The Technological Construction of Sovereignty

For policy-makers, it has always been a struggle to do justice to a diversity of perspectives when tackling challenging issues such as market access regulation, public investment in R&D, long-term unemployment, etc. In this struggle, technology, as a force that shapes economy, society, and democracy, at best used to be considered as an exogenous factor and at worst was simply forgotten. Today, however, we live in a different world. Technology is recognized as a major driver. Digital technology is now in the veins, heart, and brains of our society. Yet, the idea that we can put technology to our hand to shape reality, rather than taking technology as a given, has still not been embraced by policy-makers. This chapter argues that we can and should give a stronger steer on technology to construct the kind of reality and in particular the kind of sovereignty we aspire.

Antiaging and Skin Irritation Potential of Four Main Indonesian Essential Oils

Essential oils possess antiaging properties due to their antioxidant activity. This study aims to determine the antiaging activities of four main Indonesian essential oils and their irritation potential on the skin. The spot yeast and in vivo rat skin with UVB exposure methods were used to analyze the antiaging activity of essential oils on aging triggered by endogenous and exogenous factors, respectively. Meanwhile, patch tests and clinical evaluations were used for the skin irritation potential analysis. The antiaging activity results from the endogenous factor showed that the use of clove, patchouli, nutmeg, and citronella oils increased yeast viability at concentrations of 20, 40, 60, and 100 µg/mL, respectively. Furthermore, nutmeg, cloves, citronella, and patchouli oils decreased the wrinkle score on rat skin after UVB exposure (exogenous factor). The skin irritation potential results of patchouli, nutmeg, citronella, and clove oils were none (0), slightly (0.02), moderately (0.09), and very irritating (0.39), respectively.

AVERAGE PER CAPITA INCOME IN THE SYSTEM FOR MEASURING THE STABILITY OF CREDIT AND SAVINGS OPERATIONS OF THE RUSSIAN BANKING SYSTEM

One of the factors of stability of the banking system is the ratio of shares of deposits (deposits) and debt on loans of the population and organizations. The main idea of the study is the assumption that such stability is achieved by fulfilling the conditions of balance and dynamism of the subsystem of deposit and credit operations. The regularities of changes in the balance of shares of deposits (deposits) and debt on loans of the population and organizations and average per capita incomes of the population were revealed as an exogenous factor in the stability of the banking system of Russia during the period of 2001–2020.

Exploration exogenous factor of exchange rate: Data from Indonesia

This study aimed to determine the relationship between remittance of Indonesian workers, gross domestic product and foreign exchange reserves to the exchange rate of IDR/USD in the period 2013-2017. This research is quantitative research with regression analysis. The data collection technique uses secondary data of Indonesian labor remittance reports, GDP, foreign exchange reserves, and the rupiah's exchange rate against the dollar for the 2013-2017 period. The analysis of the results shows a significant relationship between remittance and the exchange rate; there is no significant negative correlation between GDP and the exchange rate and there is no significant positive relationship between Foreign Exchange Reserves and the exchange rate.

International migration and the gender wage gap

This article analyzes the effect of international migration on the wage gap between women and men who remain in Mexico. We use historical distance to the U.S. border over early twentieth-century railroad networks as an exogenous factor causing changes in the relative supply of men and women, due to predominately male migration. A 10% decrease in the relative labor supply of men tends to increase the wage gap between women and men by approximately 1.1 percentage points, suggesting that they are not perfect substitutes. However, the results imply a greater elasticity of substitution between men and women than that suggested by previous studies.

Impacts of high temperature on embryonic growth and seed germination of dill (Anethum graveolens)

Temperature is the main exogenous factor that determines the growth, development and productivity of agricultural plants, including seed germination. In this work, we studied the thermosensitivity of heterogeneous dill seeds (Anethum graveolens). The study aimed to study the short-term (1-5 days) effect of high temperature (40°C) on the growth of the embryo and germination of dill seeds formed on different umbels of the mother plant. The growth of the embryo had a significant effect on seed germination (r = 0.976; P < 0.001). Seeds collected from primary umbels have a more developed embryo and can overcome the effects of thermal stress. We also found that the duration of heat exposure at 40°C, leading to a decrease in viability, can vary from 1-5 days for seeds from primary umbels, to 1-2 days for seeds from secondary umbels, which, in our opinion, is due to the heteromorphism. The influence of the place of seed formation on the mother plant and the high temperature during germination is critical for embryo growth and dill seeds’ germination.

