bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
On the Cognitive Statuses of Sasak Demonstratives
Authors: Sutarman  , Abdussamad Zainudin , Abdul Muhid  , Diah Supatmiwati  , Wiya suktiningsih
Published: August 2021

This study examines the cognitive statuses of the Givenness Hierarchy on Sasak demonstratives, particularly in Menu-Meni dialect of the Sasak language. This study is qualitative research in nature. The data were collected via the field-linguistic method by utilizing three techniques: elicitation, semi-structured interview and intuition. The results of the study revealed that Menu-Meni dialect implements the pronominal demonstrative for “activated” status and adnominal demonstratives are used for the status of “referential”, “uniquely identifiable”, and “familiar”. Beyond demonstratives, zero articles is applied in the status of “type identifiable” and the pronoun ie (it/she/he) is used in the status of “in focus”. Thus, demonstrative has a prominent role in most of the cognitive statuses in the Givenness Hierarchy theory.
Comparing Lexicons Diachronically in Italian Literary Corpora
Authors: Pavan Luca
Published: August 2021

The goal of the article is to provide a comparison between several words from Florentine vernacular language and modern Italian language, using software written by the author. This paper focuses on two corpora: the first one includes a selection of Florentine vernacular literature and the second one a group of literary books written in a modern Italian language from the end of XIX Century up until the present. The article demonstrates the use of some features of the software to compare the two corpora, ranking the lexicographic entries using different strategies. It is possible to analyse the lexicon taking into consideration different types of sorting, using only three parameters: the word frequency, the percentage of frequency according to the number of words in the corpus, and the percentage of texts where the word is found in the corpus. From these parameters a fourth parameter also arises the level of persistence of words in each corpus. The software allows observing the differences in the use of lexicon in various periods of history, comparing the Florentine vernacular language, which was used in the Italian peninsula till the beginning of XIX Century, to the modern Italian language.
The Social Stratification of Qaf in Egyptian Arabic
Authors: Aloufi Aliaa
Published: August 2021

The present study aims to investigate the phonological behaviour of Egyptian speakers stratified by age, gender and region in the pronunciation of the voiceless uvular plosive /q/ sound. The application of sociolinguistic methodology shows that the study has observed the role of some social variables such as age, gender and region in language change. The study has concluded that the /q/ sound is used by men more than women and the older generation more than the younger generation. Furthermore, the study points out the role of regional differences in the speech of Egyptian speakers as the /q/ sound is used by those speakers who live in rural areas more than those who come from urban areas. In sum, this study helps to enrich our understanding of language variation and change in Arabic dialect, more specifically Egyptian Arabic.
The Interpersonal Meaning on the Covid-19 Vaccination News in Indonesia: A Systemic Functional Linguistics Study
Authors: Merty Karlina Sari  , Sumarlam  , Djatmika
Published: August 2021

Some media use interesting titles in their news. Like the online media m.republika.co.id which uses the verbs "meminta (ask)" and "diminta (requested)" in its reporting. This study will reveal the interpersonal meaning of m.republika.co.id entitled "Jokowi Minta Daerah Kawal Vaksinasi Covid-19". This research is descriptive-qualitative research that will describe the findings and describe the status, affect, and contacts that are part of the focus of this research. The methods and techniques used in this study are data analysis methods proposed by Spradley (1980) namely domain, taxonomy, and componential analysis. The results of the study indicate that m.republika.co.id positions itself as a party that provides information and places readers as members of the academic community who are expected to also have an interest in the information. This is evidenced by the dominance of the proposition of the proposal, the dominance of positive polarity, the dominance of congruent lexis rather than incongruent, and also the use of a complex clause system that describes the closeness of the distance between the writer and the reader.
Methodology Section of Graduate School Thesis Manuscripts: A Genre Analysis Probe of Rhetorical Structure
Authors: Tulud Donnie , Algouti Honee J. Mosquera, MALTE
Published: August 2021

The methodology section of thesis manuscripts is one of the important parts that should be well written. From this premise, a genre analysis was conducted to 30 Master of Arts in Language Teaching (MALT-English) research articles of the Graduate School in University of Southern Mindanao (USM). The study aimed to determine the rhetorical move structure and the moves that dominate in the methodology section of the said research articles. Results revealed that the methodology section has 5 moves with corresponding steps. These include Move 1: Introducing the Method chapter; Move 2: Presenting the Design of the Study; Move 3: Describing data collection method; Move 4: Clarifying Data Analysis Procedure; and Move 5. Establishing the ethical considerations and trustworthiness of the study. Obligatory steps identified are  Pointing out the research design used in the study under Move 2,  Presenting the Design of the Study; Describing the locale, participants/respondents and data source/research materials and research instrument/s; and Describing methods and steps in data collection under move 3, data collection method. While the moves are similar in 30 articles, there are steps which are interchanged and are either evident or not evident in some articles. This implied that writers employ varied steps in writing the methodology section even if they are of similar discipline.
Confucianism and Philosophy of a Shared-Future Global Community in an Inter-civilisational World Order: Comparative Analysis of Their Relationships and Prospects
Authors: Bao Barack Lujia
Published: August 2021

