The influence of ambient solar UV-A or UV-B radiation on growth responses was investigated in three varieties of cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) after exclusion of solar UV-A/B radiation: JK-35, IH-63 and Khandwa-2. Cotton plants were grown from seeds in UV-exclusion chambers lined with selective UV filters to exclude either UV-B (280-315 nm) or UV-A/B (280-400 nm) from the solar spectrum under field conditions. Excluding UV-B and UV-A/B significantly increased plant height, leaf area and dry weight accumulation in all three varieties of cotton. The varieties differed considerably in their sensitivity to ambient UV-A/B. Khandwa-2 was most sensitive and JK-35 least sensitive to ambient solar UV. We monitored the activity of the antioxidant enzymes superoxide dismutase (SOD), ascorbic acid peroxidase (APX), glutathione reductase (GR) and guaiacol peroxidase (GPX), as well as the level of the antioxidant ascorbic acid (ASA), in primary leaves of the most UV-sensitive variety (Khandwa-2). The level of UV-B-absorbing substances was significantly decreased by exclusion of solar UV-B and UV-A/B. Exclusion of solar UV decreased the activity of all the antioxidant enzymes monitored and the level of ascorbic acid versus control plants (+UV-A/B) grown under filters transparent to solar UV. Reduction of the antioxidant defense after UV exclusion indicates that ambient solar UV exerts significant stress and induces some reactive oxygen species to accumulate, which in turn retards the growth and development of cotton plants. Ambient solar UV stresses cotton plants, shifting their metabolism towards defense against solar UV. Exclusion of solar UV eliminates the need for that defense and leads to enhancement of primary metabolism.

This is a preliminary analysis of issues resulting from comparing two images present in the Indian tradition, in their Buddhist (‘device’ guarding the relics of the Buddha) and Epic (‘device’ guarding the Elixir of Immortality) variants. Both images are located within the range of the notions of the sacred. That complicates but does not prevent the reconstruction of ideological messages directed to their prospective recipients. They are illustrated by the fate of the ‘holy substance’ obtained after breaking into and destroying both devices. The first one sanctifies the principles of free access and free participation, the second – of inherited privilege and inherited exclusion.

This article is about the Brazilian aid programme called Programa Bolsa Família. The programme has generated the interest of international institutions, the media, and the academic world on account of its scale, which provides an opportunity for fundamental social reform; and its measurable success, which is clearly visible in the poverty statistics; and above all, on account of participation being dependent on the fulfillment of specific requirements in the field of education, health, and social care. The author undertakes to go beyond an analysis based on statistics and to look at the functioning of the programme from the level of the participants. On the basis of his own research—that is, freely-conducted interviews with the inhabitants of favelas and rural settlements—he describes what lies behind the terminology and poverty statistics. His analysis of the situation of over a dozen participants in the programme makes it possible to see the immediate improvement of their material situation; the author claims, however, that a complete diagnosis will be possible only after the passage of a dozen or more years, by comparing the human capital (and labor market position) of the children of families taking part in the programme with the socio-economic position of those families today.

The goal of the article is the description and analyze of the exclusions of the maritime carrier’s liability, regulated in international conventions, known as the Hague-Visby Rules and the Hamburg Rules. Their construction is basically different and indicates, that their creators had quite the opposite approach in the way of regulation of the negative scope of maritime carrier’s liability.

In the article it has been compared each exclusion of liability in both conventions, especially with the consideration of the genuine differences with the carrier’s scope of liability. It has been analyzed the examples of the real cases, that have been ruled on the grounds of the maritime carrier’s liability. It has been also take a try to evaluate if the court’s sentence would be the same on the grounds of both conventions, or rather would be different.

The aim study is the development of the classification of agricultural enterprises, based on the properties of the distribution of enterprises depending on the size of the land bank. To achieve this aim, open databases of agricultural enterprises were used, from which data for the Dnipropetrovsk district were selected. The data is not official. They are collected according to the data provided by the agricultural enterprises themselves. Since the official statistics group of small enterprises with up to 200 ha of land includes a fairly large number of enterprises that exist only formally, and since actively functioning enterprises are voluntarily registered in the databases used for the study, the developed classification reflects the real situation with agricultural enterprises in the Dnipropetrovsk district. The proposed scheme of a grouping of agricultural enterprises is regular, logarithmically uniform and based on the exponential increase of the land bank of agricultural enterprises. Its parameters are chosen in such a way as to take into account the classification of farms used in the Tax Code of Ukraine. The developed grouping of agricultural enterprises was used to analyze such characteristics of enterprises as types of production and organizational and legal forms of management. The analysis of the distribution showed that with the decrease of the land bank the number of farms increases and the number of enterprises, whose forms of management are joint-stock companies of different types, decreases.

The study addresses the challenges facing the law of the sea. Although UNCLOS is rightly described as a constitution of the law of the sea, it does not and cannot give answers to all problems and doubts that arise in practice and that are related to global warming, protection of biodiversity, legal status of genetic resources, controversy concerning shipping, delimitation of areas or the protection of underwater cultural heritage. Hence the question arises, what the ways and means of further development of the law of the sea are. Undoubtedly, one of the possibilities is to develop implementation agreements, of which the third devoted to the protection and sustainable use of marine biodiversity outside national jurisdiction is the subject of an international conference convened by the General Assembly, whose resolutions in the area of the law of the sea play an important role. Undoubtedly, also the importance of the organization of the United Nations system, such as the IMO, FAO, UNESCO, UNEP is significant. There is also the possibility of accepting agreements addressing the issues left by UNCLOS without solution or definition. Not without significance is the soft law and the practice of states as well as the position of the organs appointed by UNCLOS.

Immunoaffinity chromatography (IAC) is a fundamental isolation and purification tool which is incorporated in a substantial range of therapeutic and diagnostic applications. This study has reappraised the usefulness of immunoaffinity chromatography for the purification of polyclonal antibodies. Protein A based IAC is a convenient and reliable method for purification of IgG, from hyperimmunesera (HIS) raised in experimental animals such as rabbits, guinea pigs and mice to be utilized in pharmaceutics and diagnostics. The 146S fraction of Foot and Mouth Disease virus (FMDV) TCID50=10 ^5.6 was cultured on a baby hamster kidney cell line 21 (BHK-21), concentrated using salt precipitation method using PEG 6000, purified by size exclusion chromatography (SEC) using Sepharose-30 at 254nm absorbance. Purification of 146S FMDV was analyzed using 12% SDS-PAGE which provided two bands of light and heavy chains. The alum-based vaccine, consisting of ≥10μg of 146S FMDV, was applied in 10 male rabbits and 10 male guinea pigs and two animals of each group were taken as a negative control. The titer of serum was calculated using virus neutralization test. A Protein-A kit (Thermo scientific- 44667, 0528.2) was used to purify HIS raised against 146S FMDV and validated using 12% SDS PAGE in reducing condition. The data demonstrate that protein-A affinity chromatography is an efficient tool for the purification of antibodies from hyper-immune sera raised against 146S FMDV and can be used for the production of diagnostic kits e.g. Enzyme linked immuno-sorbent assay (ELISA) and radioimmunoassay.