Exact List Research Articles

Study of Agrobiologic and Pomological Characteristics of Some Aboriginal Varieties of Apple Tree Cultivated in the Territory of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic

The article presents the agrobiologic and pomological characteristics of indigenous apple varieties cultivated in the territory of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic. The origin of each variety, average fruit weight, disease susceptibility, yield per hectare and tasting prices are described in detail here. The article presents the history of the development of fruit growing in Nakhchivan, as well as what foreign travelers say about Nakhchivan, and the history of gardening in Nakhchivan goes back to ancient times. According to travelers, the history of fruit growing in Nakhchivan dates back 3,500 years or even earlier. For the first time, we studied the exact list of apple varieties common in Nakhchivan, noted their names and synonyms. Also, the varieties and forms of apple trees cultivated in Nakhchivan were grouped into local varieties, introduced varieties, folk selection varieties and newly discovered forms. As a result of the research, indigenous varieties and forms of apple trees cultivated on the territory of the autonomous republic were grouped according to their ripening time. The pomological characteristics of the indicated varieties and forms of apple trees are given in detail.

Sacralization of natural and cultural objects in Belarus (by the example of the well near the Pаručniki village, Biešankovičy district)

This publication, based on archival documents, examines the process of sacralization of the well near the Pаručniki village, Biešankovičy district. This case is an illustrative example of the process of emergence and functioning of sacred sites on the territory of Belarus. Archival documents give us a unique opportunity to learn many aspects that remain unknown or little-known: how sacralization took place, how the tradition of veneration was formed and developed, how the shrines functioned, who took care of them, what was the fate of the donations, what was the attitude of society, the church and the authorities. Using the case of a well near the Pаručniki village with additional materials, the author proposed a model of the emergence and existence of folk shrines: sacred precedent; verification of sacred precedent; sacralization of the object; cultural formalization of the object; legitimization of the shrine; the formation of a tradition of veneration; transformation of the shrine; the decline of the shrine and its subsequent disappearance/restoration. The appearance of the image of the cross in the frozen well on the Feast of the Epiphany in 1894 was a sacred precedent. People began to consider the water healing after repeated occurrences of images of the cross. Partially confirmed rumors of healing were the reason for a mass pilgrimage to the well. The largest number of pilgrims was recorded on Easter. Archival documents have preserved the exact list of donations that were left at the well. Mostly pilgrims brought money and linen and wool textiles. The donations were managed by the inhabitants of the village of Paručniki. The donations were later transferred to the parish church in Biešankovičy. Local residents asked the church to officially recognize the shrine, but a special commission created by the governor didn’t confirm the healing properties of the water. Official recognition of the folk shrine by the church and state authorities was an important condition for the preservation and development of the tradition of veneration of natural and cultural objects in Belarus in the second half of the 19th century. The local authorities took measures to stop the veneration of the well in Paručniki: a ban on visiting, propaganda of the idea that the water was harmful. The well was never officially recognized, and its mass veneration soon ceased. The holy well has not survived to this day, but the author localized its location. The memory of the holy spring (well) was preserved only in one family in the Pаručniki village among the descendants of one of the direct participants in the events of 1894–1895.

The Missing Letters J. R. R. Tolkien Received from Derek J. Price and R. M. Wilson: Addendum to “Further Notes on J. R. R. Tolkien’s Photostats of The Equatorie of the Planetis (MS Peterhouse 75.I)”


 In 2021, Andoni Cossio suggested cataloguing The Equatorie of the Planetis (MS Peterhouse 75.I, c. 1393) under “Section A” in Tolkien’s Library: An Annotated Checklist, by Oronzo Cilli. One year later, Cossio unearthed the exact list of MS Peterhouse 75.I folios J. R. R. Tolkien had once owned in the form of photostats (2022). In this second article, Cossio alludes the to the hypothetical existence of correspondence that Tolkien exchanged with Derek J. Price and R. M. Wilson during the preparation phase of Price and Wilson’s edition of The Equatorie of the Planetis (1955). New evidence gathered from Maggs Bros. Ltd. private archive (1991b), as well as auction (Phillips 1988; Sotheby’s 1995) and sales (Maggs Bros. Ltd. 1991a) catalogues demonstrate the existence of epistles and other material Tolkien received, though the brief, and often inaccurate, descriptions of the lots and items do not determine Tolkien’s exact contributions. However, the catalogues provide additional information about the timeline of Tolkien’s participation, and disclose that Price was the one to approach Tolkien in the first place. This note will elucidate those aspects and further complement Cossio’s (2022) article in other ways.

The BRICS in the sustainable agenda: Performance analysis of ESG indices in the financial markets in Brazil, China, India and South Africa

The term ESG emerged in the report of the Global Compact (UN) in partnership with the World Bank, entitled Who Cares Wins: Connecting Financial Markets to a Changing World. However, the concept and measurement associated with ESG is not a fixed concept and there is no consensus on the exact list of issues and their materiality, but it is certain that it affects the value creation of a company. In 2006, a grouping was created, incorporating the foreign policy of Brazil, Russia, India and China, the bloc focuses on solving socioeconomic problems and using its competitive advantages, the BRICS has a proposal for sustainable development and consequently ESG. This study is justified by the fact that several empirical evidences show the benefits of the ESG agenda in the market, however, there is a gap when considering developing countries. In this article, a comparison was made between returns and performances through the average return, then the risk measurement measures are presented, namely variance, standard deviation, volatility and value at risk, in addition to the calculation of covariance, correlation, beta and drawdown, with data from the MSCI ESG Leaders index. We confirm the theory of long-term gains since in the period studied the average profitability of the ESG indices were higher in all countries compared to the broad index. As for volatility risk measures, our study confirmed the hypothesis that the risks of larger companies are greater than those of ESG companies.

Systematic Item Content and Overlap Analysis of Self-Reported Multiple Sleep Disorder Screening Questionnaires in Adults.

Sleep disorders are defined on the basis of diagnostic criteria presented in medical classifications. However, no consensus has emerged on the exact list of operational symptoms that should be systematically investigated in the field of sleep medicine. We propose a systematic analysis of sleep symptoms that figure in a set of self-reported multiple sleep disorder screening questionnaires for adult populations, to identify the content overlap of symptoms that probe the presence of central sleep symptoms, and to highlight the potential level of heterogeneity among sleep disorder questionnaires. The method comprises three steps: (i) the selection of self-reported multiple sleep disorder screening questionnaires; (ii) item extraction and selection; (iii) the extraction of symptoms from items. Frequency of sleep symptoms and content overlap (Jaccard Index) are analyzed. We extracted 469 items that provide 60 different symptoms from 12 questionnaires. Insomnia, somnolence, and sleep-related breathing symptoms were found in all the questionnaires. The mean overlap among all questionnaires evaluated with the Jaccard Index is 0.44, i.e., moderate similarity. Despite limitations related to the selection of questionnaires and the symptom extraction and harmonization, this study underlines the need to standardize sleep symptom contents for sleep medicine in order to enhance the practicability, reliability, and validity of sleep disorder diagnoses.

Levers of state regulation for agricultural production

Ukrainian legislation provides a range of tools to intervene in agricultural markets, including customs protection, non-tariff trade regulation and various forms of domestic price regulation. The Agrarian Fund is the state body responsible for the implementation of domestic price interventions. The purpose of the study is to ex-amine the main support levers for state regulation of agricultural production. The theoretical and methodological basis of the study consists of the following meth-ods: organisational, strategic and legal. It was concluded that there is a need to in-tegrate the issues of sustainable development - analysis and planning of state reg-ulation of agriculture. Official minimum and maximum intervention prices for products that are "subject to state regulation" have been set for procurement. The exact list of these products and the periods during which regulated prices be valid are determined by specific government regulations. The minimum prices do not play the role of guaranteed prices, but serve as indicative minimum prices for pri-vate market players. The minimum intervention prices must not exceed the do-mestic market price level, in line with the World Trade Organisation domestic sup-port commitments of Ukraine.

