Does non-farm income diversivication in Northern Albania offer an escape from rural poverty?

The paper uses up-to-date household data from two Northern-Albanian regions. It summarises socio-economic facts on taking up remunerative non-farm employment and identifies the determinants of non-farm income diversification at the farm household level based on a binary logistic regression. Furthermore, the paper provides insight in the northern-Albanian farming structure, migration patterns, attitudes towards and reasons for income diversification into the non-farm sector. Income diversification indeed has a positive impact on the welfare of the households: A statistically significant increasing trend in incomes with rising diversification level was observed. -- G E R M A N V E R S I O N: Dieser Beitrag fasst mit Hilfe von aktuellen Haushaltsdaten aus zwei nordalbanischen Untersuchungsregionen das sozioökonomische Umfeld und insbesondere die einkommenschaffenden Tätigkeiten im außerlandwirtschaftlichen Sektor zusammen. Eine binäre logistische Regression zeigt die maßgeblichen Einflussfaktoren außerlandwirtschaftlicher Einkommensdiversifizierung auf der Ebene landwirtschaftlicher Haushalte. Außerdem gibt diese Arbeit Einsicht in die Agrarstruktur Nordalbaniens, Merkmale der dort vorgefundenen Migrationsmuster, die Einstellungen zu und Gründe für die außerlandwirtschaftliche Einkommensdiversifizierung. Die Analyse zeigt einen positiven Einfluss von Einkommensdiversifizierung auf den Wohlstand der Haushalte: Es konnte ein statistisch signifikanter Trend bestätigt werden, der zeigt, dass mit steigendem Diversifikationsniveau das Haushaltseinkommen steigt.Non-farm income diversification,farm households,migration,Albania,Außerlandwirtschaftliche Einkommensdiversifizierung,landwirtschaftliche Haushalte,Migration,Albanien

Patterns and Determinants of International Migration in Northern Albania

The European Union (EU) is the main source of remittances world wide and Albania, struck by abject poverty, is Europe’s number one country sending out migrants. Albania’s economy as well as its households’ welfare strongly depend on remittances. Consequently, the topic of migration is cutting-edge for EU and Albanian policy makers. Thus, up-to-date information is decisive for taking effective policy measures. This poster paper aims at making a fruitful contribution to understanding the varied context of migration in Albania. It presents recent data on socio-economic characteristics of households with absent family members. A binary logistic regression is employed to identify determinants of participation in international migration in Northern Albania.Albania, migration, remittances, Labor and Human Capital,

Phyllobacterium catacumbae sp. nov., a member of the order 'Rhizobiales' isolated from Roman catacombs

Two strains were isolated from tuff, a volcanic rock that forms the walls of the Roman Catacombs of Saint Callixtus in Rome, Italy. A polyphasic approach using nutritional and physiological tests, reactions to antibiotics, fatty acid profiles, DNA base ratios, DNA-DNA reassociation and 16S rRNA gene sequence comparisons showed that the two isolates belong to a novel species within the genus Phyllobacterium. The species Phyllobacterium catacumbae sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is CSC19T (=CECT 5680T=LMG 22520T).V. J. and L. L. received fellowships from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science (MEC), I3P programme and J. M. G. is supported by an MEC contract from the ‘Ramón y Cajal’ program. This study was supported by EC project EVK4-CT2000-00028 and MEC project BTE2002-04492-C02-01.Peer Reviewe

Исследования по применению флокулянтов для интенсификации работы сгустительного и обезвоживающего оборудования

Наведено результати лабораторних досліджень та промислових випробувань використання різних флокулянтів для інтенсифікації роботи згущувального та зневоднювального обладнання на ГЗФ "Самсонівська" ПАТ "Краснодонвугілля" і ВАТ "ЦЗФ "Добропільська". Виявлено фактори, які необхідно враховувати при виборі синтетичних флокулянтів та режимів флокуляції для інтенсифікації процесів згущення та зневоднення шламів.Приведены результаты лабораторных исследований и промышленных испытаний использования различных флокулянтов для интенсификации работы сгустительного и обезвоживающего оборудования на ГОФ "Самсоновская" ПАО "Краснодонуголь" и ОАО "ЦОФ "Добропольская". Выявлены факторы, которые необходимо учитывать при выборе синтетических флокулянтов и режимов флокуляции для интенсификации процессов сгущения и обезвоживания шламов.The results of laboratory and industrial tests of various flocculant using for the intensification of the thickening and dewatering equipment for МDF "Samsonovskaya" PJSC "Krasnodoncoal" and JSC "CDF" Dobropilska" are shown. The factors which are necessary for consideration at choosing a synthetic flocculants and flocculation regimes to intensify the process of thickening and dewatering of sludge are revealed

