bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
A Viable Framework for Private Investment in the Utility Sector: An Analysis of the 2005 RF Law on Concession Agreements
Authors: Skyner Louis 
Published: October 2006

AbstractThis article is based on an analysis which the author produced for a working group of the RF Ministry of Economic Development established to draft a model concession agreement, a result of the new Law on Concession Agreements which entered into force on 21 July 2005. The work entailed identifying the necessary amendments to key areas of legislation that would enable such concession agreements—which the RF government has proclaimed its intention to grant for the operation and development of both infrastructure and networks in the water supply and wastewater sectors—to be workable in practice.With regards to the new Law on Concession Agreements itself, the present article highlights its failure, in the view of the author, to clearly identify the nature of the obligations and rights assumed by the parties of a concession agreement vis-à-vis one another, and to include provisions—typically found in other jurisdictions—that ensure a balance of interests and allow for the effective transfer and mitigation of risk. This analysis is located within a framework which recognizes that—as a result of the current circumstances, where unclear regulations, a lack of transparency about the financial status of utilities, and a lack of commercial tariffs, predominate—the nature of the reform which is required is all-encompassing. As a consequence, the author maintains that the erection of a framework for the development of concession agreements demands the integrated development: of the fiscal relationship between national and municipal government; of social policy, i.e., tariffs and subsidies, and, of access and right of usage rules.Finally, when identifying such problems, the author illustrates how and why the practical experience gained in other countries should be incorporated, emphasizing how this experience reveals both the difficulty and necessity of concluding balanced agreements for what are long-term projects the performance of which is vulnerable to changes in market conditions, and which involve the operation and development of assets of social significance.
Transplanting the Anglo-American Trust in Russian Soil
Authors: Zhdanov Andrey 
Published: October 2006

AbstractThis article is dedicated to comparative analysis of the most recent developments in Russian trust legislation during the period of post-Soviet economic reforms (1991-2005), and, especially, during the Presidency of Vladimir Putin (2000-2005). The article is based on a kandidatskaia dissertation dealing with history of trusts defended in the St. Petersburg State University in December 2003, and partly is an adoption of publications in Russian legal journals and university reviews that have appeared in the period 2002-2003.The author shows that the Russian trust—although originally structured as a contractual obligation (trust management contract)—is evolving closer to a property law concept and, therefore, requires a new, more appropriate legal framework. The author evaluates examples of trust in other jurisdictions as possible options for improving the Russian trust. However, the Anglo-American trust—if described in terms of Russian legal theory and based on its historical prerequisites (case law and in particular precedent, peculiarities of property law and landholding system, various social conditions)—proves to be irrelevant in Russia for a number of theoretical reasons.The proprietary trust concepts in other jurisdictions (where the trustee is the owner of the assets or has a limited right in rem to the trust assets) also seem to be inappropriate for use in Russia, mainly for political and economic reasons, such as the current role of Russian trust in management of state-owned assets.Finally, the author concludes that the most relevant option for Russian trust would be enriching the Russian trust management contract with various proprietary elements without replacing it with a proprietary concept.
Legal Status of the Budgetary Guarantees in Ukraine and Kazakhstan
Authors: Zykov Roman , Mulder Harm 
Published: October 2006

AbstractThis article contains the analysis of developments in the budgetary legislation, which occurred during the last decade in Ukraine and Kazakhstan. In essence, the article focuses on the matters of provision of guarantees by the local authorities. The authors take a look at the evolution of the constitutional, budgetary, financial, civil and administrative legislation in connection to the issues of the budgetary guarantees in the both countries. Employing a comparative approach, the authors draw parallels between two independently developing legal systems which share a common legislative past.
There is no Hero Without a Dragon: A Revisionist Interpretation of The Myth of St. George and the Dragon
Authors: Maré Estelle Alma 
Published: September 2006

