International legal problems of compensation for harm that does not have a specific injurer

Introduction. The article deals with the problem of compensation for damage in the absence of a specific injurer through investigating two problems of international law related to the formation of space debris and pollution of the World Ocean. Theoretical analysis. Acts of international law and the actual increase in the amount of space debris and the level of pollution of the World Ocean are studied, and proposals to reduce threats to space flights and marine bioresources are made. Results. The article concludes that there is no single and universal solution to the problems, despite the revealed similarity of the considered cases (the lack of evidence of the harm-causing subject). Such decisions should have not only a legal aspect (the development of new international conventions), but also an economic aspect (the creation of special environmental funds) and an organizational aspect (the expansion of the competence of international bodies). Separately, the article emphasizes that solving these problems will require increasing level of environmental and legal culture of public authorities, businesses and the population.

Investigation of probabilistic models for forecasting the efficiency of proppant hydraulic fracturing technology

To solve the problems accompanying the development of forecasting methods, a probabilistic method of data analysis is proposed. Using a carbonate object as an example, the application of a probabilistic technique for predicting the effectiveness of proppant hydraulic fracturing (HF) technology is considered. Forecast of the increase in the oil production of wells was made using probabilistic analysis of geological and technological data in different periods of HF implementation. With the help of this method, the dimensional indicators were transferred into a single probabilistic space, which allowed performing a comparison and construct individual probabilistic models. An assessment of the influence degree for each indicator on the HF efficiency was carried out. Probabilistic analysis of indicators in different periods of HF implementation allowed identifying universal statistically significant dependencies. These dependencies do not change their parameters and can be used for forecasting in different periods of time. Criteria for the application of HF technology on a carbonate object have been determined. Using individual probabilistic models, integrated indicators were calculated, on the basis of which regression equations were constructed. Equations were used to predict the HF efficiency on forecast samples of wells. For each of the samples, correlation coefficients were calculated. Forecast results correlate well with the actual increase (values ​​of the correlation coefficient r = 0.58-0.67 for the examined samples). Probabilistic method, unlike others, is simple and transparent. With its use and with careful selection of wells for the application of HF technology, the probability of obtaining high efficiency increases significantly.

Paving the Way toward Personalized Medicine: Current Advances and Challenges in Multi-OMICS Approach in Autism Spectrum Disorder for Biomarkers Discovery and Patient Stratification

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a multifactorial neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impairments in two main areas: social/communication skills and repetitive behavioral patterns. The prevalence of ASD has increased in the past two decades, however, it is not known whether the evident rise in ASD prevalence is due to changes in diagnostic criteria or an actual increase in ASD cases. Due to the complexity and heterogeneity of ASD, symptoms vary in severity and may be accompanied by comorbidities such as epilepsy, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and gastrointestinal (GI) disorders. Identifying biomarkers of ASD is not only crucial to understanding the biological characteristics of the disorder, but also as a detection tool for its early screening. Hence, this review gives an insight into the main areas of ASD biomarker research that show promising findings. Finally, it covers success stories that highlight the importance of precision medicine and the current challenges in ASD biomarker discovery studies.

3 Addressing Food Animal Veterinary Services Shortages Through Veterinary Continuing Education Courses: A New Role for Extension as a Bridge Between Veterinary and Agriculture Communities

Food animal veterinary services are in demand due to regulatory changes that require more veterinary oversight in animal agriculture. The USDA identifies 13 counties in Arkansas as having food animal veterinary shortages. In response, the University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service developed the Food Animal Medicine Workshop Series to train veterinarians in food animal medicine with the goal of encouraging veterinarians and their staff to provide more food animal services. The workshops are funded by the USDA NIFA Veterinary Services Grant Program, which allows for monthly continuing education (CE) courses for a two year period. Topics covered to date include: how to integrate backyard poultry into your practice, pharmaceutical use in food animal medicine, the Veterinary Feed Directive and the future of antimicrobial use in food animal medicine, infectious diseases in food animals, current issues and advances in food animal wellbeing, small ruminant medicine, cattle medicine, honey bee medicine, field services, and field necropsy. 171 veterinarians have attended the workshops, with an average class size of 18. All participants were awarded CE credits by the Arkansas Veterinary Medical Examining Board. Surveys were given to participants at the end of each course. A Likert scale was used to measure responses to statements about the workshop with 1 being “strongly disagree”, 2 being “disagree”, 3 being “agree” and 4 being “strongly agree”. Participants gave an average score of 3.9 when asked if their knowledge increased from the workshop, an average score of 3.8 when asked if they would attend future workshops in the series, and an average score of 3.2 when asked if they would incorporate what they learned into their practices. Information from the surveys indicates that the workshops are achieving the goal of increasing food animal services. A future survey of attendees will measure the actual increase in such services.

