Dynamics of Multivariate Return Series of U.S. Automotive Stock Companies in Conditions of Crisis

This article contains an analysis of dynamic interrelations between log-returns series of three automotive companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange: GM, F and DAI. We consider two periods: before and during crisis. We apply DiagBEKK model and we calculate dynamic conditional correlations. As a result of our research we found that in conditions of crisis there were strong connections between considered stock companies.DiagBEKK model, dynamic conditional correlation.

INVESTIGATING THE POWER IN FREIGHT TRANSPORT COMMUNICATION NETWORK STRUCTURE

The business of freight transportation is undergoing a technological revolution at it moves toward the 21st century. New technologies are being developed and adopted in each mode of freight transportation. The one technology that affects all modes is information technology. Information technology related to the coordination of logistics and supply chain management, has the capability of affecting all the modes in a similar way. This technology in the form of electronic data interchange has begun to automate, and reduce the costs of, paper flow required to move goods from shippers, through carriers and transfer points, to consignees. Surveys of the freight transportation industry indicate that the adoption of EDI has not been nearly universal in any dimension. The paper investigates the structure of the communication system used for transport supply chain.POWER electronic commerce freight transport network structure

Svjedočanstva o Dalmatincima u Španjolskom građanskom ratu

Tijekom Španjolskoga građanskog rata republikanskim snagama podršku su pružile brojne internacionalne brigade sastavljene od dragovoljaca iz 54 države, među kojima i oko 1500 njih iz tadašnje Kraljevine Jugoslavije. U ratu je sudjelovalo i oko 150 Dalmatinaca, uglavnom iz Imotskog, Zadra, Šibenika i Splita. Većina je u Španjolsku pristigla iz Francuske i Belgije, gdje su bili zaposleni ponajviše u rudnicima, a pokušaj prebacivanja dvjestotinjak Dalmatinaca, Zagrepčana i Slovenaca iz splitske okolice početkom 1937. je propao. Dobrovoljci iz Jugoslavije sudjelovali su u borbama na madridskom, aragonskom, levantskom i katalonskom bojištu. Nakon povlačenja iz Španjolske, većina je njih zatvorena u logore St. Cypriene, Argeles, Gurs i Vernet, gdje ih je zbog teških životnih uvjeta navodno tridesetak umrlo, o čemu je zabilježeno nekoliko vrijednih svjedočanstava boraca iz Dalmacije, koja se danas čuvaju u Državnom arhivu u Splitu. During the Spanish Civil War, the republicans were supported by numerous international brigades consisting of volunteers from 54 countries, among them approximately 1500 volunteers from the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Out of this figure, approximately 150 Dalmatians, mostly from Imotski, Zadar, Šibenik and Split, fought in the war as well. The majority of them arrived to Spain from France and Belgium, where the most of them worked in the mines. The attempt to transfer from the Split surroundings around two hundred Dalmatians, inhabitants of Zagreb and Slovenes at the beginning of 1937 failed. Volunteers from Yugoslavia fought on the Madrid, Aragon, Levanto and Catalonian battlefields. After the retreat from Spain, the majority of the volunteers were captured at the camps St. Cypriene, Argeles, Gurs and Vernet, where around thirty of them are believed to have died due to severe life conditions. Several valuable testimonies of the Dalmatian “Spaniards”, in safekeeping at the State Archives in Split, witness to this fact

Odvođenja i likvidacije ranjenih pripadnika Hrvatskih oružanih snaga (HOS) iz zagrebačkih bolnica u svibnju i lipnju 1945. kroz arhivsko gradivo Državnog arhiva u Zagrebu