The Western-initiating international relations theoretical framework plays a fairly dominant role in analysing and initiating the prospects and scenarios of international order. However, with the peaceful rise of China, whose civlisation sustains almost 5000 years, China is playing a more proactive role in inter-civilisational international order; thus, in-depth explorations into Confucianism as the core element of Han Chinese Civilisation have been resurgent on the world stage, and it is indispensable for relevant scholars, intellectuals and strategists to closely evaluate unexploited implications and demystify the sustainability and intrinsic dynamism of Confucianism-themed Han Chinese Civilisation, and its implicit ties with a comparable philosophical concept of a global community of shared future. Through historical-studies approaches and comparative methodologies, the primary purpose of this paper seeks to crucially investigate a potential relationship between Confucianism and the philosophical concept of a global community of shared future ranging from the perspectives of historical origin, context, substance and so forth. It can be argued that the philosophical standpoint of a community of shared future for humankind bears historical significance and merits that Confucian thoughts somehow generate. This paper of research findings meanwhile predicts that China’s inter-civlisational international engagement as part of China’s soft-power strategy will proceed beyond classical state-based theoretic framework and the Confucian thoughts of the prevalence of public spirit and harmony without homogeneity will grow as an alternative guiding international norm in better services of rebuilding normative, inter-civilisational international order that a global community demands.
Students’ Experiences of their Leadership Development through the Leadership Subject Taught in Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
Authors: Noori Abdul Qawi
Published: August 2021

Leadership is the process of influencing followers to achieve a goal. This study aims to explore the Afghan postgraduate students’ experiences of their leadership development through the leadership course taught in Universiti Teknologi, Malaysia. A quantitative research design was employed in the study. An online survey questionnaire with 19 items was used to collect the data. The survey questionnaire was administered to all 46 postgraduate students in Social Sciences, Humanities and Science faculties, but only 42 of them responded to the online survey. Statistical Package for Social Sciences has been used to analyze the data. Descriptive statistics were used to determine the mean, frequency and percentage. Inferential statistics such as Independent Sample T-Test and One Way ANOVA were used to find out the differences in the responses of the participants by their demographic variables, i.e., gender, year of study, faculty, work experience and age. The finding showed that the students had a positive perception of the leadership course. The participants believed that the course helped them to improve their leadership skills. The study recommends that the leadership course be taught in Afghanistan universities since it plays a crucial part in developing leadership skills in students, which is crucial for their career after graduation.
Probabilistic Type Theory and Natural Language Semantics
Authors: Cooper Robin , Dobnik Simon , Lappin Shalom , Larsson Staffan
Published: August 2021

Type theory has played an important role in specifying the formal connection between syntactic structure and semantic interpretation within the history of formal semantics. In recent years rich type theories developed for the semantics of programming languages have become influential in the semantics of natural language. The use of probabilistic reasoning to model human learning and cognition has become an increasingly important part of cognitive science. In this paper we offer a probabilistic formulation of a rich type theory, Type Theory with Records (TTR), and we illustrate how this framework can be used to approach the problem of semantic learning. Our probabilistic version of TTR is intended to provide an interface between the cognitive process of classifying situations according to the types that they instantiate, and the compositional semantics of natural language.
Sentence alignment for literary texts
Authors: Xu Yong , Max Aurélien , Yvon François
Published: August 2021

Literary works are becoming increasingly available in electronic formats, thus quickly transforming editorial processes and reading habits. In the context of the global enthusiasm for multilingualism, the rapid spread of e-book readers, such as Amazon Kindle® or Kobo Touch®, fosters the development of a new generation of reading tools for bilingual books. In particular, literary works, when available in several languages, offer an attractive perspective for self-development or everyday leisure reading, but also for activities such as language learning, translation or literary studies. An important issue in the automatic processing of multilingual e-books is the alignment between textual units. Alignment could help identify corresponding text units in different languages, which would be particularly beneficial to bilingual readers and translation professionals. Computing automatic alignments for literary works, however, is a task more challenging than in the case of better behaved corpora such as parliamentary proceedings or technical manuals. In this paper, we revisit the problem of computing high-quality alignment for literary works. We first perform a large-scale evaluation of automatic alignment for literary texts, which provides a fair assessment of the actual difficulty of this task. We then introduce a two-pass approach, based on a maximum entropy model. Experimental results for novels available in English and French or in English and Spanish demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.
Modality annotation for Portuguese: from manual annotation to automatic labeling
Authors: Mendes Amália , Hendrickx Iris , Ávila Luciana , Quaresma Paulo , Gonçalves Teresa , Sequeira João
Published: August 2021

