TRANSNATIONAL TRANSPORT CORRIDOR OF THE NORTHERN SEA ROUTE BASED ON SABETTA SEAPORT: CHALLENGES OF REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT FOR RUSSIA

The article investigates the opportunity of the development of a new transnational transport corridor on the base of the NSR, which is much shorter and faster than the usual one. The basis of this project is Sabetta seaport, which is considered as a potential transnational transport hub. The authors investigated the opportunities for the development of intermodal terminals and new services/goods for the East-West and North-South international transport corridors. They design this idea on the base of multi-modal transportation approach for the development of a global innovation project of NSR Transnational Transport Corridor. Using classical methods of analysis, they conclude that the port of Sabetta, as well as other ports in the Yamal Peninsula currently does not have direct rail access to the Central Russia regions and it can be good potential for regional development in Ural and Siberia. The research was limited by the official statistics about NSR dynamic of cargo volume. The results of research can provide the development of new multimodal transnational transport corridor and can be the basis of regional development in northern Russian regions. The implementation of the idea can provide a significant amount of new jobs and an enormous amount of international investments. Mainly in international scientific literacy authors examine the question of North Transport corridor by logistic and geographical aspects. The article investigates this question in more complex aspect by a multimodal approach with involvement in the NSR another means of communication like a river, railway and motorway transportation

DOES AGGLOMERATION PROCESS EXIST IN SMALL PROVINCIAL URBAN CENTERS? EVIDENCES FROM SVERDLOVSK REGION

In this paper we analyze the agglomeration of three small urban centers in Sverdlovsk Region (Russia). We describe agglomeration economies as the process where firm can be divided into those based on internal economies and those based on external economies, and also that each kind of economy can be viewed from the perspectives of scale, scope, and complexity. In our example, agglomeration economies are based on the internal economies. All analyzed towns are different in the level of industrial production, economies of scale and increasing returns. Industrial agglomeration effects are conceptually classified into localization and urbanization economies. We believe that agglomeration is strong only in small towns with the effective industrial production. As methods we used the Cobb-Douglas production function. Results of the research showed that only a town with industrial specialization (Verkhnyaya Salda) is characterized by constant returns to scale and the growth of total production which is mainly determined by increasing of capital. The other two cases of the towns (which are not industrial specialized) do not generate these results. Moreover, the town which not develops industrial production has no any effect of agglomeration. Agglomeration effects can be observed at different levels of aggregation. Large cities provide greater opportunity for economies of scale, availability of quality human capital, cluster effects, innovation processes and knowledge spillover, but under certain conditions smaller towns can also achieve some of the effects of agglomeration

The sensory gardens as the new direction for ecological entrepreneurship development

Mother Nature teaches us that we don’t expect from her more than we gave her. In that case humans have an obligation to correct harmonic relationship with nature that they violated because of the megalopolis processes such as industrialization, urbanization and pollution. One of paramount problems of modern landscape architecture and green economy is to maximize preservation or to create a new natural zones and complexes in city space. Because of the technological development, the health status of the population in cities is getting worse every year, especially in psychological and emotional terms. human population needs new ideas how to live with nature and ecological entrepreneurship is a concept that is not interested only in making profit but also takes care about environment. Ecological entrepreneurship is relatively new term and some authors uses different terms such as “green entrepreneurship” or “environmental entrepreneurship” or “ecological entrepreneurship”. Anderson (1998) said that both entrepreneurship and environmentalism are based on a perception of value. The attitudes which inform environmental concern create areas of value that can be exploited entrepreneurially. “Environmental Entrepreneurs” not only recognize opportunity, but construct real organizations to capture and fix change in society. According to The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), SMEs participate actively in the emerging green industries, such as renewable energy production, smart metering, building refurbishment, cleaner cars, wind and solar installations, and battery development. For example, in the European Union (EU) entrepreneurship is highly important because 99.8% of Europe’s private companies are SMEs. In 2014 EU adopted “The Green Action Plan (GAP)” with the aim to help small and medium-sized enterprises to take advantage of resource efficiency improvements. “Ecological entrepreneurship is a reward – based approach to addressing environmental problems, rather than a punitive approach, and may prove more successful at changing attitudes and practices in the long run.”(http://enviroeducation.com/resources/ecological-entrepreneurship-academicrequirements-professional-outlook). One of the ways of achieving this balance is the development and the use of sensory garden. Sensory garden is a specially organized natural territory where a favourable condition for a close communication with the natural environment is created. John Dewey in his work Experience and Nature (1925) said that “we cannot separate organic life and mind from physical nature without also separating nature from life and mind. The separation has reached the point where intelligent persons are asking whether the end is to be a catastrophe, the subjection of man to the industrial and military machines he has created.” Since ancient times, philosophers and Aesculapius of the whole world showed interest in the nonconventional ways of improvement, promoting a quicker restoration of a mental and physical condition of the patient. It was considered that the nature, with her elements, such as: plants, sunlight, water, sand, birds chirping, animals and her many other components, are very effective as therapeutic addition to a traditional method of treatment. The history of emergence of sensory gardens leaves by times of the Roman Empire. People used garden therapy since ancient times. The term “sensory gardens” began to use in science in the mid-seventies. Today sensory gardens are one of the perspective directions of development of landscaping. Unique sensory gardens are created on each continent of Earth and the quantity of them constantly grows. The word “Sensorics” in translation from Latin means the “perception” which is performed by means of sense of organs. The person obtains information from the outside world by means of five main sense organs: eyes (sight), ears (hearing), language (taste), nose (sense of smell), skin (touch, tactile feelings) and it becomes more active when it beholds the nature or has a rest in a garden because the nature and a surrounding landscape, inevitably cause emotions. The aim of this paper is to explore the meaning of the sensory gardens and how they can be used as a new concept of ecological entrepreneurship

