Pandemic shock and the world after crisis

Coronavirus pandemia of 2020 turned to be a strong external shock for the modern global financial and economic systems. It triggered a virtual cliff of many world markets, especially crude oil production and consumption. COVID-19 also revealed serious shortcomings of public health systems and week governments’ preparedness to virus epidemics, as well as different degrees of the ability to overcome resulting crisis. Evidently, the world will eventually recover. However, the process will be slow and complicated. Deep structural and institutional changes will be needed. Coronacrisis accelerated many emerging trends and developments in technologies, labor markets, and corporate governance. Social isolation gave a powerful boost to IT, telecommunication, digital platforms, and gig economy. Remote work model demonstrated its efficiency for high skill professionals in financial, legal services, consulting and education. At the same time, low skilled jobs with limited remote access possibilities are likely to face growing troubles and declining incomes. This will further aggravate problems of inequality and lack of social cohesion. As for the international scene, there are already clear evidences of intensifying “bi-polar disorder” between USA and China. This is a highly dangerous trend that will seriously hamper the global post-crisis revitalization. As for the European Union, the coronavirus crisis highlighted the fragility of its currently existing architecture, namely the fundamental asymmetry between Europeanization of values and nationalization of interests. Attempts to convert values into a sort of formal regulations like Schengen or Maastricht naturally meet the challenge from deeply enrooted human identities. The EU needs either to make a decisive move towards unified budget or to rollback to more loose association. In the nearest future we will see what type of adjustment is politically feasible. During and after Covid-19 crisis an underlying trend emerged for re-focusing business activities and consumer demand towards intangible, non-material production and consumption. The resources for this type of post-crisis development are intellectual and creative, as well as alternative non-carbon, thus they are basically renewable and unlimited. Summing up, the authors suggest that societal and economic growth trajectories will be shifting towards the paradigm of responsible development

Prospects and challenges to international economic and power production cooperation after the covid-19 pandemic

The article examines the trends that hinder the development of international energy and economic cooperation in 2018–2020. These trends have been particularly exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting global economic and energy crisis. Falling demand for oil has affected the decline in world commodity prices. Competition between oil exporters has intensified amid falling demand. As a result, international energy cooperation mechanisms in the energy sector have come under serious pressure. The dynamics of relations between the world’s largest economic centers: China, the United States, the European Union, and the Eurasian space have become another aspect of the aggravation of imbalances and confrontational trends in the global economy. The strengthening of trade contradictions between the United States and China in 2018–2019 negatively affected global economic growth and the dynamics of major manufacturing indices. In turn, the events of 2020 clearly confirmed that the contradictions between China and the United States are of a deep structural nature. These contradictions exacerbate the polarization of the global economic system and cannot be overcome by concessions and agreements exclusively in the field of investment and trade. Against this background, the real effectiveness of measures taken in the EU to deal with the economic consequences of both the pandemic and Brexit is questionable, and can only be reliably assessed after a sufficiently long time. The authors show that in contrast to the situation in the EU, the EAEU has tendencies to further strengthen economic, political and energy cooperation. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the global economic crisis and external challenges, the Eurasian economic Union not only stands up to them, but also continues to actively work to unite the Union’s countries, as well as improve their energy and economic security. The authors offer their vision of further development of international economic and energy cooperation in the post-pandemic period, taking into account the positive trends in the development of the Eurasian space

Examples of unbounded homogeneous domains in complex space

Michael Eastwood and Alexander Isae

Androgenetic alopecia and risk of coronary artery disease

Background: Androgenetic alopecia (AGA) or male pattern baldness (MPB) has been found to be associated with the risk of coronary artery disease (CAD). The well-known risk factors are family history of CAD, hypertension, increased body mass index (BMI), central obesity, hyperglycemia, and dyslipidemia. The newer risk factors are serum lipoprotein-a (SL-a), serum homocysteine (SH), and serum adiponectin (SA). Aim : Identifying individuals at risk of CAD at an early age might help in preventing CAD and save life. Hence, a comparative study of CAD risk factors was planned in 100 males of AGA between the age of 25 and 40 years with equal number of age- and sex-matched controls. Materials and Methods : Patients of AGA grade II or more of Hamilton and Norwood (HN) Scale and controls were examined clinically and advised blood test. The reports were available for fasting blood sugar (FBS), serum total serum cholesterol (SC) in 64 cases, 64 controls; lipoproteins (high, low, very low density, HDL, LDL, VLDL), serum triglycerides (ST) in 63 cases, 63 controls; SL-a in 63 cases, 74 controls; SH in 56 cases, 74 controls; and SA in 62 cases, 74 controls. Results : In these cases family history (FH) of AGA and CAD was significantly high. The blood pressure (BP) was also found to be significantly high in the cases. The difference of mean serum HDL, LDL, VLDL, ST, SH, and SL-a in cases and controls were statistically significant and with increasing grade of AGA, the risk factors also increased. Conclusion : Patients with AGA appear to be at an increased risk of developing CAD, therefore, clinical evaluation of cases with AGA of grade II and above may be of help in preventing CAD in future