State Aid for Industrial Enterprises in Belarus: Remedy or Poison?

In this paper the impact of various types of state aid on aggregate productivity growth in Belarusian manufacturing is investigated by combining the data on government support with firm-level accounting data for period 1998-2007. Obtained results indicate that the state aid provided for restructuring truly leads to the modernization of the enterprises (capital-to-labor ratio grows), that this modernization leads to an increase in effectiveness (TFP grows, especially at large enterprises), and that this growth of TFP allows the newly restructured enterprises to raise their market share which results in the growth of the allocative efficiency. However, when the state aid is provided to support enterprises in financial distress, while it leads to an increase in employment (only for enterprises receiving aid, especially for large enterprises, but not for the total sample) and to an expansion in the market share of large enterprises (not small and medium size), this achievement comes at the expense of the decrease in TFP.State aid; total factor productivity; allocative efficiency; Arellano-Bond method.

State Aid for Industrial Enterprises in Belarus: Remedy or Poison?

In this paper the impact of various types of state aid on aggregate productivity growth in Belarusian manufacturing is investigated by combining the data on government support with firm-level accounting data for period 1998-2007. Obtained results indicate that the state aid provided for restructuring truly leads to the modernization of the enterprises (capital-to-labor ratio grows), that this modernization leads to an increase in effectiveness (TFP grows, especially at large enterprises), and that this growth of TFP allows the newly restructured enterprises to raise their market share which results in the growth of the allocative efficiency. However, when the state aid is provided to support enterprises in financial distress, while it leads to an increase in employment (only for enterprises receiving aid, especially for large enterprises, but not for the total sample) and to an expansion in the market share of large enterprises (not small and medium size), this achievement comes at the expense of the decrease in TFP

Male Educators in Pre-School Education: Recognition or Anxiety?

Introduction. Some parts of the education system, especially the pre-school and primary phases, remain almost exclusively “female” professional niches, and for years this dramatic gender imbalance in the educational workforce worldwide has been considered “natural” and not worthy of research. The situation has begun to change in the last two decades, as more and more researchers internationally have begun to study various aspects of male participation in early childhood education and care. The Russian academic community has been slow to join the debate, and Russian publications on males in Early Childhood Education and Care are next to naught. Materials and Methods. The authors used a diverse pool of primary and secondary information sources, such as official statistics, open source publications (content analysis of the texts of the “Kindergarten Dads” project) and newly collected empirical data (survey of 142 students of the Institute of Pedagogy and Psychology of Education of the Moscow City Pedagogical University (2022 year) and the vision of the Institute’s director, Professor A. I. Savenkov), to explore the following questions: 1) How many male educators work in the pre-school sector and in what capacity? 2) How are male educators represented in public and professional discourses? 3) What strategies have been used to attract more men into the sector and how successful have they been? Results. Despite the limitations of the available statistical data, some general conclusions can be drawn: the proportion of male pre-school educators in Russia has always remained extremely low. A peculiar combination of references to classical masculinity and gender equality in the construction of the image of a male educator. Summarizing the main results of the study, perhaps the most important point to highlight is the complexity and heterogeneity of teacher traineesʼ perceptions of the profession, their future, and male teachers. Discussion and Conclusion. Overall, our statistical analysis suggests that while barriers to more men entering the pre-school teaching profession are still prevalent and continue to create obstacles, they may not be as insurmountable as hypothesised and can be reduced, if not overcome, through targeted educational policies. Our case studies show that to be successful, recruitment and retention strategies need to address a range of common and male-specific barriers. These include changing the social image of pre-school sector as a female domain, improving pay and career prospects for some, if not all, types of jobs in the sector

Sleep Apnea in Caucasian and Asian Climacteric Women

The aim of our study was to define the structure of sleep in Caucasian and Asian peri- and postmenopausal women with sleep apnea. Materials and Methods: Two hundred and forty-seven menopausal women between 45 and 60 years of age participated in this study. The participants were divided into 2 ethnic groups, taking into account the genealogy (the representatives having in two generations of parents of one ethnic group) and self-identification, taking into account phenotype elements. Caucasians were represented by the Russian ethnic group (n=115) and Asians by the Buryat ethnic group (n=132). The study included the collection of anamnestic data, physical examinations, clinical (Berlin questionnaire, general medical examination, gynecological examination, polysomnographic monitoring according to American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommendations), and biochemical laboratory methods. Results: Sleep complaints, such as difficulty falling asleep, frequent night awakenings (more than 2 times), difficulties of morning awakening or problems waking up too early, were increased in perimenopausal Caucasian women. We found ethnic differences in a greater frequency of complaints in Caucasian women, but Asian women also showed a tendency to increased complaints about poor sleep. Polysomnographic monitoring revealed that OSA was more common in Asian postmenopausal women than in Caucasians. However, in structure of sleep we have not seen distinctions. Conclusion: For improving the quality of life, it is necessary not only to pay attention to menopausal problems, but also to solve the sleep problems associated with various strategies, both age management and lifestyle