Tourism as an Approach to Sustainable Rural Development in Post-Socialist Countries: A Comparative Study of Serbia and Slovenia

The research deals with the sustainable development of the Serbian and Slovenian countryside, under the influence of tourism progress. The article identifies the main rural tourism competitiveness in Serbia and Slovenia, as one of the essential factors of rural development in both countries, analyzing the main contributions and making a series of proposals to guide the future research agenda. The aim of the paper is to clarify around one obviously defined objective—to point out the competitiveness of sustainable rural tourism in typical post-socialist settings. The data for this study were collected using the Integrated Model of Destination Competitiveness to observe Serbian and Slovenian competitiveness in tourism. Determinants were assessed using a survey evaluating four demanding factors and 20 supporting factors, based upon a five-point Likert Scale. The results indicated that the friendliness of residents towards visitors, easy communication between them, together with quality of infrastructure and health facilities show the highest level of statistical correlation. These are the main propositions to start an initiative for the authorities in local communities to actively participate in sustainable rural development. The findings provide tourism stakeholders with relevant respondents’ perceptions pertaining to the tourism development in non-urban areas

CUBE ONLINE ANALYTICAL MODEL (COLAM) IN THE RIVER SHIPPING LOGISTIC FORECASTING

In this paper authors developed Cube Online Analytical Model (COLAM) which should anticipate various restrictions and hazards in river transport system. The aim is to construct a theoretical model which will predict certain delays in transport time caused by topographic and hydrographic constraints, natural hazards (such as ice, floods and droughts), economic and political constraints (tariff barriers between the countries, operating costs, terminal costs and sanctions, the threat of war, etc.) and different technical accidents. COLAM integrates hydroinformatic and hydrologic base of knowledge with real time and gives possibility to provide information for economic queries with different hierarchy of time. COLAM is methodological and practical instrument for this challenge. It integrates hydroinformatic and hydrologic base of knowledge with real time. The model in each concrete case is created to receive information about possible changing of navigation periods on the base of multi-dimension all of three groups of risks (natural hazards, social and technical hazards) as also their combinations

Can Proper Funding Enhance Sustainable Tourism in Rural Settings? Evidence from a Developing Country

Rural tourism is often considered to be a factor in the development tendencies of rural space, a factor in the development of agriculture, as well as a factor in reducing rural depopulation. The primary aim of the research was to look at the problems in financing sustainable rural tourism in the case study of Serbia. The secondary one was to analyze the factors that may influence the self-financing capacity of rural tourism service providers. The findings confirmed the main hypothesis that financial resources are a significant limitation of the development of sustainable rural tourism. It was found that there is a high correlation between the amount of income generated and the structure of the workforce. The results verified that rural tourism entities were not making sufficient investments due to lack of financial resources, i.e., adequate financing modalities. It can be concluded thatin order to develop sustainable rural tourism, financial investments are needed, both at the level of service providers and at the macro level

