The challenges of integrating publishers’, book trade and library information organizations in the Republic of Uzbekistan

The libraries being the state organizations are funded by the government and are limited in their resources. Therefore, despite the fact that the book market today is crowded with document resources, the libraries and information organization cannot afford purchasing all the publications they need. Their activities are regulated through norms and laws that provide both for competitive and single-source procurement. Mandatory copies alone are insufficient for collection development, and the library and information organizations have to find additional collection development sources through integration with publishers and bookselling organizations. Price lists, publishers’ and bookstores’ websites make the main source of information. Information technologies and computer systems enable to analyze whether the purchased publications are demanded by the users. The libraries have to provide for communicate between user services, acquisition department and the users. The team effort to draw acquisition lists enables to get the quality collection. The author examines the problems of integration of library and information organizations with publishers and booksellers as the case study of A. Navoi National Library of the Republic of Uzbekistan and State Scientific Medical library of the Republic of Uzbekistan.

Multi-Level Fusion Temporal–Spatial Co-Attention for Video-Based Person Re-Identification

A convolutional neural network can easily fall into local minima for insufficient data, and the needed training is unstable. Many current methods are used to solve these problems by adding pedestrian attributes, pedestrian postures, and other auxiliary information, but they require additional collection, which is time-consuming and laborious. Every video sequence frame has a different degree of similarity. In this paper, multi-level fusion temporal–spatial co-attention is adopted to improve person re-identification (reID). For a small dataset, the improved network can better prevent over-fitting and reduce the dataset limit. Specifically, the concept of knowledge evolution is introduced into video-based person re-identification to improve the backbone residual neural network (ResNet). The global branch, local branch, and attention branch are used in parallel for feature extraction. Three high-level features are embedded in the metric learning network to improve the network’s generalization ability and the accuracy of video-based person re-identification. Simulation experiments are implemented on small datasets PRID2011 and iLIDS-VID, and the improved network can better prevent over-fitting. Experiments are also implemented on MARS and DukeMTMC-VideoReID, and the proposed method can be used to extract more feature information and improve the network’s generalization ability. The results show that our method achieves better performance. The model achieves 90.15% Rank1 and 81.91% mAP on MARS.

PROJECT FINANCING THROUGH PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS IN COLOMBIA: A LOOK INSIDE OF 4G HIGHWAY CONCESSIONS

This article analyzes the benefits of the financing scheme through Public-Private Partnerships belonging to the Fourth Generation Highway Concessions Program in Colombia. In this program, the Government of Colombia establishes a concession for 25 years on highways and guarantees income through the Collection Difference Compensation Mechanism in years 8, 13 and 18. A case study is presented on the 4G highway "Autopista al Mar 2" in order to identify the commercial risks that may be caused by the difference in collection between the concessionaire and the Colombian government. For this, three traffic scenarios are proposed in order to evaluate their impact on obtaining the Present Value from Toll Revenue - PVTR. The results show that through the project’s finance scheme, this highway is financially viable for the base scenario, and the commercial risk is not stimulated by the collection differences in any of the years 8, 13 or 18; actually, an additional income for the concessionaire of USD $123.19 million is foreseen. Similar results were obtained in the optimistic scenario, with an additional collection of USD $655.90 million, which generates additional revenue to the concessionaire for operation and maintenance costs. However, if there is a 30% decrease in the estimated traffic in the baseline scenario, the PVTR will not be reached within 25 years of the concession and the risk of Collection Difference is activated in the year 18, with an amount of USD $1.11 million; this sum must be provided by the Colombian State to the concessionaire. Finally, these results help to create a roadmap on key issues that require adjustments or improvements in the financing process to drive the effective development of 4G concessions.

Effect of growth regulators and mineral fertilizers on seed productivity and decorative qual-ities of zinnia

Growth regulators had a significant effect on seed productivity of zinnia elegans, among which the most effective was epin-extra. With a two-fold treatment of zinnia plants with epibrassinolide, the increase in the collection of seeds compared to the control was 36%. The preparation from the group of hydroxycinnamic acids zircon was less productive. The increase in the collection of zinnia seeds from double spraying with zircon was 15%. The application of mineral fertilizers in a dose of N24P24K24, on average, over three years provided an additional collection of zinnia seeds by 20–35%. Analysis of variance of the data on the seed productivity of zinnia showed that a significant interaction was noted between the factors of the use of mineral fertilizers and growth regulators, i.e. the influence of one factor intensified the effect of the other. Among the varieties of zinnia, the graceful variety Mechta turned out to be more resistant to unfavorable weather conditions and, in comparison with the Orange King variety, tolerated recurrent cold and droughts more easily during the growing season. In addition, the Mechta cultivar turned out to be more even in height and in the formation of lateral flowering shoots, which is important when used in ornamental flower compositions.

Do not forget Africa – revision of fungarium collections at Kew revealed a new species of Hermatomyces (Hermatomycetaceae, Pleosporales)

Species of the genus Hermatomyces (Hermatomycetaceae, Pleosporales) are saprotrophic anamorphic ascomycetes that have been intensively studied mostly in South-East Asia and Panama. Species concepts were recently revised based on specimens from these regions using both phenotypic and molecular data. However, other tropical areas have been mostly overlooked, e.g. Africa, although members of the genus were collected from this continent in the past. Therefore, specimens available at the fungarium of Kew were studied. Most of them originated from western Africa, specifically Ghana and Sierra Leone, but collections from Ethiopia, India, and Malaysia were also revised. Among them, a new species was found and is described and illustrated herein as H. truncatus. The fungus colonized dead branches of Averrhoa carambola in Ghana and is characterized by two types of conidia; the cylindrical ones are 2-, rarely 3-celled, with a central or eccentric septum and the upper cells rounded but slightly flattened at the apex, often distinctly widening and dark brown or black in color. An additional collection of this fungus from Panama was also studied. Recently collected specimens from Puerto Rico and Australia are included and the known distribution of the following species is updated with new regions: H. indicus (first record from Sierra Leone), H. megasporus (Ethiopia), H. reticulatus (Ethiopia) and H. sphaericus (Puerto Rico and Australia).

Primer registro de Elaeagia (Rubiaceae) en México, con la descripción de una nueva especie, E. uxpanapensis

Elaeagia Wedd., a genus of some 16 species belonging to the tribe Rondeletieae, is centered in South America with a single species known from Cuba. Two additional species occur in Central America, one of which, E. nitidifolia Dwyer, is known only from Panama. The other, E. auriculata Hemsl., extends as far north as Guatemala (Standley & Williams , 1975; Dwyer, 1980). Most members are large trees, some attaining 35 meters, although the Cuban species is said to be shrubby (Standley, 1921). All known species occur in montane forest at altitudes of 800 to 2 800 meters. Consequently, it was surprising to see material, apparently representing an undescribed species, from lowland tropical rain forest in SE Oaxaca and adjacent Veracruz in Mexico. However, Dr. Tom Wendt's collecting efforts towards a woody flora of the Uxpanapa Zone have yielded a number of range extensions for taxa previously known only from Central America or Chiapas. Significantly, this region lies at the northern limits of the area to be included in Flora Mesoamericana. An additional collection is known from montane forest at 1 100 m in northern Chiapas, a habitat more typical for the genus .