rapidity and transverse momentum are also studied. The possible cross sections for these states are finally considered, with a comparison to the X(3872) pT distributions from p+p collisions at s=13 TeV. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

PROMOTION AND PROTECTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS: INCLUSION OF PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES IN NORTH MACEDONIA

North Macedonia’s accession negotiations are conditioned by the country’s progress on fulfilling the Copenhagen criteria. Respect for human rights, defined as one of the founding values of European Union, it is associated with the fundamental political criteria for full membership for every candidate state. In the Progress Report for 2022, European Commission raised the concerns that North Macedonia had made “limited progress in improving the rights of persons with disabilities”. Considering that the country since its independence ratified several international treaties on human rights and assumed obligation not only to guarantee but also to protect the fundamental human rights, in this paper will be analyzed: the national legal framework on the protection of the fundamental rights of persons with disabilities, national strategies on the rights of persons with disabilities, and national policies on the integration of persons with disabilities. The purpose of this study it is to analyze the responsibilities and commitment of the state authorities in providing equal rights and opportunities for persons with disabilities, especially focusing on the access of women with disability to the labor market and access of children and young people with disability to education. The research it is in-depth analysis and guided by two research questions: What are the responsibilities of North Macedonia as a candidate country in promoting and enforcing the rights of persons with disabilities? What have done North Macedonia for social inclusion of persons with disabilities.

Türkiye’s Harmonization With the EU’s Maritime Policies: An Analysis in the Framework of the EU Country Reports Between 2018 and 2023

This study addresses Türkiye’s policies in the maritime sector to evaluate their compliance with European Union (EU) maritime policies. Maritime transport serves as a catalyst for the economic development and prosperity of the EU. The EU adopts a maritime transport policy that is environmentally friendly, sustainable, fair, and developed within the framework of competition rules, requiring international cooperation and coordination, as well as integration with digital systems. Türkiye is a candidate state for EU membership, which means that it is supposed to converge its policies to those of the EU and make required harmonization in its national legislation. Therefore, Türkiye must develop policies and align its legislation in the maritime sector with the EU’s policies in this domain. In this context, the study, utilizing a document-based analysis in a qualitative research approach, aims to investigate the current level of Türkiye’s alignment with EU maritime policies. This is achieved by examining the EU country reports published by the European Commission between 2018 and 2023. The study concludes with findings and recommendations regarding Türkiye’s adherence to EU maritime policy, particularly in the areas of international agreements, marine safety, environmental protection, legislation, digitalization, and port management.

Role of court precedents in the development of EU law and the legal systems of the candidate states: Examples of Ukraine and Moldova

The judgements of the Court of Justice of the European Union play a fundamental role in shaping the EU acquis. The relevance of this study lies in their impact not only on the law enforcement practice within the Union, but also on the trends in the development and amendment of the EU regulations. Considering the above, the purpose of this study was to determine the role of judgements of the Court of Justice of the European Union in shaping the law of the European Union and the legal systems of the candidate states. The methodological framework of this study was based on general scientific and special research methods, such as analysis and synthesis, induction, interpretation, formal logical, and comparative legal methods. The study established the existence of a link between the structural and functional evolution of the Court of Justice of the European Union and the increasing weight of its judgements; the study identified the channels of influence of its judgements on the establishment and development of European Union law. The study outlined the current challenges faced by the judges of the Court of Justice of the European Union and which affect the efficiency of its work. Based on the analysis of the judicial practice of Ukraine and Moldova regarding the use of judgements of the Court of Justice of the European Union, the study substantiated the general significance of judicial precedent in the context of European integration of the candidate states, as well as potential problems of their widespread use in the judicial practice of these states. The practical significance of the findings obtained is that they can be used in educational programmes for training specialists in the field of European law, to develop strategies and policies aimed at integrating candidate states into the EU, ensuring their compliance with the legal standards of the Union

Fingerprints of Anti-Pfaffian Topological Order in Quantum Point Contact Transport.

