A PAINTER OF ROMANCE AND CHARM

The article is devoted to the artist, thinker, writer, public figure of Nicholas Roerich and illuminates the European period of his life and activities and his huge contribution to the world culture.

Identifying structural shocks behind loan supply fluctuations in Russia

We examine the drivers behind loan supply fluctuations in Russia using Bayesian vector autoregressive model with sign restrictions on impulse response functions. We identify two types of structural innovations: loan supply shock and monetary stance shock. We find that contractionary shocks of both types contributed significantly and in the roughly equal measure to the decrease of bank lending after the Lehman Brothers collapse.loan supply; Bayesian VAR; sign restrictions; financial crisis; Russia

Financial dollarization in Russia: causes and consequences

We review some aspects of financial dollarization in Russia, applying the main relevant theories to analyze the dynamics of several dollarization indicators. An econometric model of the short run dynamics of deposit and loan dollarization is estimated for the last decade. We find that ruble appreciation was the main driver of the de-dollarization that occurred then and of the later episode of renewed dollarization. We estimate the overall (and sectoral) currency mismatches of the Russian economy. The results show a gradual improvement of the net foreign currency position of the public sector, where we have seen significant accumulation of international reserves by the Bank of Russia and repayment of government debt. Evidence is also presented for the significant currency risk vulnerability of the nonbanking private sector. Several existing empirical studies are examined in order to assess the growth losses of the Russian economy following the crisis of 2008, which was linked with the financial dollarization.financial dollarization; currency mismatch; balance sheet effects; Russia

Feedback to the ECB's monetary analysis: the Bank of Russia's experience with some key tools

The paper investigates to what extent some basic tools of the ECBs monetary analysis can be useful for other central banks given their specific institutional, economic and financial environment. We take the case of the Bank of Russia in order to show how to adjust methods and techniques of monetary analysis for an economy that differs from the euro area as regards, for instance, the role of the exchange rate, the impact of dollarization and the functioning of sovereign wealth funds. A special focus of the analysis is the estimation of money demand functions for different monetary aggregates. The results suggest that there are stable relationships with respect to income and wealth and to a lesser extent to uncertainty variables and opportunity costs. Furthermore, the analysis also delivers preliminary results of the information content of money for inflation and for real economic development

Legal regulation of environmental protection and ensuring environmental safety when using underground resources at regional and local levels

The article deals with environmental and legal problems of using underground resources, particularly associated petroleum gas. Today regional legislation develops unsystematically and inconsistently, because the powers of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation are regulated insufficiently in the sphere of environmental protection and ensuring environmental safety, when using underground resources. Some cases contain direct contradictions to federal legislation. Some constituent entities of the Russian Federation have a tendency for normative legal regulation of this area of public relations within the framework of "advanced standard-setting". These tendencies show the need to specify the powers of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation in federal legislation. Disposal of associated petroleum gas is becoming a serious problem today. A great part of this gas is wildly flared getting into the atmosphere, whereas there is a more decent and even profitable way of its disposal. The article analyzes the corporate structure of associated petroleum gas production in Russia and determines the directions for improving the legal framework. Based on their research, the authors propose to develop a Program of implementing a set of measures aimed at increasing the extraction and subsequent processing (disposal) of associated petroleum gas by independent oil companies, which could serve as measures for state stimulation of oil production development

Prospects for cooling of marine organisms with the ice using chitosan and its polyelectrolyte complexes

A new cooling medium for storage of fish and seafood is proposed - frozen water solution of polysaccharides of natural origin, as the natural biopolymer chitosan. Rational concentration of its solution for producing the chitosan ice is determined experimentally. Organoleptic, physical, and microbiological parameters of the ice prepared from solution of polyelectrolyte complexes of chitosan and its co-polymers are examined. Better results for cooling of marine raw materials are shown for the solution of polyelectrolyte complexes based on chitosan with sodium alginate and carboxymethyl cellulose. The chitosan-alginate ice is distinguished by higher density and homogeneous consistency within the temperature range from -5 to +5оC. Antiseptic microbiological activity of the chitosan-alginate ice is in 2.3 times higher as compared with the water ice and in 1.8 times higher than for the chitosan ice. High technological properties of the ice of polyelectrolyte complexes of chitosan with sodium alginate provide good prospects for its using in technology of cooling in fishery industry