Comprehensive assessment of the state of the environment in rural and urban areas

The article examines the comfort of the environment in rural and urban areas. To assess the level of environmental comfort, methods were used to determine the degree of greening of populated areas, the state of tree plantations within green public areas, the aggressiveness of the visual environment and the quality index of the urban environment. Based on the results of the research, the comfort of the environment in rural and urban areas was compared and conclusions were drawn

Influence of Combined Therapy on Generation of Neutrophil Extracellular Traps in Patients with Cervical Cancer

BACKGROUND: According to several authors, neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) play an important role in the mechanisms of cancer development and metastatic processes, which allows them to be considered as a potential new target for the treatment of cancer. AIM: To investigate the presence of extracellular neutrophil traps in the blood of patients with cervical cancer on the background of the combined treatment. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The study was conducted in 28 patients with cervical cancer. Group 1 received only radiation therapy; Groups 2-radiation therapy with ftorafur; Group 3-radiation therapy with cisplatin. To determine the number of spontaneous extracellular neutrophilic traps in the blood of the examined individuals, we used a technique of I.I. Dolgushin and Yu.S. Andreeva. RESULTS: Peripheral blood neutrophils in 53.57% (33.87; 72.49) of cervical cancer patients showed the ability to generate NETs before treatment. The ability to form NETs was observed in neutrophils isolated from 66.67% (9.43; 99.16) patients of the Group 1. After radiation therapy with ftorafur, the ability of blood neutrophils to form NETs was observed in 50% (1.26; 98.74) of cervical cancer patients. After radiotherapy with cisplatin, 37.50% (15.20; 64.57) of patients were found to have NETs formation CONCLUSION: The ability to form NETs varied greatly after radiotherapy. The addition of chemotherapy drugs to radiation therapy did not increase the percentage of NETs in the blood of patients with cervical cancer but stimulated the appearance of basophil extracellular traps. &nbsp

Some of the Corruptogenic Factors of Environmental Legislation in the Russian Federation

The article investigates some of the shortcomings of environmental legislation, which lead to loss of valuable ecological systems in practice. The article examines two groups of regulations and their practical implementation. The first of the considered groups of normative legal sources regulates land and forest relations. It revealed corruptogenic rules that now allow to bypass the law to withdraw forest lands and specially protected natural reservations from these categories and transfer them to private ownership. In practice, this leads to deforestation and development of territories that are of great nature conservation value. The second group of normative legal acts relates to the regulation of resort relations. As a result of recent changes in environmental legislation, resorts and health and recreation areas were excluded from the specially protected natural reservations and were granted the status of just "conservation areas". At the same time, the criminal and administrative legislation has not changed. As a result, the legal regime of sanitary and mountain-sanitary conservation of resorts was left without adequate criminal and administrative protection, which may lead to the loss of natural medicinal resources and encourage corrupt activity. Keywords: environmental legislation, grant of land, regional legislation, corruption JEL Classifications: Q23; Q24; Q28; R14; R5

Optical pump–terahertz probe study of HR GaAs:Cr and SI GaAs:El2 structures with long charge carrier lifetimes

The time dynamics of nonequilibrium charge carrier relaxation processes in SI GaAs:EL2 (semi-insulating gallium arsenide compensated with EL2 centers) and HR GaAs:Cr (high-resistive gallium arsenide compensated with chromium) were studied by the optical pump–terahertz probe technique. Charge carrier lifetimes and contributions from various recombination mechanisms were determined at different injection levels using the model, which takes into account the influence of surface and volume Shockley–Read–Hall (SRH) recombination, interband radiative transitions and interband and trap-assisted Auger recombination. It was found that, in most cases for HR GaAs:Cr and SI GaAs:EL2, Auger recombination mechanisms make the largest contribution to the recombination rate of nonequilibrium charge carriers at injection levels above ~(0.5–3)·1018 cm−3, typical of pump–probe experiments. At a lower photogenerated charge carrier concentration, the SRH recombination prevails. The derived charge carrier lifetimes, due to the SRH recombination, are approximately 1.5 and 25 ns in HR GaAs:Cr and SI GaAs:EL2, respectively. These values are closer to but still lower than the values determined by photoluminescence decay or charge collection efficiency measurements at low injection levels. The obtained results indicate the importance of a proper experimental data analysis when applying terahertz time-resolved spectroscopy to the determination of charge carrier lifetimes in semiconductor crystals intended for the fabrication of devices working at lower injection levels than those at measurements by the optical pump–terahertz probe technique. It was found that the charge carrier lifetime in HR GaAs:Cr is lower than that in SI GaAs:EL2 at injection levels > 1016 cm−3.В ст. ошибочно: Irina A. Kolesnikov