We investigate modality in Portuguese and we combine a linguistic perspective with an application-oriented perspective on modality. We design an annotation scheme reflecting theoretical linguistic concepts and apply this schema to a small corpus sample to show how the scheme deals with real world language usage. We present two schemas for Portuguese, one for spoken Brazilian Portuguese and one for written European Portuguese. Furthermore, we use the annotated data not only to study the linguistic phenomena of modality, but also to train a practical text mining tool to detect modality in text automatically. The modality tagger uses a machine learning classifier trained on automatically extracted features from a syntactic parser. As we only have a small annotated sample available, the tagger was evaluated on 11 modal verbs that are frequent in our corpus and that denote more than one modal meaning. Finally, we discuss several valuable insights into the complexity of the semantic concept of modality that derive from the process of manual annotation of the corpus and from the analysis of the results of the automatic labeling: ambiguity and the semantic and syntactic properties typically associated to one modal meaning in context, and also the interaction of modality with negation and focus. The knowledge gained from the manual annotation task leads us to propose a new unified scheme for modality that applies to the two Portuguese varieties and covers both written and spoken data.
Can Recurrent Neural Networks Learn Nested Recursion?
Authors: Bernardy Jean-Philippe
Published: August 2021

Context-free grammars (CFG) were one of the first formal tools used to model natural languages, and they remain relevant today as the basis of several frameworks. A key ingredient of CFG is the presence of nested recursion. In this paper, we investigate experimentally the capability of several recurrent neural networks (RNNs) to learn nested recursion. More precisely, we measure an upper bound of their capability to do so, by simplifying the task to learning a generalized Dyck language, namely one composed of matching parentheses of various kinds. To do so, we present the RNNs with a set of random strings having a given maximum nesting depth and test its ability to predict the kind of closing parenthesis when facing deeper nested strings. We report mixed results: when generalizing to deeper nesting levels, the accuracy of standard RNNs is significantly higher than random, but still far from perfect. Additionally, we propose some non-standard stack-based models which can approach perfect accuracy, at the cost of robustness.
On dissolving morphological long distance dependencies in Russian verbs
Authors: Saléschus Dirk , Hautli Annette
Published: August 2021

This paper presents implementational issues of a finite-state approach for two crucial parts of Russian verbal morphology: Aspect formation and deverbal nominalization with nie based on aspect formation. The first process involves morphological blocking in order to avoid overgeneralization and is implemented with the xfst- tools via combining two powerful mechanisms - flag diacritics and rewrite rules. This considerably helps reducing the network size while having only small effects on processing time. Deverbal nominalization with nie has also been considered as involving some form of blocking. However, we show how to reanalyze this morphological process as a simple case of phonological neutralization which fits into a broader theory of the Russian sound system. The analysis and implementation presented here are thus theoretically consistent while maintaining implementational effectiveness.
Generating with Discourse Combinatory Categorial Grammar
Authors: Nakatsu Crystal , White Michael
Published: August 2021

This article introduces Discourse Combinatory Categorial Grammar (DCCG) and shows how it can be used to generate multisentence paraphrases, flexibly incorporating both intra- and intersentential discourse connectives. DCCG employs a simple, practical approach to extending Combinatory Categorial Grammar (CCG) to encompass coverage of discourse-level phenomena, which furthermore makes it possible to generate clauses with multiple connectives and — in contrast to approaches based on Rhetorical Structure Theory — with rhetorical dependencies that do not form a tree. To do so, it borrows from Discourse Lexicalized Tree Adjoining Grammar (D-LTAG) the distinction between structural connectives and anaphoric discourse adverbials. Unlike D-LTAG, however, DCCG treats both sentential and discourse phenomena in the same grammar, rather than employing a separate discourse grammar. A key ingredient of this single-grammar approach is cue threading, a tightly constrained technique for extending the semantic scope of a discourse connective beyond the sentence. As DCCG requires no additions to the CCG formalism, it can be used to generate paraphrases of an entire dialogue turn using the OpenCCG realizer as-is, without the need to revise its architecture. In addition, from an interpretation perspective, a single grammar enables easier management of ambiguity across discourse and sentential levels using standard dynamic programming techniques, whereas D-LTAG has required a potentially complex interaction of sentential and discourse grammars to manage the same ambiguity. As a proof-of-concept, the article demonstrates how OpenCCG can be used with a DCCG to generate multi-sentence paraphrases that reproduce and extend those in the SPaRKy Restaurant Corpus.
Detecting Ad Hoc Rules for Treebank Development
Authors: Dickinson Markus
Published: August 2021

