Country-of-origin effects on Russian wine consumers

In recent years, Russia has experienced significant economic growth. The wine industry is among those most affected by increases in disposable income. As a consequence, Russian wine importers have widened the range at the upper end of the quality spectrum. In the current scenario, some key questions arise concerning consumer attitudes toward wine and the way it is perceived in this evolving market. This article attempts to investigate such concerns through a choice experiment approach conducted by means of a questionnaire-based survey submitted to 388 Russian households located in the country's three largest cities (Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and Novosibirsk). In the experiment, respondents were asked to choose their favorite wine among seven dry red wines. The stated choices are analyzed using a random utility model to obtain an estimation of the price effect through a triangular distribution. Our results indicate the presence of three distinct market segments in the Russian wine market: a segment with only high-quality, highly priced Italian and French wines, a medium-quality segment currently limited to Spanish wines, and a much lower quality segment of wines in which demand for alcohol is essentially satisfied.

Early Holocene M similar to 6 explosive eruption from Plosky volcanic massif (Kamchatka) and its tephra as a link between terrestrial and marine paleoenvironmental records

We report tephrochronological and geochemical data on early Holocene activity from Plosky volcanic massif in the Kliuchevskoi volcanic group, Kamchatka Peninsula. Explosive activity of this volcano lasted for similar to 1.5 kyr, produced a series of widely dispersed tephra layers, and was followed by profuse low-viscosity lava flows. This eruptive episode started a major reorganization of the volcanic structures in the western part of the Kliuchevskoi volcanic group. An explosive eruption from Plosky (M similar to 6), previously unstudied, produced tephra (coded PL2) of a volume of 10-12 km(3) (11-13 Gt), being one of the largest Holocene explosive eruptions in Kamchatka. Characteristic diagnostic features of the PL2 tephra are predominantly vitric sponge-shaped fragments with rare phenocrysts and microlites of plagioclase, olivine and pyroxenes, medium- to high-K basaltic andesitic bulk composition, high-K, high-Al and high-P trachyandesitic glass composition with SiO2 = 57.5-59.5 wt%, K2O = 2.3-2.7 wt%, Al2O3 = 15.8-16.5 wt%, and P2O5 = 0.5-0.7 wt%. Other diagnostic features include a typical subduction-related pattern of incompatible elements, high concentrations of all REE (> 10x mantle values), moderate enrichment in LREE (La/Yb similar to 5.3), and non-fractionated mantle-like pattern of LILE. Geochemical fingerprinting of the PL2 tephra with the help of EMP and LA-ICP-MS analyses allowed us to map its occurrence in terrestrial sections across Kamchatka and to identify this layer in Bering Sea sediment cores at a distance of > 600 km from the source. New high-precision C-14 dates suggest that the PL2 eruption occurred similar to 10,200 cal BP, which makes it a valuable isochrone for early Holocene climate fluctuations and permits direct links between terrestrial and marine paleoenvironmental records. The terrestrial and marine C-14 dates related to the PL2 tephra have allowed us to estimate an early Holocene reservoir age for the western Bering Sea at 1,410 +/- A 64 C-14 years. Another important tephra from the early Holocene eruptive episode of Plosky volcano, coded PL1, was dated at 11,650 cal BP. This marker is the oldest geochemically characterized and dated tephra marker layer in Kamchatka to date and is an important local marker for the Younger Dryas-early Holocene transition. One more tephra from Plosky, coded PL3, can be used as a marker northeast of the source at a distance of similar to 110 km.

History of several mistakes: on differences between Lev Gumilev and Eurasians

This article challenges prevalent views about Gumilev’s relation to classic Eurasianism. On the basis of previously unavailable correspondence and interviews, it is argued that Lev Gumilev had substantial degree of affinity with the original Eurasian movement understood as a scholarly tradition. This was manifested both in his personal contacts with some of its key members, and in his scholarly work on the nomad history, which remained Eurasian in its spirit. However, the most significant departure from Eurasianism, under-appreciated by most scholars, was his theory of ethnogenesis, which attempted to establish a new naturalistic paradigm for study of history.

