Publications

This book explores the theory and application of locally nilpotent derivations, a subject motivated by questions in affine algebraic geometry and having fundamental connections to areas such as commutative algebra, representation theory, Lie algebras and differential equations.

The author provides a unified treatment of the subject, beginning with 16 First Principles on which the theory is based. These are used to establish classical results, such as Rentschler's Theorem for the plane and the Cancellation Theorem for Curves.

More recent results, such as Makar-Limanov's theorem for locally nilpotent derivations of polynomial rings, are also discussed. Topics of special interest include progress in classifying additive actions on three-dimensional affine space, finiteness questions (Hilbert's 14th Problem), algorithms, the Makar-Limanov invariant, and connections to the Cancellation Problem and the Embedding Problem.

A lot of new material is included in this expanded second edition, such as canonical factorization of quotient morphisms, and a more extended treatment of linear actions. The reader will also find a wealth of examples and open problems and an updated resource for future investigations.

Contemporary art biennials are sites of prestige, innovation and experimentation, where the category of art is meant to be in perpetual motion, rearranged and redefined, opening itself to the world and its contradictions. They are sites of a seemingly peaceful cohabitation between the elitist and the popular, where the likes of Jeff Koons encounter the likes of Guy Debord, where Angela Davis and Frantz Fanon share the same ground with neoliberal cultural policy makers and creative entrepreneurs. Building on the legacy of events that conjoin art, critical theory and counterculture, from Nova Convention to documenta X, the new biennial blends the modalities of protest with a neoliberal politics of creativity.

This book examines a strained period for these high art institutions, a period when their politics are brought into question and often boycotted in the context of austerity, crisis and the rise of Occupy cultures. Using the 3rd Athens Biennale and the 7th Berlin Biennale as its main case studies, it looks at how the in-built tensions between the domains of art and politics take shape when spectacular displays attempt to operate as immediate activist sites. Drawing on ethnographic research and contemporary cultural theory, this book argues that biennials both denunciate the aesthetic as bourgeois category and simultaneously replicate and diffuse an exclusive sociability across social landscapes.

 

Science, technology and innovation are crucial driving forces in the development of a country and a nation and of the entire human society at large. The competition in comprehensive national strength, in essence, is the competition in science, technology and innovation. In the backdrop of globalization, a country which has strong science, technology and innovation capabilities is more advantageously positioned in the division of labor in industries and better able to create new industries and can own more advanced intellectual properties needed to achieve further development. Science, technology and innovation hold the golden key to discovering new fountainheads of growth and unlocking dormant growth potential. Although the global economy remains sluggish overall, a new round of scientific, technological and industrial revolution is creating new historic opportunities as new concepts and new sectors such as “Internet+”, 3D printing and smart manufacturing emerge and new technologies keep coming up, especially in artificial intelligence, information technology, life science and biotechnology, opening up unprecedented opportunities and development impetus, also with a massive potential of transforming traditional industries. In addition, science, technology and innovation play an irreplaceable basic role in the effort to respond to global challenges and can not only effectively promote the addressing of global challenges such as climate change, food shortage, resource depletion and poverty but also accelerate the achievement of the goals set forth in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development for the benefit of the entire humankind.

Following a normative approach that suggests international norms and standards for elections apply universally, regardless of regime type or cultural context, this book examines the challenges to electoral integrity, the actors involved, and the consequences of electoral malpractice and poor electoral integrity that vary by regime type. It bridges the literature on electoral integrity with that of political regime types.

Looking specifically at questions of innovation and learning, corruption and organized crime, political efficacy and turnout, the threat of electoral violence and protest, and finally, the possibility of regime change, it seeks to expand the scholarly understanding of electoral integrity and diverse regimes by exploring the diversity of challenges to electoral integrity, the diversity of actors that are involved and the diversity of consequences that can result.

This text will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners of electoral studies, and more broadly of relevance to comparative politics, international development, political behaviour and democracy, democratization, and autocracy.

The Comparative Labor Law Dossier (CLLD) in this issue 2/2017 of IUSLabor is dedicated to teleworking and labor conditions. We have had the collaboration of internationally renowned academics and professionals from Belgium, France, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Spain, The U.K, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile and Canada.

