Politics, Governance, and Zigzags of the “Power Vertical”: Toward a Framework for Analysis of Russia\u27s Local Regimes

In the wake of multiple political and economic transformations in the 1990s and the 2000s, new patterns of subnational politics and governance emerged across Russia’s regions and large cities in the form of local regimes. These patterns could be analyzed through the theoretical and comparative lenses of international research on the subject. I argue that the major changes of local regimes in Russia’s regions and large cities – unlike those analyzed in the literature on American and European sub-national politics and governance – are heavily affected by structural factors such as trends of local as well as national economic development. Also, major political and institutional changes in Russia and, especially, the process of cooptation of previously semi-autonomous local regimes into the hierarchy of the power vertical during the wave of re-centralization of politics and governance in the 2000s led to the emergence of the dual model of sub-national governance, which combines some featured characteristics of subnational authoritarianism and crony capitalism that partly resembles developmental trends in some Third World countries as well as late-Soviet practices of territorial politics and governance

Studies of political elites in Russia: issues and alternatives

Abstract Studies of political elites have emerged rapidly in post-Communist Russia. This state-of-theart article reflects on various developments in the field, analyzes research projects and frameworks, and focuses on two major issues of elite research: stratification studies and transition studies. The formation of an academic community in this field is close to completion. Russian scholars commonly accept different theoretical and methodological approaches from those employed by Western social scientists, but the lack of value-free work and comparative studies makes Russian studies of political elites somewhat isolated from the mainstream of social research. © 2000 The Regents of the University of California. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Political elites; Social sciences; Russia; Post-Communism Until the late-1980s, the field of elite research-both theoretical and empiricalwas still a kind of taboo in Russian social sciences. Although the field itself was recognized among scholars, and, for example, C. Wright Mills' classical The Power Elite (1956) was published in Russian as early as 1959, the use of elite theories was limited to the so-called "critique of non-Marxist concepts" (se

Vapor swellable colloidal photonic crystals with pressure tunability

Polyferrocenylsilane gel photonic crystals have been reversibly swollen using solvent vapors, and exhibit precise pressure tunability over a wavelength range of greater than 100 nmGeneralitat Valenciana CTDIA/2002/2

Identification of serum biomarkers in dogs naturally infected with <i>Babesia canis canis</i> using a proteomic approach

&lt;b&gt;Background&lt;/b&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; Canine babesiosis is a tick-borne disease that is caused by the haemoprotozoan parasites of the genus Babesia. There are limited data on serum proteomics in dogs, and none of the effect of babesiosis on the serum proteome. The aim of this study was to identify the potential serum biomarkers of babesiosis using proteomic techniques in order to increase our understanding about disease pathogenesis.&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;b&gt;Results&lt;/b&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; Serum samples were collected from 25 dogs of various breeds and sex with naturally occurring babesiosis caused by B. canis canis. Blood was collected on the day of admission (day 0), and subsequently on the 1st and 6th day of treatment.&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; Two-dimensional electrophoresis (2DE) of pooled serum samples of dogs with naturally occurring babesiosis (day 0, day 1 and day 6) and healthy dogs were run in triplicate. 2DE image analysis showed 64 differentially expressed spots with p ≤ 0.05 and 49 spots with fold change ≥2. Six selected spots were excised manually and subjected to trypsin digest prior to identification by electrospray ionisation mass spectrometry on an Amazon ion trap tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS). Mass spectrometry data was processed using Data Analysis software and the automated Matrix Science Mascot Daemon server. Protein identifications were assigned using the Mascot search engine to interrogate protein sequences in the NCBI Genbank database.&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; A number of differentially expressed serum proteins involved in inflammation mediated acute phase response, complement and coagulation cascades, apolipoproteins and vitamin D metabolism pathway were identified in dogs with babesiosis.&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;b&gt;Conclusions&lt;/b&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; Our findings confirmed two dominant pathogenic mechanisms of babesiosis, haemolysis and acute phase response. These results may provide possible serum biomarker candidates for clinical monitoring of babesiosis and this study could serve as the basis for further proteomic investigations in canine babesiosis

Magnetization dynamics in disordered Fex_xCo1−x_{1-x} alloys : A first-principles augmented space approach and atomistic spin dynamics simulations

In this paper, we present a general method to study magnetization dynamics in chemically disordered alloys. This computationally feasible technique, which seamlessly combines three approaches : the density functional based linear muffin-tin orbitals (LMTO) for self-consistently obtaining a sparse Hamiltonian; the generalized recursion method to obtain the one and two-particle Green functions and augmented space approach to deal with disorder averaging. The same formalism applied to both spectral and response properties should make the errors compatible in different studies. %The underlying computational routines are optimized and parallelized for ease of handling. We have demonstrated a successful application to the binary chemically disordered Fe$_x$Co$_{1-x}$ alloys to explain several experimental features in magnon spectra. Our study captures significant magnon softening due to magnon-electron scattering for chemically disordered Fe$_x$Co$_{1-x}$ alloys within linear spin wave regime. As a complementary study, we have done atomistic spin dynamics simulations by solving Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation with parameters obtained from ab initio multiple scattering theory to compare with the results obtained from augmented space approach.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1102.4551, arXiv:1304.7091 by other author

Crystallization of YIoQ, a GTPase of unknown function essential for Bacillus subtilis viability

YLoQ is a putative ATP/GTP-binding protein of unknown function identified from the complete sequence of the Bacillus subtilis genome. A gene-knockout programme established that yloQ is one of a set of some 270 indispensable genes for the viability of this organism. Crystals of YloQ have been grown from HEPES-buffered solutions at pH 7.5 containing polyethylene glycol and diffraction data have been collected extending to 2.5 Angstrom spacing