AbstractIt is the purpose of this paper to interpret the legend of St. George and the Dragon in terms of alchemical symbolism. While the victory of the Christian hero over the Dragon is traditionally interpreted as symbolic of the triumph of good over evil, it is argued that both combatants represent the four alchemical elements: air, water, earth and fire. Instead of a duel of opposites their combat transmutes the coiled-up energy of the dragon into solar light, which manifests as the beautiful princess of the myth. The conclusion is drawn that there is a dialectical movement of force in the battle between St. George and the dragon. The hero releases the antithetical power of the dense, dark matter symbolised by the dragon so that the elements of a polarity do not remain contrasted but are resolved creatively.
'I am Christiaan Jordan, a White Man': Liberal Anxieties and the Politics of Transition in Sheila Fugard's The Castaways
Authors: Titlestad Michael , Kissack Michael 
Published: September 2006

AbstractThis article assesses the contribution that Sheila Fugard's short novel, The Castaways, makes towards an understanding of the dilemmas of white identity in South Africa during the apogee of white hegemony in the mid 1970s. The novel's protagonist, Christiaan Jordan, is emblematic of a white liberal individual, who acknowledges his/her complicity in the historical violence that has been inflicted on the defeated and colonised indigenous subjects of white rule. Such individuals sought a transition to a more just future, but dreaded the violence that might attend such a transformation. We examine Jordan's embrace of Buddhism as an attempt to evade the logic of violent confrontation, demonstrating the profound difficulties involved in the translation of Buddhist philosophy into political practice. We conclude with an affirmation of the value of secular liberal democracy for the minimization of violent political conflict, despite the imperfections and compromises that this perspective implies.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, or: Problematising the Ethical
Authors: Payne Michael 
Published: September 2006

AbstractThe problem of time has captivated the attention of philosophers, theologians and poets for centuries. In the following article the author addresses the issue of time using the novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera as the lens through which to view humanity's experience of time and the variety of options available for making sense out of time. The central argument of the article is explore how nihilism as portrayed through the two central characters of Kundera's novel, Tomas and Tereza, provides a unique dilemma for making sense of one's life as a whole. In explicating this aporia the article reflects on the work of Augustine, Karl Barth and Oliver O'Donovan as well as taking a fresh look at the work of Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger. In addition, the poetry of T.S. Elliott is also examined as it too reflects a Christian attempt to make meaningful what otherwise appears as something destructive of meaning, namely, the cruel contingency of time itself. If time is a creation of God and is good then what are we to make of Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being?
God Images and Empathy Among a Group of Secondary School Pupils in South Africa
Authors: Robbins Mandy , Kerr Shirley , Francis Leslie 
Published: September 2006

AbstractA sample of 258 secondary school pupils attending year 8, 9, 10, and 11 classes in South Africa completed the empathy scale of the Eysenck Junior Impulsiveness Questionnaire, a semantic differential index of God images, and the short-form Revised Junior Eysenck Personality Questionnaire. The data demonstrate a small but statistically significant correlation between positive God images and greater empathic capacity, after controlling for sex and for individual differences in personality.
El afecto producido por la comparación social y su influencia sobre el burnout
Authors: de la Fe Rodríguez María , Osca Amparo , Peiró José M. 
Published: September 2006

El objetivo del presente trabajo es estudiar la relación entre el afecto producido por el uso de la comparación social y el burnout. Para ello se ha contado con una muestra de 357 soldados profesionales de las Fuerzas Armadas Españolas. Se ha utilizado la versión española de la escala de “Identificación y Contraste” de van der Zee, Buunk, Sanderman, Botke y van der Bergh (2000). Esta escala consta de cuatro dimensiones que evalúan el afecto positivo y negativo ante la comparación social ascendente y descendente. También se usa el MBI (Maslach Burnout Inventory; Schaufeli, Leiter, Maslach y Jackson, 1996). Se han realizado diferentes ecuaciones de regresión jerárquica para probar la influencia de las cuatro dimensiones del afecto producido por comparación social, del conflicto y la ambigüedad de rol y sus interacciones sobre el burnout. Los resultados muestran, que los afectos tanto positivos como negativos que surgen de la comparación social ascendente predicen el cinismo y el agotamiento emocional, mientras que, en la predicción de la reducción de la eficacia profesional, resultan significativas las cuatro dimensiones del afecto. También se encuentran interacciones significativas, entre las dimensiones de la comparación social y la claridad de rol, en la predicción de las tres dimensiones de burnout.
Stratosphere–Troposphere Coupling during Spring Onset
Authors: Black Robert X. , McDaniel Brent A. , Robinson Walter A. 
Published: October 2006