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The building of an increasingly integrated system from an economic point of view in the “Eurasian” space is a phenomenon superficially evaluated by that broad part of the Western literature which simply includes it in the general claim of Russia to win lost territories of the former Trsarist and Soviet Empires. It is therefore considered an almost pretentious project when analyzed from a purely geopolitical perspective rather than economic. Such kind of approach may, however, be short-sighted, in the absence of a detailed  study of the complex roots or the historical, cultural and economic conditions justifying the integration on the former Soviet Union space, and in particular on the Eurasian one.

The present volume contains the contributions of experts from different disciplines with different sensitivity and national memberships. The hot confrontation between speakers from Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania on the one hand and Russia on the other seems to be constructive, a positive model of interaction between historically and geographically close worlds even if in a period of tough opposition.

The general trend in Afghanistan is clear-cut: the overall security situation has consistently deteriorated since 2009, worsening dramatically since 2014. However, in the provinces of Afghanistan adjacent to Central Asia, the security situation has deteriorated even further than in Afghanistan as a whole. This report considers the range of options available to the Central Asian neighbors of Afghanistan (Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) in responding to this growing threat, both unilaterally and in their bilateral engagement with actors in Afghanistan. Furthermore, it considers how decisionmaking processes in Central Asia will be affected by future developments in Afghanistan by assessing options and likely outcomes under a set of security scenarios in Afghanistan itself.

This chapter addresses the economics of regional disparities and transport policies in the European Union, offering an explanation for the uneven development of regions. We show that recent developments in spatial economics highlight the fact that trade is costly and location still matters. Since the drop in transport costs and the emergence of a knowledge-based economy, the proximity to natural resources has been replaced by new drivers of regional growth that rely on human capital and cognitive skills. Regions with a high market potential – those where demand is high and transport costs low – are likely to attract more firms and pay higher wages, which leads to sizable and lasting regional disparities. As a consequence, investments in interregional transport policies may not deliver their expected effects. In addition, new information and communication devices foster the fragmentation of the supply chain and the decentralization of activities.

The scientific research focuses on the pressing issue of an implementation of the rule of law and justice accessibility in Russia as a legal state. The core of the research is formed by a comparative study of the issues and objectives of the 1991 Concept of Judicial Reform of Russian Federation and the results of changes in procedural and judicial system legislation during the last 25 years. A comparison is also made between the standards of public services of legal dispute resolution provided by a public legislative authority and the standards of general public services by a public agency and local self-government body and the standards of a fair trial. Comparison is made not only by the level of legal guarantees for public service customers, but also by the dynamics of Russia’s process of becoming a legal state through the implementation of its judicial reform. Procedural legislation is assessed for comprehensiveness of legal provisions of judicial procedures: the order and conditions of a public service; consistency of norms, transparency of the court activities, the provision of safeguards against judicial arbitrariness and red tape, the mechanisms of efficiency enhancement and communication with the court, the compensation for the violation of the fair trial rights in civil, commercial, administrative and criminal proceedings. The court accessibility is assessed for compliance with procedural aspects of the fair trial concept: the conditions of application for the public service, the legal recourse procedures and eligibility terms, terms and size of an official fee, the possibility of fee deferral and exemption, convenience of a public fee calculation, rules of the appeal procedure. Judicial legislation is analyzed in relationship to the principles of transparency and independence of a fair trial concept in the institutional aspect. This scientific study focuses on a transfer of judiciary public services into an electronic sphere, the interaction between the courts and the interaction between courts and the executive bodies: it identifies problems and suggests possible solutions. The work assesses an effectiveness of an implementation of the 1991 Concept of Judicial Reform of Russian Federation and the targeted Federal Programs for the Development of the Judiciary, and their compatibility with the concept of sustainable development in the judicial system. The results of this scientific research have practical value, both for Russian national system and foreign countries seeking to promote the rule of law and court accessibility in the context of the UN sustainable development concept.

