The GERmanium Detector Array (Gerda) experiment located at the INFN Gran Sasso Laboratory (Italy), is looking for the neutrinoless double beta decay of 76Ge, by using high-purity germanium detectors ...made from isotopically enriched material. The combination of the novel experimental design, the careful material selection for radio-purity and the active/passive shielding techniques result in a very low residual background at the Q-value of the decay, about 10−3 cts/(keV-kg-yr). This makes GERDA the first experiment in the field to be background-free for the complete design exposure of 100 kg-yr. A search for neutrinoless double beta decay was performed with a total exposure of 46.7 kg-yr: 23.2 kg-yr come from the second phase (Phase II) of the experiment, in which the background is reduced by about a factor of ten with respect to the previous phase. The analysis presented in this paper includes 12.4 kg-yr of new Phase II data. No evidence for a possible signal is found: the lower limit for the half-life of 76Ge is 8.0 * 1025 yr at 90% CL. The experimental median sensitivity is 5.8 * 1025 yr. The experiment is currently taking data. As it is running in a background-free regime, its sensitivity grows linearly with exposure and it is expected to surpass 1026 yr within 2018.
A current status of the project of a large volume scintillation telescope at the Baksan neutrino observatory is presented. The main research activities of the BLVST are low- energy neutrino physics, ...astrophysics and geophysics. To detect geoneutrinos, large-scale new- generation scintillator detectors located at large depths in the regions with a low background level from nuclear reactors are required. The Baksan Neutrino Observatory is geographically located in one of these places. Recently resumed R&D activities are aimed at the creation of new-generation telescope with a target mass of 10 kt at a depth of 4800 m.w.e. A small scale prototype is already under construction.
The article analyzes the peculiarities of the activities of five companies of technology giants, leading the world rankings, namely: Apple, Alphabet (Google), Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook in order ...to identify/refute possible threats of abuse of these companies their monopoly position in the market. A critical analysis of the assessment of the monopoly position of these entities in the relevant markets for goods / services based on the classical approaches to the interpretation of the monopolies. It has been established that due to the inconsistency of traditional approaches to antitrust regulation of the current state of affairs, modern market leaders often cannot even be identified as monopolists. However, there are possible threats to the activities of giant technology firms. In particular, they may be related to modern highspeed, often veiled ways of collecting, processing and storing information, certain personal data, etc., and the possibility of using them in certain interests. A significant number of benefits that society receives from the activities of technology giant companies have been studied. Firstly, is the provision of free services for the use of information resources. Secondly, it is not setting high prices for advertising services. In any case, they are lower than in the real sector of the economy. In addition, over time, for loyal customers, advertising prices are constantly declining, and the effectiveness of advertising on social networks and the Internet is quite high. Thirdly, it is an opportunity to significantly save consumers when buying goods on Internet sites. It is noted that the difficulty of applying the concept of monopoly in the traditional sense of the term is that modern technology companies - giants often do not overestimate the price of their products, but rather provide their products / services at low prices or even free. Accordingly, such firms have a whole army of supporters. This suggests the obsolescence of existing antitrust law, its inability to regulate the activities of modern high-tech firms and, consequently, the need to develop more modern antitrust law.