Abstract
The authors perform an observational study of the relation between stratospheric final warmings (SFWs) and the boreal extratropical circulation. SFW events are found to provide a strong organizing influence upon the large-scale circulation of the stratosphere and troposphere during the period of spring onset. In contrast to the climatological seasonal cycle, SFW events noticeably sharpen the annual weakening of high-latitude circumpolar westerlies in both the stratosphere and troposphere. A coherent pattern of significant westerly (easterly) zonal wind anomalies is observed to extend from the stratosphere to the earth’s surface at high latitudes prior to (after) SFW events, coinciding with the polar vortex breakdown. This evolution is associated with a bidirectional dynamical coupling of the stratosphere–troposphere system in which tropospheric low-frequency waves induce annular stratospheric circulation anomalies, which in turn, are followed by annular tropospheric circulation anomalies.
The regional tropospheric manifestation of SFW events consists of a North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO)-like phase transition in the near-surface geopotential height field, with height rises over polar latitudes and height falls over the northeast North Atlantic. This lower-tropospheric change pattern is distinct from the climatological seasonal cycle, which closely follows seasonal trends in thermal forcing at the lower boundary. Although broadly similar, the tropospheric anomaly patterns identified in the study do not precisely correspond to the canonical northern annular mode (NAM) and NAO patterns as the primary anomaly centers are retracted northward toward the pole. The results here imply that (i) high-latitude climate may be particularly sensitive to long-term trends in the annual cycle of the stratospheric polar vortex and (ii) improvements in the understanding and simulation of SFW events may benefit medium-range forecasts of spring onset in the extratropics.
Utopia, Nostalgia and World War at the 1939-40 New York World’s Fair
Authors: Duranti Marco 
Published: October 2006

This article explores the shift from the utopian theme of the 1939 New York World's Fair to the nostalgic theme of the 1940 New York World's Fair. It argues that both seasons offered narratives intended to neutralize the disturbing implications of world war in Europe. The World of Tomorrow theme, conceived in the mid-1930s, represented an attempt to reconstitute a national narrative of progress shattered by a traumatic past experience (the Great War), an unstable present (the Great Depression), and uncertain expectations for the future (the spectre of ascendant totalitarian ideologies and another world war). The abandonment of the World of Tomorrow in 1940 suggests the failure of this attempt to resurrect a coherent narrative of progress in the face of renewed violence in Europe. Studies of the New York World's Fair have overlooked how the outbreak of war across the Atlantic fragmented the fairgoers' experience, challenging the promise of wholeness, continuity and coherence offered by both utopian trajectories and nostalgic returns. When the 1939 season opened, Fair officials contrasted a fractious Europe with a harmonious USA, the former representing the dark aspects of modernity, while the latter embodied modernity's promise. Fair-planners had intended the World of Tomorrow to be firmly anchored in the lessons of the past and the potential of the present. As the war broke out and entire nations disappeared off the map of Europe, however, the Fair's theme appeared increasingly a halcyon dreamworld disconnected from the realities of the bloody conflict abroad. With the effects of war echoing in the empty spaces of the pavilions of 'orphan nations', silences and nostalgic motifs disrupted the original forward-looking theme of the Fair's planners. Towards the end of the Fair's first season, with the war unsettling the utopian premise of the World of Tomorrow, the exposition's organizers increasingly invoked nostalgic themes related to a harmonious pre-industrial past. As the organizers embraced ethnic folk traditions, the particularism characteristic of nostalgia replaced universalist assumptions of progress during the exposition's second season. Similarly, the 1940 Fair organizers rejected the universalistic blurring of ideological distinctions between democratic and totalitarian systems promoted during the first season. The spectre of war cast a growing shadow across the fairgrounds and in the consciousness of fair-goers. War-related discontinuities and anxieties allowed the more troubling aspects of modernity to emerge from the Fair's imaginative cocoon.
Determination of Crystallinity and Crystal Structure of Hylamer™ Polyethylene after in vivo Wear
Authors: Visentin M. , Stea S. , De Clerico M. , Reggiani M. , Fagnano C. , Squarzoni S. , Toni A. 
Published: October 2006

