Article
Stress under modernization in indigenous populations of Siberia
Objectives. Arterial blood pressure and serum blood glucose concentration, and the level of anxiety, as determined by the Spielberger test, as physical and psychological markers of stress under “modernization”, were studied in groups of native Siberians: the Khanty and the Mansi.
Results. The fraction of respondents with a high level of anxiety is 64% of the total sample. The average values of systolic and diastolic blood pressure are higher among natives living in large than in small “national” settlements (p<0.05). The arterial blood pressure of town dwellers is even higher. The same patterns are seen in the blood serum glucose concentrations in female samples. The average arterial blood pressure (in males and females) and the blood serum glucose concentration (in females) increases as people diverge from “traditional” lifestyles.
Conclusions. The results demonstrate that “modernization” and urbanization have a serious stressing influence on the aborigines of North Siberia.
Many environmental stimuli present a quasi-rhythmic structure at different timescales that the brain needs to decompose and integrate. Cortical oscillations have been proposed as instruments of sensory de-multiplexing, i.e., the parallel processing of different frequency streams in sensory signals. Yet their causal role in such a process has never been demonstrated. Here, we used a neural microcircuit model to address whether coupled theta–gamma oscillations, as observed in human auditory cortex, could underpin the multiscale sensory analysis of speech. We show that, in continuous speech, theta oscillations can flexibly track the syllabic rhythm and temporally organize the phoneme-level response of gamma neurons into a code that enables syllable identification. The tracking of slow speech fluctuations by theta oscillations, and its coupling to gamma-spiking activity both appeared as critical features for accurate speech encoding. These results demonstrate that cortical oscillations can be a key instrument of speech de-multiplexing, parsing, and encoding.
The article is devoted to analysis of discursive practices of public representation and discussion of the political course of “modernization” announced by president Dmitry Medvedev. It is focused at interpretations of the idea of modernization by the leading Russian politicians as well as at the role of the notions about collective past, present and future in its ideological justification and contestation.
The article is concerned with results of content analysis of textbooks for high school in the area of social and human sciences. The author uses the typology of values introduced by S. Schwartz which consists of two value axes — “conservation — openness to change” and “selfassertion — caring about people and nature” — and describes values that underlie each subject area and then compares these values with results of mass surveys of the values of Russians.
The monograph is devoted to the assessment of population health indicators and comprehensive analysis of the factors influencing on the health of indigenous people of Russian North.
Nature abhors a "vacuum" - the new power elite arrives at the time of major social and political transformations and endeavours to shore up its position within the country and obtain support from outside. New power groups, which are active at times of revolution and who replace, push aside or even depose the old elites and impose their own control over the state machine and position themselves as new power elite.There are themselves not immune to social transformation, especially in the first decades of coming to their new commanding role. Unless its claims are given legitimacy it is unable to implement its positive programme, which it immediately claims as the national programme. Every country "acquires" a new functioning elite - political, financial and intellectual - from revolution or a change of regime. The old elite may lose control and depart or upon luck may merge into a new combination of social strata of particular country. We also believe that the composition and the structure of elites is the country-specific and reflect one’s country history.
This book seeks to “re-think democracy.” Over the past years, there has been a tendency in the global policy community and, even more widely, in the world’s media, to focus on democracy as the “gold standard” by which all things political are measured. This book re-examines democracy in Russia and in the world more generally, as idea, desired ideal, and practice. A major issue for Russia is whether the modernization of Russia might not prosper better by Russia focusing directly on modernization and not worrying too much about democracy. This book explores a wide range of aspects of this important question. It discusses how the debate is conducted in Russia; outlines how Russians contrast their own experiences, unfavourably, with the experience of China, where reform and modernization have been pursued with great success, with no concern for democracy; and concludes by assessing how the debate in Russia is likely to be resolved.
Considering specifi city of modernization processes in Russia, caused both by internal problems and Russias place in global economy, the author brings an attention to the question of features of standard-values system of Russian reformers. Results of the analysis of 12 values-blocks forming a basis of the variety of the standard-valuable systems of Russians are given.
Hypoxia of trophoblast cells is an important regulator of normal development of the placenta. However, some pathological states associated with hypoxia, e.g. preeclampsia, impair the functions of placental cells. Oxyquinoline derivative inhibits HIF-prolyl hydroxylase by stabilizing HIF-1 transcription complex, thus modeling cell response to hypoxia. In human choriocarcinoma cells BeWo b30 (trophoblast model), oxyquinoline increased the expression of a core hypoxia response genes along with up-regulation of NOS3, PDK1, and BNIP3 genes and down-regulation of the PPARGC1B gene. These changes in the expression profile attest to activation of the metabolic cell reprogramming mechanisms aimed at reducing oxygen consumption by enabling the switch from aerobic to anaerobic glucose metabolism and the respective decrease in number of mitochondria. The possibility of practical use of the therapeutic properties of oxyquinoline derivatives is discussed.