Соціальна справедливість як фактор розвитку пенсійної системи України

У статті проаналізовано окремі аспекти розвитку вітчизняної пенсійної системи в контексті реалізації одного з її основних формоутворюючих факторів - соціальної справедливості. Установлено коло проблемних питань у межах пенсійних відносин, розроблено пропозиції з удосконалення концепції вітчизняної пенсійної системи в контексті розвитку економіки та побудови соціальної держави.Several aspects of pension system reforming in Ukraine and its impact on qualitative changes in social environment have been analyzed. A wide range of problems has been identified and propositions to improve concepts of pension reforming have been made

Induced Gamma-band Activity Elicited by Visual Representation of Unattended Objects

Peer reviewedPostprin

There are Many Apps for That: Quantifying the Availability of Privacy-Preserving Apps

The adage "there's an app for that" holds true in modern app stores. Indeed, app stores usually go further and provide multiple apps with very similar functionality; examples range from flashlight apps to alarm clocks. We call these functionally-similar apps. When searching for these apps, users are often presented with a vast array of choices, but no distinction is made in the user interface to highlight the relative privacy risks inherent in choosing one app over another. Yet the availability of many functionally-similar apps raises the question of whether some apps are significantly less invasive than others. In this paper, we take several steps toward answering this question. We begin by enumerating 2 500 groups of functionally-similar apps in the Google Play Store. Within groups of apps, we use static analysis to understand the real-world risks coming from apps with aggressive permission usage. By leveraging an established ranking system, and combining it with real-world data from over 28 000 Android devices, we quantify the improvements that can be made if users installed apps with privacy in mind. We observe that at least 25.6% of apps contain libraries that gratuitously exploit available permissions and find that 43.5% of apps could be swapped for comparable alternatives that require fewer permissions. Permissions saved may deliver important privacy and security improvements, including preventing access to the calendar (in 24% of cases), sending text messages (12%) and recording audio (8%). This is particularly important for apps which embed third-party libraries, since library code executes with the same permissions as the app itself.Vincent F. Taylor is supported by a Rhodes Scholarship and EPSRC. Alastair R. Beresford is partly supported by EPSRC [grant number EP/M020320/1] and The Boeing Company. The Device Analyzer project was partly funded by a Google Focused Research Award

Symmetry perception for patterns defined by colour and luminance

Perception of visual symmetry is fast, efficient and relies on both early, low-level and late, mid- and high-level neural mechanisms. To test for potential influences of early, low-level mechanisms on symmetry perception, we used isoluminant, achromatic and combined (colour + luminance) patterns in a psychophysical and an event-related potential (ERP) experiment. In the psychophysical experiment, pattern contrast was fixed at individual symmetry discrimination threshold. Participants then judged whether a pattern was symmetric or random. Stimuli at isoluminance were associated with a large bias towards symmetry, achromatic stimuli introduced the opposite bias, while stimuli containing a balance of both colour and luminance were perceived without bias. These findings are in line with distinct contrast sensitivity functions for colour and luminance, with colour providing low frequency information useful for symmetry detection and luminance providing high frequency information useful for detection of detail. The subsequent ERP experiment was run at high contrasts to assess processing of symmetry in suprathreshold conditions. Sustained Posterior Negativity, a symmetry-sensitive ERP component, was observed in all conditions and showed the expected dependence on symmetry. However, interactions between symmetry and contrast type were not observed. In conclusion, while our findings at threshold support models that propose an important contribution of low-level mechanisms to symmetry perception, at suprathreshold, these low-level contributions do not persist. Therefore, under everyday viewing conditions, symmetry perception engages a relatively broad cortical network that is not constrained by low-level inputs

Human amniotic fluid glycoproteins expressing sialyl Lewis carbohydrate antigens stimulate progesterone production in human trophoblasts in vitro

Background: Progesterone is thought to mediate immune modulator effects by regulating uterine responsiveness. The aim of the study was to clarify the effect of transferrin and glycodelin A (former name PP14) as sialyl Lewis X-expressing glycoproteins on the release of progesterone by trophoblast cells in vitro. Methods: Cytotrophoblast cells were prepared from human term placentas by standard dispersion of villous tissue followed by a Percoll gradient centrifugation step. Trophoblasts were incubated with varying concentrations (50-300 mug/ml) of human amniotic fluid- and serum-transferrin as well as with glycodelin A. Culture supernatants were assayed for progesterone, human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) and cortisol by enzyme immunometric methods. Results: The release of progesterone is increased in amniotic fluid transferrin- and glycodelin A-treated trophoblast cell cultures compared to untreated trophoblast cells. There is no relation between transferrin and the hCG or cortisol production of trophoblast cells. Conclusion: The results suggest that sialyl Lewis carbohydrate antigen-expressing amniotic fluid glycoproteins modulate the endocrine function of trophoblasts in culture by upregulating progesterone production. Copyright (C) 2004 S. Karger AG, Basel

