Theoretical and methodological approaches to the determination of the "capital of enterprise" economic essence

Розглянуто основні підходи до обґрунтування сутності поняття "капітал підприємства". Сформовано власне визначення категорії "капітал" підприємства як матеріальні, грошові та нематеріальні ресурси, що авансовано у формування активів підприємства, необхідних для здійснення його господарської діяльності в довгостроковій перспективі, з метою отримання доходу та прибутку. Визначено склад взаємопов'язаних і взаємообумовлених внутрішніх і зовнішніх факторів, що впливають на структуру капіталу підприємства та визначають можливості управління ним.The main approaches to substantiating the essence of the concept of "capital of an enterprise" are considered. The actual definition of the category of "capital" of the enterprise as material, monetary and intangible resources, which was advanced in forming the assets of an enterprise necessary for its economic activity in the long run, was formed for the purpose of obtaining income and profits. The composition of interconnected and mutually determined internal and external factors influencing the structure of the enterprise capital and determine the possibilities of management of it are determined. The internal factors determining the peculiarities of the formation and composition of the capital of enterprises are: the organizational and legal form of the enterprise's activity, the existing capital structure, the level of profitability of the operating acti vity, the size of the enterprise and the stage of its life cycle, the degree of financial stability, the priorities of owners and management in choosing a method of financial provision, etc. External factors are the following: the state of the legislative process, the level of administrative influence on the economy of enterprises, the stability of the commodity market, the financial market situation, the tax burden on the enterprise, the ratio of creditors and investors to a particular enterprise, the degree of credit risk and the level of potential of the banking system, tendencies of development of other branches of economy

Two-Particle-Self-Consistent Approach for the Hubbard Model

Even at weak to intermediate coupling, the Hubbard model poses a formidable challenge. In two dimensions in particular, standard methods such as the Random Phase Approximation are no longer valid since they predict a finite temperature antiferromagnetic phase transition prohibited by the Mermin-Wagner theorem. The Two-Particle-Self-Consistent (TPSC) approach satisfies that theorem as well as particle conservation, the Pauli principle, the local moment and local charge sum rules. The self-energy formula does not assume a Migdal theorem. There is consistency between one- and two-particle quantities. Internal accuracy checks allow one to test the limits of validity of TPSC. Here I present a pedagogical review of TPSC along with a short summary of existing results and two case studies: a) the opening of a pseudogap in two dimensions when the correlation length is larger than the thermal de Broglie wavelength, and b) the conditions for the appearance of d-wave superconductivity in the two-dimensional Hubbard model.Comment: Chapter in "Theoretical methods for Strongly Correlated Systems", Edited by A. Avella and F. Mancini, Springer Verlag, (2011) 55 pages. Misprint in Eq.(23) corrected (thanks D. Bergeron

Dynamics of temporally interleaved percept-choice sequences: interaction via adaptation in shared neural populations

At the onset of visually ambiguous or conflicting stimuli, our visual system quickly ‘chooses’ one of the possible percepts. Interrupted presentation of the same stimuli has revealed that each percept-choice depends strongly on the history of previous choices and the duration of the interruptions. Recent psychophysics and modeling has discovered increasingly rich dynamical structure in such percept-choice sequences, and explained or predicted these patterns in terms of simple neural mechanisms: fast cross-inhibition and slow shunting adaptation that also causes a near-threshold facilitatory effect. However, we still lack a clear understanding of the dynamical interactions between two distinct, temporally interleaved, percept-choice sequences—a type of experiment that probes which feature-level neural network connectivity and dynamics allow the visual system to resolve the vast ambiguity of everyday vision. Here, we fill this gap. We first show that a simple column-structured neural network captures the known phenomenology, and then identify and analyze the crucial underlying mechanism via two stages of model-reduction: A 6-population reduction shows how temporally well-separated sequences become coupled via adaptation in neurons that are shared between the populations driven by either of the two sequences. The essential dynamics can then be reduced further, to a set of iterated adaptation-maps. This enables detailed analysis, resulting in the prediction of phase-diagrams of possible sequence-pair patterns and their response to perturbations. These predictions invite a variety of future experiments

An unusual clinical presentation resembling superior vena cava syndrome post heart surgery

BACKGROUND: An unusual sequence of post operative events heralded by hemodynamic deterioration followed by dyspnea and rapidly progressive dilatation of superficial neck and facial veins, resembling a superior vena cava syndrome, two days post surgical resection of filamentous aortic valve masses, closure of a patent foramen ovale, and performance of a modified Maze procedure for atrial fibrillation in a patient that presented with transient neurologic findings is presented. CASE PRESENTATION: Although both clinical findings and hemodynamic derangements completely resolved following tricuspid valve repair aimed to correct the new onset severe tricuspid regurgitation noted post operatively; a clear mechanism was not readily obvious and diagnostic testing data somewhat conflictive. We present a careful retrospective examination of all clinical data and review possible clinical entities that could have been implicated in this particular case and recognize that transesophageal echocardiographic findings were most useful in identifying the best course of action. CONCLUSION: After reviewing all clinical data and despite the inconclusive nature of test results; the retrospective examination of transesophageal echocardiographic findings proved to be most useful in identifying the best course of action. We postulate that in our case, resolution of the suspected pulmonary embolism with anticoagulation and reestablishment of a normal right ventricular geometry with tricuspid valve repair worked in unison in restoring normal hemodynamics and resolving both dyspnea and venous dilatation

