Währungsreformen im Vergleich : monetäre Strategien in Rußland, Weißrußland, Estland und der Ukraine.

Geldpolitik; Währungsreform; Bank; Währungsunion; Internationale Wirtschaftsbeziehungen; Russland; Weißrussland; Estland; Ukraine;

Anti-Trichomonas vaginalis activity of marine-associated fungi from the South Brazilian Coast

AbstractTrichomonas vaginalis is the causative agent of trichomonosis, the most common non-viral sexually transmitted disease. Infection with this protozoan may have serious consequences, especially for women. Currently, 5-nitroimidazole drugs are the treatment of choice for trichomonosis, but the emergence of resistance has limited the effectiveness of this therapy. In this context, this study aimed to evaluate the anti-T. vaginalis activity of marine-associated fungi found in the South Brazilian Coast. A total of 42 marine-associated fungal species (126 filtrate samples) isolated from 39 different marine organisms, mainly sponges, were selected to be screened against T. vaginalis. Of these, two filtrate samples from Hypocrea lixii F02 and Penicillium citrinum F40 showed significant growth-inhibitory activity (up to 100%) against ATCC 30236 and fresh clinical isolates, including a metronidazole-resistant isolate. Minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) values of H. lixii F02 and P. citrinum F40 samples for all isolates tested, including the metronidazole-resistant isolate, were 2.5mg/mL. The kinetic growth curve showed that the filtrate samples were able to reduce the density of parasites to zero within 24h of incubation, which was confirmed by microscopy. Both fungal filtrate samples exhibited no hemolytic activity, and the P. citrinum F40 filtrate sample showed low cytotoxicity against Vero cells. These data suggest that marine-associated fungi from the South Brazilian Coast may produce potential candidates for further investigation and possible use in the treatment of metronidazole-resistant trichomonosis

Performance- and Stimulus-Dependent Oscillations in Monkey Prefrontal Cortex During Short-Term Memory

Short-term memory requires the coordination of sub-processes like encoding, retention, retrieval and comparison of stored material to subsequent input. Neuronal oscillations have an inherent time structure, can effectively coordinate synaptic integration of large neuron populations and could therefore organize and integrate distributed sub-processes in time and space. We observed field potential oscillations (14–95 Hz) in ventral prefrontal cortex of monkeys performing a visual memory task. Stimulus-selective and performance-dependent oscillations occurred simultaneously at 65–95 Hz and 14–50 Hz, the latter being phase-locked throughout memory maintenance. We propose that prefrontal oscillatory activity may be instrumental for the dynamical integration of local and global neuronal processes underlying short-term memory

On the Apparent Absence of Wolf-Rayet+Neutron Star Systems: The Curious Case of WR124

Among the different types of massive stars in advanced evolutionary stages is the enigmatic WN8h type. There are only a few Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars with this spectral type in our Galaxy. It has long been suggested that WN8h-type stars are the products of binary evolution that may harbor neutron stars (NS). One of the most intriguing WN8h stars is the runaway WR 124 surrounded by its magnificent nebula M1-67. We test the presence of an accreting NS companion in WR 124 using ∼100 ks long observations by the Chandra X-ray observatory. The hard X-ray emission from WR 124 with a luminosity of L ∼ 10 erg s is marginally detected. We use the non-local thermodynamic equilibrium stellar atmosphere code PoWR to estimate the WR wind opacity to the X-rays. The wind of a WN8-type star is effectively opaque for X-rays, hence the low X-ray luminosity of WR 124 does not rule out the presence of an embedded compact object. We suggest that, in general, high-opacity WR winds could prevent X-ray detections of embedded NS, and be an explanation for the apparent lack of WR+NS systems.© 2018. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved..The authors are indebted to the anonymous referee for a detailed revision of the manuscript and constructive suggestions. Support for this Letter was provided by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration through Chandra award No. G07-18014X issued by the Chandra X-ray Center, which is operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory for and on behalf of the NASA contract NAS8-03060. J.A.T., M.A.G., and H.T. are funded by UNAM DGAPA PAPIIT project IA100318. L.M.O. acknowledges support by the DLR grant 50 OR 1508 and partial support by the Russian Government Program of Competitive Growth of Kazan Federal University. A.A.C.S. is supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) under grant HA 1455/26 and would like to thank STFC for funding under grant No. ST/R000565/1. Y.-H.C. acknowledges support from the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan. T.S. acknowledges support from the German Verbundforschung (DLR) grant 50 OR 1612. J.M.T. acknowledges support from ESP2017-85691-P

The Top-Dog Index: A New Measurement for the Demand Consistency of the Size Distribution in Pre-Pack Orders for a Fashion Discounter with Many Small Branches

We propose the new Top-Dog-Index, a measure for the branch-dependent historic deviation of the supply data of apparel sizes from the sales data of a fashion discounter. A common approach is to estimate demand for sizes directly from the sales data. This approach may yield information for the demand for sizes if aggregated over all branches and products. However, as we will show in a real-world business case, this direct approach is in general not capable to provide information about each branch's individual demand for sizes: the supply per branch is so small that either the number of sales is statistically too small for a good estimate (early measurement) or there will be too much unsatisfied demand neglected in the sales data (late measurement). Moreover, in our real-world data we could not verify any of the demand distribution assumptions suggested in the literature. Our approach cannot estimate the demand for sizes directly. It can, however, individually measure for each branch the scarcest and the amplest sizes, aggregated over all products. This measurement can iteratively be used to adapt the size distributions in the pre-pack orders for the future. A real-world blind study shows the potential of this distribution free heuristic optimization approach: The gross yield measured in percent of gross value was almost one percentage point higher in the test-group branches than in the control-group branches.Comment: 22 pages, 15 figure

Gravitational excitons from extra dimensions

Inhomogeneous multidimensional cosmological models with a higher dimensional space-time manifold are investigated under dimensional reduction. In the Einstein conformal frame, small excitations of the scale factors of the internal spaces near minima of an effective potential have a form of massive scalar fields in the external space-time. Parameters of models which ensure minima of the effective potentials are obtained for particular cases and masses of gravitational excitons are estimated.Comment: Revised version --- 12 references added, Introduction enlarged, 20 pages, LaTeX, to appear in Phys.Rev.D56 (15.11.97