The article is devoted to the formation of an economy in which there is a relative surplus of money. Excess money is seen as a consequence of the policy of quantitative easing, which was carried out ...by the central banks of developed countries. Peculiarities of growth in the ratio of money supply and gross domestic product for individual countries have been studied. It is shown that financing the reconstruction of Ukraine corresponds to the own economic interests of the donor countries, as it will help to correct certain systemic imbalances of monetary circulation in their economies. This imbalance is embodied in a relative surplus of money. This surplus is of a different nature than that implied by the quantity theory of money. From the point of view of behavioral economics, money is a tool for motivating the subject to action (or, when necessary, inaction). Stimulation of activity, in particular, entrepreneurial activity, due to the opportunity to get more money is a characteristic feature of the capitalist economy. Considering that the value of money is important not in itself, but in relation to what it is used for, we can imagine that the creeping inflation of even the most seemingly basic and solid world currencies (the US dollar, the British pound, the euro) is evidence of a certain loss of vision of what money is needed for and, accordingly, how much money is needed in the economy. The dynamics of the ratio of the money supply to the manufactured product can serve as an indicator of the existence of a problem in the monetary supply of the functioning of the world economy. A gradual increase in the ratio of money supply to GDP is observed in all countries. The rate of growth of this indicator in developed countries is generally close to the world average. In poor countries characterized by low rates of economic growth, the ratio of money supply to GDP remains quite low. Moreover, in our opinion, the leading role here is played not so much by low per capita income as by low rates of economic growth. According to the group of countries with an average level of per capita income (and especially, with “above average” incomes), the ratio is significantly higher than the world average level. The growth of the ratio of money supply to GDP is especially noticeable in the countries of the Far East, which took as an example the strategy that led to the Japanese “ economic miracle.” This strategy involves the acceleration of economic growth at the expense of the preemptive development of export-oriented industries. Periods of accelerated economic development precisely reveal the motivational role of money. Entrepreneursinnovators should receive more money. the state, or rather, its monetary regulator, the central bank, facilitates the conditions providing loans to help innovators dare and take a decisive step into something new. Entrepreneurs have separated the desire to earn money from the desire to spend to meet real needs. Due to the saturation of the economy with money, the state has already reached a high level of monetization, which indicates accumulated monetary wealth. The owners of this monetary wealth need new directions of investment, because after the ideological and motivational potential of Internetization was exhausted, the banking and financial infrastructure began to fail. A series of crises (2001, 2008-2009, 2020) was the result of a mismatch between the large accumulated monetary wealth and the lack of ideas for its profitable investment. Reconstruction of Ukraine can become such a profitable investment idea.
This article is dedicated to the examination of the economic-institutional problems and prerequisites for the reconstruction of the European military-industrial complex. During the consideration of ...this issue, the following tasks were set and addressed: – to find out the economic factors determining the ability of European economies to provide the Ukrainian army with a sufficient amount of weapons and ammunition; – to identify barriers to capital involvement in the military-industrial complex; – to study the institutional prerequisites for changing motivations for investing in the military-industrial complex. On one hand, the remilitarization of Europe appears inevitable due to the formation of an anti-Western axis of evil, consisting of Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran. On the other hand, remilitarization for formerly pacifist Europeans is not an easy matter. We believe that the problem of remilitarization has at least three aspects: price, investment, and civilization. If we were to depict the problem of European remilitarization as an iceberg, the price aspect would be the most superficial, obvious part of the problem, while the civilization aspect would be its foundation. Price aspect: This has manifested, in particular, in the rapid increase in procurement prices for weapons. The anomaly is that even with a fourfold increase in prices, which apparently promises manufacturers profits in the hundreds (!) of percent, demand saturation through increased supply does not occur. Investment aspect: It is evident in the relatively insufficient investment activity in the European military-industrial complex compared to what it should be. The issue lies in the unacceptably high risks of possible investment projects in the defense sector, namely, the risk of a decrease in demand for manufactured goods. Considering the normal profitability of production assets in developed countries, successful remilitarization could involve guarantees of extensive and stable state purchases of weapons and ammunition from producers for the next ten to fifteen years. Civilization aspect: Maintaining consistently high demand for military goods for one to two decades requires a fundamentally different approach from European societies and states to issues of war and peace than is currently the case. It turns out that for the remilitarization of Europe, a series of colonial wars is needed. Colonialism, in any of its manifestations, involves the institutionalization of inequality between Europeans and those outside Europe. Remilitarization means that the “flower generation,” the people who tried to “love, not war,” must acknowledge their defeat, and more than half a century of conscious rejection of making military violence a significant political instrument, which has always been reckless, is regarded as a terrible mistake that must not be repeated. European elites see and understand the consequences of this choice. Therefore, we can argue that the million shells for Ukraine cost Europeans significantly more than a few pitiful billion euros. It costs dreams of humanism, of a bright communist future, dreams of a time when the bright, rational, human will ultimately overcome all that is dark, primitive, and bestial.