The concept of ‘employee’ is arguably the most important one in labour law, defi ning, as it does, the scope of the discipline as a whole. This important new publication aims to develop a restatement of the concept of the employee in European labour law. The study identifi es both problems and solutions that have emerged, clearly setting out comparisons between the different member states’ approaches. The country reports explore both statutes and case law, tracking their contribution to legal doctrine. The objective of the restatement is to increase knowledge and gain a better understanding of one of the most crucial aspects of European labour law.

The volume presents a selection of contributions mostly from the fourteenth annual conference in commemoration of Prof Marco Biagi on Wellbeing at and through work held in Modena (Italy) on 17–18 March 2016. The papers, which form the chapters in this volume, cover a number of countries and a wide range of issues in relation to quality of work and employee well-being including discrimination, harassment, disability, and work-life balance addressing them in an interdisciplinary perspective. Moreover, a number of regulatory approaches ranging from legislative interventions to voluntary measures are analysed in an attempt to cast light on the problem of well-being at work.

The materials of The International Scientific – Practical Conference is presented below. The Conference reflects the modern state of innovation in education, science, industry and social-economic sphere, from the standpoint of introducing new information technologies.

It is interesting for a wide range of researchers, teachers, graduate students and professionals in the field of innovation and information technologies.

This valuable source for graduate students and researchers provides a comprehensive introduction to current theories and applications in optimization methods and network models. Contributions to this book are focused on new efficient algorithms and rigorous mathematical theories, which can be used to optimize and analyze mathematical graph structures with massive size and high density induced by natural or artificial complex networks. Applications to social networks, power transmission grids, telecommunication networks, stock market networks, and human brain networks are presented.

Chapters in this book cover the following topics:

Linear max min fairness Heuristic approaches for high-quality solutions Efficient approaches for complex multi-criteria optimization problems Comparison of heuristic algorithms New  heuristic iterative local search  Power in network structures Clustering nodes in random graphs Power transmission grid structure Network decomposition problems Homogeneity hypothesis testing Network analysis of international migration Social networks with node attributes Testing hypothesis on degree distribution in the market graphs Machine learning applications to human brain network studies

 

 

 This proceeding is a result of The 6th International Conference on Network Analysis held at the Higher School of Economics, Nizhny Novgorod in May 2016. The conference brought together scientists and engineers from industry, government, and academia to discuss the links between network analysis and a variety of fields.

As the number of digital texts increases rapidly, there is a pressing need for more advanced and diverse tools of natural language processing. While purely statistical approaches proved powerful and efficient for many NLP tasks, there are many applications that would benefit from the formal models and approaches traditional language science has to offer. With hopes to facilitate this interaction between theory and practical implementation, we are pleased to announce the workshop on Computational Linguistics and Language Science to be held in Moscow, Russia on April 25, 2016 (11 AM to 6 PM).

AIST is a scientific conference on Analysis of Images, Social Networks, and Texts. The conference is intended for computer scientists and practitioners whose research interests involve Internet mathematics and other related fields of data science. Similar to the previous year, the conference will be focused on applications of data mining and machine learning techniques to various problem domains: image processing, analysis of social networks, and natural language processing. We hope that the participants will benefit from the interdisciplinary nature of the conference and exchange experience.

In Raised under Stalin, Seth Bernstein shows how Stalin's regime provided young people with opportunities as members of the Young Communist League or Komsomol even as it surrounded them with violence, shaping socialist youth culture and socialism more broadly through the threat and experience of war. Informed by declassified materials from post-Soviet archives, as well as films, memoirs, and diaries by and about youth, Raised under Stalin explains the divided status of youth for the Bolsheviks: they were the "new people" who would someday build communism, the potential soldiers who would defend the USSR, and the hooligans who might undermine it from within.

Bernstein explains how, although Soviet revolutionary youth culture began as the preserve of proletarian activists, the Komsomol transformed under Stalin to become a mass organization of moral education; youth became the targets of state repression even as Stalin’s regime offered them the opportunity to participate in political culture. Raised under Stalin follows Stalinist youth into their ultimate test, World War II. Even as the war against Germany decimated the ranks of Young Communists, Bernstein finds evidence that it cemented Stalinist youth culture as a core part of socialism.