The gendered effects of foreign investment and prolonged state ownership on mortality in Hungary: an indirect demographic, retrospective cohort study.

BACKGROUND: Research on the health outcomes of globalisation and economic transition has yielded conflicting results, partly due to methodological and data limitations. Specifically, the outcomes of changes in foreign investment and state ownership need to be examined using multilevel data, linking macro-effects and micro-effects. We exploited the natural experiment offered by the Hungarian economic transition by means of a multilevel study designed to address these gaps in the scientific literature. METHODS: For this indirect demographic, retrospective cohort study, we collected multilevel data related to Hungary between 1995 and 2004 from the PrivMort database and other sources at the town, company, and individual level to assess the relation between the dominant company ownership of a town and mortality. We grouped towns into three ownership categories: dominant state, domestic private, and foreign ownership. We did population surveys in these towns to collect data on vital status and other characteristics of survey respondents' relatives. We assessed the relation between dominant ownership and mortality at the individual level. We used discrete-time survival modelling, adjusting for town-level and individual-level confounders, with clustered SEs. FINDINGS: Of 83 eligible towns identified, we randomly selected 52 for inclusion in the analysis and analysed ownership data from 262 companies within these towns. Additionally, between June 16, 2014, and Dec 22, 2014, we collected data on 78 622 individuals from the 52 towns, of whom 27 694 were considered eligible. After multivariable adjustment, we found that women living in towns with prolonged state ownership had significantly lower odds of dying than women living in towns dominated by domestic private ownership (odds ratio [OR] 0·74, 95% CI 0·61-0·90) or by foreign investment (OR 0·80, 0·69-0·92). INTERPRETATION: Prolonged state ownership was associated with protection of life chances during the post-socialist transformation for women. The indirect economic benefits of foreign investment do not translate automatically into better health without appropriate industrial and social policies. FUNDING: The European Research Council

Mortality in Transition: Study Protocol of the PrivMort Project, a multilevel convenience cohort study.

BACKGROUND: Previous research using routine data identified rapid mass privatisation as an important driver of mortality crisis following the collapse of Communism in Central and Eastern Europe. However, existing studies on the mortality crisis relying on individual level or routine data cannot assess both distal (societal) and proximal (individual) causes of mortality simultaneously. The aim of the PrivMort Project is to overcome these limitations and to investigate the role of societal factors (particularly rapid mass privatisation) and individual-level factors (e.g. alcohol consumption) in the mortality changes in post-communist countries. METHODS: The PrivMort conducts large-sample surveys in Russia, Belarus and Hungary. The approach is unique in comparing towns that have undergone rapid privatisation of their key industrial enterprises with those that experienced more gradual forms of privatisation, employing a multi-level retrospective cohort design that combines data on the industrial characteristics of the towns, socio-economic descriptions of the communities, settlement-level data, individual socio-economic characteristics, and individuals' health behaviour. It then incorporates data on mortality of different types of relatives of survey respondents, employing a retrospective demographic approach, which enables linkage of historical patterns of mortality to exposures, based on experiences of family members. By May 2016, 63,073 respondents provided information on themselves and 205,607 relatives, of whom 102,971 had died. The settlement-level dataset contains information on 539 settlements and 12,082 enterprises in these settlements in Russia, 96 settlements and 271 enterprises in Belarus, and 52 settlement and 148 enterprises in Hungary. DISCUSSION: In addition to reinforcing existing evidence linking smoking, hazardous drinking and unemployment to mortality, the PrivMort dataset will investigate the variation in transition experiences for individual respondents and their families across settlements characterized by differing contextual factors, including industrial characteristics, simultaneously providing information about how excess mortality is distributed across settlements with various privatization strategies.The study was funded by European Research Council (a competitive externally peer reviewed Advanced Grant Scheme, grant agreement No. 269036).This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from BioMed Central at http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-016-3249-