The trend towards energy efficiency and high competition in the office real estate market in Ukraine stimulates the launch of projects that meet the requirements of international “green” certificates, according to NAI Ukraine.
“Interest in “green” certification in Ukraine has appeared relatively recently – most of the projects have passed it in the last five years. Thus, among the names of projects with “green” certification are the most notable and successful projects on the market. Compared with the dynamics of certification in Ukraine in the past years, when these were only isolated cases, the number of projects undergoing it now makes it possible to speak of a ‘boom’,” Maryna Hurevych, the head of the consulting department of NAI Ukraine, told the Interfax-Ukraine agency.
According to her, 18 buildings are certified in Ukraine, of which six are certified according to the European eco-certification system BREEAM (two stages of the Astarta business center, Grand in Kyiv, Optima Plaza in Lviv) and 13 objects according to the American LEED system (buildings in Unit.City, Lviv Innovation Park, the business centers MAG.NETT and KMOST, separate offices of Shell, NOX, NEC, the Chanel boutique). At the same time, in general, there are 457 such projects in Eastern Europe, almost 5,000 projects in Western Europe, and more than 20,700 in the United States.
Among the triggers for the development of “green” certification, the expert names the requirements of socially responsible clients, government regulatory policy, a decrease in operating costs against the background of growing costs of utilities, care for health and the environment, and PR.
“High competition in the real estate market forces developers to introduce new formats as quickly as possible. Despite the fact that the price for one square meter of such an eco-building is slightly higher than the “usual” one, requests from investors are becoming more and more,” the expert noted.
According to her, the “green” certification of a building can reduce operating costs by an average of 11-15%, increase the cost of business (up to 38%), ensure the best competitive position in the market, improve the reputation and brand image (up to 18%), and allows increasing rental payments (up to 18% on average higher rental income). In addition, certified business centers attract a progressive audience of tenants, whose share in the country is constantly growing.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky signed law No. 910-IX on amendments to certain laws of Ukraine concerning the promotion of physical culture and sports, the presidential press service said.
“The document is aimed at supporting and developing the sphere of physical culture and sports. The law provides for the granting of the right to lease state-owned and municipal property without an auction to state-owned and municipal sports clubs, youth sports schools, schools of higher sports skills, Olympic training centers, physical culture and health-improving facilities, centers of physical health of the population, centers of physical culture and sports for persons with disabilities, as well as bases of Olympic, Paralympic and Deflympic training,” the presidential press service said.
In addition, the document coordinates the terminology of the current legislation in the field of physical culture and sports with the law of Ukraine on education, in particular, the term “teaching establishment” has been replaced by the term “educational institution.”
The law comes into force one month after the date of its publication.
Foreign trade turnover by the most important positions in January-July 2020 (export).
Ukrainian scientists hope to continue testing the method of early instrumental diagnostics of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) by ophthalmic biomarkers – specific eye movements.
“The results obtained confirmed the hypothesis of scientists about the presence of certain abnormal changes in the diameter of the pupils and eye movements in patients with PTSD in response to the applied stimuli, the possibility of its diagnosis by these signs and, accordingly, prevention,” head of the department of inflammatory eye pathologies and microsurgical treatment of the Filatov Institute of Eye Diseases and Tissue Therapy, Oleksandra Zborovska, said at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine.
She stressed that Ukrainian ophthalmologists began to study the possibility of diagnostics based on ophthalmological indicators in 2012, and in 2018 clinical studies of a new method of objective hardware diagnostics of PTSD were carried out.
These studies included ophthalmologic examination of patients with established PTSD and controls for a number of indicators. The study revealed a number of typical diagnostic signs inherent in people with PTSD.
“We are the first in the world to work on PTSD with the Eye-tracker. To continue our work, we need an Eye-tracker – until now it was provided for research by third parties, as well as participation in research of non-ophthalmological specialists – psychologists, psychiatrists, as well as the involvement of enough non-ophthalmic patient participants with an established diagnosis and participants for a control group,” she said.
