Weak Ones Research Articles

The legal vow, the oath and the treaty in the political and legal everyday life of the East Slavic state formations of the X‒XIV centuries

The research is devoted to the problems of law-making treaties and the breadth of their distribution in the East Slavic state formations of the X‒XIV centuries. The need to study the terms vow and oath is related to the peculiarities of their own Old Rus terminology, where the words denoting the vow (swearing, “khrestne ciluvannya»), oath («rota», «khodyty do roty») and treaty (“ryad”, “ryad polojiti”) are used on the meaning of the same phenomena. By swearing an oath on the terms of the treaty. Therefore, all three terms should be used, although in general it is a single phenomenon. The most studied among all law-making treaties of East Slavic state formations of the X‒XIV centuries. there are international treaties that make up a large array of both original texts and their copies, extracts from treaty texts, as well as mentions of such treaties in chronicles. About 200 treaties are known, of which several dozen have remained more or less complete. A separate independent group among international treaties are peace treaties, both because of their content and in the fact that these treaties are almost impossible to divide into international and inter-princely. Another large and fairly well-studied group of law-making treaties are interprincely treaties. The division of groups of international and inter-princely treaties is partly extremely diffi cult, as their individual varieties are almost identical. Exclusively among the inter-princely should include: a) treaties, the rules of which were of all-Rus (or common to the principality) meaning, establishing universally binding rules (common name at the time ‒ «na ustruyeniye mira») and b) treaties, which enshrined the terms of princely rule. Territorially, inter-princely treaties were spread in all areas of East Slavic state formations of the X‒XIV centuries, both during the reign of the Rurikoviches and during the reign of the fi rst Gedeminovichs. It should be noted that international treaties are usually referred to in the sources as treaties (“ryad”), and inter-princely treaties are more based on the oaths that binded their conclusion («khrestne ciluvannya», «rota»). Therefore, in historical science, they received another name ‒ «Khrestociluval’ni gramoty». Two large blocks of treaties are the treaties of princes with their subjects. A distinction should be made between the political treaties of princes and the “viche”, which embodied the opinion of society and was its representative (the so-called treaties of princes with the people) and the treaties of princes with their servants (so-called free servants, “slugi volnyye”) and boyars. The latter category of treaties is a kind of vassal treaty, but they had many diff erences from such an institution in Western Europe. Both types of treaties are usually mentioned in the sources as oaths, although several fulltext records of princes with the “viche” survived, and for treaties with boyars, the sources themselves know that the reason for dismissal of the boyar could be a breach of treaty by the prince. The least studied among the law-making treaties are vassal treaties and treaties of personal dependence, in which the suzerains were free people and aristocrats. Similarly, intra-family and inter-family contracts have been little studied, although their existence is known from sources. In both cases, the limited subject matter is due to the extremely small source base: although more than a thousand birch-bark manuscripts have been found in the last 70 years, the number of private documents found remains insignifi cant. It is concluded that the complex cellular structure of East Slavic society, where each cell was the smallest social unit. In such a society, vertical connections are very weak and horizontal ones are complex. The cells of this cellular structure do not have hard walls and a person can belong to several neighboring cells. The closets themselves are attracted to each other on the basis of contractual relations. It is noted that this model of society has much in common with the so-called Catalan pactism (pactisme). Key words: East Slavic, Kyivan Rus, Old Rus, Medieval Law, Old Rus Law, Treaty, Legal Oath, International treaty, Source of Law, state formations, Legal history.

Hydro-geochemical characterization and suitability analysis of spring water of the Mai Khola Watershed, Ilam, eastern Nepal

The interaction of different physical and chemical factors as well as anthropogenic activities influences the chemistry of groundwater. The hydro-geochemical assessment of the groundwater is the basic part of the water resources management and its assessment in regards to its usability is considered vital. The study involves the measurement of physicochemical parameters (pH, EC, EH, DO, TDS) of the observed 147 springs and the ionic concentration of the representative 32 springs along the Mai Khola Watershed using standard analytical procedure. The results of the physicochemical parameters and ionic concentration were analysed and interpreted using different indices and graphical methods. The physicochemical parameter suggests that spring water is weakly acidic to alkaline and the measured EC and TDS suggest low interaction of rocks and water therein. The piper diagram indicates Ca2+ and Mg2+ together (alkaline earth metals) dominate over combined Na+ and K+ (alkali metals) and Cl- and SO42- (strong acids) predominate over HCO3- (weak ones). The Gibbs plot also satisfies the movement of groundwater from the precipitation domain to the rock-water interaction domain. The groundwater in this area is derived from a shallow aquifer with low rock-water interaction and the water is good for drinking purpose and excellent to good for irrigation. The spring water in the study area possesses no threat to quality deterioration, however proper management and conservation plans are required to maintain the quality of the water.

