The wealth of nations depends on the quality of their infrastructure. Often, however, infrastructure suffers from ineffective investments and poor maintenance. Proposed solutions, such as New Public Management or Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) tend to develop into Politicians-Private Partnerships as politicians collude with private firms to exploit present and future tax-payers. Therefore, it is necessary to give citizens better control over collective decision making. While there is a significant economic literature on empowering citizens via decentralization and direct democratic institutions, the role of electoral rules has thus far been rather neglected. An interesting case in point is Switzerland, which is well known for its high-quality infrastructure, extensive decentralization, and direct democracy. However, this paper argues that there is an additional and previously neglected institution that moves Swiss politicians away from client politics towards better serving public interest: Switzerland’s unique electoral institutions which effectively combine proportional elections with multi-seat majority elections. We explain how these institutions work, how they enhance the relationships between citizens and public and private entities, and we argue that they could be implemented in other countries.

Sweet cherry is a type of fruit that is high on demand in exports for table consumption. Turkey is a gene centre for sweet cherry fruit. Fruits are produced over an extended period because of the ecological richness and large cultivation area, which allows Turkey to remain as the leader of sweet cherry production in the world. The variety, ‘0900 Ziraat’, also known as the Turkish sweet cherry fruit, has the highest production volume. Mazzard and Mahaleb are the commonly used rootstocks for sweet cherry cultivation; and Mazzard is used more frequently than Mahaleb. Clonal rootstocks are used to maintain cultivation in new orchards. The present study provides a detailed information on the current status of sweet cherry fruit cultivation in Turkey as well as its cultivation practices and exports. It is targeted that modern irrigation techniques, good agricultural practices, and increased cultivation areas are established to maintain Turkey’s position as the leader in global sweet cherry production and exports. 

As the technical support for economic activities and social development, standards play a great role in modern society. However, with the increasing digitization of various industries, the traditional form of standards can no longer meet the needs of the new era, and there is an urgent need to digitally transform standards using advanced technologies. The digital transformation of standards involves the standard itself and all stages of its life cycle, is a very complex systematic project, in the transformation process, technology plays a key role. Therefore, this paper summarizes the key technologies involved in the process of digital transformation of standards, sorted out and evaluated them according to different purposes for which they were used, while giving the digitalization of standards transformation technology development trends and planning as well as typical cases, hoping to provide a comprehensive and clear perspective for those engaged in the related work, as well as reference for the subsequent research and application of digital transformation of standards.

Objective: To evaluate the radiographic characteristics of dentigerous cysts (DC) diagnosed at the School of Stomatology of the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia (UPCH) during the period of 2010–2017. Material and methods: Retrospective, descriptive, observational and cross-sectional study, where the panoramic radiographs of 37 cases of DC were selected. Results: The total number of diagnosed cases of dentigerous cysts was 233, which after inclusion and exclusion criteria, 37 cases were obtained, of which 45.9% of cysts were found in the second decade of life with a higher frequency of 51.4 percent for women, and a jaw predilection of 59.5% in all cases. In addition, it was found that 97.3% of the cases were radiolucent, defined limits were found in 67.6%, corticalized edges in 54.1% and unilocular in 94.6%. All dentigerous cysts were associated with a tooth, of which closed apex (48.6%) and tooth displacement (59.5%) were observed. The adjacent tooth was not affected in 56.8% of cases, but its hard lamina was affected (59.5%). The 68.2% of cases did not affect the basal mandibular cortex, but did displace the inferior dental canal (54.5%) and 46.7% of cases displaced the floor of the maxillary sinus. Conclusions: Most of the results obtained on the characteristics in the Peruvian population support previous studies reported in America, Europe and Asia. Radiographically the dentigerous cyst showed characteristics that support its clearly benign behavior.

In this study, the effect of porogenic solvents on pore size distribution of the polycaprolactone (PCL) thin films was investigated. Five thin PCL films were prepared using the solvent-casting method. Chloroform, Methylene Chloride (MC) and three different compositions of MC/ Dimethylformamide (DMF) (80/20, 50/50 and 20/80) were used as solvents. Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) investigations were employed to study morphology and consequently the pore size distribution of the prepared films. The PCL films made by chloroform and MC as a solvent were completely non-porous. Whereas the other films (made by a combination of MC and DMF) showed both uni-modal and bi-modal pore size distributions.