The purpose of the study is to identify the relationship between the values of major international rankings and the volume of foreign direct investment for 20 leading countries in involvement FDI. ...The following rankings were examined: the index of ease of doing business, international and global ratings of competitiveness, the index of economic freedom, tolerance for corruption. Analysis of the places occupied by Ukraine in the relevant rankings. The statistical processing of information on 20 leading countries in terms of foreign direct investment and the corresponding place of these countries in the main international rankings, the use of the correlation method to identify the relationship between these indicators, methods of analysis and synthesis, comparing the level of foreign direct investment with the corresponding values of known international indices. In addition, countries were classified into three different groups depending on the relationship between the values of the main international ratings and of foreign direct investment. Another research method was the abstract-logical method to find new additional factors that determine the investment attractiveness of countries. The analysis of the relationship between the inflow of foreign direct investment and the corresponding place of the studied countries in the main international rankings did not show a significant dependence. At the same time, it was found that a number of countries that hold leading positions in attracting the highest volumes of foreign direct investment have correspondingly high-ranking positions in international indices. However, this sample of countries turned out to be the smallest. The largest number was the sample of countries, it was half of the list of countries for which there is no correlation between the volume of foreign direct investment and the rating values in major international indices. The analysis showed a fairly close relationship between the volume of foreign direct investment, on the one hand, and the size of the country, which is characterized by GDP and population, on the other hand. However, in our opinion, international ratings should not be ignored in general: achieving high places in international rankings to some extent forms a positive investment image of the country, and ignoring the results of ratings can lead to financial isolation of the country. At the same time, the study of new factors that cause the desire to make foreign direct investment in a country is a very interesting object of further research.
for the first time to our knowledge, multilayer fog evolution is detected using a compact backscattering lidar. Sensing of aerosols was performed in an inclined tunnel (50 m long) of the ...scintillation telescope of the Baksan Neutrino Observatory. The lidar was assembled on a GaAs diode laser (λ = 910 nm) with an eye-safe radiation intensity (< 1
µ
J/cm
2
) and a high pulse repetition rate (to 10 kHz) with a record short duration (∼3 ns) when pumped with current pulses. A silicon avalanche photodiode operating in the gated photon counting mode was used as a receiver.
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OBVAL, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
We report on the study of thermal neutron flux using monitors based on mixture of ZnS(Ag) and LiF enriched with a lithium-6 isotope at the deep underground laboratory DULB-4900 at the Baksan Neutrino ...Observatory. An annual modulation of thermal neutron flux in DULB-4900 is observed. Experimental evidences were obtained of correlation between the long-term thermal neutron flux variations and the absolute humidity of the air in laboratory. The amplitude of the modulation exceed 5% of total neutron flux.
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OBVAL, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
The technique used in the experiment in the search for the process of
2K2ν
-capture in
124
Xe using large high-pressure proportional counters is briefly described. The measurements with a xenon ...sample enriched to 21% (or ~57 g) of the
124
Xe isotope carried out for 3340 hours yielded a zero signal. The resultant upper limit on the
124
Xe half-life with respect to the 2ν-mode of the nuclear capture of two K-shell electrons amounts to
T
1/2
>4.6 10
21
yr at the 90% confidence level.
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OBVAL, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
The observation of neutrinoless double beta decay would allow to shed light onto the particle nature of neutrinos. Gerda is aiming to perform a background-free search for this process using high ...purity germanium detectors enriched in 76Ge operated in liquid argon. This goal relies on the application of active background suppression techniques. A low background light instrumentation has been installed for Phase II to detect events with coincident energy deposition in the nearby liquid argon. The intended background index of ∼10−3 cts/(keV·ky·yr) has been confirmed.
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