Oligonucleotides Isolation and Separation-A Review on Adsorbent Selection.

Oligonucleotides have many important applications, including as primers in polymerase chain reactions and probes for DNA sequencing. They are proposed as a diagnostic and prognostic tool for various diseases and therapeutics in antisense therapy. Accordingly, it is necessary to develop liquid chromatography and solid phase extraction methods to separate oligonucleotides and isolate them from biological samples. Many reviews have been written about the determination of these compounds using the separation technique or sample preparation for their isolation. However, presumably, there are no articles that critically review the adsorbents used in liquid chromatography or solid phase extraction. The present publication reviews the literature from the last twenty years related to supports (silica, polymers, magnetic nanoparticles) and their modifications. The discussed issues concern reversed phase (alkyl, aromatic, cholesterol, mixed ligands), ion-exchange (strong and weak ones), polar (silica, polyhydroxy, amide, zwitterionic), and oligonucleotide-based adsorbents.

Cassava [Manihot Esculenta (Crantz)] Germplasm for Effective Conservation

An experiment was conducted to characterize the cassava germplasm of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Plant Genetic Resources Research Institute (CSIR-PGRRI), Ghana to help in effective conservation. A total of 210 cassava accessions being conserved at the field genebank of the CSIR – PGRRI were used for the experiment in October, 2014 and data collected in October, 2015 on five morphological traits comprising of plant height, growth type, height of first branch, levels of branching and branch angle. The five traits revealed variability among the cassava accessions. Based on the variability, the 210 accessions were classified into four categories namely short-spreading, tall-spreading, short-non-spreading and tall-nonspreading. Four different planting distances were suggested for the different groups for effective conservation. The recommended planting distances were 75 x 75 cm, 75 x 100 cm, 100 x 100 cm and 100 x 150 cm groups based on height and spreading nature of the cassava accessions. Cassava accessions from different planting distances groups should not be planted adjacent each other to avoid suppressing of weaker ones.

Are the folk utilitarian about animals?

Robert Nozick famously raised the possibility that there is a sense in which both deontology and utilitarianism are true: deontology applies to humans while utilitarianism applies to animals. In recent years, there has been increasing interest in such a hybrid views of ethics. Discussions of this Nozickian Hybrid View, and similar approaches to animal ethics, often assume that such an approach reflects the commonsense view, and best captures common moral intuitions. However, recent psychological work challenges this empirical assumption. We review evidence suggesting that the folk is deontological all the way down—it is just that the moral side constraints that protect animals from harm are much weaker than those that protect humans. In fact, it appears that people even attribute some deontological protections, albeit extremely weak ones, to inanimate objects. We call this view Multi-level Weighted Deontology. While such empirical findings cannot show that the Nozickian Hybrid View is false, or that it is unjustified, they do remove its core intuitive support. That support belongs to Multi-level Weighted Deontology, a view that is also in line with the view that Nozick himself seemed to favour. To complicate things, however, we also review evidence that our intuitions about the moral status of humans are, at least in significant part, shaped by factors relating to mere species membership that seem morally irrelevant. We end by considering the potential debunking upshot of such findings about the sources of common moral intuitions about the moral status of animals.

Organizational Culture as Barriers to Employee Mobility: Evidence from Employer Reviews & Job Posts

What firm level strategies can firms adopt for reducing employee mobility? While firms make large investments in their corporate cultures, their effects on the labor force are not yet completely understood. We argue that strong cultures act as a retention mechanism by facilitating shared understanding of the task environment, enhancing employees’ sense of homophily and ability to coordinate and reducing the portability of their task related firm specific skills. We test these predictions on a subsample analysis of 6,208 firms based in Illinois and Michigan. We measure labor-related variables from 1,265,760 job vacancies posted by those firms, and their cultural strength from 203,093 employees’ text reviews about the companies. We find that, following a regulatory shock that increases employee mobility in Illinois, strong cultures post fewer jobs and offer lower salaries than weak ones, compared to Michigan. We propose heterogeneity in cultural distributional properties as a novel retention mechanism to explain cross-firm variation in human capital strategies.