Interventions to foster family inclusion in nursing homes for people with dementia: a systematic review

Background Family inclusion in nursing homes is central to the provision of individualized care for people with dementia. Although positive effects can be recognized, barriers have been identified that hamper family inclusion in nursing homes. Specifically for people with dementia, insight into the content of interventions to foster family inclusion is lacking. Methods A systematic review was performed by systematically searching the databases PubMed, Cinahl, PsycInfo and Embase. Studies were eligible if they examined (1) nursing home settings, (2) interventions to foster the inclusion of family members from people with dementia, (3) were original research articles in which effects/experiences of/with these interventions were evaluated, and (4) were written in English, Dutch or German. Findings were summarized systematically. Results Twenty-nine studies were included. Two interventions were targeted at creating family-staff partnerships from a two-way perspective. Other interventions focused on single components, such as including family members in formal decisions (n = 9), enabling them to make better informed decisions and/or participate more actively (n = 7), or providing psychoeducation for family members (n = 3). Within the interventions, family and staff members are often treated differently. Effects on actual increase in family inclusion remain unclear. Conclusions Very few interventions exist that try to enhance equal family-staff partnerships in nursing homes. Future interventions should pay specific attention to mutual exchange and reciprocity between family and staff. As little is known about promising (components of) interventions to foster family inclusion in nursing homes for people with dementia, more effectiveness research is needed.

Trends in self-reported psychological distress among college and university students from 2010 to 2018

Background An increase in reported psychological distress, particularly among adolescent girls, is observed across a range of countries. Whether a similar trend exists among students in higher education remains unknown. The aim of the current study was to describe trends in self-reported psychological distress among Norwegian college and university students from 2010 to 2018. Methods We employed data from the Students' Health and Wellbeing Study (SHoT), a nationwide survey for higher education in Norway including full-time students aged 18–34. Numbers of participants (participation rates) were n = 6065 (23%) in 2010, n = 13 663 (29%) in 2014 and n = 49 321 (31%) in 2018. Psychological distress was measured using the Hopkins Symptom Checklist-25 (HSCL-25). Results Overall, a statistically significant increase in self-reported psychological distress was observed over time across gender and age-groups. HSCL-25 scores were markedly higher for women than for men at all time-points. Effect-size of the mean change was also stronger for women (time-by-gender interaction: χ2 = 70.02, df = 2, p < 0.001): in women, mean HSCL-25 score increased from 1.62 in 2010 to 1.82 in 2018, yielding a mean change effect-size of 0.40. The corresponding change in men was from 1.42 in 2010 to 1.53 in 2018, giving an effect-size of 0.26. Conclusions Both the level and increase in self-reported psychological distress among Norwegian students in higher education are potentially worrying. Several mechanisms may contribute to the observed trend, including changes in response style and actual increase in distress. The relative low response rates in SHoT warrant caution when interpreting and generalising the findings.

Manufacturing Jobs and Inequality

We examine the extent to which declining manufacturing employment may have contributed to increasing inequality in advanced economies. This contribution is typically small, except in the United States. We explore two possible explanations: the high initial manufacturing wage premium and the high level of income inequality. The manufacturing wage premium declined between the 1980s and the 2000s in the United States, but it does not explain the contemporaneous rise in inequality. Instead, high income inequality played a large role. This is because manufacturing job loss typically implies a move to the service sector, for which the worker is not skilled at first and accepts a low-skill wage. On average, the associated wage cut increases with the overall level of income inequality in the country, conditional on moving down in the wage distribution. Based on a stylized scenario, we calculate that the movement of workers to low-skill service sector jobs can account for about a quarter of the increase in inequality between the 1980s and the 2000s in the United States. Had the U.S. income distribution been more equal, only about one tenth of the actual increase in inequality could have been attributed to the loss of manufacturing jobs, according to our simulations.

The 2018 Censo Nacional de Población y Vivienda: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Preliminary results from the 2018 Census by the National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE) have shown interesting news for Colombia, the major one probably being that instead of the projected 50 millions of habitants expected in 2018 in the Census 2005 projections, Colombia’s population in 2018 was 45.5 million (DANE 2018). Although, the differences in population projections vs. censuses totals have been described across countries in Latin America 1, Colombia seems to be a country with a major gap. Knowing how many people live in the country is important for governmental planning, public spending, and to set up goals according to public needs. Therefore, these news from the 2018 Census were received with caution among different sectors. This is not the first time something like this happens in the country as projections from the 1993 Census also did not match the population estimates from the 2005 Census, with the projection being short by 3,150,552 individuals. Back then, the difference between the 1993 projections and the 2005 Census results was attributable to differences in collection methods used in 2005 and an initial overestimation of the 1993 census population (1,051,965 individuals), an overestimation of natality rates, and also an underestimation of emigration rates (mainly for women of reproductive age) 2. Similarly, it possible that the current differences between 2005 projections and the 2018 Census results were caused by methodological issues, but also social changes, such as the reduction in natality rates linked to economy improvements and a growing middle-class. An important problem with differences in projected vs. recent Census data is that trajectories of economic or health indicators used to describe progress or regressions in these sectors become challenged by them. An issue is that there is a jump in the trajectory of disease rates when using the 2018 population estimate instead of the 2005 projected for 2018. This jump is explained by the change in the denominator used to calculate the rate, not by an actual increase in the number of cases. A good example is the change in the homicide rate in Cali, where the 2005 Census projections differed from the 2018 census estimates by 28.7% (for Colombia, projections were over the 2018 estimate by 9.5%) 3. The population for Cali in 2018 with the 2018 Census was estimated to be 1.9 million, which is even lower than the population estimated for 2005 with the 2005 Census (2.1 million) 3.

Estimation of competences of short-term and long-term planning in the structure of the activity of the teacher of higher school

The analysis of the professional activity of a teacher of higher education can be carried out in several aspects: by assessing the content of the activity, overall effectiveness, the nature of the tasks to be solved, etc. However, for the performance of work functions the most appropriate will be a competency analysis of professional activity. The authors assessed the expressiveness of the competencies of short-term, medium-term and long-term planning by teachers of higher education, taking into account the duration of the educational activity. A low and medium level of expression of these competencies was revealed, regardless of the duration of the pedagogical activity, as well as the absence of an actual increase in the volume of competence with the duration of the pedagogical activity over 5 years, which is evidence of staff stagnation. The findings can be the basis for organizing professional development programs for teachers in relevant aspects of their activities in order to improve their planning competencies.

Education as Fictitious Capital: The Crisis in the Social Importance of Knowledge

The article describes the system of mass higher education in terms of political economy. The author discusses how the social and economic results of the education system depend on the principles of its organization. In identifying the economic effect of education, the author emphasizes that in certain circumstances certificates of education may function in the market as fictitious capital, increasing the economic opportunities of certificate holders without any basis in an actual increase in training or professionalism. The analogy with fictitious capital is methodologically justified because the certificate itself brings about an increment in money received although it creates no new value. The social consequence of the formalization of education is the falsification of its cultural content and significance. This formalization of education and the decline in the role of education and knowledge in society may make the cultural capital to which education contributes fictitious as well because it is verified only by a certificate of qualification in place of an actual advanced level of education. The author describes the process of formalization of education as a bureaucratic attack on the autonomy of the academic environment. To overcome the formalization of education and to repel this bureaucratic attack on it, it is necessary to establish the proper conditions for academic and personal development while enlisting society at large in formulating standards and specific criteria for the development of education. The author sees the processes taking place in education as signs of a crisis of institutionalization as a principle for regulating human activity. This crisis is manifested today not only by numerous disruptions in the operation of the educational system but also in the crisis concerning its social significance, and more broadly in questioning the social significance of knowledge.