Space weather and hurricanes Irma, Jose and Katia

This research is devoted to the determination of the causal relationship between the flow of particles that are coming from the Sun and the hurricanes Irma, Jose, and Katia. To accomplish this, the lag correlation analysis was performed. High correlation coefficients confirmed a preliminary conclusion about the relationship between solar activities and the hurricane phenomenon, which allows further research. Five parameters i.e. characteristics of solar activity (10.7 cm solar radio flux (F10.7), the flows of protons and electrons with maximum energy, speed and density of solar wind particles) were chosen as model input, while the wind speed and air pressure of Irma, Jose, and Katia hurricanes were used as model output. Input data were sampled to a six hours interval in order to adapt the time interval to the observed data about hurricanes, in the period between September 28 and December 21, 2017. As a result of the preliminary analysis, using 12,274,264 linear models by parallel calculations, six of them were chosen as best. The identified lags were the basis for refinement of models with the artificial neural networks. Multilayer perceptrons with back propagation and recurrent LSTM have been chosen as commonly used artificial neural networks. Comparison of the accuracy of both linear and artificial neural networks results confirmed the adequacy of these models and made it possible to take into account the dynamics of the solar wind. Sensitivity analysis has shown that F10.7 has the greatest impact on the wind speed of the hurricanes. Despite low sensitivity of pressure to change the parameters of the solar wind, their strong fluctuations can cause a sharp decrease in pressure, and therefore the appearance of hurricanes

Prevalence, associated factors and outcomes of pressure injuries in adult intensive care unit patients: the DecubICUs study

Funder: European Society of Intensive Care Medicine; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100013347Funder: Flemish Society for Critical Care NursesAbstract: Purpose: Intensive care unit (ICU) patients are particularly susceptible to developing pressure injuries. Epidemiologic data is however unavailable. We aimed to provide an international picture of the extent of pressure injuries and factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries in adult ICU patients. Methods: International 1-day point-prevalence study; follow-up for outcome assessment until hospital discharge (maximum 12 weeks). Factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injury and hospital mortality were assessed by generalised linear mixed-effects regression analysis. Results: Data from 13,254 patients in 1117 ICUs (90 countries) revealed 6747 pressure injuries; 3997 (59.2%) were ICU-acquired. Overall prevalence was 26.6% (95% confidence interval [CI] 25.9–27.3). ICU-acquired prevalence was 16.2% (95% CI 15.6–16.8). Sacrum (37%) and heels (19.5%) were most affected. Factors independently associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries were older age, male sex, being underweight, emergency surgery, higher Simplified Acute Physiology Score II, Braden score 3 days, comorbidities (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, immunodeficiency), organ support (renal replacement, mechanical ventilation on ICU admission), and being in a low or lower-middle income-economy. Gradually increasing associations with mortality were identified for increasing severity of pressure injury: stage I (odds ratio [OR] 1.5; 95% CI 1.2–1.8), stage II (OR 1.6; 95% CI 1.4–1.9), and stage III or worse (OR 2.8; 95% CI 2.3–3.3). Conclusion: Pressure injuries are common in adult ICU patients. ICU-acquired pressure injuries are associated with mainly intrinsic factors and mortality. Optimal care standards, increased awareness, appropriate resource allocation, and further research into optimal prevention are pivotal to tackle this important patient safety threat

Correction to: Prevalence, associated factors and outcomes of pressure injuries in adult intensive care unit patients: the DecubICUs study

The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake

Prevalence, associated factors and outcomes of pressure injuries in adult intensive care unit patients: the DecubICUs study

Funder: European Society of Intensive Care Medicine; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100013347Funder: Flemish Society for Critical Care NursesAbstract: Purpose: Intensive care unit (ICU) patients are particularly susceptible to developing pressure injuries. Epidemiologic data is however unavailable. We aimed to provide an international picture of the extent of pressure injuries and factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries in adult ICU patients. Methods: International 1-day point-prevalence study; follow-up for outcome assessment until hospital discharge (maximum 12 weeks). Factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injury and hospital mortality were assessed by generalised linear mixed-effects regression analysis. Results: Data from 13,254 patients in 1117 ICUs (90 countries) revealed 6747 pressure injuries; 3997 (59.2%) were ICU-acquired. Overall prevalence was 26.6% (95% confidence interval [CI] 25.9–27.3). ICU-acquired prevalence was 16.2% (95% CI 15.6–16.8). Sacrum (37%) and heels (19.5%) were most affected. Factors independently associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries were older age, male sex, being underweight, emergency surgery, higher Simplified Acute Physiology Score II, Braden score 3 days, comorbidities (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, immunodeficiency), organ support (renal replacement, mechanical ventilation on ICU admission), and being in a low or lower-middle income-economy. Gradually increasing associations with mortality were identified for increasing severity of pressure injury: stage I (odds ratio [OR] 1.5; 95% CI 1.2–1.8), stage II (OR 1.6; 95% CI 1.4–1.9), and stage III or worse (OR 2.8; 95% CI 2.3–3.3). Conclusion: Pressure injuries are common in adult ICU patients. ICU-acquired pressure injuries are associated with mainly intrinsic factors and mortality. Optimal care standards, increased awareness, appropriate resource allocation, and further research into optimal prevention are pivotal to tackle this important patient safety threat