Mind the gap:The global governance of just transitions

Transitions away from fossil fuels need to be governed, financed, regulated and coordinated, patterns of production and innovation need to be steered and shaped by rulemaking bodies at all levels of authority. For this to happen across a highly uneven international system, global institutions have a vital role to play in supporting and implementing just transitions (JTs) that align with principles addressing the procedural, distributional, intergenerational and recognition-based aspects of justice and which help to address the temporal and spatial aspects of transitions. In this paper, we review the ways in which global institutions are involved in the governance of JTs. We illustrate the roles these institutions are playing through three key areas vital to JTs: the (i) governance of finance (ii) labour protection and (iii) mobilising alternatives. To make sense of the diverse and uneven nature of these engagements and their implications, we explore in turn four key gaps in the way global institutions are approaching the issue of JTs.</p

Study of o-fluorbenzonal electrochemical behavior with the carbon electrode using voltammetry

A high sensitive stripping voltammetric method was for the first time proposed for determination of o-fluorbenzonal. This method is based on the ability to be electrochemically reduced with the carbon electrodes of different types. The working conditions of o-fluorbenzonal voltammetric determination are: pH of the background electrolyte, electrolysis potential and time scan rate. The effective dissociation constant of various forms of o-fluorbenzonal, number of electrons involved in the electrode process were calculated

Aligned Multi-Task Gaussian Process

Multi-task learning requires accurate identification of the correlations between tasks. In real-world time-series, tasks are rarely perfectly temporally aligned; traditional multi-task models do not account for this and subsequent errors in correlation estimation will result in poor predictive performance and uncertainty quantification. We introduce a method that automatically accounts for temporal misalignment in a unified generative model that improves predictive performance. Our method uses Gaussian processes (GPs) to model the correlations both within and between the tasks. Building on the previous work by Kazlauskaiteet al. [2019], we include a separate monotonic warp of the input data to model temporal misalignment. In contrast to previous work, we formulate a lower bound that accounts for uncertainty in both the estimates of the warping process and the underlying functions. Also, our new take on a monotonic stochastic process, with efficient path-wise sampling for the warp functions, allows us to perform full Bayesian inference in the model rather than MAP estimates. Missing data experiments, on synthetic and real time-series, demonstrate the advantages of accounting for misalignments (vs standard unaligned method) as well as modelling the uncertainty in the warping process(vs baseline MAP alignment approach)

Encouraging employees to increase the labor intellectualization level as a factor of evolution of the intellectual capital

Rapid changes in the turbulent environment cause the emergence of a new paradigm for modern enterprise operation – new rules, principles and methods of management, and popularize the problems of labor intellectualization, which can be primarily solved on the basis of the development of individual intellectual capital. In everyday life, this means transformation of an "industrial enterprise" into an "intelligent enterprise", the development of which is based on information, knowledge and creativity of employees. Goal of the article is the analysis of the prospects of encouraging employees to increase the labor intellectualization level as a factor of evolution of the intellectual capital at domestic enterprises. Following the results of the study, the conclusion is drawn that the development of the individual intellectual capital at an enterprise is based on the simultaneous increase in the number of working days (during the year) intended for training and improving the employees’ skills in the economic practice of domestic economic entities and determining the place and sources of training for employees who are most capable of developing their "capital of competences". At the same time, the main vector for domestic enterprises development under the new management paradigm is based on the development of individual intellectual capital, the main aspects of formation of which should be borrowed from the experience of European countries.peer-reviewe

Different Faces of Fiscal Bureaucracy

In light of the growing importance of finance ministries and the financial dimension in policy-making, opening up the “black box” of fiscal bureaucracies is more warranted than ever. Our paper addresses the following research question: What kinds of roles can be assumed by fiscal bureaucrats in fiscal policy-making and budgeting? We propose four dichotomies that can be employed for examining the roles played by fiscal bureaucracies: 1) Developers vs guardians; 2) Initiators vs followers; 3) Mediators vs insulators; 4) Calculators vs (gu)estimators. In developing these dimensions, we juxtaposed the insights from various streams of institutionalist research and also on literature on public budgeting and public policy with the themes that emerged from the interviews we conducted in four different countries: Estonia, Latvia, Sweden and Norway. We find that fiscal bureaucracies in Estonia and Latvia tend to be closer to the guardian-insulator-guestimator ends of the continuums, whereas the officials in Sweden and especially Norway lean towards the developer-mediator-modeller end of the scale. The division between the initiator vs follower roles is less clear-cut.Different Faces of Fiscal BureaucracypublishedVersio

Universal Situation as a Literary-Semantic Phenomenon: On the Example of Works by N.S. Leskov

The starting point of the research was the understanding of the fact that a literary work is created and exists in a particular social and cultural area and that a writer is guided by existential universals, eternal themes, motives, images, typological genre components and poetical means. The individual style of an author is revealed by the presentation of universal situations and his perception of them. In the works by N.S. Leskov the key universal situations are transfiguration of a person and the world by a righteous man, leaving home and a comeback, deception. The realization of a universal situation of transfiguration of the world and a man are impossible without some righteous activity performed by characters. Righteous characters are able to increase their spiritual grace and with the help of it to transfigure space and time, the world and mankind. The situation of leaving and coming back home is connected with Leskov’s idea that a home is a place which is full of peace, coziness. It correlates with the concept of a home in Russian culture and is the basis of the author’s world vision peculiarities. Referring to such situation the writer illustrates the degradation of a person who has lost his home as well as his renunciation of roots and loss of moral landmarks. The universal situation of deception in Leskov’s Christmas tales has an effect of a distorting mirror, a change in value landmarks (from material and spiritual), moral lesson that highlights the axiological perception of the writer. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n3s7p9

A case of severe hyperparathyroidism in clinical practice. Case report

Disorders of the mineral balance often determine the symptoms, the severity of the course and the prognosis of many diseases. Primary hyperparathyroidism (PHPT) is a common endocrine disease caused by increased secretion of parathyroid hormone as a result of primary damage to the parathyroid glands. Diagnosis of PHPT is often difficult. Clinical signs of PHPT appear months or years after the onset of the disease, however, the presence of hypercalcemia serves as an early indication of the disease of the thyroid gland. Often, patients are observed for a long time by related specialists (rheumatologists, traumatologists-orthopedists, oncologists), which gives rise to a lot of problems consisting in the lack of adequate treatment and its result, the progression of the disease, disability, and a decrease in the quality of life. Often, patients are observed for a long time by related specialists (rheumatologists, orthopedic traumatologists, oncologists) under the “masks” of various pathologies (osteoporosis, recurrent urolithiasis, etc.), which gives rise to a lot of problems, consisting in an erroneous diagnosis, lack of adequate treatment and its result, progression of the disease, disability, and a decrease in the quality of life. Late diagnosis of PHPT leads to the development of severe complications (osteoporetic fractures, renal failure) and an increased risk of premature death. A clinical case of late diagnosis of PHPT at the stage of pronounced bone complications of the disease, which proceeded under the guise of osteoarthritis, is considered. According to the results of laboratory and instrumental studies, the following were revealed: hypercalcemia, a significant increase in the concentration of PTH, adenoma of the left lower parathyroid gland, hyperparathyroid osteodystrophy, and a decrease in bone mineral density. Surgical treatment was performed – selective parathyroidectomy with the development of hypocalcemia in the early postoperative period, which was stopped by taking calcium supplements and active vitamin D metabolites and is designed to help practitioners of various specialties to understand the issues of diagnosis of PHPT and effective care for patients