U članku se analiziraju ranije poznati podaci o sudbini ranjenih pripadnika Hrvatskih oružanih snaga, koji su se po završetku Drugog svjetskog rata zatekli u zagrebačkim bolnicama te se nadopunjuju dosad neobjavljenim dokumentima iz sačuvanog gradiva nekadašnje Zakladne bolnice i Bolnice sestara milosrdnica, koje se čuva u Državnom arhivu u Zagrebu. Naročitu vrijednost predstavljaju popisi ranjenika otpuštenih iz ovih dviju bolnica između 17. svibnja i 29. lipnja 1945, među kojima i onih otpremljenih u logor Prečko. Based on documents from the two hospitals in Zagreb, Croatia (‘Zakladna’ and ‘Sisters of Mercy’), it is possible, at least to some degree, to reconstruct what happened to the hospitalized members of the Croatian Armed Forces (HOS), most of whom were suffering from heavy injuries and were bedridden when the Yugoslav Army entered Zagreb on May 8, 1945 and found them in the hospitals. Even though contemporary historians do not have access to documents from other Croatian hospitals (because they are not available and/or not preserved) where the members of the Croatian Armed Forces were hospitalized together with soldiers from Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Slovenia, Italy and the New Siberia region, the documents from the ‘Sisters of Mercy’ hospital, currently deposited in the State Archives in Zagreb, definitely confirm previous eyewitnesses’ accounts on how the Department for the Protection of People (OZN-a) conducted massive arrests and transported these patients to the concentration camp „Prečko“ in Zagreb, Croatia. Even though there are no documents regarding the ultimate destiny of these hospitalized Croatian soldiers, the results from excavations and the reports from pathologists made in 1999 i.e. the evidence recovered from the mass grave Jazovka, in Zumberak, Croatia, proves that these wounded Croatian soldiers were mass murdered at this location, together with the hospital staff and other victims. The registration and the release documents from these two hospitals provide necessary information that could eventually, with the help of additional research and excavation of other mass graves, lead to at least a partial list of hospitalized members of the Croatian Armed Forces that were mass murdered by the members of the Yugoslav Army, the Department for the Protection of People (OZN-a) and the Corpus of People's Defense of Yugoslavia (KNOJ) and thrown into Jazovka and other mass graves

The use of recombinant DNA technology in producing pharmaceuticals

Rekombinantna DNA tehnologija podrazumijeva metode kojima možemo prenijeti gene iz jednog organizma u drugi. Time se omogućava dobivanje proteina u organizmima u kojima se ti proteini prirodno ne stvaraju. Takva tehnologija danas ima brojne primjene, a jedna od njih je proizvodnja lijekova. Prvi ljudski protein dobiven iz bakterije E. coli bio je inzulin, 1982. godine. Danas se za manipulaciju gena u svrhu dobivanja rekombinantnih proteina, osim bakterija, koriste i kvasci, životinje, biljke te stanične kulture. Svaka metoda proizvodnje ima svoje prednosti i nedostatke. Glavni nedostatak bakterijama je nemogućnost glikozilacije proteina. Kvasci, kao eukarioti, uspješniji su u tom procesu. Transgenične životinje mogu izlučivati znatne količine proteina u krv, mlijeko, bjelanjak ili urin. Mogu proizvoditi proteine složenih struktura koji moraju proći proces posttranslacijske modifikacije da bi postali aktivni. Upotreba transgeničnih životinja postavlja brojna etička pitanja te pitanja vezana uz sigurnost pripreme takvih proteina. Transgenične biljke mogu proizvoditi velike količine proteina te stvarati proteine kompleksnih struktura. Također takva je proizvodnja jeftina i nema gotovo nikakvih etičkih problema. Najveći nedostatak genetički modificiranih organizama je interakcija s okolišem. Unatoč tome što još uvijek malo znamo o tome kakav bi učinak transgenični organizmi mogli imati na svoj okoliš, možemo reći da je rekombinantna DNA tehnologija u proizvodnji lijekova svojevrsno čudo 20.-og stoljeća.Recombinant DNA technology encompasses various techniques by which we can transfer genes from one organism to another. This way we accomplished production of proteins in organisms for which these proteins are not natural. Such technology has many applications today. One of them is the use in producing pharmaceuticals. Proteins play an important role in the pharmaceutical industry. The first human protein produced in Escherichia coli was insulin, in 1982. Today, we use biotechnology in order to obtain recombinant proteins from bacteria, yeasts, animals, plants and cell cultures. Each manufacturing method has its advantages and disadvantages. The major drawback of bacteria is that they are unable to perform the posttranslation modifications such as glycosylation. Yeasts, as eukaryotes, have some advantages over bacteria in this process. Transgenic animals can secrete significant amounts of protein in blood, milk, egg white or urine. They can also produce proteins with complex structure that must undergo a process of posttranslational modifications. The use of transgenic animals faces many ethical issues and issues of environmental impact of such animals. Transgenic plants can produce large amounts of protein and they can also form complex protein structures. This system of production is cheap and avoids some ethical issues. The biggest disadvantage is interaction with the environment. Although we still know little about how transgenic organisms could affect the nature one day, we can say that the recombinant DNA technology in the production of pharmaceuticals is sort of a miracle of the 20th century

