Degradation of higher education in Kazakhstan as an example of post-transitional crisis

It is shown, that objectives of degradation of Higher Education in most part of post-soviet countries are connected with the specific factors appeared at the economical situation appeared at the end of transitional period (transition from planned economy to market one). Decreasing of quality of higher education in such countries as Kazakhstan may be interpreted in frameworks of Baudrillard’s concept of evolution of connection between "The Sign" and "The Reality"; such interpretation directly shows that overcoming of negative trends in post-soviet countries education cannot be realized by traditional administrative instruments. The problem may be solved by taking into account concepts of institutional economy

Using Supply Chain Management Strategy for Regional Economic Clusterization in Kazakhstan’s Chemical Industry

This article develops an approach to forming innovative development clusters in Kazakhstan’s chemical industry as an opportunity to promote the effectiveness of the sector’s development and to increase its competitive advantage based on the supply chain management. An expert evaluation method is used to form a system of indicators for assessing innovative development in the country’s regional chemical industry. A scaling technique was also incorporated to distinguish these clusters according to the quality levels of innovative development among the chemical industry regions in a modern context, with industrial gas production as an example. Two chemical clusters of innovative development in Kazakhstan’s regions were formed though a cluster analysis – and their economic efficiency substantiated – using multivariate linear regression modeling. The efficiency from creating Chemical Cluster No. 0 for innovative development indicates that its total regional product would grow by 0.68%, while Cluster 5 exhibited an efficiency of 4.23%. The presented methodological approach is based on a horizontal integration of the manufacturers and suppliers of chemical products, and considers specific characteristics of the industry’s operation; this allows for the creation of chemical clusters with highly efficient communication in the innovation process. The research findings contribute to modernizing the country’s chemical industry and increasing its competitive capacity in the international market

The impact of uncertainty on predictions of the CovidSim epidemiological code

Data availability Figure 1a,b displays publicly available cumulative death count data for the UK, which were obtained from ref. 22. Source Data are available with this paper. Furthermore, the parameter list—with all input parameters, a description, their default values and reasons for inclusion or exclusion from the Imperial College London CovidSim team—is available as Supplementary Data. Supplementary information: https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs43588-021-00028-9/MediaObjects/43588_2021_28_MOESM1_ESM.pdf Supplementary discussion, Figs. 1–7 and Table 1. Supplementary Data 1: https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs43588-021-00028-9/MediaObjects/43588_2021_28_MOESM2_ESM.xlsx All input parameters, a description, their default values and reasons for inclusion or exclusion from the Imperial College London CovidSim team. Source data Source Data Fig. 1: https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs43588-021-00028-9/MediaObjects/43588_2021_28_MOESM3_ESM.xlsx The computed cumulative death results for Fig. 1 and the observed death count data. Source Data Fig. 2: https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs43588-021-00028-9/MediaObjects/43588_2021_28_MOESM4_ESM.xlsx The Sobol indices of Fig. 2.Copyright © 2022 The Autor(s). Epidemiological modelling has assisted in identifying interventions that reduce the impact of COVID-19. The UK government relied, in part, on the CovidSim model to guide its policy to contain the rapid spread of the COVID-19 pandemic during March and April 2020; however, CovidSim contains several sources of uncertainty that affect the quality of its predictions: parametric uncertainty, model structure uncertainty and scenario uncertainty. Here we report on parametric sensitivity analysis and uncertainty quantification of the code. From the 940 parameters used as input into CovidSim, we find a subset of 19 to which the code output is most sensitive—imperfect knowledge of these inputs is magnified in the outputs by up to 300%. The model displays substantial bias with respect to observed data, failing to describe validation data well. Quantifying parametric input uncertainty is therefore not sufficient: the effect of model structure and scenario uncertainty must also be properly understood.Royal Society’s RAMP initiative: European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement nos. 800925 (VECMA project; www.vecma.eu) and 823712 (CompBioMed2 Centre of Excellence, www.compbiomed.eu); UK EPSRC for the UK High-End Computing Consortium (grant no. EP/R029598/1)