Weight dependence in BCM leads to adjustable synaptic competition

Models of synaptic plasticity have been used to better understand neural development as well as learning and memory. One prominent classic model is the Bienenstock-Cooper-Munro (BCM) model that has been particularly successful in explaining plasticity of the visual cortex. Here, in an effort to include more biophysical detail in the BCM model, we incorporate 1) feedforward inhibition, and 2) the experimental observation that large synapses are relatively harder to potentiate than weak ones, while synaptic depression is proportional to the synaptic strength. These modifications change the outcome of unsupervised plasticity under the BCM model. The amount of feed-forward inhibition adds a parameter to BCM that turns out to determine the strength of competition. In the limit of strong inhibition the learning outcome is identical to standard BCM and the neuron becomes selective to one stimulus only (winner-take-all). For smaller values of inhibition, competition is weaker and the receptive fields are less selective. However, both BCM variants can yield realistic receptive fields.

Dynamics and structure of youth preferences in the information space of the Republic of Crimea

The article actualises the issues of information security in the conditions of transformations of the media space in the regions of Russia (on the example of the Republic of Crimea). Attention is focused on the preferences of young people regarding the sources of obtaining and usage the information received. The main contours of preferences in the choice of information source are determined. The specificity of the choice of information sources typical for young people in the Republic of Crimea is shown. In addition to the Internet, an important source of information for regional youth is direct social contacts and personal communication. In the list of Internet sources, social network information resources have an advantage. It is proved that the information preferences of young people and older generations do not always coincide. For this purpose, the results of sociological studies conducted in 2018-2020 in the Republic of Crimea (before and during the coronavirus pandemic) are presented. Studies have shown that it is distance learning and self-isolation that are factors undermining the existing system of social relations, social subordination and social control. Particular attention is paid to the study of the manifestation of youth interest in information sources of extremist content. The gender and age structure of those interested in Internet sources of extremist content has been revealed. Despite the fact that the identified "risk groups" are relatively small, they significantly increase the likelihood of participating in various kinds of informal organisations, including those of a radical nature. The problem is exacerbated by the secrecy and vagueness of the existence of such groups that function in the information space as flexible and combinatorial social formations capable of rapid structural change and renewal. As the results of the research showed, the tendency of young people to “leave” into the virtual space was intensified by the factor of social isolation and the introduction of forms of distance learning, that contributed to the erosion of strong social ties and their replacement with weak ones (in accordance with the terminology of network analysis theory). It is shown that the state and society in the interests of ensuring internal stability and security, should, undoubtedly, must seriously take into account the processes of transformation of the media space, where a significant proportion of the activity of today's youth is transferred.

Improving the information content of seismic data and increasing the depth of investigation by choosing the optimal length of the amplitude adjustment operator

The article is devoted to the role of digital automatic amplitude control in increasing the depth of seismic exploration. It is noted that the depth of productive strata is gradually increasing, at the same time, more powerful explosive sources are being replaced by relatively weak non-explosive ones. Naturally, during processing, it is necessary to pay close attention to the choice of parameters for adjusting the amplitudes. The article provides basic information about the form and amplitude of seismic vibrations, lists the main empirical formulas that characterize the dependence of the amplitudes of seismic vibrations on time. It is noted that when registering seismic vibrations, one has to deal with minimal soil displacements caused by the arrival of a seismic wave at the observation point, which must be amplified millions of times and their adjustment. In this regard, in the digital processing of seismic data, a technique was developed for recovering the true amplitudes, more precisely, the true amplitude ratio. Adjustment while maintaining the true ratio of amplitudes is used only when it is required to study the dynamics of the wave field (dynamic digital processing). The optimal choice of the length of the adjustment operator (or window) is of paramount importance, since with a small adjustment interval (less than 0.1 s), a loss of dynamic expressiveness of the recording may occur, and this is clearly shown in model studies. The article considers the efficiency of choosing the length of the optimal adjustment operator on the example of the Kurovdag area, which has complex both surface and deep seismogeological conditions. A summary of the Kurovdag field is given. An amplitude compensation function for spherical divergence is given, and to compensate for the effects associated with changes in reception and excitation conditions, a surface-matched amplitude adjustment was performed after removing amplitude bursts. A fragment of the time section is given before and after the optimal adjustment of the amplitudes according to the seismograms of the Kurovdag area, which clearly demonstrates how the information content of the time section increases and, thereby, the depth of the seismic exploration: before the optimal digital automatic adjustment of the amplitudes at times of 3.25 - 3.5 sec, no seismic horizons, while after this procedure, dynamically well-defined seismic horizons appear at the same times, reflecting the structure of the medium at great depths.