Zborovska noted that the ophthalmological part of the method was patented, a declarative patent of Ukraine was obtained. At the same time, a similar study by British scientists, widely covered in the media, was carried out six to seven years after the discovery of Ukrainian scientists.
“An international patent is a very costly business. We planned to get involved in obtaining an international patent so that there would be no such thing that our developments would be stolen from us – the problem of academic integrity is urgent all over the world,” she said.
According to the chief psychiatrist of the Ministry of Defense, Oleh Druz, currently “100% of the servicemen who are in the east are under the influence of psycho-traumatic factors.” At the same time, since 2015, military doctors have been observing these changes, developing protocols for their treatment and detection.
“Now specialists in psychiatry and ophthalmology have joined forces and with the help of instrumental studies on ophthalmological signs with a 98% probability can predict the likelihood of developing PTSD and prevent it,” he said.
Druz noted that over the past five years for this development “there are two patents, several articles have been written in scientific journals, there are articles in the Scopus database, articles in foreign journals where we covered the problems of PTSD.”
“There are sad statistics when military personnel commit suicide, commit crimes, go to jail, lead an immoral lifestyle. Thanks to the timely preventive diagnosis of PTSD, we can prevent this,” he said.
The head of the Main Military Clinical Hospital of the Ministry of Defense, Anatoliy Kazmiruk, in turn, noted that at present there is no corresponding state program providing for the use of methods for early diagnosis of PTSD by ophthalmological indicators.
“We hope that the NSDC will be interested in the results of our work. Applying this technique, we managed to almost threefold reduce the treatment time for patients with PTSD. If in 2014-2015, the bulk of patients with PTSD or with suspected PTSD were treated for at least 60 days and actually fell out from an active professional life for three to four months, then with the use of this method, the duration of treatment can be reduced to 22-25 days, almost threefold,” he said.
According to Major General, Doctor of Technical Sciences Yuriy Danyk, “the research has been carried out so far as an initiative development, but the authors have done everything that is needed to describe and publish it in the relevant scientific editions.”
He also said that the authors of the development have applied to participate in the innovative platform Sikorsky Challenge.
“Development continues on the basis of Sikorsky Challenge, we hope to receive funding from investors who are interested in this development, I think that there will also be government attention,” he said.
Danyk noted that ophthalmic stress diagnostics can be used to assess the impact of stress due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The mobile operator Kyivstar has launched the beta testing of the Kyivstar Open Telecom (KOT) project for testing API products based on mock data (have a structure identical to the real one, but are not valid).
“In Kyivstar we have 25.4 million subscribers, 4 million website users per month, 514 stores, 300 terabytes of data per day, and we are trying to become more and more open every day, so we launch the Kyivstar Open Telecom project,” the head of R&D & Digital at the company, Ivan Pasichnyk, said.
The KOT API allows using Kyivstar’s capabilities for developing new products, creating applications and automating business processes with a minimum Time to First Successful API Call indicator.
The company’s website reports work with mock data is free of charge, while the use of API products with real data and a debug server will be paid.
“In the next releases, we will add a sandbox in which you can work with real data: with a limit of five numbers, the ownership of which you confirmed with one-time password, and the number of requests. This format will be useful to test integration with real data,” he said.
The operator emphasizes that now Kyivstar Open Telecom is in a closed beta, so not all functions may be available, at the same time, the functionality of the KOT user account will expand.
As reported, on October 9, Kyivstar announced the launch of the Open Telecom Platform, an online platform for interaction with IT companies, which allow connecting to the operator’s services and using its datasets for developing and testing products.
Kyivstar also plans to transform from a traditional telecoms operator into a digital company.
The Cabinet of Ministers will approve a resolution facilitating the registration of international technical assistance and will replace the wording “donors” with “partners in development,” Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal has said.
“We are planning to approve a resolution that will relax the registration procedure for international technical assistance… In addition, now the concept of “donors” has been replaced by “partners in development,” Shmyhal said, opening a government meeting on Friday.
“This is the kind of relationship we want to develop with colleagues – partnership for the sake of development,” he said.