A temperature‐controlled, circular maintenance system for studying growth and development of pelagic tunicates (salps)

Salps have attracted attention as zooplankton organisms that may be able to expand their habitat range and increase their ecological importance in the face of ongoing global warming. Due to their gelatinous nature, unique feeding strategy, and reproductive ecology such changes could have profound impacts on regional marine ecosystems. While their role in the regional carbon cycle is receiving attention, our knowledge of their physiology and life cycle is still limited. This knowledge gap is mainly due to their fragile gelatinous nature, which makes it difficult to capture and maintain intact specimen in the laboratory. We present here a modified kreisel tank system that has been tested onboard a research vessel with the Southern Ocean salp Salpa thompsoni and at a research station with Salpa fusiformis and Thalia democratica from the Mediterranean Sea. Successful maintenance over days to weeks allowed us to obtain relative growth and developmental rates comparable to in situ field samples of S. thompsoni and S. fusiformis, and provided insights into previously unknown features of their life cycle (e.g., testes development). Our results show that traditional methods of estimating growth, such as cohort analysis, may lead to a general overestimation of growth rates and neglect individual strategies (e.g., shrinkage), which can affect the results and conclusions drawn from population dynamic models. By providing a starting point for the successful maintenance of different species, comparable experiments on the physiology of salps is made possible. This will contribute to refining model parameters and improving the reliability of the predictions

Approval Voting on Dichotomous Preferences

The aim of this paper is to find normative foundations of Approval Voting. In order to show that Approval Voting is the only social choice function that satisfies anonymity, neutrality, strategy-proofness and strict monotonicity we rely on an intermediate result which relates strategy-proofness of a social choice function to the properties of Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives and monotonicity of the corresponding social welfare function. Afterwards we characterize Approval Voting by means of strict symmetry, neutrality and strict monotonicity and relate this result to May's Theorem. Finally, we show that it is possible to substitute the property of strict monotonicity by the one efficiency of in the second characterization.This research was undertaken with support from the fellowship 2001FI-00451 of the Generalitat de Catalunya and from the research grant BEC2002-02130 of the Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología of Spain

Seasonal and Form-Specific Gene Expression Signatures Uncover Different Generational Strategies of the Pelagic Tunicate Salpa thompsoni During the Southern Ocean Winter

The pelagic tunicate Salpa thompsoni is recognized as a major metazoan grazer in the Southern Ocean. Long term observations show an increase in this species’ biomass and a southward shift in its distribution both of which are positively correlated with ocean warming and winter sea ice decline around the Antarctic Peninsula. However, our understanding on how salps adapt their life cycle to the extreme seasonality of the Southern Ocean and the putative differences between its two reproductive forms (aggregates, solitaries) is rudimentary. In particular, our current knowledge of whether and how S. thompsoni overwinter is limited, largely due to winter sampling constraints. In this study, we investigated the form-specific gene expression profiles of Salpa thompsoni during the austral autumn and winter. Between the seasons, genes related to translation showed the biggest difference in gene expression. We found more genes were upregulated in solitaries compared to aggregates, indicating a potentially form-specific overwintering strategy. Our data provide first insights into the seasonal and form-specific physiology of salps by considering their complex life cycle, thereby contributing to a more comprehensive understanding of the response of salps to seasonal changes in their environment and to anthropogenic induced global climate change

An agent model for business relationships

Relationships are fundamental to all but the most impersonal forms of interaction in business. An agent aims to secure projected needs by attempting to build a set of (business) relationships with other agents. A relationship is built by exchanging private information, and is characterised by its intimacy — degree of closeness — and balance — degree of fairness. Each argumentative interaction between two agents then has two goals: to satisfy some immediate need, and to do so in a way that develops the relationship in a desired direction. An agent’s desire to develop each relationship in a particular way then places constraints on the argumentative utterances. This paper describes argumentative interaction constrained by a desire to develop such relationships.Peer Reviewe