WHIRLBOB, the Whirlpool Based Variant of STRIBOB: Lighter, Faster, and Constant Time

WHIRLBOB, also known as STRIBOBr2, is an AEAD (Authenticated Encryption with Associated Data) algorithm derived from STRIBOBr1 and the Whirlpool hash algorithm. WHIRLBOB/STRIBOBr2 is a second round candidate in the CAESAR competition. As with STRIBOBr1, the reduced-size Sponge design has a strong provable security link with a standardized hash algorithm. The new design utilizes only the LPS or ρ component of Whirlpool in flexibly domain-separated BLNK Sponge mode. The number of rounds is increased from 10 to 12 as a countermeasure against Rebound Distinguishing attacks. The 8 ×8 - bit S-Box used by Whirlpool and WHIRLBOB is constructed from 4 ×4 - bit “MiniBoxes”. We report on fast constant-time Intel SSSE3 and ARM NEON SIMD WHIRLBOB implementations that keep full miniboxes in registers and access them via SIMD shuffles. This is an efficient countermeasure against AES-style cache timing side-channel attacks. Another main advantage of WHIRLBOB over STRIBOBr1 (and most other AEADs) is its greatly reduced implementation footprint on lightweight platforms. On many lower-end microcontrollers the total software footprint of π+BLNK = WHIRLBOB AEAD is less than half a kilobyte. We also report an FPGA implementation that requires 4,946 logic units for a single round of WHIRLBOB, which compares favorably to 7,972 required for Keccak / Keyak on the same target platform. The relatively small S-Box gate count also enables efficient 64-bit bitsliced straight-line implementations. We finally present some discussion and analysis on the relationships between WHIRLBOB, Whirlpool, the Russian GOST Streebog hash, and the recent draft Russian Encryption Standard Kuznyechik.

European Union Cross-Border Cooperation as Conflict Transformation:Potential and Limits

Cross-border cooperation as conflict transformation provides a potential strategy for the European Union (EU) to help realise its founding peacebuilding objective. A wealth of cross-border cooperation activity sponsored by the EU spans a quarter of a century. Although the conflict transformation capacity of that cooperation is questionable in some border regions there is evidence to suggest that it has delivered peacebuilding dividends in other border regions. However, EU cross-border cooperation as conflict transformation faces a number of significant twenty-first century challenges including: ghost borders of the communal imagination; EU external border securitization; perceptions of EU and Russian empire-building; and the Mediterranean transmigrant/refugee crisis. It is argued that these challenges pose significant obstacles to EU cross-border cooperation as conflict transformation and undermine the peacebuilding objective of European integration.

Institutions of Activism: Museums and Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2015-12

Russia and the Arab Spring: supporting the counter-revolution

Russia’s response to the Arab Spring ranged from apprehension to deep anxiety and diverged significantly from the US and the EU responses. While initially welcoming the popular demands for political reform in North Africa, the Russian reaction rapidly became more critical as a result of Western military intervention into Libya and the threat of the spread of Islamist extremism. It was these twin fears which prompted the Russian leadership to adopt an uncompromizing stance towards Syria. While geopolitical factors certainly played a role in driving Russian strategy, domestic political factors were also more significant. As the Russian leadership felt internally threatened by the growing opposition within the country, conflict in the Middle East highlighted the perceived flaws of the imposition of Western liberal democracy and the virtues of Russia’s own model of state-managed political order. There was, as such, a significant ideational and ideological dimension to the Russian response to the Arab Spring.