Omics approaches to discover pathophysiological pathways contributing to human pain.

Omics approaches to discover pathophysiological pathways contributing to human pain.

Problems of the realization of the requirements of Article 6 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms in the appeal of cases of administrative offenses

The article examines the problems of the realization of the requirements of Article 6 of the Convention for the Protection ofHuman Rights and Fundamental Freedoms in the appeal of cases of administrative offenses. It is emphasized that control of the appellatecourt over compliance with the requirements of Art. 6 of the Convention by the court of first instance is an important task to ensurethe implementation of the requirements of a fair trial. It should be noted that, in accordance with judicial practice, the violations by thecourt of first instance of the requirements of Art. 6 of the Convention are deemed to be a significant violation of the Criminal ProcedureCode of Ukraine, cause the reversal of the sentence with the referral of a case of administrative offenses to a new trial. In particular,these violations include: sentencing by an illegal court in violation of the rules of jurisdiction (the right to a court established by law),violation of impartiality of the court (sentencing by a court, which previously expressed on guilt and evaluation of evidence), violationof the right to defense (including any manifestations of violation of this right, that is trial without the participation of defense counsel,with the participation of defense counsel, but without effective legal assistance, failure to give the defendant the final statement or theright to participate in debates, absence of an attorney during the final statement, failure to report 5 days in advance about the day, timeand place of the court hearing of the court of first instance).It is concluded that it is necessary to improve significantly the legislation and law enforcement practice in order to realize therequirements of a fair trial during the appeal of cases of administrative offenses. Further development of the appeal in line with therequirements of Art. 6 of the Convention should take place either in the direction of specifying the exact list of cases of necessity ofjudicial investigation according to the rules of the court of first instance, or by recognizing that the modern appeal is not able to elimi -nate any violation of Art. 6 of the Convention, as this is possible only if the case is re-examined by a court of first instance. However,both options have significant disadvantages. The first one entails some organizational and technical problems associated with ensuringthe appearance of witnesses from remote areas, the need to provide all district courts with the means of communication to ensure theinterrogation of witnesses and victims, whose appearance in court of appeal is difficult to ensure. The second one entails the shortco -mings associated with the increase in the terms of the proceedings, and so on.

Evaluation of the HIV-1 drug resistance to elsulfavirine and the effectiveness of it among Russian treatment-naïve patients