Despite recent experimental developments, the topological order of the fractional quantum Hall state at filling ν=5/2 remains an outstanding question. We study conductance and shot noise in a quantum point contact device in the charge-equilibrated regime and show that, among Pfaffian, particle-hole Praffian, and anti-Pfaffian (aPf) candidate states, the hole-conjugate aPf state is unique in that it can produce a conductance plateau at G=(7/3)e^{2}/h by two fundamentally distinct mechanisms. We demonstrate that these mechanisms can be distinguished by shot noise measurements on the plateaus. We also determine distinct features of the conductance of the aPf state in the coherent regime. Our results can be used to experimentally single out the aPf order.

Multireference Ab Initio Calculations on Excited Electronic States of Carbazole-Based Organic Compounds for Thermally Activated Delayed Fluorescence.

The emerging technology of organic light-emitting diodes takes advantage of the thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) mechanism for improved efficiency. Carbazole-based organic molecules are suitable for TADF emission because of charge transfer excitations between the electron-donor carbazole and an electron-acceptor unit. Computational design of new TADF molecules with the desired properties is challenging because charge-transfer excitations cannot be predicted accurately by time-dependent density functional theory. Four groups of carbazole-based donor-acceptor molecules have been studied using multireference ab initio methods to understand the nature of excited electronic states. The state-averaged complete active space self-consistent field (SA-CASSCF) and the N-electron valence state perturbation theory (NEVPT2) were used to calculate energies and oscillator strengths for multiple excited electronic states. The number of active electrons and orbitals and the number of excited states included in state-averaged CASSCF were selected such that the accuracy of ab initio predictions could be improved systematically. The procedure introduced here for the calculation of multiple excited electronic states of TADF candidates can be used to accelerate the computational search for efficient TADF materials.

Charmonium χc0 and χc2 resonances in coupled-channel scattering from lattice QCD

In order to explore the spectrum of hidden-charm scalar and tensor resonances, we study meson-meson scattering with JPC=0++,2++ in the charmonium energy region using lattice QCD. Employing a light-quark mass corresponding to mπ≈391 MeV, we determine coupled-channel scattering amplitudes up to around 4100 MeV considering all kinematically relevant channels consisting of a pair of open-charm mesons or a charmonium meson with a light meson. A single isolated scalar resonance near 4000 MeV is found with large couplings to DD¯, DsD¯s and the kinematically closed D*D¯* channel. A single tensor resonance at a similar mass couples strongly to DD¯, DD¯* and D*D¯*. We compare the extracted resonances to contemporary experimental candidate states, previous lattice results and theoretical modeling. In contrast to several other studies, we do not find any significant feature in the scalar amplitudes between the ground state χc0(1P) and the resonance found around 4000 MeV. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

A Rapid Detection Method for Coal Ash Content in Tailings Suspension Based on Absorption Spectra and Deep Feature Extraction

Traditional visual detection methods that employ image data are often unstable due to environmental influences like lighting conditions. However, microfiber spectrometers are capable of capturing the specific wavelength characteristics of tail coal suspensions, effectively circumventing the instability caused by lighting variations. Utilizing spectral analysis techniques for detecting ash content in tail coal appears promising as a more stable method of indirect ash detection. In this context, this paper proposes a rapid detection method for the coal ash content in tailings suspensions based on absorption spectra and deep feature extraction. Initially, a preprocessing method, the inverse time weight function (ITWF), is presented, focusing on the intrinsic connection between the sedimentation phenomena of samples. This enables the model to learn and retain spectral time memory features, thereby enhancing its analytical capabilities. To better capture the spectral characteristics of tail coal suspensions, we designed the DSFN (DeepSpectraFusionNet) model. This model has an MSCR (multi-scale convolutional residual) module, addressing the conventional models’ oversight of the strong correlation between adjacent wavelengths in the spectrum. This facilitates the extraction of relative positional information. Additionally, to uncover potential temporal relationships in sedimentation, we propose a CLSM-CS (convolutional long-short memory with candidate states) module, designed to strengthen the capturing of local information and sequential memory. Ultimately, the method employs a fused convolutional deep classifier to integrate and reconstruct both temporal memory and positional features. This results in a model that effectively correlates the ash content of suspensions with their absorption spectral characteristics. Experimental results confirmed that the proposed model achieved an accuracy of 80.65%, an F1-score of 80.45%, a precision of 83.43%, and a recall of 80.65%. These results outperformed recent coal recognition models and classical temporal models, meeting the high standards required for industrial on-site ash detection tasks.

