Do Russian Firms Need ISO Certification for Exporting?

We present some preliminary empirical results on impact of international certification on export behavior of Russian manufacturing firms. Our research is motivated, first, by the fact that little is known about the impact of ISO certification on the performance of Russian firms and, second, by unclear role of ISO certificate in week local institutional environment (where some firms simply buy these certificates without real audit and modernization of business processes). Russian medium and large enterprises in manufacturing are lagging far behind European peers both in terms of exporting activity and ISO certification level. We are trying to estimate the impact of international certification on the probability of a firm to be involved in foreign trade. We follow the general logic and methodology proposed in papers of Grajek (2004), Clougherty and Grajek (2008), Swann (2010), Otsuki (2011), Martincus et al. (2010), Masacure et al. (2009), Potoski and Prakash (2009). Empirical data comes from two rounds of nation-wide survey on the competitiveness of Russian manufacturing enterprises conducted in 2005 and 2009. We use a panel data from two rounds on approximately 500 firms in eight manufacturing industries. This gives us a unique opportunity to track the history of both availability of ISO certificate and exporting status of the firm. We use several different empirical models to examine the effect of certification on export activity and to control for possible endogeneity by estimating systems of simultaneous equations. We find evidence that ISO certification has a significant positive impact on probability of export if we control for self-selection effect for both export and ISO certification. Firms self-select for ISO by size and productivity as well as by being a supplier of a foreign-owned company in Russia. Then we compared two effects on export performance ? networking with foreign partners and ISO certification. We found out that while there is a direct positive impact of networking with foreign partners and certification on propensity to export, we were unable to find any significant impact of ISO certification on networking with foreign partners as a signal of "common language" that facilitate establishing partnership relations. We conclude that in the period analyzed these two institutions, both being important facilitators of exporting, worked individually

Circuit-level Mechanisms of EtOH-dependent dopamine release.

Alcoholism is the third leading cause of preventable mortality in the world. In the last decades a large body of experimental data has paved the way to a clearer knowledge of the specific molecular targets through which ethanol (EtOH) acts on brain circuits. Yet how these multiple mechanisms play together to result in a dysregulated dopamine (DA) release under alcohol influence remains unclear. In this manuscript, we delineate potential circuit-level mechanisms responsible for EtOH-dependent increase and dysregulation of DA release from the ventral tegmental area (VTA) into nucleus accumbens (Nac). For this purpose, we build a circuit model of the VTA composed of DA and GABAergic neurons, that integrate external Glutamatergic (Glu) inputs to result in DA release. In particular, we reproduced a non-monotonic dose dependence of DA neurons firing activity on EtOH: an increase in firing at small to intermediate doses and a drop below baseline (alcohol-free) levels at high EtOH concentrations. Our simulations predict that a certain level of synchrony is necessary for the firing rate increase produced by EtOH. Moreover, EtOH effect on the DA neuron firing rate and, consequently, DA release can reverse depending on the average activity level of the Glu afferents to VTA. Further, we propose a mechanism for emergence of transient (phasic) DA peaks and the increase in their frequency in EtOH. Phasic DA transients result from DA neuron population bursts, and these bursts are enhanced in EtOH. These results suggest the role of synchrony and average activity level of Glu afferents to VTA in shaping the phasic and tonic DA release under the acute influence of EtOH and in normal conditions

The Determinants of Privatised Enterprise Performance in Russia

Using data from a large enterprise-level panel designed to address this issue, we account for enterprise performance in Russia. We link performance to four aspects of the economic environment: enterprise ownership; corporate governance; market structures and competition; and financial constraints. We conclude that private ownership and improved performance are not correlated, though restructuring is positively associated with the competitiveness of the market environment. These findings on private ownership support those of previous studies, e.g. Earle and Estrin (1997). Moreover, we find evidence that financially unconstrained firms are better in their undertaking of restructuring measures then financially constrained firms. Further analysis suggests that causality runs from restructuring to financial constraint, rather than the reverse. Finally, our findings indicate strong complementarities between the four factors influencing improved company performance, confirming the view that these factors need to be considered jointly.Privatisation, enterprise performance, competition, corporate governance, investment

Sequencing the potato genome: outline and first results to come from the elucidation of the sequence of the world's third most important food crop

Potato is a member of the Solanaceae, a plant family that includes several other economically important species, such as tomato, eggplant, petunia, tobacco and pepper. The Potato Genome Sequencing Consortium (PGSC) aims to elucidate the complete genome sequence of potato, the third most important food crop in the world. The PGSC is a collaboration between 13 research groups from China, India, Poland, Russia, the Netherlands, Ireland, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru, USA, New Zealand and the UK. The potato genome consists of 12 chromosomes and has a (haploid) length of approximately 840 million base pairs, making it a medium-sized plant genome. The sequencing project builds on a diploid potato genomic bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) clone library of 78000 clones, which has been fingerprinted and aligned into ~7000 physical map contigs. In addition, the BAC-ends have been sequenced and are publicly available. Approximately 30000 BACs are anchored to the Ultra High Density genetic map of potato, composed of 10000 unique AFLPTM markers. From this integrated genetic-physical map, between 50 to 150 seed BACs have currently been identified for every chromosome. Fluorescent in situ hybridization experiments on selected BAC clones confirm these anchor points. The seed clones provide the starting point for a BAC-by-BAC sequencing strategy. This strategy is being complemented by whole genome shotgun sequencing approaches using both 454 GS FLX and Illumina GA2 instruments. Assembly and annotation of the sequence data will be performed using publicly available and tailor-made tools. The availability of the annotated data will help to characterize germplasm collections based on allelic variance and to assist potato breeders to more fully exploit the genetic potential of potat

Methods of studying the composition of the low-energy ion beams and the surface of deuterated-metal targets

To study the reactions between the light nuclei (dd, pd, d{3}He, d{4}He) with ultralow collision energies, there is a need to obtain the high-precision experimental results on the purity of the target surface saturated with the hydrogen isotopes (protium, deuterium) and on the number and composition of the accelerated particles falling on the target. To solve this problem, a method has been developed and tested for operational testing the quality of the vacuum system and the cleaning of the metal target surface saturated with deuterium. The paper also presents the measurement results for the true flow of the accelerated ions and neutrals of hydrogen (deuterium), using a multigrid electrostatic energy analyzer. The values of the ion and neutral components of the accelerated particle flow were received for the Hall ion source. The values of the secondary electron emission coefficients were determined for a number of the metal targets (Cu, Ti, Ta, Zr) in the range of the accelerated ion energies of 3-12 keV

Stability of spinning ring solitons of the cubic-quintic nonlinear Schrodinger equation

We investigate stability of (2+1)-dimensional ring solitons of the nonlinear Schrodinger equation with focusing cubic and defocusing quintic nonlinearities. Computing eigenvalues of the linearised equation, we show that rings with spin (topological charge) s=1 and s=2 are linearly stable, provided that they are very broad. The stability regions occupy, respectively, 9% and 8% of the corresponding existence regions. These results finally resolve a controversial stability issue for this class of models.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, accepted to Phys. Lett.