Pseudo Phase Plane and Fractional Calculus Modelling of Western Global Economic Downturn

This paper applies Pseudo Phase Plane (PPP) and Fractional Calculus (FC) mathematical tools for modeling world economies. A challenging global rivalry among the largest international economies began in the early 1970s, when the post-war prosperity declined. It went on, up to now. If some worrying threatens may exist actually in terms of possible ambitious military aggression, invasion, or hegemony, countries’ PPP relative positions can tell something on the current global peaceful equilibrium. A global political downturn of the USA on global hegemony in favor of Asian partners is possible, but can still be not accomplished in the next decades. If the 1973 oil chock has represented the beginning of a long-run recession, the PPP analysis of the last four decades (1972–2012) does not conclude for other partners’ global dominance (Russian, Brazil, Japan, and Germany) in reaching high degrees of similarity with the most developed world countries. The synergies of the proposed mathematical tools lead to a better understanding of the dynamics underlying world economies and point towards the estimation of future states based on the memory of each time series.

The determinants of net interest margins & net interest spreads in the Russian & Japanese Commercial Banking sectors

This study presents an empirical investigation of the determinants of net interest margins and spreads in the Russian and Japanese banking sectors with a particular focus on commercial banks. Net interest mar-gins and spreads serve as indicators of financial intermediation efficiency. This paper employed a bank-level unbalanced panel dataset prolonging from 2005 to 2014. My main empirical results show that bank characteristics explain the most of the variation in not only net interest margins but also in spreads. Capi-talization, liquidity risk, inflation, economic growth, private and government debt are important determi-nants of margin in Russia. In Japan to the contrary loan and deposit market concentration along with bank size do predominate. Common significant variables in both countries are the substitution effect, cost effi-ciency and profitability. Turning to net interest spreads, micro- and macro-specific variables are the main significant drivers in Russia. I reach the conclusion that there are no significant determinants of net interest spreads in Japan within the original selection of variables, but operating efficiency and deposits to total funding seem to prevail. In both countries, there are solid differences in the net interest margins as well as spreads once the pre- and the post-crisis periods are considered.

Coronary heart disease and cerebrovascular disease mortality in young adults: recent trends in Europe.

Background: Over the last two decades, mortality from coronary heart disease (CHD) and cerebrovascular disease (CVD) declined by about 30% in the European Union (EU). Design: We analyzed trends in CHD (X ICD codes: I20-I25) and CVD (X ICD codes: I60-I69) mortality in young adults (age 35-44 years) in the EU as a whole and in 12 selected European countries, over the period 1980-2007. Methods: Data were derived from the World Health Organization mortality database. With joinpoint regression analysis, we identified significant changes in trends and estimated average annual percent changes (AAPC). Results: CHD mortality rates at ages 35-44 years have decreased in both sexes since the 1980s for most countries, except for Russia (130/100,000 men and 24/100,000 women, in 2005-7). The lowest rates (around 9/100,000 men, 2/100,000 women) were in France, Italy and Sweden. In men, the steepest declines in mortality were in the Czech Republic (AAPC = -6.1%), the Netherlands (-5.2%), Poland (-4.5%), and England and Wales (-4.5%). Patterns were similar in women, though with appreciably lower rates. The AAPC in the EU was -3.3% for men (rate = 16.6/100,000 in 2005-7) and -2.1% for women (rate = 3.5/100,000). For CVD, Russian rates in 2005-7 were 40/100,000 men and 16/100,000 women, 5 to 10-fold higher than in most western European countries. The steepest declines were in the Czech Republic and Italy for men, in Sweden and the Czech Republic for women. The AAPC in the EU was -2.5% in both sexes, with steeper declines after the mid-late 1990s (rates = 6.4/100,000 men and 4.3/100,000 women in 2005-7). Conclusions: CHD and CVD mortality steadily declined in Europe, except in Russia, whose rates were 10 to 15-fold higher than those of France, Italy or Sweden. Hungary and Poland, and also Scotland, where CHD trends were less favourable than in other western European countries, also emerge as priorities for preventive interventions.