Key Success Factors and Barriers for Small Businesses: Comparative Analysis

AbstractThis paper analyses the current situation of small businesses, their outlook and their problems in Europe and in Russia. The number of small businesses opened, legislative system, number of self-employed without employees, influence of bureaucratic system on small business's life, unemployment and corruption are considered in this study. The object of this paper is understanding what can modify the life of small companies. Thus the analysis of every factor is useful to understand how the economy could change, what is correct and what resolutions make the life of small businesses better. The analysis is made using data from Eurostat, Rosstat, and Fedstat (an OECD institutional website), studying how values of indicators have changed during recent years. The results clearly show that the development of small companies is correlated with the development of good institutions, a sane community and trust and optimism in economy and small business sector

Neuronal population representation of human emotional memory

Understanding how emotional processing modulates learning and memory is crucial for the treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders characterized by emotional memory dysfunction. We investigate how human medial temporal lobe (MTL) neurons support emotional memory by recording spiking activity from the hippocampus, amygdala, and entorhinal cortex during encoding and recognition sessions of an emotional memory task in patients with pharmaco-resistant epilepsy. Our findings reveal distinct representations for both remembered compared to forgotten and emotional compared to neutral scenes in single units and MTL population spiking activity. Additionally, we demonstrate that a distributed network of human MTL neurons exhibiting mixed selectivity on a single-unit level collectively processes emotion and memory as a network, with a small percentage of neurons responding conjointly to emotion and memory. Analyzing spiking activity enables a detailed understanding of the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying emotional memory and could provide insights into how emotion alters memory during healthy and maladaptive learning

Buenas prácticas para el diseño e implementación de sistemas nacionales de monitoreo para la adaptación al cambio climático

6 ilustraciones, 13 tablas, 76 página

300 years of hydrological records and societal responses to droughts and floods on the Pacific coast of Central America

The management of hydrological extremes and impacts on society is inadequately understood because of the combination of short-term hydrological records, an equally short-term assessment of societal responses and the complex multi-directional relationships between the two over longer timescales. Rainfall seasonality and inter-annual variability on the Pacific coast of Central America is high due to the passage of the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) and the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Here we reconstruct hydrological variability and demonstrate the potential for assessing societal impacts by drawing on documentary sources from the cities of Santiago de Guatemala (now Antigua Guatemala) and Guatemala de la Asunción (now Guatemala City) over the period from 1640 to 1945. City and municipal council meetings provide a rich source of information dating back to the beginning of Spanish colonisation in the 16th century. We use almost continuous sources from 1640 AD onwards, including > 190 volumes of Actas de Cabildo and Actas Municipales (minutes of meetings of the city and municipal councils) held by the Archivo Histórico de la Municipalidad de Antigua Guatemala (AHMAG) and the Archivo General de Centro América (AGCA) in Guatemala City. For this 305-year period (with the exception of a total of 11 years during which the books were either missing or damaged), information relating to Catholic rogation ceremonies and reports of flooding events and crop shortages were used to classify the annual rainy season (May to October) on a five-point scale from very wet to very dry. In total, 12 years of very wet conditions, 25 years of wetter than usual conditions, 34 years of drier conditions and 21 years of very dry conditions were recorded. An extended drier period from the 1640s to the 1740s was identified and two shorter periods (the 1820s and the 1840s) were dominated by dry conditions. Wetter conditions dominated the 1760s–1810s and possibly record more persistent La Niña conditions that are typically associated with higher precipitation over the Pacific coast of Central America. The 1640s–1740s dry period coincides with the Little Ice Age and the associated southward displacement of the ITCZ

Enrichment of Sialylated IgG by Lectin Fractionation Does Not Enhance the Efficacy of Immunoglobulin G in a Murine Model of Immune Thrombocytopenia

Intravenous immunoglobulin G (IVIg) is widely used against a range of clinical symptoms. For its use in immune modulating therapies such as treatment of immune thrombocytopenic purpura high doses of IVIg are required. It has been suggested that only a fraction of IVIg causes this anti immune modulating effect. Recent studies indicated that this fraction is the Fc-sialylated IgG fraction. The aim of our study was to determine the efficacy of IVIg enriched for sialylated IgG (IVIg-SA (+)) in a murine model of passive immune thrombocytopenia (PIT). We enriched IVIg for sialylated IgG by Sambucus nigra agglutinin (SNA) lectin fractionation and determined the degree of sialylation. Analysis of IVIg-SA (+) using a lectin-based ELISA revealed that we enriched predominantly for Fab-sialylated IgG, whereas we did not find an increase in Fc-sialylated IgG. Mass spectrometric analysis confirmed that Fc sialylation did not change after SNA lectin fractionation. The efficacy of sialylated IgG was measured by administering IVIg or IVIg-SA (+) 24 hours prior to an injection of a rat anti-mouse platelet mAb. We found an 85% decrease in platelet count after injection of an anti-platelet mAb, which was reduced to a 70% decrease by injecting IVIg (p<0.01). In contrast, IVIg-SA (+) had no effect on the platelet count. Serum levels of IVIg and IVIg-SA (+) were similar, ruling out enhanced IgG clearance as a possible explanation. Our results indicate that SNA lectin fractionation is not a suitable method to enrich IVIg for Fc-sialylated IgG. The use of IVIg enriched for Fab-sialylated IgG abolishes the efficacy of IVIg in the murine PIT model