We outline a method of detecting ad hoc, or anomalous, rules in treebank grammars, by exploiting the fact that such rules do not fit with the rest of the grammar.  Ad hoc rules are rules used for specific constructions in one data set and unlikely to be used again.  These include ungeneralizable rules, erroneous rules, rules for ungrammatical text, and rules which are not consistent with the rest of the annotation scheme.  Based on the idea that valid rules should receive support from other rules in the grammar, we develop two methods for detecting ad hoc rules in flat treebanks and show they are successful in detecting such rules.  Although one can put some linguistic knowledge into determining rule similarity and dissimilarity, the methods work best by using a simple, modified Levenshtein distance.  We illustrate this on the English Wall Street Journal treebank and the German TIGER treebank.  For the latter, we extend the method to formalisms incorporating discontinuous constituents, employing CFG-like rules for the comparisons.
Bootstrapping the Language Archive
Authors: Bird Steven
Published: August 2021

There are grounds to believe that language technology in general, and natural language processing in particular, have important roles to play in creating and analyzing corpora for small languages. This goes beyond the development of data management tools to the application of natural language processing techniques to small and noisy datasets, and the design of new methods that operate within the constraints of linguistic field data. A set of seven such constraints (or "axioms for scalable work with small languages") are presented, and suggestions for further NLP research are related back to these axioms.
Parallel Syntactic Annotation in CReST
Authors: Kübler Sandra , Baucom Eric , Scheutz Matthias
Published: August 2021

In this paper, we introduce the syntactic annotation of the CReST corpus, a corpus of natural language dialogues obtained from humans performing a cooperative, remote search task. The corpus contains the speech signals as well as transcriptions of the dialogues, which are additionally annotated for dialogue structure, disfluencies, and for syntax. The syntactic annotation comprises POS annotation, Penn Treebank style constituent annotations, dependency annotations, and combinatory categorial grammar annotations. The corpus is the first of its kind, providing parallel syntactic annotation based on three different grammar formalisms for a dialogue corpus. All three annotations are manually corrected, thus providing a high quality resource for linguistic comparisons, but also for parser evaluation across frameworks.
Banking Meaning Representations from Treebanks
Authors: Butler Alastair , Yoshimoto Kei
Published: August 2021

This paper describes a method to convert existing treebanks with syntactic information into banks of meaning representations. The central component is a system of evaluation for a small formal language with respect to an information state. Inputs to the evaluation system are formal language expressions obtained from the conversion of parsed representations conforming to (Penn Treebank Project) guidelines. Outputs from the evaluation system are Davidsonian (higher-order) predicate logic meaning representations. Having a system of evaluation as the basis for generating meaning representations makes possible accepting input with minimal conversion from existing treebanks and from the tools used to construct treebanks. Results of having built corresponding banks of meaning representations from available treebanks are discussed.
Frame Semantics and legal corpora annotation
Authors: Bertoldi Anderson , Chishman Rove
Published: August 2021

This paper presents a theoretical discussion about the use of Frame Semantics as corpora annotation paradigm. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the applicability of Frame Semantics theory and FrameNet paradigm for the semantic annotation of legal texts. The work presented in this paper is an initial step in the construction of a treebank for the Brazilian legal language.
Bulgarian-English Treebank
Authors: Simov Kiril , Osenova Petya
Published: August 2021

The paper describes the construction of a Bulgarian-English treebank aligned on the word and semantic level. We consider the manual word level alignment easier and more reliable than the manual alignment on syntactic and semantic level. Thus, after manual word level alignment we apply an automatic procedure for the construction of semantic level alignments. Our work presents the main steps of this automatic procedure which exploits the syntactic analysis of both sentences, morphosyntactic annotation, manual word level alignment in producing the semantic annotation of the sentences and semantic alignment. Last, but not least, a method for identification of potential errors is discussed using the automatically constructed semantic analyses of Bulgarian sentences and their comparison to the semantic representation of the English sentences.
Bootstrapping the Development of an HPSG-based Treebank for Persian
Authors: Ghayoomi Masood
Published: August 2021

In this paper, we describe an ongoing research to develop an HPSG-based treebank for Persian. To this aim, we use a bootstrapping approach for the data annotation. In the first step, a set of seed rules are defined as regular expressions in the CLaRK system. Then, the data is shallow processed with this set of rules. In the next step, a human annotator completes the annotation of sentences manually. To increase automatic annotation, we extract the manual applied rules and iteratively augment the seed rules with the rules applied frequently in the manual annotation. Our experiment in building the Persian treebank which currently contains 1000 sentences shows that the proposed method reduces human intervention from 74.05% in first iterations to 39.01% in last iterations.
Is there a place for logic in recognizing textual entailment?
Authors: Bos Johan
Published: August 2021

