Globalization came to the ex-Soviet republics of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus quite suddenly at the end of 1991 with the disintegration of the Soviet political and economic system, the opening of these economies to world trade and first efforts toward building market economies. Compared with the sizeable changes brought by the transition in the countries generally, the effects of globalization on food and nutrition security have been surprisingly small.
While agricultural production, livestock inventories and per capita incomes have plunged and then partially recovered over the past 10 years, food consumption in terms of calories has remained comparatively steady and indicators of food inadequacy are quite moderate. For the countries for which information is available, anthropometric and dietary indicators show that the preeminent problems in these countries are not inadequate food intake, but stunting in children, micronutrient deficiencies and a high prevalence of overweight and obesity.
The bandwidth limitation on the reflection coefficient of circuits containing a reactance limited negative conductance such as a tunnel diode is derived, and the insertion loss method of modern network theory is adapted to the synthesis of low pass ladder equivalents of amplifiers containing these elements. Amplifiers which have a considerable bandwidth advantage over simple single tuned circuits, and which approach the ultimate bandwidth limit as rapidly as possible as the number of passive components is increased, are demonstrated.
Increasing international competition and changes in the regulatory framework driven by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (Basel II) called forth incentives for banks to improve their credit rating systems. In a competitive framework a poor statistical power of a bank's internal rating system will deteriorate the economic performance due to adverse selection, i. e. customers with a better credit quality than assessed by the bank will potentially walk away and leave the bank with a portfolio of customers with a credit quality lower than estimated. Obviously, improving the statistical power of a rating system will have a positive impact on economic performance.