Coordination and organometallic precursors of group 10 and 11 Focused electron beam induced deposition of metals and insight gained from chemical vapour deposition, atomic layer deposition, and fundamental surface and gas phase studies

Nanostructured materials made from group 10 Ni, Pd, Pt and group 11 Cu, Ag, Au elements have outstanding technological relevance in microelectronics, nano optics, catalysis, and energy conversion. Processes that allow for the easy and reliable fabrication of such nanostructures are heavily sought after. Focused electron beam induced deposition FEBID is the only direct write technique that can fabricate nanostructures with arbitrary shape and dimensions down to the sub 10 nm regime. However, the complex chemistry of FEBID involving electron induced dissociation processes of metalorganic precursors molecules, surface kinetics, and thermal effects is poorly understood and far from being optimized. Here, we review in a comparative manner the performance and the underlying chemical reactions of surface deposition processes, namely, chemical vapour deposition CVD , atomic layer deposition ALD , and FEBID itself. The knowledge gained in CVD and ALD as related surface deposition techniques will help us to understand the spatially selective chemistry occurring in FEBID. Fundamental surface and gas phase studies provide insight to electron induced chemistry and desorption of precursor fragments. Specific emphasis is put on the type of the ligands and their different behaviour under thermal, surface related, and electron induced processes. The comprehensive overview of the current state of FEBID for group 10 and 11 metals includes reactive environments and purification approaches as these may provide valuable information on the design of novel precursors. The evaluation of the precursor and process performance is extended to include W, Co, Fe, Ru, Rh, and Ir to represent a general guide towards future developments in FEBID. These may not only rely on the design of novel compounds but also on optimized deposition strategies inspired by ALD and CV

Plasma Proteomic Variables Related to COVID-19 Severity: An Untargeted nLC-MS/MS Investigation

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection leads to a wide range of clinical manifestations and determines the need for personalized and precision medicine. To better understand the biological determinants of this heterogeneity, we explored the plasma proteome of 43 COVID-19 patients with different outcomes by an untargeted liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry approach. The comparison between asymptomatic or pauci-symptomatic subjects (MILDs), and hospitalised patients in need of oxygen support therapy (SEVEREs) highlighted 29 proteins emerged as differentially expressed: 12 overexpressed in MILDs and 17 in SEVEREs. Moreover, a supervised analysis based on a decision-tree recognised three proteins (Fetuin-A, Ig lambda-2chain-C-region, Vitronectin) that are able to robustly discriminate between the two classes independently from the infection stage. In silico functional annotation of the 29 deregulated proteins pinpointed several functions possibly related to the severity; no pathway was associated exclusively to MILDs, while several only to SEVEREs, and some associated to both MILDs and SEVEREs; SARS-CoV-2 signalling pathway was significantly enriched by proteins up-expressed in SEVEREs (SAA1/2, CRP, HP, LRG1) and in MILDs (GSN, HRG). In conclusion, our analysis could provide key information for 'proteomically' defining possible upstream mechanisms and mediators triggering or limiting the domino effect of the immune-related response and characterizing severe exacerbations

The Standard Model Prediction of the Muon Anomalous Magnetic Moment

This article reviews and updates the Standard Model prediction of the muon g-2. QED, electroweak and hadronic contributions are presented, and open questions discussed. The theoretical prediction deviates from the present experimental value by 2-3 standard deviations, if e+e- annihilation data are used to evaluate the leading hadronic term.Comment: 30 pages, 8 figures. v2: Updated version to appear in J.Phys.G. Comments and references added, typo corrected in eq.(17

Secure Code Update for Embedded Devices via Proofs of Secure Erasure

Abstract. Remote attestation is the process of verifying internal state of a remote embedded device. It is an important component of many security protocols and applications. Although previously proposed re-mote attestation techniques assisted by specialized secure hardware are effective, they not yet viable for low-cost embedded devices. One no-table alternative is software-based attestation, that is both less costly and more efficient. However, recent results identified weaknesses in some proposed software-based methods, thus showing that security of remote software attestation remains a challenge. Inspired by these developments, this paper explores an approach that relies neither on secure hardware nor on tight timing constraints typi-cal of software-based technqiques. By taking advantage of the bounded memory/storage model of low-cost embedded devices and assuming a small amount of read-only memory (ROM), our approach involves a new primitive – Proofs of Secure Erasure (PoSE-s). We also show that, even though it is effective and provably secure, PoSE-based attestation is not cheap. However, it is particularly well-suited and practical for two other related tasks: secure code update and secure memory/storage erasure. We consider several flavors of PoSE-based protocols and demonstrate their feasibility in the context of existing commodity embedded devices.