Ecological and economic mechanism for the formation of environmental measures in the gas extraction constructions

The disturbed balance of the “society-nature” system has led to the fact that the production of output usually involves environmental pollution. The reason is that most technological processes are far from perfect and involve formation of intermediate substances or end products that do not participate in further production process and consequently become waste. Therefore, the authors analyze the methodological approaches of integrated environmental and economic assessment of environment protection measures during the construction of gas industry facilities, which is a relevant issue in terms of ecology. The authors claim that the extraction of fuel and energy resources disrupt the biogeocoenosises’ components during the survey, development and exploitation of deposits, leading to the manifestation of dangerous natural management processes and destruction of flora and fauna. Therefore, the environmental-economic mechanism for the formation of environmental measures during the construction of gas facilities should be improved within the framework of the strategy of sustainable economic development of society and ensuring its environmental safety. Analysis of methods for assessing the environmental and economic impact of gas industry enterprises on the environment has shown that enterprises need further instrumental and methodological improvement

ПАТРИОТИЗМ В СИСТЕМЕ ИНТЕРЕСОВ СОВРЕМЕННОГО ЧЕЛОВЕКА

The social and economic role of patriotismin the socio-economic progress of Russiais considered in the article. The comparative analysis of technologies of formation ofpatriotism in the United States, Israel andFrance is provided. The role of the general and vocational education system in this process is defined. The system of measures to mainstream the patriotism of the populationof Russia is proposed.Рассмотрена социальная и экономическая роль патриотизма в социальноэкономическом прогрессе России. Дан сравнительный анализ технологий формированияпатриотизмавСША, Израиле, Франции. Обозначена роль системы общегоипрофессиональногообразованияв этомпроцессе. Предложенасистемамер по актуализации патриотизма населения Росси

Natural Selection Equally Supports the Human Tendencies in Subordination and Domination: A Genome-Wide Study With in silico Confirmation and in vivo Validation in Mice

We proposed the following heuristic decision-making rule: “IF {an excess of a protein relating to the nervous system is an experimentally known physiological marker of low pain sensitivity, fast postinjury recovery, or aggressive, risk/novelty-seeking, anesthetic-like, or similar agonistic-intolerant behavior} AND IF {a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) causes overexpression of the gene encoding this protein} THEN {this SNP can be a SNP marker of the tendency in dominance} WHILE {underexpression corresponds to subordination} AND vice versa.” Using this decision-making rule, we analyzed 231 human genes of neuropeptidergic, non-neuropeptidergic, and neurotrophinergic systems that encode neurotrophic and growth factors, interleukins, neurotransmitters, receptors, transporters, and enzymes. These proteins are known as key factors of human social behavior. We analyzed all the 5,052 SNPs within the 70 bp promoter region upstream of the position where the protein-coding transcript starts, which were retrieved from databases Ensembl and dbSNP using our previously created public Web service SNP_TATA_Comparator (http://beehive.bionet.nsc.ru/cgi-bin/mgs/tatascan/start.pl). This definition of the promoter region includes all TATA-binding protein (TBP)-binding sites. A total of 556 and 552 candidate SNP markers contributing to the dominance and the subordination, respectively, were uncovered. On this basis, we determined that 231 human genes under study are subject to natural selection against underexpression (significance p < 0.0005), which equally supports the human tendencies in domination and subordination such as the norm of a reaction (plasticity) of the human social hierarchy. These findings explain vertical transmission of domination and subordination traits previously observed in rodent models. Thus, the results of this study equally support both sides of the century-old unsettled scientific debate on whether both aggressiveness and the social hierarchy among humans are inherited (as suggested by Freud and Lorenz) or are due to non-genetic social education, when the children are influenced by older individuals across generations (as proposed by Berkowitz and Fromm)

Document Functional characteristics of the English and Russian media texts about the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games: political and linguistic aspects.

The article is devoted to a research of functional characteristics of the English and Russian media texts about the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games. Modern English and Russian media texts about the XXII Olympic Winter Games act as a research object. Functional classification of media texts is described; substantial features of the English and Russian media texts about the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics are defined. Functional features of the Russian and English media texts about the 2014 Winter Olympics are establishe