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The aim of this study was to elaborate a conceptual approach to the development of financial technologies under the impact of restrictions imposed by international economic sanctions. The development of this sector was analyzed based on empirical studies of available information on the state of the FinTech sector in 28 countries that are impacted by international economic sanctions, using the Global Sanctions Database presented by OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control). The research involved comprehensive research methods: situational analysis, system analysis, reproductive analysis, structural and functional analysis. The results of the study confirmed the main hypothesis: international economic sanctions do not block the development of financial technologies, as FinTech can ensure the development of the financial sphere of sanctioned countries because of its flexibility and mobility. The calculations proved that depending on the way of combining the internal perception of external restrictions imposed by the sanctions, which is unique for each country, international economic sanctions are a stimulator for some countries (China, Ukraine, Iran), while being a significant development blocker (r=0.896) for others (with a financial technology performance less than 1). This study will be useful not only to scholars who deal with the theoretical and methodological framework of the development of the financial sector of countries subject to sanctions.

The COVID-19 pandemic impacted every aspect of life on a global scale. E-business has become a key factor influencing the profitability of businesses in various fields, regardless of their size. The aim of this study was to assess the effectiveness of e-business in entrepreneurship development in various fields during the COVID-19 pandemic. For this purpose, a panel analysis of data from 212 micro, small, medium-sized and large companies, and nine business sectors (trade, chemical, light, pharmaceutical, food, agricultural, HoReCo (hotel and restaurant industry), electronics and IT, transport) was used with data comparison for 2019 and 2020 in Ukraine, Bulgaria, Poland, Moldova and Georgia. The e-business platform was found to be the key indicator of maintaining performance during a pandemic. The analyzed questionnaire data show that 58% of respondents saw an increase in online income in 2020 compared to 2019 that in such sectors as trade, IT and pharmacy. There were 59% of respondents who saw the need to expand communication networks with existing and potential customers, because it was positively correlated with the efficiency of e-business. Besides, the results show that equity financing and proper liquidity management consolidate the economic performance of businesses in terms of return on equity and return on assets. Our findings are useful to managers and investors, and can help them make the best decisions about their management or investment activities. Moreover, the study demonstrates how companies were responding to the pandemic in order to identify sectors that are more vulnerable to the effects of the crisis and the key financial management decisions that companies need to make during the crisis.

Nucleosomes, containing histone variants H2A.Z, are important for gene transcription initiation and termination, chromosome segregation and DNA double-strand break repair, among other functions. However, the underlying mechanisms of how H2A.Z influences nucleosome stability, dynamics and DNA accessibility are not well understood, as experimental and computational evidence remains inconclusive. Our modeling efforts of human nucleosome stability and dynamics, along with comparisons with experimental data show that the incorporation of H2A.Z results in a substantial decrease of the energy barrier for DNA unwrapping. This leads to the spontaneous DNA unwrapping of about forty base pairs from both ends, nucleosome gapping and increased histone plasticity, which otherwise is not observed for canonical nucleosomes. We demonstrate that both N- and C-terminal tails of H2A.Z play major roles in these events, whereas the H3.3 variant exerts a negligible impact in modulating the DNA end unwrapping. In summary, our results indicate that H2A.Z deposition makes nucleosomes more mobile and DNA more accessible to transcriptional machinery and other chromatin components.

