Adapting a psychological instrument on the “hard-to-survey” population: the case of poor people in Russia

This paper addresses the issue of adapting the instrument on a “hard-to-survey” sample (poor people). The adaptation consisted of three stages: (1) the translation of scales that have not been previously adapted on a Russian sample, (2) cognitive interviews with people living in poverty, (3) adjusting the questionnaire based on the results of cognitive interviews. We used translation — back translation, as well as committee approach, to translate the scales. Cognitive interviews were conducted using a concurrent probing approach with both scripted and spontaneous probes. In the conclusion, we present the results of reliability analysis and equivalence of measures across the poor (N=162) and non-poor (N=188) samples. Finally, we formulate recommendations for researchers dealing with “hard-to-survey” samples among the poor

Evolution of judicial system of the Russian Empire: From estate court to all-estates court

The article researches the connection between estate and judicial systems of the Russian Empire from the birth of estates in times of Peter the Great to their liquidation in 1917 by the decree of the Soviet regime. As a part of fundamental basis of the Empire estate system determined social relations and legal status of the subjects, influenced the form of rule and system of governmental bodies. In the same way estate system with its privileges and restrictions affected the Imperial judicial system. Principle of equality of subjects before law and court proclaimed by Alexander II in Court Statutes of 1864 meant establishment of all-estates court in Russia. But during the judicial reform of 1864 peasant volost' courts were preserved, and in 1889 after the abolition of justice of the peace in the most part of territory of the Empire offices of district captains with administrative and judicial functions for peasants were established. Volost' courts kept working even after the reform of local justice of 1912. The authors emphasize existence of elements of the estate system inside organisation and work of the Russian courts even in the beginning of the XXth c. that disturbed the judicial system. Local courts in Russia were finally not integrated into all-estates court system because of traditional relations existed in the Russian villages for ages. Copyright © 2017 by Academic Publishing House Researcher s.r.o. Copyright © 2017 by Sochi State University

The main approaches to the study of the phenomenon of poverty in foreign psychological studies

This article is devoted to the analysis of the main theories aimed at the definition and description of the phenomenon of poverty. Up to date, within the framework of psychological studies of the phenomenon of poverty there is no consensus on the definition of poverty and its relationship with different individual and psychological characteristics of personality. The analysis of the literature on the issue helped to allocate four psychological approach to the study of the premises for the emergence and development of the phenomenon of poverty and its possible impact on personality, which focus on the different characteristics of poverty and assert various psychological consequences of poverty for the individual. These approaches include the "culture of poverty", "evolutionary approach to poverty," "situational approach to poverty” and “socio-cognitive theory of a social class". The analysis of these approaches suggests that poverty is a complex and non-homogeneous phenomenon, which manifests a big variety of individual differences. It also highlights the different types of poverty: chronic poverty, short-term poverty, objective and subjective poverty. Further research in this area make it possible to empirically test the hypothesis of the existence of these types of poverty, as well as help to understand in what way each of them interacts with various individual psychological characteristics of personality

Evolution of judicial system of the Russian Empire: From estate court to all-estates court

The article researches the connection between estate and judicial systems of the Russian Empire from the birth of estates in times of Peter the Great to their liquidation in 1917 by the decree of the Soviet regime. As a part of fundamental basis of the Empire estate system determined social relations and legal status of the subjects, influenced the form of rule and system of governmental bodies. In the same way estate system with its privileges and restrictions affected the Imperial judicial system. Principle of equality of subjects before law and court proclaimed by Alexander II in Court Statutes of 1864 meant establishment of all-estates court in Russia. But during the judicial reform of 1864 peasant volost' courts were preserved, and in 1889 after the abolition of justice of the peace in the most part of territory of the Empire offices of district captains with administrative and judicial functions for peasants were established. Volost' courts kept working even after the reform of local justice of 1912. The authors emphasize existence of elements of the estate system inside organisation and work of the Russian courts even in the beginning of the XXth c. that disturbed the judicial system. Local courts in Russia were finally not integrated into all-estates court system because of traditional relations existed in the Russian villages for ages. Copyright © 2017 by Academic Publishing House Researcher s.r.o. Copyright © 2017 by Sochi State University

Encapsulins-bacterial protein nanocompartments: Structure, properties, and application.