From a purely theoretical point of view, it makes sense to approach recognizing textual entailment (RTE) with the help of logic. After all, entailment matters are all about logic. In practice, only few RTE systems follow the bumpy road from words to logic. This is probably because it requires a combination of robust, deep semantic analysis and logical inference—and why develop something with this complexity if you perhaps can get away with something simpler? In this article, with the help of an RTE system based on Combinatory Categorial Grammar, Discourse Representation Theory, and first-order theorem proving, we make an empirical assessment of the logic-based approach. High precision paired with low recall is a key characteristic of this system. The bottleneck in achieving high recall is the lack of a systematic way to produce relevant background knowledge. There is a place for logic in RTE, but it is (still) overshadowed by the knowledge acquisition problem.
The Relational Syllogistic Revisited
Authors: Pratt-Hartmann Ian
Published: August 2021

The relational syllogistic is an extension of the language of Classical syllogisms in which predicates are allowed to feature transitive verbs with quantified objects. It is known that the relational syllogistic does not admit a finite set of syllogism-like rules whose associated (direct) derivation relation is sound and complete. We present a modest extension of this language which does.
Utjecaj različitih tehničkih sustava i eksploatacijskih parametara na kvalitetu rada raspršivača u trajnom nasadu
Authors: Petrović Davor , Tadić Vjekoslav , Zeko Zvonko , Knežević Dario , Banaj Anamarija , Banaj Đuro
Published: August 2021

Istraživanjem su uspoređena dva tipa raspršivača (Agromehanika i Tifone) s ciljem određivanja optimalnog sustava raspršivanja (senzorski i konvencionalni sustav). Istraživan je utjecaj tehničkih čimbenika raspršivanja (norma raspršivanja, tip mlaznice, brzina zračne struje), te uporaba ultrazvučnog senzorskog sustava za selektivnu aplikaciju na depozit tekućine u krošnji, zračno i zemljišno zanošenje. Istraživanje je postavljeno prema ISO 22866 normi u četverogodišnjem nasadu višnje, vlasnika Karoline d.o.o. Osijek. Eksploatacijom raspršivača Agromehanika najveći otklon zemljišnog zanošenja između konvencionalnog i senzorskog sustava iznosi 57,77 % i zabilježen je s tretmanom A1B2C2. Razlika kod raspršivača Tifone iznosila je 52,54 % (tretman A1B1C1). Ostvareni depozit tekućine u krošnji nije se značajno razlikovao između dva sustava raspršivanja, te je najveći ostvareni otklon od 1,31 % utvrđen s raspršivačem Agromehanika i 2,17 % s raspršivačem Tifone. Tretmani A2B2C1 i A2B2C2 ostvarili su 100 % smanjenje zračnog zanošenja tekućine (na 5 m udaljenosti od tretiranog reda) s raspršivačem Agromehanika, dok je raspršivač Tifone ostvario isti otklon kod tretmana A1B2C1 i A2B2C1. Također, 100 % otklon između konvencionalne i selektivne aplikacije (senzorski sustav) kod zračnog zanošenja (na 10 m udaljenosti od tretiranog reda) ostvaren je s tretmanima A2B1C1 i A1B1C1 za oba raspršivača. Ostvareni rezultati u ovom istraživanju ukazuju na uspješno smanjenje norme raspršivanja za 20 % bez statistički značajne razlike ostvarenog depozita tekućine u krošnji. Prema ostvarenim rezultatima, raspršivač Agromehanika je ostvario statistički značajno veći depozit tekućine u krošnji (LSD0,05 = 13,46), pa se može zaključiti da je navedeni raspršivač optimalnije tehničke konstrukcije za nasad višnje u kojem je obavljeno istraživanje.
Psychological and Social Wellbeing of Paramedics in Riyadh City during the Covid-19 Pandemic
Authors: Alqahtani Abdulrahman , Alqahtani Saleh , Alhodaib Abdullah , Daoulah Amin , Mobarad Abdulmajeed , Alhamid Sameer , Alhazmi Riyadh
Published: August 2021

Introduction

Our research sought to assess the psychological and social wellbeing of paramedics in Riyadh City in Saudi Arabia during the COVID 19 pandemic. It also aimed to assess the therapeutic assistance provided to pre-hospital care givers during the pandemic.

Methods

In this quantitative cross-sectional analysis an assessment of 106 paramedics was undertaken from data obtained from 28 September to 10 November 2020. The authenticity and durability of Pilot and the Cronbach have been added.

Results

Of the 106 paramedics surveyed, 60 (56.6%) were 30–39 years of age; 101 were male (95.3%). The mean average psychological wellbeing of the paramedics was 6.41 with the standard deviation of 2.42. Family and friends’ average social support score was 9.2 in norm 2.6 deviation.