Coupling of pollination services and coffee suitability under climate change

Climate change will cause geographic range shifts for pollinators and major crops, with global implications for food security and rural livelihoods. However, little is known about the potential for coupled impacts of climate change on pollinators and crops. Coffee production exemplifies this issue, because large losses in areas suitable for coffee production have been projected due to climate change and because coffee production is dependent on bee pollination. We modeled the potential distributions of coffee and coffee pollinators under current and future climates in Latin America to understand whether future coffee-suitable areas will also be suitable for pollinators. Our results suggest that coffee-suitable areas will be reduced 73–88% by 2050 across warming scenarios, a decline 46–76% greater than estimated by global assessments. Mean bee richness will decline 8–18% within future coffee-suitable areas, but all are predicted to contain at least 5 bee species, and 46–59% of future coffee-suitable areas will contain 10 or more species. In our models, coffee suitability and bee richness each increase (i.e., positive coupling) in 10–22% of future coffee-suitable areas. Diminished coffee suitability and bee richness (i.e., negative coupling), however, occur in 34–51% of other areas. Finally, in 31–33% of the future coffee distribution areas, bee richness decreases and coffee suitability increases. Assessing coupled effects of climate change on crop suitability and pollination can help target appropriate management practices, including forest conservation, shade adjustment, crop rotation, or status quo, in different regions

Modelling the hydrological behaviour of a coffee agroforestry basin in Costa Rica

UMR LISAH, Equipe Eau et Polluants en Bassins VersantsThe profitability of hydropower in Costa Rica is affected by soil erosion and sedimentation in dam reservoirs, which are in turn influenced by land use, infiltration and aquifer interactions with surface water. In order to foster the provision and payment for Hydrological Environmental Services (HES), a quantitative assessment of the impact of specific land uses on the functioning of drainage-basins is required. The present paper aims to study the water balance partitioning in a volcanic coffee agroforestry microbasin (1 km(2), steep slopes) in Costa Rica, as a first step towards evaluating sediment or contaminant loads. The main hydrological processes were monitored during one year, using flume, eddy-covariance flux tower, soil water profiles and piezometers. A new Hydro-SVAT lumped model is proposed, that balances SVAT (Soil Vegetation Atmosphere Transfer) and basin-reservoir routines. The purpose of such a coupling was to achieve a trade-off between the expected performance of ecophysiological and hydrological models, which are often employed separately and at different spatial scales, either the plot or the basin. The calibration of the model to perform streamflow yielded a Nash-Sutcliffe (NS) coefficient equal to 0.89 for the year 2009, while the validation of the water balance partitioning was consistent with the independent measurements of actual evapotranspiration (R-2 = 0.79, energy balance closed independently), soil water content (R-2 = 0.35) and water table level (R-2 = 0.84). Eight months of data from 2010 were used to validate modelled streamflow, resulting in a NS = 0.75. An uncertainty analysis showed that the streamflow modelling was precise for nearly every time step, while a sensitivity analysis revealed which parameters mostly affected model precision, depending on the season. It was observed that 64% of the incident rainfall R flowed out of the basin as streamflow and 25% as evapotranspiration, while the remaining 11% is probably explained by deep percolation, measurement errors and/or inter-annual changes in soil and aquifer water stocks. The model indicated an interception loss equal to 4% of R, a surface runoff of 4% and an infiltration component of 92%. The modelled streamflow was constituted by 87% of baseflow originating from the aquifer, 7% of subsurface non-saturated runoff and 6% of surface runoff. Given the low surface runoff observed under the current physical conditions (andisol) and management practices (no tillage, planted trees, bare soil kept by weeding), this agroforestry system on a volcanic soil demonstrated potential to provide valuable HES, such as a reduced superficial displacement- capacity for fertilizers, pesticides and sediments, as well as a streamflow regulation function provided by the highly efficient mechanisms of aquifer recharge and discharge. The proposed combination of experimentation and modelling across ecophysiological and hydrological approaches proved to be useful to account for the behaviour of a given basin, so that it can be applied to compare HES provision for different regions or management alternatives

Climate-Smart Agriculture in Grenada

The climate-smart agriculture (CSA) concept reflects an ambition to improve the integration of agriculture development and climate responsiveness. It aims to achieve food security and broader development goals under a changing climate and increasing food demand. CSA initiatives sustainably increase productivity, enhance resilience, and reduce/remove greenhouse gases (GHGs), and require planning to address tradeoffs and synergies between these three pillars: productivity, adaptation, and mitigation [1]. The priorities of different countries and stakeholders are reflected to achieve more efficient, effective, and equitable food systems that address challenges in environmental, social, and economic dimensions across productive landscapes. While the concept is new, and still evolving, many of the practices that make up CSA already exist worldwide and are used by farmers to cope with various production risks. Mainstreaming CSA requires critical stocktaking of ongoing and promising practices for the future, and of institutional and financial enablers for CSA adoption. This country profile provides a snapshot of a developing baseline created to initiate discussion, both within countries and globally, about entry points for investing in CSA at scale