The Role of Non-Bank Financials in the Formation of Long-Term Resources for Economic Growth in Russia

The development of the activities of non-bank financial institutions that accumulate the resources of the national savings system on a long-term basis is seen as a factor in increasing investment in the Russian economy and its growth rates. When carrying out the study, we used general scientific methods, methods of structural, weigh, and dynamic analysis, and comparisons of performance indicators of non-bank financial institutions. Problems in the activities of organizations in the non-banking sector of the Russian financial market are predetermined by the parameters and trends in the development of the socio-economic situation in Russia, including insufficient efficiency of regulatory practices. The positive dynamics of the development of non-bank financial intermediaries is qualified as unstable; it is not supported by the solution of the structural and institutional problems of the Russian economy. In view of this, an increase in their role in the redistribution process is associated both with decisions of a more general order and with the improvement of the regulatory and supervisory practices implemented by the Bank of Russia. The solution to the identified problems in the development of the non-banking segment of the financial market should be aimed at turning it into an effective mechanism for capital formation to ensure economic growth.

A General Order Reduction Method of Wideband Digital Predistortion Model Using Attention Mechanism

In wireless networks, for the common in-phase and quadrature-phase ( I / Q ) imbalance in the transmitters, the I / Q branch models of digital predistortion (DPD) need to be identified separately, to improve the linearization effects. The existing order reduction methods of the predistorter are based on the contributions of the complex basis function terms, so as not to deal with the different contributions of I / Q components of the complex basis function terms caused by the separate identification of the I / Q branch models. The separate pruning of the I / Q branch models will increase the complexity. Aiming at this issue, this paper proposes a general order reduction method based on the attention mechanism for the predistortion of the power amplifiers (PAs). This method is suitable for pruning both the traditional models and neural network-based models. In this method, the attention mechanism is used to evaluate the contributions of the real basis function terms to the predistorted output’s I / Q components through offline training, and the influence of the cross terms of the I / Q branch models is considered. The experimental results based on the comparison with other typical methods under 100 MHz Doherty PA and different I / Q imbalance levels show that this method has superior pruning performance and good linearization ability.

Study of Spectrally Resolved Thermoluminescence in Tsarev and Chelyabinsk Chondrites with a Versatile High-Sensitive Setup

Thermoluminescence (TL) research provides a powerful tool for characterizing radiation-induced processes in extraterrestrial matter. One of the challenges in studying the spectral features of the natural TL of stony meteorites is its weak intensity. The present work showcases the capabilities of a high-sensitive original module for measuring the spectrally resolved TL characteristics of the Chelyabinsk and Tsarev chondrites. We have analyzed the emission spectra and glow curves of natural and induced TL over the 300–650 nm and RT–873 K ranges. A quasi-continuous distribution of traps active within the 350–650 K range was found in the silicate substructure of both meteorites under study. Based on the general order kinetic formalism and using the natural TL data, we also estimated the activation energies of EA = 0.86 and 1.08 eV for the Chelyabinsk and Tsarev chondrites, respectively.

Legislation on Administrative Procedures: The German Experience

This article provides an overview of the main provisions of German administrative procedural law. It outlines in a systematic way the particularities of administrative procedures and the possibilities for a citizen to seek administrative remedy. The essence of the basic principles of administrative procedural law as well as the particularities of temporary legal protection and the possibilities for an extrajudicial appeal against an administrative act are explained to the reader. The Author points out that administrative proceedings in Germany are, in a broad sense, any decision-making activity of a public administration body. According to the German Administrative Procedure Act, an administrative procedure in the sense of the law is an externally imposed activity of the administrative authorities that is aimed at verifying the conditions, preparing and issuing an administrative act or entering into a public-law contract. At the same time, the activities of a public administration body are not bound by a specific form, unless there are specific rules on the form of procedure. It is stated that current German administrative law distinguishes between an administrative act and a general order. The latter is also an administrative act, the range of addressees, however, is wider. An administrative act according to the law is any order, decision or other authoritative action of an administrative body aimed at regulating a single case in the field of public law and having direct legal consequences of an external nature. A general order is an administrative act, which is addressed to a certain or defined by general features, or which concerns the public-law properties of a thing or the use of it by the public. The author notes that an administrative act must be specific in content, justified and announced to the participants in the proceedings. As long as the act has not been declared, it is invalid. An administrative act is valid from the moment it is announced, unless it itself provides otherwise. It continues in force until it is revoked, cancelled, terminated by a deadline or for any other reason specified in the law. Based on the analysis, it is concluded that the lack of a law on administrative procedures in Russia is a negative indicator of the modern Russian administrative legal system.