In this paper we suggest a modification of the regression-based variance reduction approach recently proposed in Belomestny et al. This modification is based on the stratification technique and allows for a further significant variance reduction. The performance of the proposed approach is illustrated by several numerical examples.

 

We study the problem of nonparametric estimation of the risk-neutral densities from options data. The underlying statistical problem is known to be ill-posed and needs to be regularized. We propose a novel regularized empirical sieve approach for the estima- tion of the risk-neutral densities which relies on the notion of the minimal martingale entropy measure. The proposed approach can be used to estimate the so-called pricing kernels which play an important role in assessing the risk aversion over equity returns. The asymptotic properties of the resulting estimate are analyzed and its empirical per- formance is illustrated. 

 

In this work we derive an inversion formula for the Laplace transform of a density observed on a curve in the complex domain, which generalizes the well known Post– Widder formula. We establish convergence of our inversion method and derive the corresponding convergence rates for the case of a Laplace transform of a smooth density. As an application we consider the problem of statistical inference for variance-mean mixture models. We construct a nonparametric estimator for the mixing density based on the generalized Post–Widder formula, derive bounds for its root mean square error and give a brief numerical example. 

 

In this work, we consider optimal stopping problems with conditional convex risk measures.  

 

Our research suggests that the relation between GDP per capita and sociopolitical destabilization is not characterized by a straightforward negative correlation; it rather has an inverted U-shape. The highest risks are typical for the countries with intermediate values of GDP per capita, not the highest or lowest values. Thus, until a certain value of GDP per capita is reached, economic growth predicts an increase in the risks of sociopolitical destabilization. This positive correlation is particularly strong (r = .94, R^{2 = .88) and significant for the intensity of antigovernment demonstrations. This correlation can be observed in a very wide interval (up to 20,000 of international 2014 dollars at purchasing power parities [PPPs]). We suggest that it is partially accounted for by the following regularities: (a) GDP growth in authoritarian regimes strengthens the pro-democracy movements, and, consequently, intensifies antigovernment demonstrations; (b) in the GDP per capita interval from the minimum to $20,000, the growth of GDP per capita correlates quite strongly with a declining proportion of authoritarian regimes and a growing proportion of intermediate and democratic regimes; and, finally, (c) GDP growth in the given diapason increases the level of education of the population, which, in turn, leads to a higher intensity of antigovernment demonstrations.}

Statistical properties of infinite products of random isotropically distributed matrices are investigated. Both for continuous processes with finite correlation time and discrete sequences of independent matrices, a formalism that allows to calculate easily the Lyapunov spectrum and generalized Lyapunov exponents is developed. This problem is of interest to probability theory, statistical characteristics of matrix T-exponentials are also needed for turbulent transport problems, dynamical chaos and other parts of statistical physics.

We analyze passive scalar advection by a turbulent flow in the Batchelor regime. No restrictions on the velocity statistics of the flow are assumed. The properties of the scalar are derived from the statistical properties of velocity; analytic expressions for the moments of scalar density are obtained. We show that the scalar statistics can differ significantly from that obtained in the frames of the Kraichnan model.

 

The Early Soviet policy was oriented to promoting minority languages’ use in education, publishing, and local administration; then in the end of the 1930s there was a shift toward Russification. Mariupol, or Azov Greeks, were moved from Crimea to Azov Sea region in the late 18th century.  Linguistically they can be divided into two groups: Turkish-speaking (Urum) and Greek-speaking (Roumeis). Both groups were classified as Greeks by the Soviet official nomenclature, however their native languages were taken into account in schools in 1920-1930. Paper focuses on individual efforts of language planners in the frame of Micro Language Planning  (Baldauf 2006; Davies, Ziegler 2015; Liddicoat, Baldauf 2008). The data used in this study comes from archive documents (1918-late1930s). Two procedures which are of special interest in the Mariupol Greek context are language selection in the community with two native languages and communication with activist from other Greek groups. The case of Mariupol Greeks shows how language planning emerges from biographical experiences and ideological discourse shared by the actors. 