Conclusion

Our study showed that during the COVID-19 pandemic paramedics suffered from social and psychological depression. Paramedics must be protected from the socioeconomic and psychological difficulties they face every day in order to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.
Webmetrical analysis of Ecology Section of RNPLS&T website
Authors: Klimova M. A.
Published: August 2021

The Ecology Section of RNPLS&T website maintained since 2003 is targeted at both Library users and partners in ecological education and information. Access to bibliographic annotated database “Ecology: Science and technology” and to e-library in ecology is provided; new acquisition bibliography are published monthly; information on exhibitions, conference proceedings and webinar records are also available. These are the ways to inform Library users and partners on publications in ecology, sustainable development and RNPLS&T’s efforts in ecology education and awareness building. The traffic to ecological pages evidences on the demand and usefulness of the provided information. The bibliometrical analysis of the Ecology Section was completed; the author provides its findings. The Section materials are characterized. The traffic statistics, i. e. number of views, visit depth, link sources, is provided for the period January 1, 2019 – December 31, 2019. AWStats vs. Yandex.Metrica data are compared; corresponding improvement lines are identified for RNPLS&T website Ecology Section.
The Science Library’s providing information support of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Authors: Glushanovsky A. V. , Solovyova T. N.
Published: August 2021

The role and place of science libraries during the transfer to digital science information and online user services is examined. The authors argue that in these circumstances of transfer to digital communication and Internet-based services and facilities, the peer-reviewed journals still maintain their role as a key publication format and promptly deliver research findings to researchers and experts. Open access has not been widely adopted in fundamental sciences: the scholarly information awareness system has to be financed by the government. The network of academic and research libraries make the part of this system. Based on the experience of the centralized library network (CLN) of the Russian Academy of Sciences Library for Natural Sciences (RAS LNS), the possibilities of the vast academic library network are explored. The structure of full-text collection of CLN RAS LNS is analyzed. This collection core is made primarily of the National Electronic Subscription materials comprising the world most established academic journals. With the Internet, these resources can be delivered directly to researcher’s workplace via the two channels under the National Electronic Subscription program, i. e. via his/her organizational subscription or via the library providing services to his/her organization. Both channels should be integrated in the system where the core resources are provided directly to the organization, and individual components demanded by individual researcher – via the library network. This system of science information provision has been for several years efficiently functioning at CLN RAS LNS. The need for similar system for the outside of National Electronic Subscription program is substantiated.
Networked library information interaction, the case of the central library of Pushchino Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Authors: Kharybina T. N. , Beskaravainaya E. V. , Mitroshin I. A.
Published: August 2021

The issues of networked library interaction is examined and exemplified by the experience of the Pushchino Scientific Center Central Library (division of the Library for Natural Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, LNS RAS). Ready-made software solutions designed by LNS RAS specialists enabled the participating libraries to implement computer-aided collection development system, union reference aids, online ordering, lending and refusal registration, digital resources access system. The authors focus, in particular, on specific networked interactions between the scientific library and users of its information services. Within the framework of the Library-Research Institute of Pushchino Center cooperation, the main efforts of the Library are focused on implementing modern network technologies, providing access to information resources, research information support, developing union Internet-based catalogs within the online order system, designing problem-oriented databases and maintaining current list of networked resources in physico-chemical biology. New library services are described, e.g. bibliometric and patent research, design and maintenance of the library website. Approaches to building network interaction with libraries of various types, institutions of memory (archives, museums, etc.), publishers’, and mass media, are discussed. The authors come to the conclusion that networked cooperation is efficient organizational and technological instrument to provide equal use opportunities for every member of library information network.
PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHERS’ KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS OF MEASUREMENT AND ASSESSMENT: A CASE OF SWAZILAND
Authors: Matsenjwa Lindiwe Rose , Thwala S’lungile Kindness
Published: August 2021

The study purposed to find primary school teachers’ knowledge and skills of measurement and assessment and to elicit their views of teacher role of measurement and assessment. Within a descriptive survey, a questionnaire was used to collect data. The sample consisted of 72 primary school teachers randomly selected from 40 Swaziland schools. The findings revealed that primary school teachers had some knowledge of measurement and assessment, however lacked skills in using a variety of assessment techniques. The study further found out that as much as primary teachers view assessment as important in improving teaching and learning, they do not use it in planning for their lessons. The study also revealed that oral assessment and practical assessment has frequently been used in primary schools even though such observation and project techniques are rarely exploited. In light of these findings, the study concluded that mainly primary teachers assess learners to monitor learners’ progress instead of providing instructional planning. The study recommends that the teacher training colleges and the University of Swaziland should extend the scope of measurement and evaluation course to adequately equip the primary school teachers. Key words: assessment, knowledge, measurement, primary teachers, Swaziland.
COVID-19 Australia: Epidemiology Report 48: Reporting period ending 15 August 2021
Authors:   COVID-19 National Incident Room Surveillance Team
Published: August 2021

This is the forty-eighth epidemiological report for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), reported in Australia as at 23:59 Australian Eastern Standard Time [AEST] 15 August 2021. It includes data on COVID-19 cases diagnosed in Australia and the international situation.
The Integrated Model of Quality Management System of Laboratory Studies of Medicines (Review)
Authors: Selezneva A. I. , Smirnov V. A. , Goryachkin V. V. , Chadova N. N. , Polyakov S. V. , Shestakov V. N. , Abramovich R. A.
Published: August 2021

Introduction. The publication is devoted to the role of laboratory research in ensuring the quality of domestic medicines and is a review and analysis of regulatory documents and current publications on this topic.