Russia’s Exogenous Factor in the Donbass Conflict

The hypothesis of this research is that Russia has been imposing its influence on Ukraine since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Before the political and military crisis in 2013, it was an indirect influence, whereas since 2014 it has been a direct impact in many spheres. It is necessary to underline that Ukraine has always been split into two parts in terms of foreign policy priorities, language, religion, and culture. This fact was mentioned by Samuel Huntington, who predicted an intense crisis in bilateral relations between Russia and Ukraine in his work Clash of Civilizations. There were two parties in Ukraine that were widely supported in South-Eastern Ukraine, namely the Party of Regions and the Communist Party. The former never spoke about the integration of Ukraine as part of Russian integrational projects because its politicians were afraid of aggressive Russian capital. So they only used pro-Russian rhetoric to win elections. The Communist Party openly backed integration with Russia, but didn’t get enough support as for this idea. It is also demonstrated that there were no parties that were backed financially by Russia, because the parties that offered a kind of a union with Russia never got any seats in the parliament. Since 2014, Russia has been imposing its influence on Ukraine in various spheres, such as economics, politics, diplomacy, the military sphere, etc. Having signed two cease-fire agreements, Russia and Ukraine have failed to apply them and the crisis continues to this day.

Innovation and the commons: lessons from the governance of genetic resources in potato breeding

This article explores the relation between innovation and resources that are governed as commons by looking at the governance of potato genetic resources, especially in the context of the emergence of hybrid diploid potato breeding that will enable potato propagation through true seeds. As a new breeding tool, hybrid diploid potato breeding may not only revolutionize traditional potato breeding practices, it may also strongly affect current governance modes of potato genetic resources as a commons. Contrary to conventional accounts of the commons that treat technological innovation mainly as an exogenous factor, we argue that technological innovation can better be understood as an endogenous factor. In particular, we develop a co-production framework of innovation and the commons that draws attention to the different ways in which innovation, commons and its governance interact. Using this framework, we demonstrate that the constitution of potato genetic resources as a commons cannot be understood without considering the various ways in which technological innovation affects resources and mediate how these are governed. While reversely, technological innovations themselves are also enabled and constrained by users who govern potato genetic resources as a shared resource. We argue that changes in the governance of genetic resources can be understood as a change from one socio-technical constellation to another, whereby innovations, resources, and institutions are continuously co-produced.

Financial speculation impact on agricultural commodity price volatility: TGARCH approach

Motivated by agricultural commodity price fluctuations and spikes in the last decade, we investigate whether financial speculation destabilizes the price of agricultural commodities. The aim of this research is to assess the impact of financial speculation on agricultural commodity price volatility. In our study we use weekly returns on wheat, soybean and corn futures from Chicago Mercantile of Exchange. To measure this impact, we apply autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (ARCH) technique. We also propose a model with seasonal dummy variables to measure if financial speculation impact on price volatility differs among seasons. The results of our research indicate that financial speculation as an exogenous factor has either no effect or reduces the volatility of the underlying futures prices. Therefore, we conclude that the increase of non-commercial market participants does not make the agricultural commodity prices more volatile or this link is at least questionable.

An Intrinsic Entropy Model for Exchange-Traded Securities

This paper introduces an intrinsic entropy model which can be employed as an indicator for gauging investors’ interest in a given exchange-traded security, along with the state of the overall market corroborated by individual security trading data. Although the syntagma of intrinsic entropy might sound somehow pleonastic, since entropy itself characterizes the fundamentals of a system, we would like to make a clear distinction between entropy models based on the values that a random variable may take, and the model that we propose, which employs actual stock exchange trading data. The model that we propose for the intrinsic entropy does not include any exogenous factor that could influence the level of entropy. The intrinsic entropy signals if the market is either inclined to buy the security or rather to sell it. We further explore the usage of the intrinsic entropy model for algorithmic trading, in order to demonstrate the value of our model in assisting investors’ intraday stock portfolio selection, along with timely generated signals for supporting the buy/sell decision-making process. The test results provide empirical evidence that the proposed intrinsic entropy model can be used as an indicator for evaluating the direction and the intensity of intraday trading activity of an exchange-traded security. The data employed for testing consisted of historical intraday transactions executed on The Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB).