Energy & Carbon Neutral NYC

In 2016, the world\u27s leading countries signed the Paris Agreement which focused on reducing anthropogenic climate change on the planet. On May 2019, New York State and New York City declared its own ambitious goals aimed at decarbonizing the city and restricting the state’s energy use to relying completely on renewables. Some of these goals specifically target infrastructure in the city since estimates cite buildings as accounting for nearly 70% of New York’s energy use. The main law of New York’s Climate Policy, Local Law 97, requires all buildings over 25,000 sq ft to reduce their CO2 footprint by 40% by 2030 and by 80% by 2050. It also mandates increasing the efficiency of buildings based on the Energy Star rating system. While very ambitious and a step in the right direction for New York, some critics have voiced concern over the comprehensiveness of the Energy Star rating system, how carbon dioxide emissions are calculated and what means and methods building owners will take in order to comply with the law. The legislation will become legally binding in 2024 and owners with buildings meeting the legal requirement will need to move quickly in order ensure their properties meet benchmarks

The economic approach to designing anticorruption institutions

Contemporary economic analysis of corrupt behaviour requires practical consideration of the issues concerning projecting of social anti-corruption institutions. The economic science has accumulated sufficient practical experience of institutional construction in society, for instance approaches provided by K. Sunstein’s and E. Ostrom. The requirement of reasonability in managing economic interactions makes the society refuse from the dichotomy of market (anarchical, spontaneous) and non-market (hierarchical) institutions. The same tendency can be observed in arranging anti-corruption struggle in state management. Both approaches - aimed at creating fixed vertical hierarchy as well as at creating competition at the lowest bureaucratic level - are inappropriate. That is why anticorruption institutions arranging should be based on economic models of rational criminal and citizens involvement in law enforcement activity. These models enable to harmonize state dirigisme related to the state management ex ante with basic provision of laissez-faire doctrine – personal motives of people’s behaviour. Standard economic supply and demand model has shown inelasticity of corruption crimes supply in Russia. Non-price determinants (cultural norms, “tabu”) seem to be more significant in motivating corruption behaviour than price determinants (seriousness and probability of punishment). Economic characteristics of elasticity and inelasticity of supply and demand in the model of involvement into law enforcement activity enable to create strategy of developing social anti-corruption institutions

Employment structure transformation through economic activity types perspective

The present study was conducted to identify the reasons in modern information society that caused significant changes in the labor market particularly in its industrial structure through the perspective of individuals employed in real and service sectors. The analysis of the employed population`s statistical sample by economic activity type in enlarged groups of industrial and non-industrial spheres of activity over the past 20 years has shown that scientific and technological transformations have led to a significant shift in the employment structure. The research used statistical data comparison of economic activity types and the ratio of the regions employed in real and service sectors. New types of economic activity are emerging and start prevailing inherent exclusively in the current state of economy in the context of digitalization. A significant structural shift has been revealed in the course of the analysis of the employed population by the enlarged industry affiliation, which demonstrates diametrically opposite positions in the overall structure of employment. The resulting ratio allows us to propose and apply the coefficient of the employment structure, demonstrating a multiplier effect on identifying such jobs creation and preservation of which leads to further employment provisioning. The obtained tool allows managing population employment as well as related social and economic processes as migration outflow and population growth in all age groups, population reproduction, expansion and improvement of educational and health services in a particular territory. In addition, application of the developed employment structure tool allows estimating the amount of investment required to solve these issues

A Novel Glycosyl Donor with a Triisopropylsilyl Nonparticipating Group in Benzyl-Free Stereoselective 1,2-cis-Galactosylation

A novel glycosyl donor with a triisopropylsilyl (TIPS) nonparticipating group at O-2 is introduced for use in 1,2-cis-galactosylation. Coupling the 2-O-TIPS-substituted thiogalactoside donor with a series of mono- and disaccharide glycosyl acceptors was found to lead exclusively to a-linked oligosaccharides. The observed exceptionally high a-selectivity was interpreted in terms of conformational changes in the glycosyl cation induced by the bulky 2-O-TIPS group

Сравнительный анализ внешнего облучения различных профессиональных групп медперсонала г. Душанбе Республики Таджикистан