Adaptation of national legislation to EU law: experience of member states and candidate states for Ukraine

The article is analyzed the experience of EU member states and candidate states for EU accession in the sphere of adaptation of national legislation to EU law. The relevance of the topic is due to the fact that on June 23, 2022, Ukraine received the status of a candidate state for EU membership, and today it is very close to the beginning of the negotiation process on joining the EU. Negotiations on accession to the EU provide for the screening of the compliance of the national legislation of the candidate state with EU law in order to identify differences between them in each part of the negotiations. After the screening, direct negotiations begin on the conditions under which the candidate state accepts and applies EU law. Each candidate country operates according to a separate schedule and can be accepted into the EU as quickly as it can adapt its national legislation to EU law (a decisive criterion for EU membership). Adaptation of the national legislation of the candidate country to EU law is a long-term process that continues even after the state has acquired full membership in the EU. It is not only about the formal adaptation of legislation, but also about the creation of institutions that ensure its compliance and implementation in practice. Ukraine, which is at the beginning of the negotiation stage, will be helped to speed up its path to the EU by using the positive and taking into account the negative experience of other states in adapting national legislation to the EU acquis. The experience of the EU member states shows that they overcame the process of joining the EU and the related adaptation of national legislation through various legal and institutional mechanisms, but always in one form or another, success depended on the coordination of the actions of the parliament and the government. In particular, it is the development and implementation of programs for the adaptation of national legislation to EU law; establishment of special institutions responsible for European integration; consultative, methodical and financial assistance of the EU and member states; control of projects of normative legal acts for compliance with EU law; a high level of coordination of the activities of state authorities involved in the process of adapting legislation to EU law, etc. At the same time, the main guarantee of successful European integration is the presence of the political will to carry out the necessary reforms in the state, a quick transition from declaring intentions to become a full member of the EU to concrete actions along the way, as well as the support of civil society. The adaptation of national legislation to EU law as a process of bringing the laws of Ukraine and other normative legal acts into compliance with the EU acquis is, first of all, a separate direction of law-making activity that requires proper legal, institutional, methodological, organizational and personnel support. However, the experience of other countries shows that the approximation of the national legal system to the EU law should also include the application and interpretation of the law in the spirit of the EU legal standards.

French attitude to Ukraine’s EU membership: from indifference through securitisation to alternatives

ABSTRACT After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, EU enlargement rebounded from the sidelines to take centre stage in the European debate. The overall support of the EU towards Kyiv was framed by a sudden moral imperative to help Ukraine enter the EU even though it had been stuck in the perpetual waiting room of Eastern Partnership for quite some time. France repeatedly attempted to form a pan-European body and created the European Political Community (EPC), allegedly intended primarily to help Ukraine. However, France has had an ambiguous attitude to EU enlargement which is domestically a politically sensitive topic. We examined to what extent a rationalist or securitisation-driven stance to EU enlargement prevails in France. To do so, an analysis of the geopolitical ambitions of France in Central and Eastern Europe together with its pan-European projects such as EPC was carried out. Our analysis proves that despite all the political statements of support for the EU candidate states, the French ruling elite and society do not favour enlargement. Potential member states are securitised in the political discourse and potential cons of their entry are emphasised. Moreover, French president Emmanuel Macron openly stated he expects the accession process of Ukraine would take decades.

ANALYSIS OF THE EXPERIENCE OF SOME EU MEMBER STATES OR IN THE PROGRESS OF ACCESSION TO THE EU – ANTICIPATED CHALLENGES AND STRATEGIES FOR THE REPUBLIC OF MOLDOVA

The process of joining the European Union (EU) represents a complex and significant undertaking for the candidate countries, and the experience of this process can be influenced by a variety of socioeconomic, political and institutional factors. In the context of the Republic of Moldova, which has shown an increased interest in joining the EU, there is an opportunity to learn from the experience of other EU member states that have gone through the accession process in the past. These countries, which have already become EU members, or are candidate states, “have navigated” through similar stages of negotiation, implementation of reforms and adjustment to the standards and requirements of the European community. Their experiences provide a valuable source of information and perspectives for the Republic of Moldova in its own accession process. By analyzing the research and the problems encountered in the EU accession process in other member states, this article aims to identify learned lessons, anticipated challenges and the effective strategies that could be applied in the specific context of the Republic of Moldova.