When the partisan becomes personal: Mayoral Incumbency Effects in Buenos Aires, 1983–2019

ABSTRACT A burgeoning literature finds that incumbency effects reflect mostly a personal rather than a partisan advantage. We attribute this to incumbents’ mobilization incentives. Incumbents have weaker incentives to exert costly effort on behalf of their copartisans in national races than in local ones, where their local power is at stake. We examine these implications in the Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina’s largest subnational unit, where midterm elections give mayors a strong incentive to help their copartisans running for the local council, but much weaker ones to support those running for a national seat. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find a large positive effect of incumbency in local mayoral and midterm elections. In contrast, local incumbents neither help nor hurt their copartisans running for the presidency or the national legislature.

Control of shock-wave/boundary-layer interaction using a backward-facing step

Flow separation induced by the shock-wave/boundary-layer interaction is detrimental to the performance of a hypersonic inlet. This paper develops a new method to control the shock-wave/boundary-layer interaction using a backward-facing step. The backward-facing step is placed on the shock-wave generator with a deflection angle of 14 deg. The shock-wave generator and a flat plate construct a simple hypersonic inlet. The control ability and mechanism are numerically studied using Reynolds Averaged Navier–Stokes equations at a freestream Mach number of 5. The results suggest that the backward-facing step can effectively suppress the flow separation. The reason is that the backward-facing step replaces the strong shock-wave in the baseline inlet with two weak ones. Consequently, the separation bubble in the controlled inlet is much smaller than that in the baseline inlet. Moreover, a parameter study is performed to analyze the effect of the design parameters of the backward-facing step on the control ability. The wave systems in the controlled inlet are classified into three types based on the results. However, only the effective wave system can suppress the shock-wave/boundary-layer interaction.

Evaluating sustainable efficiency of decision-making units considering undesirable outputs: an application to airline using integrated multi-objective DEA-TOPSIS.

Sustainable development has gained significant attention in the literature due to the increased global awareness of environmental sustainability during the last decade. Sustainable development has three aspects, including economic, social, and environmental. The challenge of sustainable development is to establish a balance between these three aspects. Assessing the efficiency of a company contributes comprehensive information to improve its overall performance. Despite numerous studies in this field, the literature lacks studies that simultaneously consider all three aspects of sustainable development, especially the social aspect. The main objective of this paper is to calculate the technical, social, and environmental efficiency scores. We also introduce a new efficiency called sustainable efficiency that merges all three sustainable development aspects in one efficiency score. This study applies two existing data envelopment analysis (DEA) models to evaluate technical, social, environmental, and sustainable efficiencies. These models, namely the three-step method and the modified three-step method, are computationally intensive. Also, this paper introduces two new DEA models, namely the common weight goal programming DEA and the common weight DEA, to assess the efficiencies with much fewer computations. Each model produces results that are different from one another. Therefore, the TOPSIS approach is applied to provide an overall result by integrating the results obtained from the four presented models. For this purpose, the implementation of four TOPSIS models is required. To illustrate the capability and validity of the developed models in efficiency calculation, a case of Iranian airlines is presented. The selected airlines are evaluated in different aspects, and final results are obtained by applying TOPSIS. The findings show that using TOPSIS to combine the results of several DEA models leads to a fully ranking of airlines in four aspects of technical, social, environmental, and sustainable efficiencies. Also, it is recommended to managers to probe pairwise comparison between different efficiencies of airlines in order to find and improve the weak ones.