The Role of Social Capital in Avoiding Over-education

In post-socialist countries, overqualification is a current and relevant issue, butdespite its importance, this topic is not sufficiently addressed in the literature,especially in the post-communist region. Starting from the theory of professionalreorientation strategies, one can assume that the lack of social capital may be one ofthe causes of overqualification. In this study, I will investigate this hypothesis. Theanalysis of the issue was performed on the database of the “MOZAIK2001”sociological survey. The long period of time that has lapsed since the collection of thedata requires the verification of the assumptions on a much more recent database,namely the Cultural Consumption Barometer 2010. In order to identify the necessaryworkplace educational training, I used the occupation classification method.Overqualification was determined by comparing the educational training acquiredwith the occupation performed. Although the importance of relational resources on thelabour market is discussed in several studies in the field, the research was only partlyable to prove the positive role of social capital in avoiding overqualification

A nettó jelenérték maximalizálása erőforrás-korlátos projektekben - egy új harmóniakereső metaheurisztika (A harmony search metaheuristic for the resourceconstrained project scheduling problem with discounted cash flows)

Ebben a tanulmányban a szerző egy új harmóniakereső metaheurisztikát mutat be, amely a minimális időtartamú erőforrás-korlátos ütemezések halmazán a projekt nettó jelenértékét maximalizálja. Az optimális ütemezés elméletileg két egész értékű (nulla-egy típusú) programozási feladat megoldását jelenti, ahol az első lépésben meghatározzuk a minimális időtartamú erőforrás-korlátos ütemezések időtartamát, majd a második lépésben az optimális időtartamot feltételként kezelve megoldjuk a nettó jelenérték maximalizálási problémát minimális időtartamú erőforrás-korlátos ütemezések halmazán. A probléma NP-hard jellege miatt az egzakt megoldás elfogadható idő alatt csak kisméretű projektek esetében képzelhető el. A bemutatandó metaheurisztika a Csébfalvi (2007) által a minimális időtartamú erőforrás-korlátos ütemezések időtartamának meghatározására és a tevékenységek ennek megfelelő ütemezésére kifejlesztett harmóniakereső metaheurisztika továbbfejlesztése, amely az erőforrás-felhasználási konfliktusokat elsőbbségi kapcsolatok beépítésével oldja fel. Az ajánlott metaheurisztika hatékonyságának és életképességének szemléltetésére számítási eredményeket adunk a jól ismert és népszerű PSPLIB tesztkönyvtár J30 részhalmazán futtatva. Az egzakt megoldás generálásához egy korszerű MILP-szoftvert (CPLEX) alkalmaztunk. _______________ This paper presents a harmony search metaheuristic for the resource-constrained project scheduling problem with discounted cash flows. In the proposed approach, a resource-constrained project is characterized by its „best” schedule, where best means a makespan minimal resource constrained schedule for which the net present value (NPV) measure is maximal. Theoretically the optimal schedule searching process is formulated as a twophase mixed integer linear programming (MILP) problem, which can be solved for small-scale projects in reasonable time. The applied metaheuristic is based on the "conflict repairing" version of the "Sounds of Silence" harmony search metaheuristic developed by Csébfalvi (2007) for the resource-constrained project scheduling problem (RCPSP). In order to illustrate the essence and viability of the proposed harmony search metaheuristic, we present computational results for a J30 subset from the well-known and popular PSPLIB. To generate the exact solutions a state-of-the-art MILP solver (CPLEX) was used