Health policy developments in the Western Balkan Countries 2000-19: towards European Health and Health Care Policies.

Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia have committed to becoming European Union (EU) member states. This, among others, implies that candidate/potential candidate states adopt legally authorized EU policies, including health. The study aims to identify the main country-specific health policy areas critical to the EU accession health policy dimension and present the change in associated selected health indicators from 2000 to 2019. The study draws on published reports and analyses of official statistics over time and cross-country. Health care policy adherence to the European Commission's recommended country-specific health actions was classified into five health policy areas: financing, payment, organization, regulation and persuasion. Key health policy areas for Western Balkan countries (WBCs) were identified. Health progress or lack thereof in catching up to the EU15 population health, health expenditure and the number of health professionals are measured. The European Commission prioritized financing and regulation for all WBCs in the five policy areas. Nine of the 18 analyzed selected health indicators showed divergence, and the other nine converged towards the EU15 averages. WBCs continue to face diverse public health challenges in improving life expectancy at birth, death rates caused by circulatory system diseases, malignant neoplasms, traffic accidents, psychoactive substance use, tuberculosis incidence, tobacco smoking prevalence and public-sector health expenditure. By 2019, there is limited evidence of WBCs catching up to the average EU15 health levels and health care policies. Closer attention towards EU health and health care policies would be favourable.

The Cultural Genocide that Resulted from the Agreement between Macedonia and Greece Concluded in Prespa Village ("Prespa Agreement", 2018) and the Process of Assimilation of the Macedonian Identity ("Bulgarization") as a Result of the Dismantling and Annihilation of the National Identity of Ethnic Macedonians

In this paper, we have shown how Macedonia, in its misperception that Security Council Resolutions 817 (1993) and 845 (1995) were legal UN acts, nonsensically negotiated for three decades over the legally impermissible sovereign matter of national identity, virtually not understanding that the legal identity is the basic element of sovereignty and the juridical personality of any state and at the same time an inviolable category of "national identity of a sovereign people" (which is an essence of the cultural sovereignty). In their apparent ignorance, all Macedonian governments didn’t notice that the Macedonian state without the legal identity(as a de facto, even de jure nameless State) was admitted to the UN membership by an error and an omission (deli ct of omission)committed by the main political bodies of the UN when they admitted Macedonia under prohibited additional conditions extraneous to the legally defined scope of general UN membership conditions, prescribed by Article 4 (paragraph 1) of the UN Charter. One of the two illegal additional conditions that was imposed on the candidate state for admission to the UN was to negotiate with another state about its sovereign legal identity, that is, about its constitutional name (that obviously constitute essential internal matter within domestic jurisdiction), which was disputed by the UN organs (whereas the second additional condition of the UN membership was mandatory usage of the provisional reference (the FYROM). With the imposition of the reference, UN basically created a ban on using the proper constitutional name of the UN candidate and replaced that constitutional identity with a temporary vague reference-denomination (only for the needs of UN). Not noticing that UN had committed a tort of omission and that in the imposition of supplementary additional(and illegal) conditions, UN organs actually exceeded their powers (committing an ultra vires act), Macedonians continued baseless negotiations over its constitutional name. After UNSC resolutions of 1993, when Greece was unable to initiate a new UNSC resolution (since problem was not of the security nature, as was realized by more and even more UN members) Macedonia naively continued with negotiations, first with the conclusion of the legally controversial Interim Accord (1995) that in essence provided an expansion of the range of the sovereign identity issues on the table, and finally Macedonian ignorance resulted to the conclusion of the Prespa agreement (PA) as a complete and comprehensive re-definition of the (previous-original) Macedonian national identity.

European Union media policy: a tool for strengthening members relationship

European Union media policy has evolved significantly over the years, serving as a powerful tool for fostering stronger relationships among its member states. The development of this policy can be divided into several distinct phases, each reflecting the changing landscape of media and the EU’s expansion. EU media policy aims to establish a common framework for media services, facilitating the free movement of audiovisual content across borders. The EU recognized the need to compete with non-European productions and introduced programs to support and promote European works, providing essential funding to bolster the industry. EU media policy has played a pivotal role in strengthening relationships among member states by promoting a unified media market, facilitating cross-border content sharing, and fostering a sense of common identity through media. However, it also faces ongoing challenges in adapting to the fast-paced media landscape and accommodating the diverse needs of member and candidate states. The article explores the multifaceted role of EU media policy in fostering closer ties among member states and highlights ongoing challenges in the media field.