Sağır, Özlem (Balikesir Author), Introduction More than 300 million surgical procedures are performed each year. Acute kidney injury (AKI) is a common complication after major surgery and is associated with adverse short-term and long-term outcomes. However, there is a large variation in the incidence of reported AKI rates. The establishment of an accurate epidemiology of surgery-associated AKI is important for healthcare policy, quality initiatives, clinical trials, as well as for improving guidelines. The objective of the Epidemiology of Surgery-associated Acute Kidney Injury (EPIS-AKI) trial is to prospectively evaluate the epidemiology of AKI after major surgery using the latest Kidney Disease: Improving Global Outcomes (KDIGO) consensus definition of AKI. Methods and analysis EPIS-AKI is an international prospective, observational, multicentre cohort study including 10 000 patients undergoing major surgery who are subsequently admitted to the ICU or a similar high dependency unit. The primary endpoint is the incidence of AKI within 72 hours after surgery according to the KDIGO criteria. Secondary endpoints include use of renal replacement therapy (RRT), mortality during ICU and hospital stay, length of ICU and hospital stay and major adverse kidney events (combined endpoint consisting of persistent renal dysfunction, RRT and mortality) at day 90. Further, we will evaluate preoperative and intraoperative risk factors affecting the incidence of postoperative AKI. In an add-on analysis, we will assess urinary biomarkers for early detection of AKI. Ethics and dissemination EPIS-AKI has been approved by the leading Ethics Committee of the Medical Council North Rhine-Westphalia, of the Westphalian Wilhelms-University Münster and the corresponding Ethics Committee at each participating site. Results will be disseminated widely and published in peer-reviewed journals, presented at conferences and used to design further AKI-related trials. Trial registration number NCT04165369. ©

The purpose of the article is to identify the basic components that form the appropriate level of competitiveness of the enterprise on ProZorro electronic platforms. This is relevant because about 4000 purchases are announced on the ProZorro system every day. In this way, enterprises can increase the sales of their products. The expert method of research was used. The process of participation of enterprises in tenders placed on ProZorro e-commerce platforms is briefly characterized. This process includes submission of tender documents by the customer, submission of proposals by participants, bidding with the choice of the winner. During the research, the level of competitiveness of Aquapolimer Engineering LLC at the ProZorro electronic trading platforms was substantiated. This company specializes in complex solution of problems in designing, assembly and installation of treatment facilities, installation of tanks. Analysis of competitors of Aquapolimer Engineering LLC, which provide similar services, has been completed. For each competitor (30 in total), such indicators are presented as: number of concluded contracts, percentage of concluded contracts in total quantity, value of concluded contracts, average value of one contract, number of concluded contracts in one year, number of disqualifications and work experience. A rating scale for these criteria has been generated. The competitiveness schedule is presented. The strongest competitors for Aquapolimer Engineering LLC are found (only 13 out of 30). A similar assessment of the competitiveness of Aquapolimer Engineering LLC was also performed for 2017-2018. The strengths of the enterprise are revealed. This is the number of contracts and the value of contracts that increase every year. The participation of the company in tenders contributes to the increase of sales and increase of net profit. The share of products sold by Aquapolimer Engineering LLC increased to 76.3% in total volume due to participation in tenders. In general, the pros of the ProZorro system are identified. These are effective public procurement, reduction of corruption risks, implementation of an accessible tender monitoring process for all parties, creation of conditions for attracting new participants to the public procurement process. The practical value of the article is that this approach allows the company to evaluate its strengths and weaknesses among competitors applying for the same tender.

The article analyzes the commercial risks of industrial enterprises, identifies their main sources and causes. Types of commercial risks are described and methods of their assessment are presented

The article examines modern methods of risk assessment, analyzes their advantages and disadvantages, as well as features of use. In particular, it is determined that most of them are based on the use of statistical data and postulates of probability theory. In the case when obtaining the necessary initial data is difficult, the methods of analogues or expert assessments are used, but they are subjective. In a separate group, we can distinguish methods that are based on the use of mathematical modeling, such as the scenarios method , project sensitivity analysis or game theory. Housing construction is characterized by a high level of risk, and the specifics of the industry complicate its unambiguous assessment and, consequently, its management. Therefore, to effectively manage the risks of financing the housing construction, it is necessary to choose an assessment method that can provide the most accurate result. The amount of risk in housing construction financing directly depends on the chosen financing mechanism, and its total value will consist of the sum of individual risks that arise at different stages of the process, and the amount of which can be estimated using different methods. It is necessary to develop a combined assessment model that not only combines different risks, but also considers them as a single object, the individual parts of which are not only related, but can also cross-influence each other. Such a model will combine economic-statistical, expert methods and methods of mathematical modeling.