Cryptosporidium Priming Is More Effective than Vaccine for Protection against Cryptosporidiosis in a Murine Protein Malnutrition Model

Cryptosporidium is a major cause of severe diarrhea, especially in malnourished children. Using a murine model of C. parvum oocyst challenge that recapitulates clinical features of severe cryptosporidiosis during malnutrition, we interrogated the effect of protein malnutrition (PM) on primary and secondary responses to C. parvum challenge, and tested the differential ability of mucosal priming strategies to overcome the PM-induced susceptibility. We determined that while PM fundamentally alters systemic and mucosal primary immune responses to Cryptosporidium, priming with C. parvum (106 oocysts) provides robust protective immunity against re-challenge despite ongoing PM. C. parvum priming restores mucosal Th1-type effectors (CD3+CD8+CD103+ T-cells) and cytokines (IFNγ, and IL12p40) that otherwise decrease with ongoing PM. Vaccination strategies with Cryptosporidium antigens expressed in the S. Typhi vector 908htr, however, do not enhance Th1-type responses to C. parvum challenge during PM, even though vaccination strongly boosts immunity in challenged fully nourished hosts. Remote non-specific exposures to the attenuated S. Typhi vector alone or the TLR9 agonist CpG ODN-1668 can partially attenuate C. parvum severity during PM, but neither as effectively as viable C. parvum priming. We conclude that although PM interferes with basal and vaccine-boosted immune responses to C. parvum, sustained reductions in disease severity are possible through mucosal activators of host defenses, and specifically C. parvum priming can elicit impressively robust Th1-type protective immunity despite ongoing protein malnutrition. These findings add insight into potential correlates of Cryptosporidium immunity and future vaccine strategies in malnourished children

Infection rates associated with epidural indwelling catheters for seven days or longer: systematic review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: To determine infection rate with use of epidural catheters in place for seven days or more. METHODS: Systematic review and pooled analysis of observational studies. RESULTS: Twelve studies with 4,628 patients (median 197 patients) provided information, of which nine (4,334 patients) were published after 1990. Eight studies (3,893 patients) were retrospective, and four studies (735 patients) prospective. Electronic searches identified three studies and searching reference lists nine. There were 257 catheter-related infections in total, of which 211 were superficial and 57 deep, giving rates of 6.1%, 4.6% and 1.2% respectively. Ten of the 12 studies had deep infection rates of 2% or less. The incidence of deep infection was 1 per 2391 days of treatment, or 0.4 per 1000 catheter treatment days. In nine studies (1503 patients), predominantly in cancer, and with average catheter duration of 74 days, the deep infection rate was 2.8%. The proportion of patients with infection of any type was higher in cancer patients with longer catheter duration. Limited numbers of events meant that no reliable estimate of the impact of prospective and retrospective design could be made. There appeared to be a relationship between catheter duration and infection rate from this and other recent estimates. Four of 57 (7%) patients with deep infection died. CONCLUSION: The best estimate is that one person in 35 with an epidural catheter in place for 74 days for relief of cancer pain can be expected to have a deep epidural infection, and that about 1 in 500 may die of infection-related causes. This is a most uncertain estimate given the limited nature of the evidence

Impact Factor: outdated artefact or stepping-stone to journal certification?

A review of Garfield's journal impact factor and its specific implementation as the Thomson Reuters Impact Factor reveals several weaknesses in this commonly-used indicator of journal standing. Key limitations include the mismatch between citing and cited documents, the deceptive display of three decimals that belies the real precision, and the absence of confidence intervals. These are minor issues that are easily amended and should be corrected, but more substantive improvements are needed. There are indications that the scientific community seeks and needs better certification of journal procedures to improve the quality of published science. Comprehensive certification of editorial and review procedures could help ensure adequate procedures to detect duplicate and fraudulent submissions.Comment: 25 pages, 12 figures, 6 table

Permutation criteria to evaluate multiple clinical endpoints in a proof-of-concept study: lessons from Pre-RELAX-AHF

Clinically relevant endpoints cannot be routinely targeted with reasonable power in a small study. Hence, proof-of-concept studies are often powered to a primary surrogate endpoint. However, in acute heart failure (AHF) effects on surrogates have not translated into clinical benefit in confirmatory studies. Although observing an effect on one of many endpoints due to chance is likely, observing concurrent positive trends across several outcomes by chance is usually unlikely. Pre-RELAX-AHF, which compared 4 relaxin doses with placebo in AHF, has shown favourable trends versus placebo (one-sided P <0.10) on six of nine clinical endpoints in the 30 mu g/kg/day group. To illustrate evaluation of multiple, correlated clinical endpoints for evidence of efficacy and for dose selection, a permutation method was applied retrospectively. By randomly re-assigning the treatment group to the actual data for each of the 229 subjects, 20,000 permutation samples were constructed. The permutation P value for at least six favourable trends among nine endpoints in any dose groups was 0.0073 (99.9% CI 0.0053-0.0093). This is higher than would be expected if the endpoints were uncorrelated (0.00026), but much lower than the probability of observing one of nine comparisons significant at the traditional two-sided P <0.05 (0.74). Thus, the result was unlikely due to correlated endpoints or to chance. Examining consistency of effect across multiple clinical endpoints in a proof-of-concept study may identify efficacious therapies and enable dose selection for confirmatory trials. The merit of the approach described requires confirmation through prospective application in designing future studies