Changes in the foreign trade structure of the Russian Far East under the process of transition toward a market economy

Under the process of transition toward a market economy, the economic connections of the Russian Far East (RFE) with external regions changed from a division of labor among the regions of the USSR (Russia) to an international division of labor. This happened due to factors including the liberalization of the trade system away from a state monopoly, the presence of rich natural resources and of developed industries related to these resources, the advantage of geographically proximity to Asia-Pacific countries, and the political and economic division of the once unified national economic space during the process of transition. The economic connections of RFE with external economies changed radically under the transition toward the market economy. First, the value of foreign trade increased dramatically and the importance of foreign trade for the RFE economy increased enormously. Second, however, different territories of RFE traveled along different trajectories, due to factors involving their industrial structure and geographical conditions. Third, in recent years connections with China, in the areas of both exports and imports, have grown. Fourth, the share within exports of "fuel, mineral resources and metal" increased radically from the end of the 1990s, and the share of "machine, facilities and transportation means" increased from 2002 year within imports. Under this situation, especially since 2002, there has been a major change in the structure of foreign trade.

Remarks on Compositionality (with reference to Gennadij Zeldoviè's article “On Russian Dative Reflexive Constructions: Accidental or Compositional”)

Zeldovič’s article “On Russian Dative Reflexive Constructions: Accidental or Compositional” is very interesting. It contains a good deal of insightful observations and is painstakingly argued. Its research object is the Russian dative reflexive construction (DRC) like Ивану не работается ‘Ivan does not feel like reading’. The aim of the article is to show that the DRC is fully compositional. Like many other works by Zeldovič, the article is written from the radical-pragmatic perspective and constitutes a very good illustration of this trend in linguistic research. The language material that it analyzes has often been investigated within more traditional frameworks, especially in Russian linguistics, which makes Zeldovič’s novel approach to the old problem particularly interesting. In this short note I would like (by way of discussion) to address two problems connected not so much with the DRC itself as with methodological issues concerning compositionality. I will dwell on two aspects: on the question of how we understand the very concept of compositionality, and what instruments we employ to demonstrate it.

Health beliefs and folk models of diabetes in British Bangladeshis: a qualitative study

Objective: To explore the experience of diabetes in British Bangladeshis, since successful management of diabetes requires attention not just to observable behaviour but to the underlying attitudes and belief systems which drive that behaviour.

A large-capacity memory system that recognizes the calls and songs of individual birds.

Auditory responses in the caudomedial neostriatum (NCM) of the zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata) forebrain habituate to repeated presentations of a novel conspecific song. This habituation is long lasting and specific to individual stimuli. We here test the acoustic and ethological basis of this stimulus-specific habituation by recording extracellular multiunit activity in the NCM of awake male and female zebra finches presented with a variety of conspecific and heterospecific vocalizations, white noise, and tones. Initial responses to conspecific song and calls and to human speech were higher than responses to the other stimuli. Immediate habituation rates were high for all novel stimuli except tones, which habituated at a lower rate. Habituation to conspecific calls and songs outlasted habituation to other stimuli. The extent of immediate habituation induced by a particular novel song was not diminished when other conspecific songs were presented in alternation. In addition, the persistence of habituation was not diminished by exposure to other songs before testing, nor was it influenced by gender or laterality. Our results suggest that the NCM is specialized for remembering the calls and songs of many individual conspecifics.

Russia's Clandestine War against the United States: The Resurrection of the KGB and Russian Organized Crime Post 9/11

As American leadership has narrowly focused on fighting global terror in Iraq and Afghanistan, the modern version of the KGB, now known as the FSB, has been conducting continuous clandestine warfare operations against the United States. These warfare operations include strategic economic and political partnerships with anti-American entities worldwide and direct embedding of double agents in the US intelligence community. This paper investigates the role of Russia's cultural history leading to the merger of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and Russian Organized Crime (ROC). This paper concludes that the FSB is the most pervasive security threat to the United States and that employing Russian native and heritage speakers of Russian in the US intelligence community compromises US national security.