Hylamer™ polyethylene is a crystalline form of polyethylene of 70% crystallinity whereas conventional polyethylene (PE) has 50% crystallinity. Crystallinity is the percentage by weight of the crystalline phase present in the whole polymer, which comprises both amorphous and crystalline phases. Clinical experience has shown that Hylamer™ components used in joint prostheses, if sterilized by gamma rays in the presence of oxygen, are easily affected by wear, which leads to osteolysis. The authors have analyzed the crystallinity of polyethylene liners removed from seven patients who had received Hylamer™ polyethylene implants sterilized by gamma rays in air and had suffered prosthetic loosening, using Raman spectroscopy coupled with partial least squares (PLS) analysis. The results have been compared to those of two controls who had received Hylamer™ polyethylene implants sterilized by gamma irradiation in a nitrogen atmosphere. The crystal structure of wear particles released into the tissues from the Hylamer™ liners sterilized by gamma rays in air is also studied. The materials undergoing two different types of sterilization methods show different crystallinity values (71.50 vs. 69.43), but the crystallinity do not change according to wear (worn and unworn liner region). Both monoclinic and orthorhombic phases are present in the liner, while in wear debris prevalently monoclinic crystals are found in both types of sterilized liners. Different crystallinity rates can explain different wear rates observed in vivo.
Transcriptome profiling of human hepatocytes treated with Aroclor 1254 reveals transcription factor regulatory networks and clusters of regulated genes
Authors: Reymann Susanne , Borlak Jürgen 
Published: October 2006

Abstract

Background
Aroclor 1254 is a well-known hepatotoxin and consists of a complex mixture of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), some of which have the ability to activate the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) and other transcription factors (TFs). Altered transcription factor expression enables activation of promoters of many genes, thereby inducing a regulatory gene network. In the past, computational approaches were not applied to understand the combinatorial interplay of TFs acting in concert after treatment of human hepatocyte cultures with Aroclor 1254. We were particularly interested in interrogating promoters for transcription factor binding sites of regulated genes.

Results
Here, we present a framework for studying a gene regulatory network and the large-scale regulation of transcription on the level of chromatin structure. For that purpose, we employed cDNA and oligomicroarrays to investigate transcript signatures in human hepatocyte cultures treated with Aroclor 1254 and found 910 genes to be regulated, 52 of which code for TFs and 47 of which are involved in cell cycle and apoptosis. We identified regulatory elements proximal to AhR binding sites, and this included recognition sites for the transcription factors ETS, SP1, CREB, EGR, NF-kB, NKXH, and ZBP. Notably, ECAT and TBP binding sites were identified for Aroclor 1254-induced and E2F, MAZ, HOX, and WHZ for Aroclor 1254-repressed genes. We further examined the chromosomal distribution of regulated genes and observed a statistically significant high number of gene pairs within a distance of 200 kb. Genes regulated by Aroclor 1254, are much closer located to each other than genes distributed randomly all over the genome. 37 regulated gene pairs are even found to be directly neighbored. Within these directly neighbored gene pairs, not all genes were bona fide targets for AhR (primary effect). Upon further analyses many were targets for other transcription factors whose expression was regulated by Aroclor 1254 (secondary effect).