The aim of the study: to analyze the prevalence of resistance mutations to elsulfavirine and to evaluate the effectiveness of it among HIV-infected treatment-naïve patients in real clinical practice.Materials and methods. The study included 578 patients with HIV infection, which divided into 3 groups. The first group is 354 HIV-infected treatment-naïve patients for whom HIV-1 nucleotide sequences were obtained as part of routine drug resistance testing. The second study group included 111 HIV-infected treatment-naïve patients, tested for drug resistance before the antiretroviral therapy containing elsulfavirine. The third study group included 113 HIV-infected treatment-naïve patients, each of whom was assigned a treatment regimen containing elsulfavirine without prior drug resistance testing. The observation period for patients of the second and third groups who received treatment was 24 weeks. To assess the effectiveness of antiretroviral therapy in patients, viral load, CD4+ T-cell counts, and adherence to therapy were assessed. HIV-1 subtypes and drug resistance mutations were determined using the Stanford HIV Resistance Database (v. 8.9-1). To clarify the results of subtyping, phylogenetic analysis of nucleotide sequences was carried out using the MEGA program (v. 6.0).Results. The prevalence of mutations associated with decreased susceptibility to elsulfavirine among HIV-infected treatment-naïve patients was 1.7% and 4.5% for the first and second groups of patients, respectively. All of the patients have only single resistance mutations which, according to the results of preclinical studies, cannot cause drug resistance. The use of elsulfavirine in real clinical practice among treatment-naïve patients has demonstrated good virological and immunological efficacy of the drug. As a result of 24 weeks of therapy in patients of the second group, no treatment ineffectiveness, and the development of drug resistance were observed. Among the patients of the third group, 6 patients (5.3%) have the virological failure of therapy associated with the resistance to the used drugs. All patients with virological failure had a resistance mutation profile associated with a high level of drug resistance to one of the drugs in the treatment regimen, lamivudine. Additionally, 1 patient had a combination of mutations that reduce susceptibility to elsulfavirine, and 4 patients had mutations that can reduce susceptibility to elsulfavirine in combination with other mutations.Conclusion. The low prevalence of mutations associated with a decrease in susceptibility to elsulfavirine and the absence of combinations of mutations make it possible to predict the successful use of this drug for Russian treatment-naïve patients. Reported cases of virological failure of antiretroviral therapy are difficult to interpret in the context of elsulfavirine due to the lack of an exact list of mutations and their combinations, and associations with the degree of resistance to it. This study describes for the first time the mutation profiles in patients with virological failure of therapy containing elsulfavirine and demonstrates the necessity of the further study of drug resistance profile to drug in vitro and in vivo.

A Study of Multi-Task and Region-Wise Deep Learning for Food Ingredient Recognition.

Food recognition has captured numerous research attention for its importance for health-related applications. The existing approaches mostly focus on the categorization of food according to dish names, while ignoring the underlying ingredient composition. In reality, two dishes with the same name do not necessarily share the exact list of ingredients. Therefore, the dishes under the same food category are not mandatorily equal in nutrition content. Nevertheless, due to limited datasets available with ingredient labels, the problem of ingredient recognition is often overlooked. Furthermore, as the number of ingredients is expected to be much less than the number of food categories, ingredient recognition is more tractable in the real-world scenario. This paper provides an insightful analysis of three compelling issues in ingredient recognition. These issues involve recognition in either image-level or region level, pooling in either single or multiple image scales, learning in either single or multi-task manner. The analysis is conducted on a large food dataset, Vireo Food-251, contributed by this paper. The dataset is composed of 169,673 images with 251 popular Chinese food and 406 ingredients. The dataset includes adequate challenges in scale and complexity to reveal the limit of the current approaches in ingredient recognition.

СОЦИАЛЬНАЯ ЗАЩИТА ВЕТЕРАНОВ БОЕВЫХ ДЕЙСТВИЙ В РЕСПУБЛИКЕ МОРДОВИЯ: ПРАКТИКА И ЕЕ СОВЕРШЕНСТВОВАНИЕ

The article analyzes the concept of the status of «veteran» and «combat veteran» occurs in accordance with the legislation of the Russian Federation. The authors consider the definition and main directions of social protection of this category of persons. It is noted that in the Russian Federation, regions can independently set benefits in increased amounts or introduce additional benefits for veterans. Therefore, the exact list of social support measures may differ in different regions of the Russian Federation. The authors present a detailed analysis of social support measures for combat veterans in the Republic of Mordovia. These include housing benefits, land incentives, pensions, tax benefits to veterans, as well as other types of benefits and measures of social support of veterans of combat operations in RM (setting the phone in priority mode; care in medical facilities of the Ministry of defence, Ministry of interior and other relevant agencies; provision of artificial limbs and orthopedic goods on the conditions stipulated by law, etc.) At the same time, the authors note that in General, the system of social protection of combat veterans needs to be improved in the following aspects: the development of legislative acts that expand the regulatory framework for social support, protection of the rights and legitimate interests of combat veterans; the development of a program-target method of experience in social management of the sphere of social protection and social support of combat veterans, protection of their rights; informing combat veterans and their family members about the possibilities of implementing rights and guarantees through positive social interaction with social management entities, state authorities, specialised organisations, etc. The authors conclude that the system of social protection of combat veterans in the Republic of Mordovia includes a system of measures to implement social guarantees regulated at the Federal and regional levels, as well as the creation of conditions necessary for their normal life, including reducing the negative impact of social risks.