Text. A number of different types of laboratories are involved in Drug life cycle and ensuring their effectiveness and safety. Today there are a large number of regulations governing laboratory research. Common to all types of laboratories and regulatory documents is the need to organize an effective quality management system (QMS) for the drug life cycle laboratories. The aim of this review is to analyze approaches to regulating the quality of laboratory research of domestic drugs and to consider the most effective QMS model, which is fundamental for all types of laboratories in the life cycle of drugs.

Conclusion. The laboratory research quality system serves as a basic tool for achieving the ultimate goal - the clinical value of drugs and is designed to ensure that risks for patients are minimized. At the same time, each stage of the drug life cycle provides a solution to a specific problem on the way to this goal, which must be taken into account when building a QMS in each type of laboratory. The range of regulatory documents and external assessment systems (accreditation, certification, inspection control, etc.) in the field of domestic laboratory research is quite diverse. In this regard, it is advisable for the laboratory to build a harmonious QMS based on priorities in accordance with the goals and objectives. The most effective method for building such a system is an integrated management system model.
Actual Aspects of Quality Control and Standardization of Rosehip Fruits
Authors: Zhdanov D. A. , Kurkin V. A. , Braslavsky V. B. , Agapov A. I.
Published: August 2021

Introduction. Currently, herbal medicines are becoming increasingly popular. In this regard, of particular interest are medicinal herbal preparations based on rosehip fruits, which have a tonic, choleretic and wound healing effect due to the presence of ascorbic acid, flavonoids and carotenoids. According to the State Pharmacopoeia of the Russian Federation (SP RF) of the XIV edition, the determination of the main groups of biologically active substances (BAS) by thin-layer chromatography (TLC) is carried out only by the presence of ascorbic acid, while the sensitivity of the method does not allow it to be detected in rosehip fruits of low-vitamin species.

Aim. Aim is the development of new approaches to control quality and standardization of Rosehip fruits with using of modern pharmacognostic analysis methods.

Materials and methods. Prepared in Samara Region, the Republic of Mari El Rosehip fruits samples in 2020 and commercial samples from various manufacturers. TLC, UV/Vis-spectroscopy and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) methods were used for determination the main BAS groups.

Results and discussion. The introduction of flavonoids as one of the definitioned groups of BAS in rosehip fruits along with ascorbic acid was justified. A technique for the identification of ascorbic acid by UV/Vis-spectroscopy (wavelength 264 ± 2 nm) was developed and shown the determination possibility of this substance by HPLC.

Conclusion. So phytochemical study results the expediency of the using of modern approaches to quality control and standardization of rosehip fruits, consisting in the qualitative determination of ascorbic acid by UV/Vis-spectroscopy and HPLC, as well as rutin by TLC, was justified.
Modern Medicines (Assortment) and Trends in the Improvement of Dosage Forms of Hepatoprotective Agents (Review)
Authors: Petrukhina D. A. , Pletneva I. V. , Sysuev B. B.
Published: August 2021

Introduction. Liver diseases with all the variety of clinical manifestations have common pathogenetic links at the cellular level. The group of hepatoprotective agents is represented by drugs that exhibit versatile mechanisms for protecting liver cells from the effects of damaging factors, the main of which are membrane-stabilizing, antioxidant, regenerative, detoxifying, choleretic and anti-inflammatory effects. The high therapeutic and hepatoprotective effectiveness of modern drugs is largely due to their metabolic effects, as well as their ability to bind free radicals and reactive oxygen species in the cell.

Text. The purpose of this work is to form an analytical review of the literature on the assortment and concepts of improving the dosage forms of hepatoprotective agents. According to the analysis and systematization of modern publications devoted to the use of hepatoprotectors in the treatment of liver diseases, it is shown that it is necessary to develop new formulations and combinations of biologically active substances with the manifestation of versatile mechanisms of hepatoprotection, as well as to improve the composition and manufacturing technologies of existing traditional therapies. One of the current trends is the use of new substances in the development of traditional and innovative dosage forms. The search for biologically active molecules with antioxidant, antiradical and membrane-stabilizing activity that can be considered as effective hepatoprotectors continues. An integral task of pharmaceutical development is the creation of bioavailable drugs that have a prolonged effect and minimal side effects. A promising direction in pharmaceutical technology is the development of innovative drugs for the directed transport of biologically active molecules to the affected organ.

