Since the beginning of Vladimir Putin's rule in Russia 20 years ago, Russia has lost much of the leverage that it previously enjoyed in the Baltics. On the one hand, Russia has antagonized Baltic states through its wars in Georgia and Ukraine, on the other hand, deep integration in the EU and NATO has pulled the Baltic states from the Russian zone of influence. This article discusses the gradual decrease of Russia's influence in the Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania while considering the increased NATO presence in the region, Baltic energy security, and Baltic Russian-speaking communities.The Vladimir Putin regime has framed the Russian national idea in terms of security and militarization, both domestically and internationally. This unifying vision emerged as a reaction against the 1990s and blended together a cultivation of militant and anti-Western patriotism, Soviet nostalgia, and religious orthodoxy. Emphasis on cultivation of the youth has been another key defining feature of these efforts. This vision required a growing Russian presence regionally and globally, which in turn necessitated restoration of Russian military power. It resulted in growing self-confidence, internal repressions, and external military interventionism. There are glimmers of hope, but the Putin regime has shown that it will fight to stay in power, and the cult of militarization which has permeated multiple aspects of the Russian society will influence Russia's uncertain future.In his 20 years in power, Vladimir Putin has employed a savvy use of social policy to bolster his popularity, but it is a set of policies not well designed to address Russia's chronic under-provision of healthcare, education, and other social services-particularly in rural areas. The COVID-19 global pandemic will only exacerbate Russia's social policy challenges and could pose a threat to Putin's political survival.Self-mixed optical feedback interferometry based laser sensors show promising results in the measurement of the vibration frequency. To date several measurement methods have been developed to extract the vibration information from the self-mixed (SM) signal; however, the complexity and accuracy of the methods still need improvement. The presented work tries to fulfill the gap by realizing a novel method using maximal overlap discrete wavelet transformation (MODWT) and multi-resolution analysis (MRA). The proposed method can reconstruct the micro-harmonic ( less then 5 μ m ) vibration up to 1 kHz even under weak feedback conditions. The mean squared error and the maximum relative error of the proposed method for this range remained below 1.89 × 1 0 - 3 & 8.79%, respectively. Although, above 1 kHz, the proposed method turns out to be futile to reconstruct the vibration signal but still capable to measure vibration frequency up to 10 kHz with an accuracy of ± 0.0001. The method also found suitable to measure non-sinusoidal vibration frequency with reasonable accuracy even for the moderate feedback conditions. The authors envision that the proposed method will provide a compact, non-contact, and low-cost alternative for the vibration frequency measurement hence useful in early fault detection schemes and lung abnormality diagnosis.In this study, it was aimed to investigate the effects of both using curcumin and microencapsulation method on in vitro release behaivour of chia seed oil and its antioxidant potential during simulated gastrointestinal (GI) tract. Maltodextrin (MD) and gum Arabic (GA) was used as wall materials for freeze dried capsules. Sample 6, having 13 MD to GA ratio, 15 chia seed oil to wall material ratio and 40% total dry matter content, was found to have the optimum results in terms of emulsion stability (CI% = 0), zeta potential (-32.2 ± 0.8 mV) and size distribution (600 ± 8 nm). Moreover, release profiles of encapsulated chia seed oil samples were evaluated to determine if curcumin addition has any significant effect. The results revealed that curcumin addition decreased the release of chia seed oil from 44.6% to 37.2%. On contrary, it increased total phenolic content of in fraction of intestine to 22 mg gallic acid equivalents (GAE)/L.Ragweed or Ambrosia artemisiifolia pollen is an important atmospheric constituent affecting the Earth's climate and public health. The literature on light scattering by pollens embedded in ambient air is however rather sparse polarization measurements are limited to the sole depolarization ratio and pollens are beyond the reach of numerically exact light scattering models mainly due to their tens of micrometre size. Also, ragweed pollen presents a very complex shape, with a small-scale external structure exhibiting spikes that bears some resemblance with coronavirus, but also apertures and micrometre holes. In this paper, to face such a complexity, a controlled-laboratory experiment is proposed to evaluate the scattering matrix of ragweed pollen embedded in ambient air. It is based on a newly-built polarimeter, operating in the infra-red spectral range, to account for the large size of ragweed pollen. https://www.selleckchem.com/products/eapb02303.html Moreover, the ragweed scattering matrix is also evaluated in the visible spectral range to reveal the spectral dependence of the ragweed scattering matrix within experimental error bars. As an output, precise spectral and polarimetric fingerprints for large size and complex-shaped ragweed pollen particles are then provided. We believe our laboratory experiment may interest the light scattering community by complementing other light scattering experiments and proposing outlooks for numerical work on large and complex-shaped particles.US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allowed for direct addition of castor oil for human consumption as food and most recently FDA approved castor oil as over-the-counter (OTC) for laxative drug. The present article highlights the green route phosphorylation of castor oil (COL) via condensation polymerization. Further, the incorporation of metal ions Cu (II)) and Zn (II) into the polymer matrix have been carried out at elevated temperature using catalyst p-toluene sulphonic acid (PTSA). The modification of the said material has been confirmed by FT-IR, UV-VIS, and 1H and 31P-NMR spectroscopy. Further, the in vitro antibacterial activities of the metal incorporated-COL has been performed by standard methods against B. cereus (MCC2243) (gram-positive) and E. coli (MCC2412) (gram-negative) bacteria. The results revealed that the incorporation of metal ions into the polymer matrix increases the antibacterial activity largely. This may be governed by the electrostatic interaction between metal ions and microbes, also the generation of free active oxygen hinders the normal activity of bacteria.