ESG and Responsible Institutional Investing Around the World: A Critical Review

This survey examines the vibrant academic literature on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing. While there is no consensus on the exact list of ESG issues, responsible investors increasingly assess stocks in their portfolios based on nonfinancial data on environmental impact (e.g., carbon emissions), social impact (e.g., employee satisfaction), and governance attributes (e.g., board structure). The objective is to reduce exposure to investments that pose greater ESG risks or to influence companies to become more sustainable. One active area of research at present involves assessing portfolio risk exposure to climate change. This literature review focuses on institutional investors, which have grown in importance such that they have now become the largest holders of shares in public companies globally. Historically, institutional investors tended to concentrate their ESG efforts mostly on corporate governance (the “G” in ESG). These efforts included seeking to eliminate provisions that restrict shareholder rights and enhance managerial power, such as staggered boards, supermajority rules, golden parachutes, and poison pills.

Fungal and Bacterial Diversity of Airway Microbiota in Adults with Cystic Fibrosis: Concordance Between Conventional Methods and Ultra-Deep Sequencing, and Their Practical use in the Clinical Laboratory.

Given the complexity of the airway microbiota in the respiratory tract of cystic fibrosis (CF) patients, it seems crucial to compile the most exhaustive and exact list of the microbial communities inhabiting CF airways. The aim of the present study was to compare the bacterial and fungal diversity of sputa from adult CF patients during non-exacerbation period by culture-based and molecular methods, and ultra-deep-sequencing (UDS). Sputum samples from four CF patients were cultured and analysed by DNA extractions followed by terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis through resolution of bacterial ribosomal gene (rDNA) fragments, and cloning plus sequencing of part of fungal rRNA genes. These approaches were compared with UDS method targeting 16S rDNA gene and the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) 2 region of rDNA. A total of 27 bacterial and 18 fungal genera were detected from the four patients. Five (18%) and 3 (16%) genera were detected by culture for bacteria and fungi, respectively, 9 (33%) and 3 (16%) by first generation sequencing (FGS) methods, and 26 (96%) and 18 (100%) by UDS. The mean number of genera detected by UDS per patient was statistically higher than by culture or FGS methods. Patients with severe airway disease as assessed by standard spirometry exhibited a reduced fungal and bacterial diversity. UDS approach evaluates more extensively the diversity of fungal and bacterial flora compared with cultures. However, it currently remains difficult to routinely use UDS mainly because of the lack of standardization, and the current cost of this method.

A model to Estimate the Implicit Values of Housing Attributes by Applying the Hedonic Pricing Method

Many scholars focused on the location based attributes rather than the non-location factors in decision making on land prices. Further, new research studies have identified the importance of the non-location attributes with the location factors. Many studies suggest that, many attributes exist which affects the housing price. Since the attributes involved and dominant for a particular case differs from one situation to the other, there cannot be an exact list of attributes. Yet, identification of factors that determine housing price and their relationships and the level of influence have poorly understood in planning and property development in the context of Sri Lanka. This study attempts to address what make householders to decide on housing price and application of hedonic pricing approach to estimate the implicit price of housing attributes in context of Sri Lanka. A sample study of selected fifty (50) single house transactions in Maharagama urban neighborhood area has been utilized to illustrate the applicability of the hedonic pricing model. As a methodology, correlation analysis has been carried out to study the degree of relationship between the housing price and the independent variables. The attributes which correlate with housing prices, the study identified the most significant attributes. A model was developed to estimate the future house price by applying the pricing model which is incorporated with these attributes. A hedonic house price model derived from multiple liner regression analysis was developed for the purpose. The findings reveal that six attributes as design type of the house, distance to the local road, quality of Infrastructure, garden size, number of the bed rooms and property age are contributed to estimate the implicit value of Housing property. The model developed would be used to identify implicit values of houses located in urban neighborhood area of Sri Lanka.