Integration of a Generalized Ratio of Polynomials

This paper provides a closed-form solution to the indefinite integral of a ratio of generalized polynomials where the denominator polynomial is raised to the general order r∈Z+. Such an integral arises in physics and engineering, the solution of which allows for closed-form analysis.

The Gettysburg Campaign

When Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia marched into Pennsylvania in June 1863, five counties in the south-central region of the Keystone State became the first significant area of free soil to experience the destruction that accompanied the passage of rival armies. Despite Lee’s General Order No. 72 that prohibited unauthorized confiscation of civilian property, residents of the Chambersburg area experienced nearly a week of depredations and saw local freeborn African Americans rounded up and sent south into slavery. The major battle around Gettysburg on July 1–3 inflicted massive destruction on the landscape and residents’ livelihoods, in some cases forcing the sale of damaged properties that became the foundation of today’s National Military Park.

Dehydration of Fructose to 5-Hydroxymethylfurfural: Effects of Acidity and Porosity of Different Catalysts in the Conversion, Selectivity, and Yield

There is a demand for renewable resources, such as biomass, to produce compounds considered as platform molecules. This study deals with dehydration of fructose for the formation of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF), a feedstock molecule. Different catalysts (aluminosilicates, niobic acid, 12-tungstophosphoric acid—HPW, and supported HPW/Niobia) were studied for this reaction in an aqueous medium. The catalysts were characterized by XRD, FT-IR, N2 sorption at −196 °C and pyridine adsorption. It was evident that the nature of the sites (Brønsted and Lewis), strength, quantity and accessibility to the acidic sites are critical to the conversion and yield results. A synergic effect of acidity and mesoporous area are key factors affecting the activity and selectivity of the solid acids. Niobic acid (Nb2O5·nH2O) revealed the best efficiency (highest TON, yield, selectivity and conversion). It was determined that the optimum acidity strength of catalysts should be between 80 to 100 kJ mol−1, with about 0.20 to 0.30 mmol g−1 of acid sites, density about 1 site nm−2 and mesoporous area about 100 m2 g−1. These values fit well within the general order of the observed selectivity (i.e., Nb2O5 > HZSM-5 > 20%HPW/Nb2O5 > SiO2-Al2O3 > HY > HBEA).

Multidisciplinary team meetings in palliative care: an ethnographic study

ObjectivesMultidisciplinary team meetings are a regular feature in the provision of palliative care, involving a range of professionals. Yet, their purpose and best format are not necessarily well understood or documented. This article describes how hospital and community-based palliative care multidisciplinary team meetings operate to elucidate some of their main values and offer an opportunity to share examples of good practice.MethodsEthnographic observations of over 70 multidisciplinary team meetings between May 2018 and January 2020 in hospital and community palliative care settings in intercity London. These observations were part of a larger study examining palliative care processes. Fieldnotes were thematically analysed.ResultsThis article analyses how the meetings operated in terms of their setup, participants and general order of business. Meetings provided a space where patients, families and professionals could be cared for through regular discussions of service provision.ConclusionsMeetings served a variety of functions. Alongside discussing the more technical, clinical and practical aspects that are formally recognised aspects of the meetings, an additional core value was enabling affectual aspects of dealing with people who are dying to be acknowledged and processed collectively. Insight into how the meetings are structured and operate offer input for future practice.

Ensuring road safety: the main stages of institutionalization in Russia

The article is devoted to the historical and legal study of the development and formation of the road safety system, the regularity of its development, legal regulation, especially during the period of motorization of the Russian Empire, and then the Soviet Republic, when the legislator set the tasks of ensuring road safety in a concrete form. Their consolidation in normative legal acts was of a casual nature, for example: avoid riding horses and bicycles on sidewalks; observe that painters with tubs, buckets and other accessories, hand carts and sleds, do not walk on the sidewalks, but follow the roads, obeying the general order of traffic on the street; not allowed to play balls, and similar games in the street in front of the houses, to fly kites, to wear uncovered mirrors so as not to frighten horses, to clutter the sidewalks with barrels, tar boxes, and firewood, and to prevent peddlers and merchants from blocking the free passage on the bridge and the passage on the sidewalk with their trays. The international experience of traffic regulation was used. Special attention was paid to the training of the driver’s staff. The propaganda of road safety of the Soviet society was widely introduced in all spheres of life, and then became part of the ideological education of the Soviet person. New «Traffic rules on the streets of cities, settlements and roads of the USSR» were approved. The State Traffic Inspectorate was reformed and new technologies were introduced into its activities, control and supervision of traffic was improved with the use of technical means and innovative technologies, which certainly affected a significant reduction in accidents in Russia.