Parents and teachers often express concern about the extensive use of social media by youngsters. Some of them see emoticons, undecipherable initialisms and loose grammar typical for social media as evidence of language degradation. In this paper, we use a simple measure of text complexity to investigate how the complexity of public posts on a popular social networking site changes over time. We analyze a unique dataset that contains texts posted by 942, 336 users from a large European city across nine years. We show that the chosen complexity measure is correlated with the academic performance of users: users from high-performing schools produce more complex texts than users from low-performing schools. We also find that complexity of posts increases with age. Finally, we demonstrate that overall language complexity of posts on the social networking site is constantly increasing. We call this phenomenon the digital Flynn effect. Our results may suggest that the worries about language degradation are not warranted.

This paper focuses on evaluation of discourse abilities of speakers with brain damage: people with dynamic aphasia (PWA(d)) and right hemisphere damage (RHD) as compared to healthy speakers of Russian language. The study is based on the material from the Russian CliPS corpus that contains retellings of the Pear Film produced by PWA and RHD, as well as neurologically healthy controls. The nature of the narratives in the corpus allows for a comparative investigation of discourse on the level of micro-structure (grammatical and lexical phenomena) and on the macro level: narrative structure, coherence and cohesion, interactional patterns and narrative discourse strategies. In this paper we present results of the comparative analysis of some macro level discourse strategies: the way interaction and empathy are realized in the stories by PWA(d), RHD and healthy speakers. We have found significantly higher numbers of attitude expression markers, as well as significantly lower numbers of cognitive difficulties markers, in healthy speakers as compared to PWA(d). These results support what is known about difficulties that PWA(d) demonstrate in discourse production tasks. While PWA(d) use interactive markers to get a break from keeping with the story plan, they avoid using epistemic predicates whose subjects are the story characters. We also present qualitative analysis of the discourse strategies of healthy speakers.

Authors argue how Russia has politically reacted to the crisis. As compared to other Central and Eastern European transition economies, Russia experienced an extremely steep decline of its GDP (about 8% in 2009) during the global financial crisis but managed to maintain and even increase living standards. However, unlike CEE countries, in 2013, Russia already faced a new economic slowdown and entered recession in 2014–2016 after the acceleration of geopolitical tensions with the West within the context of the Ukrainian crisis. In this chapter the authors will show the reasons for the economic slowdown in 2013, including key features of the Russian model of economic development in the 2000s, its crash during the 2008–2009 global financial crisis, and the failed attempts to change the model in 2009–2011. Their analysis is based on the limited access order (LAO) framework formulated by North et al. (2009; 2013). They try to explain the instability of Russian economic growth as the unpreparedness of dominant groups within the ruling elite to restrain their own ambitions and take into account the interests of other players. They also analyze the role of key elite groups (the oligarchs, federal bureaucracy, and siloviki) during every stage of development as well as the role of new elite groups that have also evolved within that system, including the regional bureaucracy, successful medium-sized businesses, and public sector elites. Taking into account political constraints, the authors argue the key drivers and main risks of economic development in Russia. Finally, they discuss conditions for transition to a new model of economic development.

The current article describes the state of the art, institutional design, and a historical overview on how strategic management in public administration developed in post-Soviet Russia till 2017. Strategic attempts in public administration run contemporarily, and they evolve. After the 13th 5-year Soviet plan was revoked in 1991 along with the collapse of the Soviet Union itself, it took Russia 9 years to come back to the concept of planning as a governing procedure. Since then, Russia had several iterations in the development of a national long-term strategy and performed vast activity in introduction of strategic routines into public administration. As for the end of 2016, Russian system of strategic management in public administration is passing through an institutional reform.

The question whether an ontology can safely be replaced by another, possibly simpler, one is fundamental for many ontology engineering and maintenance tasks. It underpins, for example, ontology versioning, ontology modularization, forgetting, and knowledge exchange. What ‘safe replacement’ means depends on the intended application of the ontology. If, for example, it is used to query data, then the answers to any relevant ontology-mediated query should be the same over any relevant data set; if, in contrast, the ontology is used for conceptual reasoning, then the entailed subsumptions between concept expressions should coincide. This gives rise to different notions of ontology inseparability such as query inseparability and concept inseparability, which generalize corresponding notions of conservative extensions. In this chapter, we survey results on various notions of inseparability in the context of description logic ontologies, discussing their applications, useful modeltheoretic characterizations, algorithms for determining whether two ontologies are inseparable (and, sometimes, for computing the difference between them if they are not), and the computational complexity of this problem