Conclusion
We observed coordinate events in transcript regulation upon treatment of human hepatocytes with Aroclor 1254 and identified a regulatory gene network of different TFs acting in concert. We determined molecular rules for transcriptional regulation to explain, in part, the pleiotropic effect seen in animals and humans upon exposure to Aroclor 1254.
A novel mutation in STK11gene is associated with Peutz-Jeghers Syndrome in Indian patients
Authors: Thakur Nikita , Reddy D Nageshwar , Rao G Venkat , Mohankrishna P , Singh Lalji , Chandak Giriraj R 
Published: September 2006

Abstract

Background
Peutz-Jeghers syndrome (PJS) is a rare multi-organ cancer syndrome and understanding its genetic basis may help comprehend the molecular mechanism of familial cancer. A number of germ line mutations in the STK11 gene, encoding a serine threonine kinase have been reported in these patients. However, STK11 mutations do not explain all PJS cases. An earlier study reported absence of STK11 mutations in two Indian families and suggested another potential locus on 19q13.4 in one of them.

Methods
We sequenced the promoter and the coding region including the splice-site junctions of the STK11 gene in 16 affected members from ten well-characterized Indian PJS families with a positive family history.

Results
We did not observe any of the reported mutations in the STK11 gene in the index patients from these families. We identified a novel pathogenic mutation (c.790_793 delTTTG) in the STK11 gene in one index patient (10%) and three members of his family. The mutation resulted in a frame-shift leading to premature termination of the STK11 protein at 286th codon, disruption of kinase domain and complete loss of C-terminal regulatory domain. Based on these results, we could offer predictive genetic testing, prenatal diagnosis and genetic counselling to other members of the family.

Conclusion
Ours is the first study reporting the presence of STK11 mutation in Indian PJS patients. It also suggests that reported mutations in the STK11 gene are not responsible for the disease and novel mutations also do not account for many Indian PJS patients. Large-scale genomic deletions in the STK11 gene or another locus may be associated with the PJS phenotype in India and are worth future investigation.
Aqueous extract of Terminalia arjuna prevents carbon tetrachloride induced hepatic and renal disorders
Authors: Manna Prasenjit , Sinha Mahua , Sil Parames C 
Published: September 2006

Abstract

Background
Carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) is a well-known hepatotoxin and exposure to this chemical is known to induce oxidative stress and causes liver injury by the formation of free radicals. Acute and chronic renal damage are also very common pathophysiologic disturbances caused by CCl4. The present study has been conducted to evaluate the protective role of the aqueous extract of the bark of Termnalia arjuna (TA), an important Indian medicinal plant widely used in the preparation of ayurvedic formulations, on CCl4 induced oxidative stress and resultant dysfunction in the livers and kidneys of mice.

Methods
Animals were pretreated with the aqueous extract of TA (50 mg/kg body weight) for one week and then challenged with CCl4 (1 ml/kg body weight) in liquid paraffin (1:1, v/v) for 2 days. Serum marker enzymes, namely, glutamate pyruvate transaminase (GPT) and alkaline phosphatase (ALP) were estimated in the sera of all study groups. Antioxidant status in both the liver and kidney tissues were estimated by determining the activities of the antioxidative enzymes, superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT) and glutathione-S-transferase (GST); as well as by determining the levels of thiobarbutaric acid reactive substances (TBARS) and reduced glutathione (GSH). In addition, free radical scavenging activity of the extract was determined from its DPPH radical quenching ability.

Results
Results showed that CCl4 caused a marked rise in serum levels of GPT and ALP. TBARS level was also increased significantly whereas GSH, SOD, CAT and GST levels were decreased in the liver and kidney tissue homogenates of CCl4 treated mice. Aqueous extract of TA successfully prevented the alterations of these effects in the experimental animals. Data also showed that the extract possessed strong free radical scavenging activity comparable to that of vitamin C.

Conclusion
Our study demonstrated that the aqueous extract of the bark of TA could protect the liver and kidney tissues against CCl4-induced oxidative stress probably by increasing antioxidative defense activities.