Tatar nation building since 1991: Ethnic mobilisation in historical perspective’

This study analyses the process of ethnic mobilization in the Soviet and post-Soviet eras and assesses the way in which history, memory and the treatment of the Volga Tatars by the Soviet state, especially under Lenin and Stalin, affected their long term desire for greater independence from Moscow. The central argument of this study is that Volga Tatar’s nation building was influenced by changes introduced under Gorbachev and by the weaknesses of the post-Sovietstate particularly during the Yeltsin era of the 1990s. The article assesses the strategies the President of Tatarstan and his advisors utilized during this period,especially after 1985, to successfully negotiate a bilateral treaty with Moscow in February 1994 granting Tatarstan greater autonomy and independence. Within this framework, the article then provides a detailed analysis of the approach taken in Tatarstan to achieve this goal and to renew the treaty in October 2005, despite Putin’s recentralization policies from 2000-2008

From a restricted to full linguistic space: an ‘affirmative action’ strategy for the Udmurt language

This study analyzes the long-term reasons why Udmurt occupies a restricted linguistic space in the post-Soviet state – the low status of Udmurt, due to Soviet language and other policies; urbanization; population shifts; myths and stereotypes about Udmurts; making Russian compulsory after 1938 – and the consequences of this for the fate of the Udmurt language today (relatively few native speakers). The central argument is that Udmurts have not overcome the Stalinist legacy, which led to the reversal of Lenin’s ‘affirmative action’ policy on non-Russian languages. This stems from the failure of the elites in the Udmurt Republic to pursue an ethnic mobilization strategy to promote the Udmurt language in contemporary Russia. Drawing upon language planning and ethnic policy elsewhere in Russia (Tatarstan) and in the UK (Wales), this article outlines ways to raise the status of Udmurt without generating inter-ethnic conflict, thereby creating a ‘space for all’

Administration of Long-Acting Injections

Expanding the scope of pharmacy practice demonstrates that the profession has been successful at improving public health. Despite being a late adopter, New York\u27s limited experience with vaccines has improved immunization rates and lowered rates of disease. During emergencies, the 2017-2018 flu season for example, the state has turned to pharmacists to go beyond what the pharmacy practice law permits, in this case enabling immunizations in pediatric patients.1 This illustrates recognition of untapped potential within the profession to contribute to the public health. Another opportunity for pharmacists to enhance the public health is embodied in a Bill introduced in the New York State Legislature that would amend the pharmacy practice law to enable administration of long-acting injectables designed to treat mental health disorders including schizophrenia and substance use disorder ( SUD ). The goal of this paper is to review the proposed amendment, the relevant background, and to discuss the implications for patients and the pharmacy profession

Manufacturing Metallic Parts with Designed Mesostructure via Three-Dimensional Printing of Metal Oxide Powder

Cellular materials, metallic bodies with gaseous voids, are a promising class of materials that offer high strength accompanied by a relatively low mass. In this paper, the authors investigate the use of ThreeDimensional Printing (3DP) to manufacture metallic cellular materials by selectively printing binder into a bed of metal oxide ceramic powder. The resulting green part undergoes a thermal chemical post-process in order to convert it to metal. As a result of their investigation, the authors are able to create cellular materials made of maraging steel that feature wall sizes as small as 400 µm and angled trusses and channels that are 1 mm in diameter.Mechanical Engineerin

Innovative psychological treatments for depression

A number of high-intensity psychosocial interventions have been shown to be as efficacious as and more enduring than medications in the treatment of nonpsychotic depression. Moreover, there have been important advances in the development of strategies to facilitate the selection of the best treatment for a given patient with a depression diagnosis. However, the demand for services is too great to be met by conventional high-intensity approaches alone. Some of the most exciting work in recent years has focused on the development of low-intensity approaches that can benefit many people and do so cost-effectively

Multiple Texture Boltzmann Machines

We assess the generative power of the mPoTmodel of [10] with tiled-convolutional weight sharing as a model for visual textures by specifically training on this task, evaluating model performance on texture synthesis and inpainting tasks using quantitative metrics. We also analyze the relative importance of the mean and covariance parts of the mPoT model by comparing its performance to those of its subcomponents, tiled-convolutional versions of the PoT/FoE and Gaussian-Bernoulli restricted Boltzmann machine (GB-RBM). Our results suggest that while state-of-the-art or better performance can be achieved using the mPoT, similar performance can be achieved with the mean-only model. We then develop a model for multiple textures based on the GB-RBM, using a shared set of weights but texturespecific hidden unit biases. We show comparable performance of the multiple texture model to individually trained texture models.

Use of stereo camera systems for assessment of rockfish abundance in untrawlable areas and for recording pollock behavior during midwater trawls

We describe the application of two types of stereo camera systems in fisheries research, including the design, calibration, analysis techniques, and precision of the data obtained with these systems. The first is a stereo video system deployed by using a quick-responding winch with a live feed to provide species- and size- composition data adequate to produce acoustically based biomass estimates of rockfish. This system was tested on the eastern Bering Sea slope where rockfish were measured. Rockfish sizes were similar to those sampled with a bottom trawl and the relative error in multiple measurements of the same rockfish in multiple still-frame images was small. Measurement errors of up to 5.5% were found on a calibration target of known size. The second system consisted of a pair of still-image digital cameras mounted inside a midwater trawl. Processing of the stereo images allowed fish length, fish orientation in relation to the camera platform, and relative distance of the fish to the trawl netting to be determined. The video system was useful for surveying fish in Alaska, but it could also be used broadly in other situations where it is difficult to obtain species-composition or size-composition information. Likewise, the still-image system could be used for fisheries research to obtain data on size, position, and orientation of fish

Vesicular systems for delivering conventional small organic molecules and larger macromolecules to and through human skin

The history of using vesicular systems for drug delivery to and through skin started nearly three decades ago with a study utilizing phospholipid liposomes to improve skin deposition and reduce systemic effects of triamcinolone acetonide. Subsequently, many researchers evaluated liposomes with respect to skin delivery, with the majority of them recording localized effects and relatively few studies showing transdermal delivery effects. Shortly after this, Transfersomes were developed with claims about their ability to deliver their payload into and through the skin with efficiencies similar to subcutaneous administration. Since these vesicles are ultradeformable, they were thought to penetrate intact skin deep enough to reach the systemic circulation. Their mechanisms of action remain controversial with diverse processes being reported. Parallel to this development, other classes of vesicles were produced with ethanol being included into the vesicles to provide flexibility (as in ethosomes) and vesicles were constructed from surfactants and cholesterol (as in niosomes). Thee ultradeformable vesicles showed variable efficiency in delivering low molecular weight and macromolecular drugs. This article will critically evaluate vesicular systems for dermal and transdermal delivery of drugs considering both their efficacy and potential mechanisms of action

A reusable knowledge acquisition shell: KASH

KASH (Knowledge Acquisition SHell) is proposed to assist a knowledge engineer by providing a set of utilities for constructing knowledge acquisition sessions based on interviewing techniques. The information elicited from domain experts during the sessions is guided by a question dependency graph (QDG). The QDG defined by the knowledge engineer, consists of a series of control questions about the domain that are used to organize the knowledge of an expert. The content information supplies by the expert, in response to the questions, is represented in the form of a concept map. These maps can be constructed in a top-down or bottom-up manner by the QDG and used by KASH to generate the rules for a large class of expert system domains. Additionally, the concept maps can support the representation of temporal knowledge. The high degree of reusability encountered in the QDG and concept maps can vastly reduce the development times and costs associated with producing intelligent decision aids, training programs, and process control functions