Our concern is answering ontology-mediated queries (Ο q), whereΟ is a set of linear tgds and q a conjunctive query (CQ) of bounded hypertree width. Assuming that the arity of predicates is bounded, we show that polynomial-size nonrecursive Datalog rewritings can be constructed and executed in (i) LOGCFL for OMQs with ontologies of bounded existential depth; (ii) NL for OMQs with ontologies of bounded depth and CQs whose hypertree decompositions have a bounded number of leaves; (iii) LOGCFL for OMQs with acyclic CQs whose join trees have a bounded number of leaves.

We discuss the parameterised complexity of answering tree-shaped ontology-mediated queries (OMQs) in OWL2QL under various restrictions on their ontologies and conjunctive queries (CQs). In particular, we construct an ontology τ such that answering OMQs (τ, q) with tree-shaped CQs q is W[1]- hard if the number of leaves in q is regarded as the parameter. The number of leaves has previously been identified as an important characteristic of CQs as bounding it leads to tractable OMQ answering. Our result shows that treating it as a parameter does not make the problem fixed-parameter tractable, even for a fixed ontology.

Analysis of polyadic data (for example n-ary relations) becomes a popular task nowadays. While several data mining techniques exist for dyadic contexts, their extensions to triadic case are not obvious. In this work, we study development of ideas of Formal Concept Analysis for processing three-dimensional data, namely OAC-triclustering (from Object, Attribute, Condition). We consider several similar methods, study relations between their outputs and organize them in an ordered structure.

This paper is concerned with Random walk approximations of the Brownian motion on the Affine group Aff(R). We are in particular interested in the case where the innovations are discrete. In this framework, the return probability of the walk have fractional exponential decay in large time, as opposed to the polynomial one of the continuous object. We prove that integrating those return probabilities on a suitable neighborhood of the origin, the expected polynomial decay is restored. This is what we call a Quasi-local theorem.

In this research we analyze new approach for prediction of demand. In the studied market of  performing arts the observed demand is limited by capacity of the house. Then one needs to account for demand censorhip to obtain unbiased estimates of demand funnction parameters. The presence of consumer segments with dierent purposes of going to the theatre and willingness-to-pay for performance and ticket characteristics causes a heterogeneity in theatre demand. We propose an estimator for prediction of demand that accounts for both demand censorhip and preferences heterogeneity. The estimator is based on the idea of classiffication and regression trees and bagging prediction aggregation extended for prediction of censored data. Our algorithm predicts and combines predictions for both discrete and continuous parts of censored data.We show that our estimator performs better in terms of prediction accuracy compared with estimators which accounts either for censorship, or heterogeneity only. The proposed approach is helpful for finding product segments and optimal price setting.

The goal of this paper is twofold. First, we write down the semi-infinite Pl\"ucker relations, describing the Drinfeld-Pl\"ucker embedding of the (formal version of) semi-infinite flag varieties in type A. Second, we study the homogeneous coordinate ring, i.e. the quotient by the ideal generated by the semi-infinite Pl\"ucker relations. We establish the isomorphism with the algebra of dual global Weyl modules and derive a new character formula. Co

Structurally stable (rough) flows on surfaces have only finitely many singularities and finitely many closed orbits, all of which are hyperbolic, and they have no trajectories joining saddle points. The violation of the last property leads to Ω-stable flows on surfaces, which are not structurally stable. However, in the present paper we prove that a topological classification of such flows is also reduced to a combinatorial problem. Our complete topological invariant is a multigraph, and we present a polynomial-time algorithm for the distinction of such graphs up to an isomorphism. We also present a graph criterion for orientability of the ambient manifold and a graph-associated formula for its Euler characteristic. Additionally, we give polynomial-time algorithms for checking the orientability and calculating the characteristic.