The effect of institutional factors on financial deepening: evidence from 50 African countries

PurposeThis paper investigates the impact of institutional factors on financial deepening and its implications on bank credit in Africa.Design/methodology/approachThe paper employs different panel econometric models to examine the heterogeneity of 50 African countries from 2000 to 2019. The estimators include panel corrected standard errors, system generalized method of moments, quantile and threshold regressions.FindingsThe results show that rule of law, regulatory quality, government effectiveness, voice and accountability, control of corruption and political stability significantly influence financial deepening in Africa. However, government effectiveness has a higher effect on middle- and high-income countries, while other indicators have a high impact on low-income countries. All institutional indicators have stronger effects, almost double, at higher financial depth levels than for countries with lower levels. Government effectiveness and regulatory quality impact financial deepening more for countries with strong institutions than weak ones. Thus, the relationship between institutional qualities and credit provided by banks is non-monotonic.Practical implicationsThe findings suggest that strengthening appropriate institutional factors based on country heterogeneity may effectively stimulate debt financing in Africa, the primary source of financing for small and medium-sized enterprises and entrepreneurs.Originality/valueThe novelty of this paper is that previous studies did not sufficiently scrutinize the heterogeneity of the structure of African economies – i.e. differences in institution, credit and income levels.

Обнаружение плотных скоплений источников мазера водяного пара во время мощных вспышек в комплексе IRAS 16293-2422

Based on long-term monitoring data of the water maser transition at 22.2 GHz from 2019 to 2021 we were able to detect two powerful phenomena in IRAS 16293-2422 that lasted in total about a year and that occurred at radial velocities near 6 and 8 km s–1. In both cases, powerful short flares were located on the top of less powerful, but more prolonged ones (4 and 0.6 kJy). Their radiation initiated the release of more powerful flares. Thanks to long-term detailed observations of water masers, the exist-ence of the several emitting maser spot configurations with very close radial velocities, located in the line of sight of the observer were confirmed for the first time. This made it possible to demonstrate the correctness of the water maser activation hypothesis based on an increase in the amplification length of the maser due to several maser condensations located in the line of sight of the observer. The unsaturated state of the most powerful and shortest maser flares, as well as the saturated state of the weaker ones, has been observed. New important parameters of the water masers and the as-sumed location of the maser spots have been obtained.

Cell adhesion and twitching motility influence strong biofilm formation in Pseudomonas aeruginosa

In the present study, biofilm formation was quantified in UTI isolates of Pseudomonas aeruginosa (n = 22) using the crystal violet assay and was categorized into; strong (n = 16), weak (n = 4), and moderate (n = 2) biofilm producers. Further experiments were done using strong (n = 4) and weak (n = 4) biofilm producers. Biofilm formation was greater in Luria broth followed by natural urine and artificial urine on silicone and silicone-coated latex. Cell adhesion and twitching motility were greater in strong biofilm producers. The presence of thick biofilm with an increased number of dead and total number of cells of strong biofilm producers was observed using CLSM. The concentrations of exopolymeric substances (eDNA, protein, and pel polysaccharide) were high in strong biofilm producers. FEG-SEM visualization of biofilm produced by strong biofilm producers showed more cells encased in thick biofilm matrix than weak ones. Overall results provide evidence for increased cell adhesion and twitching motility in strong biofilm producers.

McKean–Vlasov optimal control: The dynamic programming principle

We study the McKean–Vlasov optimal control problem with common noise which allow the law of the control process to appear in the state dynamics under various formulations: strong and weak ones, Markovian or non-Markovian. By interpreting the controls as probability measures on an appropriate canonical space with two filtrations, we then develop the classical measurable selection, conditioning and concatenation arguments in this new context, and establish the dynamic programming principle under general conditions.