Religion-based urbanization process in Italy: statistical evidence from demographic and economic data

This paper analyzes some economic and demographic features of Italians living in cities containing a Saint name in their appellation (hagiotoponyms). Demographic data come from the surveys done in the 15th (2011) Italian Census, while the economic wealth of such cities is explored through their recent [2007-2011] aggregated tax income (ATI). This cultural problem is treated from various points of view. First, the exact list of hagiotoponyms is obtained through linguistic and religiosity criteria. Next, it is examined how such cities are distributed in the Italian regions. Demographic and economic perspectives are also offered at the Saint level, i.e. calculating the cumulated values of the number of inhabitants and the ATI, "per Saint", as well as the corresponding relative values taking into account the Saint popularity. On one hand, frequency-size plots and cumulative distribution function plots, and on the other hand, scatter plots and rank-size plots between the various quantities are shown and discussed in order to find the importance of correlations between the variables. It is concluded that rank-rank correlations point to a strong Saint effect, which explains what actually Saint-based toponyms imply in terms of comparing economic and demographic data.

Distribution of Parasitic Nematodes in Japan with Host–Parasite Relationship of Lizards ofPlestiodon(Reptilia: Squamata: Scincidae)

ABSTRACT: Four Japanese species of Plestiodon (Reptilia: Scincidae, formerly Eumeces): Plestiodon japonicus, Plestiodon finitimus, Plestiodon latiscutatus, and Plestiodon oshimensis oshimensis collected from Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu of the Japanese main islands and Amamioshima Island of the Ryukyus, Japan, were examined to make a more exact list of the parasitic nematodes and to reveal their distribution patterns. Six nematode species were found, including 2 species of Heterakidae (Meteterakis japonica and Meteterakis amamiensis), 1 species of Rhabdiasidae (Kurilonema markovi), 1 species of Trichostrongylidae (Oswaldocruzia socialis), 1 species of Cosmocercidae (Cosmocercidae gen. sp.), and 1 species of Pharyngodonidae (Pharyngodonidae gen. sp.). Six new hosts were recorded and 19 new localities were reported. Meteterakis amamiensis and K. markovi were distributed on both sides of Watase's line, which is known as a geographical distribution boundary between the Oriental and Palaearctic regions in Japan...

Tips for Advancing to Dean of Students

Tips for Advancing to Dean of Students

Policy on Planning and Promotion of Development of Supporting Industries for Vietnam

This research aims at analyzing aspects determining supporting industries (SIs) to serve the task of planning and developing such industries. Analyses show that Vietnamese SIs are very small and unable to help the manufacturing sector increase its added value and join the global value chain. The results find the following culprits: the plan and policies on SI development are not compatible with main trends of market specialization and global value chain; chain of domestic industrial production is till lacking; and inter-industry cooperation is poor. Policy recommendations, therefore, are as follows: establishing the exact list of SIs that help increase the added value of local industrial production and integrate into the global value chain; and planning space, time, track, and methods needed for carrying out such policies. Besides the development plan, the paper also offers suggestions about policies to promote SIs, such as legal infrastructure for SI development, design of a value chain for SIs, building of clusters of SIs, and mechanism for promoting SI development.

Health of children born to mothers aged 40 years or over, analyses of two national cohort studies

BackgroundIn the UK in 2005 there were 10 000 births to women aged 40 years or over. This phenomenon of delaying child birth is on the increase. There is a...

Numerical characterizations of some integral domains

Let R be an integral domain. If R satisfies some finiteness conditions, an algorithm that produces the exact list of all distinct overrings of R is established. Then numerical characterizations of several classes of integral domains are obtained.