Regional development problems of small and medium-sized enterprises in Latvia

Despite the achievements attained in recent years in the economic development of Latvia, until now Latvia’s regions demonstrate uneven development, which negatively impacts the development of small business. The development of the regional innovation environment will contribute to the enhancement of competitiveness of regional economies

Spatial ecology, habitat and speciation in the Porto Santan land snail genus Heterostoma

The Madeiran land snail genus Heterastoma expresses two forms of genital anatomy. One form (hemiphallic) lacks the distal male organs while the other (euphallic) has fully developed hermaphroditic genitalia. Recent evidence suggests this genital variation characterizes two sibling or incipient species. The spatial ecology and habitat associations of these taxa are described in the light of recent ideas on the role of ecology in speciation. Hemiphallic snails are found at a lower density and show a tendency to be more separated from each other compared to euphallic snails. Both taxa are more likely to be closer to other members of the same taxon. The genus as a whole is not found in the presence of sand or pale rock. However, when only areas actually containing snails are examined, hemiphallics show a positive association with sand and rock while euphallics continue to show a negative association. The differences in population density and spacing may suggest an adaptive explanation for reduction of male organs in hemiphallics since this taxon would be expected to have significantly fewer mating encounters. The observed differences in habitat association may suggest a mechanism for sympatric or parapatric divergence in keeping with current models of habitat-driven adaptive speciation. Both of these factors (selection on the mating system in a marginal environment and small scale separation based on habitat) may have been significant in the divergence of hemiphallic and euphallic taxa

Optochemical detection strategies for heavy metals in water

Groundwater contamination by toxic heavy metals is a serious global issue, therefore, there is an increasing demand for fast, portable and reliable on site monitoring methods for heavy metals in water. Conventional laboratory based methods are not capable of meeting this demand as they require expensive instrumentation and highly trained technical staff. Consequently, cost effective and user friendly alternative methods are needed. Microfluidic detection devices have been employed for routine monitoring of water quality parameters such as nutrients, however, a limited number of commercially available techniques are available for heavy metal monitoring in water. Although numerous examples of optical methods for heavy metals have been described in the literature, only a small number of these methods have been successful in real applications. The aim of this research was to develop an optical method for heavy metal monitoring using microfluidic detection systems, and thereby enhance the range of available techniques for water quality analysis. An extensive literature review was carried out to identify candidate optochemical based heavy metal detection methods which could be further optimised and integrated into microfluidic detection systems. Preliminary screening was carried out in the laboratory using UV-vis spectroscopy to assess different optochemical method suitability for application in microfluidic detection systems. Micro scale quartz cuvettes were used to replicate the restricted path length in microfluidic detection chip. For chromium detection in water, a 1,5-diphenylcarbazide method was assessed. Parameters such as colour stability, reaction time, reagent stability, the effect of interfering ions, linear range, and limit of detection were investigated. Additionally, the method’s effectiveness to monitor the target analyte in environmental water samples with various matrices was evaluated. A strong analytical signal was obtained from experiments carried out in micro scale quartz cuvettes. In addition, simple reagent to sample ratio was obtained by combining the reagents, which in turn enables cost effective microfluidic detection system design. The method showed great potential for use in microfluidic detection system. For arsenic monitoring in water, methods based on leucomalachite green, variamine blue, and molybdenum blue were assessed. Similarly to the chromium method’s assessment optimum reaction conditions, reproducibility, colour stability, linear range, and limit of detection were determined for the different arsenic detection methods. The leucomalachite green method was chosen for integration into microfluidic detection systems due to its fast reaction time, strong colour development, and ability to detect arsenic in various environmental water samples. The analytical system used was based on an existing microfluidic platform developed by project partners TE Laboratories, with appropriate revisions as required to incorporate the optimised optical method. Polymethyl methacrylate microfluidic detection and mixing chip was designed for arsenic detection using leucomalachite green method. The microfluidic detection system’s design was optimised in order to enhance the reagent and sample mixing efficiency. LED and photodiode were coupled to the detection channel and served as miniaturised UV-vis photometer. Syringe pumps were used for sample and reagent introduction. A range of spiked arsenic samples were analysed using the microfluidic detection system. In addition, the effect of iron interference on arsenic monitoring was investigated. Linear range and limit of detection for the microfluidic detection method were determined. As a result, a novel arsenic determination method based on microfluidic detection was developed. Although the method’s linear range was too high to be used for arsenic determination in most environmental waters, it showed a great potential for arsenic monitoring in ground or surface waters with known high arsenic concentrations as well as in waste waters.ye

The Aspect of Culture in the Social Inclusion of Ethnic Minorities.Evaluation of the Impact of Inclusion Policies under the Open Method of Co-ordination in the European Union : Assessing the Cultural Policies of Six Member States. Final Report Latvia.

Shape-Based matching (SBM) is a known method for 2D object recognition that is rather robust against illumination variations, noise, clutter and partial occlusion. The objects to be recognized can be translated, rotated and scaled. The translation of an object is determined by evaluating a similarity measure for all possible positions (similar to cross correlation). The similarity measure is based on dot products between normalized gradient directions in edges. Rotation and scale is determined by evaluating all possible combinations, spanning a huge search space. A resolution pyramid is used to form a heuristic for the search that then gains real-time performance. For SBM, a model consisting of normalized edge gradient directions, are constructed for all possible combinations of rotation and scale. We have avoided this by using (bilinear) interpolation in the search gradient map, which greatly reduces the amount of storage required. SBM is highly parallelizable by nature and with our suggested improvements it becomes much suited for running on a GPU. This have been implemented and tested, and the results clearly outperform those of our reference CPU implementation (with magnitudes of hundreds). It is also very scalable and easily benefits from future devices without effort. An extensive evaluation material and tools for evaluating object recognition algorithms have been developed and the implementation is evaluated and compared to two commercial 2D object recognition solutions. The results show that the method is very powerful when dealing with the distortions listed above and competes well with its opponents