Особенности социальной ответственности малых и средних предприятий

Рассмотрены особенности деятельности малых и средних предприятий, их отличия от крупных предприятий, особенности и проблемы развития социальной ответственности малого и среднего бизнеса в Украине.Розглянуто особливості діяльності малих і середніх підприємств, їх відмінності від великих підприємств, особливості та проблеми розвитку соціальної відповідальності малого і середнього бізнесу в Україні.The paper examines features of small and middle enterprises activities and their distinction from big enterprises. The problems concerning development of social responsibility of small and middle business in Ukraine are also considered in the article

Need for Alloparental Care and Attitudes Toward Homosexuals in 58 Countries: Implications for the Kin Selection Hypothesis

Homosexuality is an evolutionary puzzle. Many theories attempt to explain how a trait undermining individual reproduction can be maintained, but experimental testing of their predictions remains scarce. The kin selection hypothesis (KSH) is an important theoretical framework to account for the evolution of human homosexuality, postulating that its direct cost to reproduction can be offset by inclusive fitness gains through alloparental assistance to kin. Consistent evidence in support of the KSH has only been garnered from research on Samoan fa’afafine (i.e. feminine, same-sex attracted males), whereas research in numerous industrialized societies has repeatedly failed to secure empirical support for the theory. Here, we propose an alternative test of the KSH by investigating how need for alloparental care influences women’s attitudes toward homosexuality (AtH). AtH would influence the likelihood of women receiving alloparental care from homosexual kin. We applied logistic regression analysis to a large dataset (17,295 women in 58 countries) derived from the World Values Survey. As predicted by the KSH, women who are potentially most in need of alloparental support exhibit significantly more positive attitudes toward homosexuals. For single mothers who expressed parental care concerns, each additional child mothered was associated with an increase of 1.24 in their odds of exhibiting positive attitudes toward homosexuals. Our study is the first to provide circumstantial evidence in support of the KSH on a global scale

Offspring Production among the Extended Relatives of Samoan Men and Fa'afafine

Androphilia refers to sexual attraction to adult males, whereas gynephilia refers to sexual attraction to adult females. Male androphilia is an evolutionary paradox. Its development is at least partially influenced by genetic factors, yet male androphiles exhibit lower reproductive output, thus raising the question of how genetic factors underlying its development persist. The sexual antagonism hypothesis posits that the fitness costs associated with genetic factors underlying male androphilia are offset because these same factors lead to elevated reproduction on the part of the female relatives of androphilic males. Western samples drawn from low fertility populations have yielded inconsistent results when testing this hypothesis. Some studies documented elevated reproduction among the matrilineal female kin of androphilic males, whereas others found such effects in the paternal line. Samoa is a high-fertility population in which individuals reproduce closer to their maximum capacities. This study compared the reproductive output of the paternal and maternal line grandmothers, aunts, and uncles of 86 Samoan androphilic males, known locally as fa'afafine, and 86 Samoan gynephilic males. Reproductive output was elevated in the paternal and maternal line grandmothers, but not aunts or uncles, of fa'afafine. These findings are consistent with the sexual antagonism hypothesis and suggest that male androphilia is associated with elevated reproduction among extended relatives in both the maternal and paternal line. Discussion focuses on how this study, in conjunction with the broader literature, informs various models for the evolution of male androphilia via elevated reproduction on the part of female kin

Erratum to “Vessel strikes to large whales before and after the 2008 Ship Strike Rule”

© The Author(s), 2016. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Conservation Letters 9 (2016): 236, doi:10.1111/conl.12273

Sexually Antagonistic Selection in Human Male Homosexuality

Several lines of evidence indicate the existence of genetic factors influencing male homosexuality and bisexuality. In spite of its relatively low frequency, the stable permanence in all human populations of this apparently detrimental trait constitutes a puzzling ‘Darwinian paradox’. Furthermore, several studies have pointed out relevant asymmetries in the distribution of both male homosexuality and of female fecundity in the parental lines of homosexual vs. heterosexual males. A number of hypotheses have attempted to give an evolutionary explanation for the long-standing persistence of this trait, and for its asymmetric distribution in family lines; however a satisfactory understanding of the population genetics of male homosexuality is lacking at present. We perform a systematic mathematical analysis of the propagation and equilibrium of the putative genetic factors for male homosexuality in the population, based on the selection equation for one or two diallelic loci and Bayesian statistics for pedigree investigation. We show that only the two-locus genetic model with at least one locus on the X chromosome, and in which gene expression is sexually antagonistic (increasing female fitness but decreasing male fitness), accounts for all known empirical data. Our results help clarify the basic evolutionary dynamics of male homosexuality, establishing this as a clearly ascertained sexually antagonistic human trait