Features of the electronic transport of topological semimetal PtSn4 and WTe2 single crystals

PtSn4 and WTe2 single crystals were grown, and the resistivity was studied in the temperature range from 4.2 to 80 K in various magnetic fields up to 10 T in detail. It is suggested that the observed quadratic temperature dependence of the electrical resistivity at low temperatures in zero field can be due to, in addition to electron-electron scattering, the “electron-phonon-surface” interference scattering mechanism. The transition from high effective magnetic fields to weak ones, which is observed in compensated conductors with a closed Fermi surface, was proposed as a possible explanation for the minimum on the temperature dependence of the resistivity of PtSn4 and WTe2 in a magnetic field. The values of the mean free path of current carriers were estimated in these materials.

International and domestic external knowledge in the innovation performance of firms from transition economies: The role of institutions

In this study, we analyze how the acquisition of domestic and international external knowledge contributes to the innovation performance of firms in transition economies and how the institutional conditions of the home country may affect these relations. We test our hypotheses via the responses of 645 firms from 18 Central and Eastern European countries. Our findings show that both external knowledge sources—domestic and international—contribute positively to the number of new products in transition economies. Our results also indicate that a country's governance imperfections positively moderate the relations between both domestic and international external knowledge and the number of new products. Additionally, our findings highlight that the benefits of international external knowledge for product innovation are greater in contexts with weaker institutional conditions than in environments with stronger institutional conditions. In contrast, the benefits of domestic external knowledge for product innovation do not vary substantially between scenarios with stronger institutional conditions and those with weaker ones. These findings lead us to conclude that the institutional conditions of transition economies moderate the relation between domestic and international external knowledge and innovation performance differently, with international external knowledge proving particularly valuable for product innovation when these conditions are weak.

High-fidelity noise-reconstructed empirical mode decomposition for mechanical multiple and weak fault extractions

The premise to ensure the safe operation of rotating machinery is to accurately and timely capture all kinds of damages and fault signatures, whose challenging issues are the multiple and weak faults. Ensemble noise-reconstructed empirical mode decomposition (ENEMD) is a smart method of adaptively decomposing and denoising for mechanical fault diagnosis. However, the original ENEMD and its derivative methods suffer from the drawbacks of critical noise estimation on the high accuracy, leading to the powerless capability for accurate multiple and weak fault signature extraction. Thus, high-fidelity noise-reconstructed empirical mode decomposition (HNEMD) is proposed to overcome the drawbacks, whose compositions include: (1) The cepstral neighboring coefficient editing is proposed to obtain the pre-whitening signal with the actual white noise, from which the major noise can be well purified by the minimax thresholding. (2) The high order singular value decomposition (HOSVD) local reconstruction is developed to estimate the minor noise from the pre-characterizing signal, where the tensor with the reasonable singular order is constructed by the sliding window and Hankel matrix. (3) The high-fidelity noise recovered by the major noise and the minor noise is reconstructed and combined with the basic ENEMD algorithm for accurate signature extraction, especially for the multiple or/and weak fault ones. Three repeatable simulations are analyzed to illustrate the signature extraction capability and noise estimation process of this method. Moreover, the effective detections of weak and multiple faults from a hot strip finishing mill gearbox and an aerospace bearing further validate the feasibility of the proposed method.

Insight into the Catalytic Activity of Amorphous Multimetallic Catalysts under a Magnetic Field toward the Oxygen Evolution Reaction.

Slow kinetics in the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) remains a Gordian knot to develop an efficient and cost-effective electrocatalyst in electrochemical water splitting. In recent studies, either a synergistic effect on multimetallic catalysts or spin polarization in ferromagnetic materials is considered as a desirable way to improve water electrolysis. Herein, the OER performance of amorphous FeNiCo-based multimetallic catalysts with adjustable composition was investigated from the perspective of atomic structure. Mössbauer spectra results demonstrate that the OER activities exhibit a significant dependence on the local structure of catalysts in which a catalyst with a high content of Fe clusters of low coordination numbers tends to obtain higher activity. Furthermore, benefiting from the spin polarization of these ferromagnetic catalysts, the OER activity is notably enhanced in the presence of a magnetic field. In particular, overpotential reduction exceeding 20 mV (above 100 mA cm-2) in alkaline OER performance is observed for strong ferromagnetic catalysts in comparison with the weak ferromagnetic ones. An increment of 65.2% in turnover frequency is achieved for the catalyst with the strongest ferromagnetism. This magnetic enhancement strategy affords an effective way of improving the water oxidation performance on amorphous ferromagnetic catalysts.