The work provides a comparative analysis of average annual individual radiation doses based on the obtained values of individual dose equivalent Hp (10), which had been obtained during 5 years of investigations (2014-2018) by using the thermo-luminescent dosimetry method of 70 employees working computed tomography, radioscopy, fluorography and radiography from 15 medical institutions in Dushanbe city. The ratio of medical personnel of the different professional groups showed that 63% of them were engaged in radiography, 19% x-ray, 10% computed tomography and 8% radioscopy. Analysis of the average annual radiation doses of every occupational group showed that the specialists in charge of fluorography have a high dose (max 1.74 mSv) and the personal of computed tomography have the lowest dose (max 1.34 mSv), and over time there is a tendency to equalize the values of average annual doses for all professional groups in the area close to the value of 1.5 mSv. The obtained data of the effective annual dose for all occupational categories had not exceeded the permissible dose limits values required by the «Radiation Safety Standards» (NRB-06 SP 2.6.1.001-06). Calculations are given without subtracting background values. The analysis data allows to identify the most exposed professional groups and to address the issues of ensuring radiation safety in a targeted manner.В работе на основе полученных величин индивидуального эквивалента дозы Hp(10) методом термолюминесцентной дозиметрии дается сравнительный анализ среднегодовых индивидуальных доз облучения за 5 лет (2014–2018 гг.) 70 сотрудников при проведении компьютерной томографии, скопии, флюорографии и рентгенографии из 15 медучреждений г. Душанбе. Соотношение медперсонала профессиональных групп показало, что 63% из них занимаются рентгенографией, 19% – флюорографией, 10% – компьютерной томографией и 8% – скопией. Анализ среднегодовых доз облучения каждой профессиональной группы показал, что наибольшую дозовую нагрузку в среднем имеют специалисты, занимающиеся флюорографией (max 1,74 мЗв), а наименьшую – компьютерной томографией (max 1,34 мЗв), причем со временем наблюдается тенденция выравнивания значений среднегодовых доз у всех профессиональных групп в область, близкую к значению 1,5 мЗв. Полученные данные эффективной годовой дозы для всех профессиональных категорий не превышают допустимые предельные значения, установленные «Нормами радиационной безопасности» (НРБ-06 СП 2.6.1.001-06). Расчеты даны без вычета фоновых значений. Данные анализа позволяют выявлять наиболее облучаемые профессиональные группы и целенаправленно решать вопросы обеспечения радиационной безопасности

QTL mapping for seedling and adult plant resistance to stripe and leaf rust in two winter wheat populations

The two recombinant inbred line (RIL) populations developed by crossing Almaly × Avocet S (206 RILs) and Almaly × Anza (162 RILs) were used to detect the novel genomic regions associated with adult plant resistance (APR) and seedling or all-stage resistance (ASR) to yellow rust (YR) and leaf rust (LR). The quantitative trait loci (QTLs) were detected through multi-year phenotypic evaluations (2018–2020) and using high-throughput DArTseq genotyping technology. RILs exhibited significant genetic variation with p < 0.001, and the coefficient of variation ranged from 9.79% to 47.99% for both LR and YR in all Environments and stages of evaluations. The heritability is quite high and ranged between 0.47 and 0.98. We identified nine stable QTLs for YR APR on chromosomes 1B, 2A, 2B, 3D, and 4D and four stable QTLs for LR APR on chromosomes 2B, 3B, 4A, and 5A. Furthermore, in silico analysis revealed that the key putative candidate genes such as cytochrome P450, protein kinase-like domain superfamily, zinc-binding ribosomal protein, SANT/Myb domain, WRKY transcription factor, nucleotide sugar transporter, and NAC domain superfamily were in the QTL regions and probably involved in the regulation of host response toward pathogen infection. The stable QTLs identified in this study are useful for developing rust-resistant varieties through marker-assisted selection (MAS)

Tree encroachment may lead to functionally-significant changes in peatland testate amoeba communities

Climate change is likely to cause increased tree recruitment on open peatlands but we currently have little idea what consequences this vegetation change may have below-ground. Here we use transects across forested to open bog ecotones at three Russian peatland complexes to assess potential changes in the most abundant group of peatland protists - the testate amoebae. We show that the testate amoeba communities of forested and open bog are markedly different with a very abrupt boundary at, or near, the vegetation ecotone. Changes along our transects suggest that tree encroachment may reduce the trophic level of testate amoeba communities and reduce the contribution of mixotrophic testate amoebae to primary production. Our study strongly suggests that increased tree recruitment on open peatlands will have important consequences for both microbial biodiversity and microbially-mediated ecosystem processes

Significance testing testate amoeba water table reconstructions

Transfer functions are valuable tools in palaeoecology, but their output may not always be meaningful. A recently-developed statistical test ('randomTF') offers the potential to distinguish among reconstructions which are more likely to be useful, and those less so. We applied this test to a large number of reconstructions of peatland water table depth based on testate amoebae. Contrary to our expectations, a substantial majority (25 of 30) of these reconstructions gave non-significant results (P > 0.05). The underlying reasons for this outcome are unclear. We found no significant correlation between randomTF P-value and transfer function performance, the properties of the training set and reconstruction, or measures of transfer function fit. These results give cause for concern but we believe it would be extremely premature to discount the results of non-significant reconstructions. We stress the need for more critical assessment of transfer function output, replication of results and ecologically-informed interpretation of palaeoecological data