Full Classification of Transport on an Equilibrated 5/2 Edge via Shot Noise.

The nature of the bulk topological order of the 5/2 non-Abelian fractional quantum Hall state and the steady state of its edge are long-studied questions. The most promising non-Abelian model bulk states are the Pfaffian (Pf), anti-Pffafian (APf), and particle-hole symmetric Pfaffian (PHPf). Here, we propose to employ a set of dc current-current correlations (electrical shot noise) in order to distinguish among the Pf, APf, and PHPf candidate states, as well as to determine their edge thermal equilibration regimes: full vs partial. Using other tools, measurements of GaAs platforms have already indicated consistency with the PHPf state. Our protocol, realizable with available experimental tools, is based on fully electrical measurements.

National and foreign experience in determining the legal status of guardianship bodies

In the scientific article, the author conducted a scientific study of the peculiarities of the legal status of guardianship and guardianship bodies in Ukraine and other countries. On the basis of the conducted research, the author came to the conclusion that guardianship and guardianship bodies are distinguished by various authorities - local bodies of state executive power and local self-government bodies, separate departments of these bodies, services for children, which function under local state administrations and local councils, and as well as advisory and advisory support bodies. At the same time, the scientific literature notes the inexpediency of such a wide list of guardianship and guardianship bodies and the need to empower these bodies only with services for children. In the family law doctrine, there is no unanimity regarding the definition of the powers of the guardianship and guardianship authorities, which relate to the protection of the rights and legitimate interests of the child; they are contained in special legislation, which, however, does not fully correspond to each other and provides for the presence of a number of bodies that do not actually function or carry out activities formally, without having the appropriate competence (commissions for the protection of children's rights, departments of local state administrations), or at the same time function two bodies that are subordinate to each other (local state administrations and services for children). In the family law doctrine, there is no certainty in the issue of recognition of guardianship bodies and care by subjects of family relations; some scientists attribute them to the subjects of administrative-procedural relations or to the participants of legal relations of a complex nature, which are partly family, while others distinguish them as subjects of family relations. Analogues of guardianship and guardianship bodies in the states of the European Union and candidate states for EU membership are various types of bodies, including quasi-judicial ones, which perform both the functions of appointing, approving or dismissing a guardian, as well as supervising the observance of the rights of the child by its guardian (in France these functions are divided between the "family council” and the "guardianship judge”). Also, these bodies make decisions in family disputes regarding determining a child's surname, establishing his origin, his upbringing and maintenance.

Foreign Trade Relations of Ukraine in the Context of the russian-Ukrainian War

Abstract. The article focuses on the analysis of Ukraine’s foreign trade flows in the context of the war and assesses the adaptability and reorientation of export and import operations with major partner countries and regions. The authors analyse the dynamics of exports and imports by the main groups of goods and services, highlight the main structural changes, emphasise the increase of the European Union’s share in Ukraine’s foreign trade, and outline the possibilities of trade diversification through updated agreements with strategic partners. The article indicates that the solidarity with Ukraine, trade liberalisation decisions and the suspension of trade remedies by the EU have led to an increase in exports and the establishment of new logistics corridors, but have also caused a rapid increase in exports of certain agricultural products and changes in the markets for these products in Ukraine’s neighbouring countries. The article outlines the prospects for cooperation with the Global South countries. It is noted that in the long term, the restoration and expansion of Ukraine’s economic positions in the markets of the Global South would be primarily possible if Ukraine realises its status as an EU candidate state, which entails a focus on the practical implementation of the goals, principles and instruments of the EU trade policy. The authors conclude that since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Ukraine’s foreign trade flows have changed significantly in terms of both commodity and geographical structure. At the same time, Ukrainian foreign trade and the agricultural sector, in particular, have demonstrated high adaptability to wartime risks. Furthermore, the authors provide a number of relevant recommendations for Ukraine’s further foreign trade activities. Keywords: foreign trade, geographical and commodity structure of exports and imports, partner countries, strategic partnerships.