Spiritual Development as a Factor of Professional and Personal Qualities of Modern Students

This article deals with the formation of spiritual development of students, caused by three main circumstances: First, the need to study the changes taking place in society and changes in the mechanism of formation of spiritual culture of students. The hierarchy of values and spiritual activity of new generations of students differ significantly from previous generations' value-normative system. Secondly, students' innovative role in youth culture and a special place of higher education as a factor in the formation of students' spiritual culture. Third, considering students' specific qualities and characteristics as a special social group, the study of youth spiritual culture can determine the parameters of society's spiritual development prospects. In the works of the researchers mentioned above, in particular, the social aspects of cultural self-identification of young people were touched upon. The influence of deformations of the value-normative system on the strengthening of the processes of individualization of consciousness of young people taking place against the background of the destruction of rigid traditional forms of social control and the absence of new moral boundaries was studied. In connection with the social and educational environment, the issues of adaptation of young people were considered. Applied research in the higher education system reflects the urgent problems of universities. It contributes to the clarification of hypotheses and building theories of the middle level, including issues of institutional impact institutions of higher education on the formation of students' spiritual development, especially in terms of its professional component. The analysis of requests, expectations, and preferences of young generations in the field of culture makes it possible to form a holistic view of the development of leisure behavioral stereotypes

Exposure of wild Caspian seals (Pusa caspica) to parasites, bacterial and viral pathogens, evaluated via molecular and serological assays

Disease surveillance of marine mammal populations is essential to understand the causes of strandings, identify potential threats to animal health, and to support development of conservation strategies. Here we report the first large multi-pathogen screening of prevalence for viruses, bacteria and parasites in a sample of 177 live, healthy, wild Caspian seals (Pusa caspica), captured and released during satellite telemetry studies 2007-2017. Employing molecular and serological assays we assess prevalence of pathogens known to be of significance for marine mammal health worldwide, and evaluate the results in relation to Caspian seal health and conservation. RT-PCR, and PCR assays find evidence for infection by Canine Distemper Virus (CDV), Phocine herpes virus, phocine adenovirus and Influenza A at prevalences of 5%, 6.4%, 21.7%, and 4% respectively. The genomes of CDV isolates collected in 2008 showed 99.59% identity with the 2000 Caspian seal CDV epizootic strain. A partial coding sequence for the Us2 gene from the Caspian seal herpes virus was identical to PhHV-1 isolate PB84, previously reported from a harbor seal (Phoca vitulina), while amplicon sequences for the adenovirus polymerase gene indicated a novel strain. ELISA assays detected exposure to Influenza A (55% of tested samples), adenovirus (25%), coronavirus (6%), CDV (8%), herpes virus (94%), Toxoplasma gondii (2.6%) and heartworm (1%). Hemagglutination inhibition (HI) tests detected exposure to Influenza B at a prevalence of 20%, and Leptospira microscopic agglutination tests detected suspected exposure to Leptospira serovars in 9% of tested samples. Overall, the risks, profile and prevalence of pathogens in Caspian seals appear comparable to other wild phocid seal populations. Our results suggest Caspian seals have exposure pathways to pathogens with epizootic potential or ability to cause significant morbidity, and disease impacts could reduce the resilience of the population to other conservation threats. Caspian seals are listed as Endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and we recommend that resources are invested to support further surveillance programmes and to understand how anthropogenic pressures may influence future disease risks

FabCovidsim

This is a FabSim3 / EasyVVUQ plugin for Covid-19 simulation. It was used to compute the ensembles of the following paper: Edeling, Wouter and Hamid, Arabnejad and Sinclair, Robert and Suleimenova, Diana and Gopalakrishnan, Krishnakumar and Bosak, Bartosz and Groen, Derek and Mahmood, Imran and Crommelin, Daan and Coveney, Peter, The Impact of Uncertainty on Predictions of the CovidSim Epidemiological Code, 2020