In addition to maintaining the GenBank® nucleic acid sequence database, the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) provides analysis and retrieval resources for the data in GenBank and other biological data made available through the NCBI web site. NCBI resources include Entrez, the Entrez Programming Utilities, MyNCBI, PubMed, PubMed Central, Entrez Gene, the NCBI Taxonomy Browser, BLAST, BLAST Link (BLink), Electronic PCR, OrfFinder, Spidey, Splign, Reference Sequence, UniGene, HomoloGene, ProtEST, dbMHC, dbSNP, Cancer Chromosomes, Entrez Genomes and related tools, the Map Viewer, Model Maker, Evidence Viewer, Trace Archive, Sequence Read Archive, Retroviral Genotyping Tools, HIV-1/Human Protein Interaction Database, Gene Expression Omnibus, Entrez Probe, GENSAT, Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man, Online Mendelian Inheritance in Animals, the Molecular Modeling Database, the Conserved Domain Database, the Conserved Domain Architecture Retrieval Tool, Biosystems, Peptidome, Protein Clusters and the PubChem suite of small molecule databases. Augmenting many of the web applications are custom implementations of the BLAST program optimized to search specialized data sets. All these resources can be accessed through the NCBI home page at www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.

Recent literature is explored focusing on the relationship between symptoms of anorexia nervosa (AN) and other psychiatric disorders and lines of treatment. In AN, restrictive subtype, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorders are the most frequent co-morbidities. In AN, bulimic subtype, depression, emotional instability/borderline and dependency disorders are most frequent. Psychopharmacological treatment could be tried in cases with AN and co-morbid depression, but otherwise the evidence base is lacking and pharmacological treatment relies on case stories and experience.

It has been observed that the evolutionary distances of interacting proteins often display a higher level of similarity than those of non-interacting proteins. This finding indicates that interacting proteins are subject to common evolutionary constraints and constitutes the basis of a method to predict protein interactions known as mirrortree. It has been difficult, however, to identify the direct cause of the observed similarities between evolutionary trees. One possible explanation is the existence of compensatory mutations between partners’ binding sites to maintain proper binding. This explanation, however, has been recently challenged; and it has been suggested that the signal of correlated evolution uncovered by the mirrortree method is unrelated to any correlated evolution between binding sites. We examined the contribution of binding sites to the correlation between evolutionary trees of interacting domains. We showed that binding neighborhoods of interacting proteins have, on average, higher coevolutionary signal compared to the regions outside binding sites; although when the binding neighborhood was removed, the remaining domain sequence still contained some coevolutionary signal. In conclusion, the correlation between evolutionary trees of interacting domains cannot exclusively be attributed to the correlated evolution of the binding sites or to common evolutionary pressure exerted on the whole protein domain sequence, both factors contribute to the signal measured by the mirror tree approach. In addition, we showed that binding neighborhoods of interacting proteins have, on average, higher coevolutionary signal compared to the regions outside binding sites.

Phosphorylation offers a dynamic way to regulate protein activity, subcellular localization, and stability. At the same time phosphorylation sites are often located in the intrinsically disordered regions. We studied the effect of phosphorylation on protein binding for different types of complexes from human proteome. We estimated the effect of phosphorylation on complex stability and found that the majority of complexes do not show significant stability differences upon phosphorylation or de-phosphorylation. However, we also found that phosphorylation sites tend to be located on binding interfaces, may orthosterically modulate the strength of interactions and for about one-third of all complexes cause relatively large changes in binding energy. All this suggests that processes of phosphorylation, binding and disorder-to-order transitions might be tightly coupled with each other. Indeed we showed that there is significant association between phosphorylation, disorder and binding for serine and threonine residues in human. However, tyrosine phosphorylation might not be necessarily associated with binding through disorder-to-order transitions and is often observed in ordered regions which are not disordered in unbound state. We suggest possible mechanisms of how phosphorylation might regulate protein-protein binding via intrinsic disorder, for example, phosphorylation in disordered regions may prevent disorder-to-order transition and subsequent protein-protein binding.