Identifying Molecular Effects of Diet through Systems Biology: Influence of Herring Diet on Sterol Metabolism and Protein Turnover in Mice

BACKGROUND: Changes in lifestyle have resulted in an epidemic development of obesity-related diseases that challenge the healthcare systems worldwide. To develop strategies to tackle this problem the focus is on diet to prevent the development of obesity-associated diseases such as cardiovascular disease (CVD). This will require methods for linking nutrient intake with specific metabolic processes in different tissues. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDING: Low-density lipoprotein receptor-deficient (Ldlr -/-) mice were fed a high fat/high sugar diet to mimic a westernized diet, being a major reason for development of obesity and atherosclerosis. The diets were supplemented with either beef or herring, and matched in macronutrient contents. Body composition, plasma lipids and aortic lesion areas were measured. Transcriptomes of metabolically important tissues, e.g. liver, muscle and adipose tissue were analyzed by an integrated approach with metabolic networks to directly map the metabolic effects of diet in these different tissues. Our analysis revealed a reduction in sterol metabolism and protein turnover at the transcriptional level in herring-fed mice. CONCLUSION: This study shows that an integrated analysis of transcriptome data using metabolic networks resulted in the identification of signature pathways. This could not have been achieved using standard clustering methods. In particular, this systems biology analysis could enrich the information content of biomedical or nutritional data where subtle changes in several tissues together affects body metabolism or disease progression. This could be applied to improve diets for subjects exposed to health risks associated with obesity

Human GLI3 Intragenic Conserved Non-Coding Sequences Are Tissue-Specific Enhancers

The zinc-finger transcription factor GLI3 is a key regulator of development, acting as a primary transducer of Sonic hedgehog (SHH) signaling in a combinatorial context dependent fashion controlling multiple patterning steps in different tissues/organs. A tight temporal and spatial control of gene expression is indispensable, however, cis-acting sequence elements regulating GLI3 expression have not yet been reported. We show that 11 ancient genomic DNA signatures, conserved from the pufferfish Takifugu (Fugu) rubripes to man, are distributed throughout the introns of human GLI3. They map within larger conserved non-coding elements (CNEs) that are found in the tetrapod lineage. Full length CNEs transiently transfected into human cell cultures acted as cell type specific enhancers of gene transcription. The regulatory potential of these elements is conserved and was exploited to direct tissue specific expression of a reporter gene in zebrafish embryos. Assays of deletion constructs revealed that the human-Fugu conserved sequences within the GLI3 intronic CNEs were essential but not sufficient for full-scale transcriptional activation. The enhancer activity of the CNEs is determined by a combinatorial effect of a core sequence conserved between human and teleosts (Fugu) and flanking tetrapod-specific sequences, suggesting that successive clustering of sequences with regulatory potential around an ancient, highly conserved nucleus might be a possible mechanism for the evolution of cis-acting regulatory elements

Response of human HT-29 colorectal tumor cells to extended exposure to bromodeoxyuridine

Effects of the extended exposure of a human colorectal tumor-cell line (HT-29) to bromodeoxyuridine (BrdUrd) were studied in anticipation of the clinical use of that agent to treat colorectal cancer, particularly as a regionally delivered radiosensitizer. We found that 72-h exposure to a concentration of BrdUrd that is estimated to be locally maintained in the liver (100 μ M ) was significantly cytotoxic with a 3-log reduction in survival. As measured by GC/MS-SIM method, incorporation of BrdUrd into DNA followed an unexpected time course in that continuous exposure to 10 μ M BrdUrd resulted in maximal incorporation at 3 days, after which the extent of incorporated analog fell significantly (despite daily changes of the medium). This finding was apparently due to a greater rate of loss of BrdUrd from the medium at later time points. Flow cytometric analysis using an anti-BrdUrd antibody (IU-4) revealed that antibody binding also peaked and fell off with time. However, at exposure times of >24 h, the timing and extent of this decline were significantly different than had been indicated by the GC/MS method. These results indicate that the quantitative relationship between antibody staining and BrdUrd incorporation changes as drug-exposure time increases and that quantitative studies of anti-BrdUrd antibody binding must be interpreted with caution, especially when extended drug-treatment protocols have been used.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/46921/1/280_2004_Article_BF00694337.pd