We characterize three classes of demand systems, all of which are defined non-parametrically: homothetic demand systems with a single aggregator (HSA), those with direct implicit additivity (HDIA), and those with indirect implicit additivity (HIIA). In HSA, all the cross-price effects are captured by one price aggregator, while in HDIA and in HIIA, they are captured by two price aggregators. Each of these three classes contains CES as a special case. Yet, they are pairwise disjoint with the sole exception of CES. Thus, these classes of homothetic demand systems offer us three alternative ways of departing from CES.

The purpose of this study is to test the agenda-setting theory, according to which the media has a significant impact on what people consider to be important events. We compare the results of the Levada Center surveys on the most memorable events of the month with the number of publications on these issues in the press. We focused on the period from January 2014 to December 2016. A total of 884 events were analyzed in the article. The results of the study confirm the impact of discussions in the media on people's attention to the problem. The results also show that the discussions in the media one week before the date of polling are more important than the issues covered over the entire month. People better remember those events which took place shortly before the polling, as well as the events the discussion of which intensified during this period. It is also important to note the role of regional publications in the sensitization of the public to various issues. The issues covered by the national newspapers and news agencies, but ignored by the regional press, are much worse remembered by the population. The results of the study are controlled for background of the discussion: the presence of important events in each relevant month, which monopolized the public attention, is taken into account.

In 2013, Russia launched Project 5-100 to place five Russian universities among the top 100 university rankings by 2020. As one of the important changes within universities Project 5-100 sought an enhancement of the management system. This paper provides insights into the changing roles and responsibilities of middle managers in Russian university under Project 5-100. The theoretical approach of new managerialism was applied, using documentary analysis, semi-structured interviews and survey as data-gathering tools. The findings demonstrate that significant changes toward more a managerial character influenced the responsibilities of the heads of academic units (HAU). It reveals disagreement between managers and academics on many questions evaluating the changes. The author concludes that managers also may contribute to the implementation of Project 5-100, but agreement between different levels of staff needs to be achieved for further successful development.

This research explores the utility of using strategic indicators to track the performance of the Bank of Russia. This approach is used in international practice and has demonstrated its positive effect. Nowadays, the Bank of Russia has introduced one key indicator, the size of inflation, which has proven to be highly effective in terms of policy implications. This article argues that this approach could be extended to other strategic areas like banking regulation, financial regulation, and oversight of the national payment system, and offers ideas on improving the approach for a given target purpose. Second, the article demonstrates the potential utility of such an extension by focusing on financial stability. An empirical model of banking stability is developed based on factors originating in both the external and internal environment of the Bank of Russia. The results of the model suggest that a number of factors contribute to stability, which in turn suggests that the strategic indicators approach can play a useful role in this area

Let M be a hyperkahler manifold, Γ its mapping class group, and Teich the Teichmuller space of complex structures of hyperkahler type. After we glue together birationally equivalent points, we obtain the so-called birational Teichmuller space Teichb. Every connected component of Teichb is identified with its period space P by global Torelli theorem. The mapping class group of M acts on P as a finite index subgroup of the group of isometries of the integer cohomology lattice, that is, satisfies assumptions of Ratner theorem. We prove that there are three classes of orbits, closed, dense and the intermediate class which corresponds to varieties with Re(H2,0(M)) containing a given rational vector. The closure of the later orbits is a fixed point set of an anticomplex involution of P. This fixes an error in the paper 1306.1498, where this third class of orbits was overlooked. We explain how this affects the works based on 1306.1498.

We examine stationary state properties of an impurity particle injected into a one-dimensional quantum gas. We show that the value of the impurity's end velocity lies between zero and the speed of sound in the gas, and is determined by the injection protocol. This way, the impurity's frictionless motion is a dynamically emergent phenomenon whose description goes beyond accounting for the kinematic constraints of Landau's approach to superfluidity. We provide exact analytic results in the thermodynamic limit, and perform finite-size numerical simulations to demonstrate that the predicted phenomena are within the reach of the existing ultracold gases experiments.

We classify quasi-simple finite groups of essential dimension 3.

We classify del Pezzo surfaces of Picard number one with log canonical singularities admitting Q-Gorenstein smoothings.