Recently, a new class of prokaryotic compartments, collectively called encapsulins or protein nanocompartments, has been discovered. The shell proteins of these structures self-organize to form icosahedral compartments with a diameter of 25-42 nm, while one or more cargo proteins with various functions can be encapsulated in the nanocompartment. Non-native cargo proteins can be loaded into nanocompartments and the surface of the shells can be further functionalized, which allows for developing targeted drug delivery systems or using encapsulins as contrast agents for magnetic resonance imaging. Since the genes encoding encapsulins can be integrated into the cell genome, encapsulins are attractive for investigation in various scientific fields, including biomedicine and nanotechnology

Genetically encoded self-assembling iron oxide nanoparticles as a possible platform for cancer-cell tracking.

The study of growth and possible metastasis in animal models of tumors would benefit from reliable cell labels for noninvasive whole-organism imaging techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging. Genetically encoded cell-tracking reporters have the advantage that they are contrast-selective for viable cells with intact protein expression machinery. Besides, these reporters do not suffer from dilution during cell division. Encapsulins, which are bacterial protein nanocompartments, can serve as genetically controlled labels for multimodal detection of cells. Such nanocompartments can host various guest molecules inside their lumen. These include, for example, fluorescent proteins or enzymes with ferroxidase activity leading to biomineralization of iron oxide inside the encapsulin nanoshell. The aim of this work was to implement heterologous expression of encapsulin systems from Quasibacillus thermotolerans using the fluorescent reporter protein mScarlet-I and ferroxidase IMEF in the human hepatocellular carcinoma cell line HepG2. The successful expression of self-assembled encapsulin nanocompartments with functional cargo proteins was confirmed by fluorescence microscopy and transmission electron microscopy. Also, coexpression of encapsulin nanoshells, ferroxidase cargo, and iron transporter led to an increase in T2-weighted contrast in magnetic resonance imaging of HepG2 cells. The results demonstrate that the encapsulin cargo system from Q. thermotolerans may be suitable for multimodal imaging of cancer cells and could contribute to further in vitro and in vivo studies

Encapsulin based self‐assembling iron‐containing protein nanoparticles for stem cells mri visualization.

Over the past decade, cell therapy has found many applications in the treatment of different diseases. Some of the cells already used in clinical practice include stem cells and CAR‐T cells. Compared with traditional drugs, living cells are much more complicated systems that must be strictly controlled to avoid undesirable migration, differentiation, or proliferation. One of the approaches used to prevent such side effects involves monitoring cell distribution in the human body by any noninvasive technique, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Long‐term tracking of stem cells with artificial magnetic labels, such as magnetic nanoparticles, is quite problematic because such labels can affect the metabolic process and cell viability. Additionally, the concentration of exogenous labels will decrease during cell division, leading to a corresponding decrease in signal intensity. In the current work, we present a new type of genetically encoded label based on encapsulin from Myxococcus xanthus bacteria, stably expressed in human mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) and coexpressed with ferroxidase as a cargo protein for nanoparticles’ synthesis inside encapsulin shells. mZip14 protein was expressed for the enhancement of iron transport into the cell. Together, these three proteins led to the synthesis of iron‐containing nanoparticles in mesenchymal stem cells—without affecting cell viability—and increased contrast properties of MSCs in MRI

Iron-sequestering nanocompartments as multiplexed Electron Microscopy gene reporters.

Multicolored gene reporters for light microscopy are indispensable for biomedical research, but equivalent genetic tools for electron microscopy (EM) are still rare despite the increasing importance of nanometer resolution for reverse engineering of molecular machinery and reliable mapping of cellular circuits. We here introduce the fully genetic encapsulin/cargo system of Quasibacillus thermotolerans (Qt), which in combination with the recently characterized encapsulin system from Myxococcus xanthus (Mx) enables multiplexed gene reporter imaging via conventional transmission electron microscopy (TEM) in mammalian cells. Cryo-electron reconstructions revealed that the Qt encapsulin shell self-assembles to nanospheres with T = 4 icosahedral symmetry and a diameter of similar to 43 nm harboring two putative pore regions at the 5-fold and 3-fold axes. We also found that upon heterologous expression in mammalian cells, the native cargo is autotargeted to the inner surface of the shell and exhibits ferroxidase activity leading to efficient intraluminal iron biomineralization, which enhances cellular TEM contrast. We furthermore demonstrate that the two differently sized encapsulins of Qt and Mx do not intermix and can be robustly differentiated by conventional TEM via a deep learning classifier to enable automated multiplexed EM gene reporter imaging