ROAD ACCIDENTS IN RUSSIA: STATISTICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL ANALYSIS

Road transport is the most dangerous means of modern transportation. About 1.24 million people die annually on the world’s roads. Middle-income countries including the Russian Federation have the highest road traffic fatality rates. The author analyzed the main causes of road accidents in the Russian Federation, their temporal variation and spatial distribution as well as temporal change in the number of road accidents, fatalities and injuries over the last 10 years at national and regional level using official statistics data and information of the database created by the author. The main purpose of the study is to trace regional differences in road (un-)safety, to find out the most critical points and to reveal areas most at risk. The study was done at the level of the main administrative units of the Russian Federation (federal regions). As the leading cause of road accidents in Russia, rank traffic violations by drivers, including drink-driving that accounts for one-fifths of car crashes in some regions. In some regions, as the most severe problem remains the poor state of roads and streets causing 40-50 per cent of accidents there

Postface “From natural hazards to technological disasters”

The importance of the impact of natural hazards on critical infrastructures and a lack of research on the problem, compared with studies of natural hazards themselves, prompted us to guest-edit a Special Issue on “Natural Hazards and Technological Disasters” in the journal Natural Hazards and Earth Systems Sciences. The special issue deals with the relationship between natural hazardous processes and the technosphere. The articles included in the special issue address a variety of topics including methodologies and tools for Natech risk assessment, procedures for loss estimations, case-study descriptions of Natech events and analysis of other natural-hazard impact on technological systems. Therefore, the main purpose of the Special Issue is to raise awareness of the increasing problem of natural hazards triggering technological disruptions and accidents and to propose methods and tools to mitigate the associated risk. This article is the postface to this Special Issue.JRC.G.6-Security technology assessmen

Power, People, and the Political: Understanding the Many Crises in Belarus

The many recent crises in Belarus are often seen through the prism of democratization, post-communist transition, and nation- and identity-building. As a rule, it is put into the context of the 1989 democratization in Central and Eastern Europe and compared with similar societal mobilization in Georgia (2003), Ukraine (2004; 2014), and Kyrgyzstan (2005). This article, however, argues that while these theoretical approaches provide an important explanatory potential, they nevertheless fail to account for informal, hidden, and unstable processes presently unfolding in the Belarusian society, leading to profound change. We argue that, in the vulnerable, unpredictable, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world of today, our knowledge and ability to plan and achieve desirable outcomes are limited in contrast to a largely positivist or interpretivist epistemology of the mainstream theories, which conceive of the world as a closed system. In this article, we offer an alternative explanation of the many crises in Belarus by drawing on the insights of complexity-thinking to suggest that (hidden) transformative change in the country is now irreversible

Resilience is dead. Long live resilience!

Reflections about the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic and its implications for Europe and the world engendered the view that ‘resilience is dead’. In this post, Elena Korosteleva & Irina Petrova argue that what we observe today is the demise of the ‘neo-liberal’ framing of resilience. Meanwhile, the resilience of human grit lives on

Features of Circadian Rhythms in Patients with Cerebrovascular Diseases

The chapter describes in detail the pathogenetic role of desynchronosis in the development of cerebrovascular diseases (CVD). The data of domestic and foreign literature on the study of desynchronosis are presented. The role of melatonin in the regulation of circadian rhythms (CR) is shown. Pathological changes in CR affect sleep disturbance, emotional and cognitive disorders. It is demonstrated the need of the further study of the prevalence and structure of desynchronosis in patients with CVD. The search of the most significant factors of desynchronosis development in patients with vascular diseases is of great scientific and practical significance. The importance of creating and introducing diagnostic and therapeutic algorithms for chronodiagnostics and chronotherapy of CVD into everyday practical activities. The effectiveness of melatonin for the normalization of sleep and CR in patients with insomnia, acute stroke, depressive disorders is shown. Complex therapy of the patients with CVD taking into account chronobiological disorders allows to eliminate the adverse effect of sleep disorders and CR on the regulation of the cardiovascular system and improve the efficiency of rehabilitation

From ‘the global’ to ‘the local’: the future of 'cooperative orders' in Central Eurasia in times of complexity

Living in times of increasing complexity is hard; it becomes even harder with the realisation of diminishing control. How do we adapt our governance to this complexity to ensure peaceful cohabitation of the established and emergent order regimes? This paper contends that it is important to embrace complexity in full, conceptually and practically, by shifting from ‘the global’ to ‘the local’, to understand the pressure of transformational change and to prepare the ground for the emergence of more resilient and cooperative orders. We apply this complexity-thinking, using a 3P analysis, to Central Eurasia, presently a battleground of three competing order-making regimes - the EU, China and Russia. We argue that for more resilient and cooperative orders to emerge, it is essential to understand and enable ‘the local’ and embrace the region in is diversity, to facilitate a more joined-up and bottom-up governance in managing the complexity of a changing world

Efficiency of public administration and economic growth in Russia : empirical analysis

This article presents the results of multivariate correlations between regional governance system performance indicators and key indicators of socio-economic territorial development based on modern economic and mathematical tools. The representation of the socioeconomic system of the region as a space of key variables of socio-economic territorial development and regional authorities’ performance indicators allows the use of canonical correlation analysis tools. The analysis is performed on the indicators calculated for the regions of the Russian Federation for the period of 2008-2010. As a result, weak correlation was found between subject-object variables of meso-level economic systems. A visible correlation in two sets is observed between economic territory development and indicators of executive authorities’ performance such as the average monthly wage of civil servants of executive authorities of the Russian Federation constituent entities, tax and non-tax share of municipalities budget income in total municipalities budget income and the number of employees in the executive branch of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation. The lack of correlation between performance indicators of regional governance systems and socio-economic territorial development requires a revision of the existing formal approach to this evaluation.peer-reviewe

Photoacoustic Imaging in Gastroenterology: Advances and Needs

Gastroenterologists routinely use optical imaging and ultrasound for the minimally invasive diagnosis and treatment of chronic inflammatory diseases and cancerous tumors in gastrointestinal tract and related organs. Recent advances in gastroenterological photoacoustics represent combination of multispectral and multiscale photoacoustic (PA), ultrasound (US), and near-infrared (NIR) fluorescent imaging. The novel PA endoscopic methods have been evaluated in preclinical models using catheter-based miniature probes either noncontact, all-optical, forward-viewing probe or contact, side-viewing probe combined with ultrasound (esophagus and colon). The deep-tissue PA tomography has been applied to preclinical research on targeted contrast agents (pancreatic cancer) using benchtop experimental setups. The clinical studies engaging human tissue ex vivo have been performed on endoscopic mucosal resection tissue with PA-US tomography system and intraoperative imaging of pancreatic tissue with PA and NIR fluorescence multimodality. These emerging PA methods are very promising for early cancer detection and prospective theranostics. The noninvasive transabdominal examination with PA-US handheld probe has been implemented into clinical trials for the assessment of inflammatory bowel disease. To facilitate translational and clinical research in PA imaging in gastroenterology, we discuss potential clinical impact and limitations of the proposed solutions and future needs