The main aim of this study was to estimate direct and indirect effects of phonological ability and vocabulary knowledge on subsequent mathematics and reading performance. To achieve our goals we used two-wave longitudinal data from the international Performance Indicators in Primary Schools (iPIPS) data set, which was produced in Russia in 2015-2016. We used rhyming skills and ability to repeat words/pseudowords as indicators of phonological ability, and identified three types of mathematical skills (digit identification, number manipulations and formal math). The results of our analysis confirmed the predictive role of preschool phonological ability as a domain-general precursor of later achievements. Phonological ability had a positive direct and indirect effects on the subsequent reading and math performance. Moreover, the direct effect was higher than the indirect effect. Reading fluency mediated the effect of phonological ability and did not mediate the effect of vocabulary knowledge. Vocabulary knowledge had insignificant direct effect on math achievement and positive indirect effect via phonological ability.

Given a relatively projective birational morphism f:X→Y of smooth algebraic spaces with dimension of fibers bounded by 1, we construct tilting relative (over Y) generators TX,f and SX,f in Db(X). We develop a piece of general theory of strict admissible lattice filtrations in triangulated categories and show that Db(X) has such a filtration L where the lattice is the set of all birational decompositions f:X→gZ→hY with smooth Z. The t-structures related to TX,f and SX,f are proved to be glued via filtrations left and right dual to L. We realise all such Z as the fine moduli spaces of simple quotients of OX in the heart of the t-structure for which SX,g is a relative projective generator over Y. This implements the program of interpreting relevant smooth contractions of X in terms of a suitable system of t-structures on Db(X).

We study automorphism groups and birational automorphism groups of compact complex surfaces. We show that the automorphism group of such surface X is always Jordan, and the birational automorphism group is Jordan unless X is birational to a product of an elliptic and a rational curve.

The main subject of this article is devited of analyses a problem of Good and Evil in the teaching of Leo Tolstoy and Hannah Arendt. each in his epoch and by a similar way, got to the back of contradictions between “reasonableness”, “morality” and a human behavior in the state and society though they approached them from the opposing points of view. The approach of Tolstoy was Christian-ethical while that of Arendt was philosophic-political. Their congeniality is attributed to the fact that the ethics of Tolstoy and the policy of Arendt are built on a common theoretical ground, i.e. the philosophical anthropology of Kant. In the “man-state” opposition, Tolstoy revealed the ethical prerequisites to creation of the totalitarian ideology, and Arendt showed up the historical, political and inhuman essence of the totalitarianism phenomenon as such.

December 19, 2016, saw three tragedies simultaneously, that could not go unnoticed by the Russian media: dozens of people died as a result of a surrogate alcohol poisoning in Irkutsk, a Russian ambassador was killed in Turkey, and a terrorist attack took place at the Christmas market in Berlin. In this article using the network agenda theory we analyze how these tragedies were covered by various types of mass media: on 11 federal TV channels, in 1,974 print newspapers, in 34,905 online newspapers and 2,574 blogs. We believe that direct and indirect control of the agenda by the state can be exercised by creating a network of events that will canalize correctly discussions about tragedies. We showed that ties between the tragedy and a network of other acute issues are more important than objective circumstances, such as the number of victims or a geography of the event. The context in which the events were looked at led to greater attention to the killing of the ambassador and less attention to surrogate alcohol poisoning. The Russian mass media paid significantly less attention to the Berlin terror attack, it yet was used as a supplement to the demonstration of importance of the fight against terrorism.

Recent decades have been years of intensive growth, structural change and expanding informality for many developing and emerging economies. However, in exploring the relationship between structural change and productivity growth, most empirical studies ignored informality. This paper explores how structural change in the Russian economy 1995–2012 affects aggregate labour productivity growth, taking into account the informal sector. Using a newly developed dataset for 34 industries and applying three alternative approaches aggregate labour productivity growth is decomposed into intra-industry and interindustry contributions. All three approaches show that the overall contribution of structural change is growth enhancing, significant, and dumped in time. In turn, labour reallocation between the formal and informal sectors is growth reducing because of the extension of informal activities with low productivity levels. At the same time, sectoral labour reallocation effects are found to be highly sensitive to the methods.