Conclusion. As a result of the analysis of modern data, priority directions for the development and improvement of existing formulations based on modern approaches to the production of innovative dosage forms are identified. The relevance of improving the dosage forms of hepatoprotectors presented on the pharmaceutical market is shown. Of particular interest is the development of innovative targeted delivery systems with effective and safe hepatoprotectors in various combinations, including those based on cinnamic acid derivatives.
Development of Compositions and Technologies for Producing Tablets with Hydroxythyrozol-standardized Extract of Olive Leaves
Authors: Maslennikova M. S. , Solovyova N. L.
Published: August 2021

Introduction. The article presents the results of a study of the physicochemical properties of dry extract of olive leaves, standardized by hydroxythyrozol - a biologically active substance that is part of the chemical composition of aerial parts of the olive tree.

Aim. The purpose of the study is to develop tablet Formulations containing dry extract of olive leaves and to standardize by hydroxythyrozol by reversed-phase-HPLC method on the main substancecontent.

Materials and methods. Substance of dry extract of olive leaves, microcrystalline cellulose (Avicel® PH-112), Aerosil® (Aeroperl® 300 Pharma), Ludipress® (Ludipress®), lactose, potato starch, sodium salt of carboxymethyl starch, magnesium stearate, direct pressing, HPLC.

Results and discussion. Studies of the physicochemical properties of dry extract of olive leaves have been carried out. Selected excipients for the study of tablettable masses. Formulations for further tabletting have been developed. A complex of studies of the obtained tablets was carried out according to Russian Pharmacopoeia XIV for compliance with quality indicators.

Conclusion. The biological properties of dry extract of olive leaves are have been studied, indicating the prospect of developing drugs based on it. Formulations of tablets with dry extract of olive leaves have been developed and their quality indicators have been investigated.
Modeling the Formation of Liposomes with Vinpocetine from Soy Lecithin Phospholipids by Molecular Dynamics
Authors: Polkovnikova Yu. A.
Published: August 2021

Introduction. Liposomal preparations have the following advantages: they protect body cells from the toxic effects of drugs; prolong the action of the drug introduced into the body; protect medicinal substances from degradation; promote the manifestation of targeted specificity due to selective penetration from blood into tissues; change the pharmacokinetics of drugs, increasing their pharmacological effectiveness; allow you to create a water-soluble form of a number of medicinal substances, thereby increasing their bioavailability. The development of liposomal forms of vinpocetine is highly relevant. Currently, when developing the composition of liposomal forms, molecular modeling methods are widely used, which are a convenient method for predicting both the properties of the membranes themselves and aspects of the interaction of membranes with small molecules or proteins.

Aim. The aim of this study is to model the process of liposome assembly from soy lecithin phospholipids in the presence of vinpocetine by the molecular dynamics method; as well as predicting the distribution of vinpocetine between the internal cavity of the liposome, the phospholipid membrane, and the dispersion medium based on the simulation results.

Materials and methods. To simulate the process of liposome formation, the method of coarse-grained molecular dynamics in a Martini 2.2 force field was used using the Gromacs 2016.4 program. The assembly of the simulated system - a solution of soy lecithin phospholipids in water was performed using the Internet service Charmm-GUI-> Inputgenerator-> Martinimaker-> Randombuilder.

Results and discussion. The results of molecular modeling showed that the vinpocetine molecules did not penetrate into the liposome, but were adsorbed on its surface. This is due to the low solubility of vipocetin in the hydrophobic medium of the soy lecithin liposome membrane.

Conclusion. It was shown that the minimum diameter of a liposome formed from purified soy lecithin is 15.3 nm. Vinpocetine does not penetrate into liposomes from purified soy lecithin, but is adsorbed on the outer surface of their membrane. The surface excess in this case, according to the results of modeling coarse-grained molecular dynamics at a temperature of 298 K in an alcohol-water medium, is 1.2 • 10-7 mol/m2.
Qatar Soft Power: From Rising to the Crisis
Authors: Naier Taha , Altuntaş Çakır Dr. Ravza
Published: August 2021

Qatar has recently become a regional power and an influential actor in international politics. Qatar has adopted a foreign policy of soft power, which played a prominent role in the rise of the international scene. On 5 June 2017, a diplomatic boycott crisis has erupted against Qatar. The Arab Quartet imposed a complete blockade on Qatar and stated 13 demands. The study explores Qatar’s soft power tools such as lobbying, international mediation, scholarships, foreign aids, Al Jazeera network, which has created a national brand for Qatar. With the non-coercive foreign policy, Qatar’s stance in regional politics has transformed from neutrality to influence. This study will investigate the underlying political, ideological, and strategical factors of the 2017 crisis that has manifested the power struggles in the Gulf, the role of Qatar's foreign policy of soft power in the context of the crisis. Finally, the study will analyze whether the current situation demonstrates transient appeasement or a permanent resolution.