Publications

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Formal Concept Analysis, ICFCA 2021, held in Strasbourg, France, in June/July 2021.

The 14 full papers and 5 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 32 submissions. The book also contains four invited contributions in full paper length.

The research part of this volume is divided in five different sections. First, "Theory" contains compiled works that discuss advances on theoretical aspects of FCA. Second, the section "Rules" consists of contributions devoted to implications and association rules. The third section "Methods and Applications" is composed of results that are concerned with new algorithms and their applications. "Exploration and Visualization" introduces different approaches to data exploration.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Mathematical Optimization Theory and Operations Research, MOTOR 2021, held in Irkutsk, Russia, in July 2021. 

 

The 29 full papers and 1 short paper presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 102 submissions. Additionally, 2 full invited papers are presented in the volume. The papers are grouped in the following topical sections: ​combinatorial optimization; mathematical programming; bilevel optimization; scheduling problems; game theory and optimal control; operational research and mathematical economics; data analysis.

The book begins with a discussion of what a performant system is and progresses to measuring performance and setting performance goals. It introduces different classes of queries and optimization techniques suitable to each, such as the use of indexes and specific join algorithms. You will learn to read and understand query execution plans along with techniques for influencing those plans for better performance. The book also covers advanced topics such as the use of functions and procedures, dynamic SQL, and generated queries. All of these techniques are then used together to produce performant applications, avoiding the pitfalls of object-relational mappers.

 

Not only is May otherwise undescribed in writing, but it is also the only small Vietic language documented and analysed in such detail, and one of few endangered Austroasiatic languages described so thoroughly.  May is predominantly monosyllabic, yet retains traces of affixes and consonant clusters that reflect older disyllabic forms. It is tonal, and also manifests breathy phonation and vowel ongliding, yielding a remarkable complexity of syllable types. The lexicon, which is extensively documented, has a substantial archaic component. Consequently, the volume provides an invaluable resource for comparative historical and typological studies. 

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.

Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards in Russia and Former USSR States is the first full-scale commentary in English that aims at analysing the application of the New York Convention in Russia. The Convention introduced a straightforward model for the recognition and enforcement of foreign arbitral awards, which has had a unifying global effect, and created homogeneous national legal regimes in the field of commercial law. The 15 sovereign states that emerged from the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1991, all having adopted the New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards, today are drawing increasing attention from international law firms and global arbitral institutions. This book is compiled under the editorship of the Secretary General of the Russian Arbitration Association with attention to various relevant national laws and procedures.

Few aspects of today’s world system demand such urgent response as our ability to produce sustainable food. Yet at the same time as malnutrition plagues the world, overuse of land, water, and energy in the agricultural and livestock sectors exacerbates environmental degradation and climate change. This important book, in its focus on the interrelated topics of food, nutrition, animals, health, and environment, critically analyses whether the current food production chain – as regulated by domestic, European, and international food law – is sufficient to guarantee a sustainable food supply, respectful of the right of future generations to adequate nutrition and a healthy environment. The book’s chapters, written by eminent scholars from a variety of countries and legal backgrounds – including leading experts at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) – explore such issues and topics linked to food production as the following: – concentrated animal feeding operations; – relation of human well-being and animal welfare; – manufacturing, trade, and distribution of food products; – human rights concepts of right to food and right to health; – the COVID-19 Pandemic and the One Health Approach; – genetically modified organisms; – deforestation, habitat destruction and zoonoses; – food naming and labelling; and – food risk management. Throughout there is reference to an abundance of legislation, treaties, conventions, and case law at domestic, regional, and international levels, with particular attention to European, US, and World Trade Organization law and the work of the FAO. The book clearly demonstrates the necessity for reform of the global system of food production in the direction of a more sustainable and environment-friendly model. In its authoritative discussion of the relations among fields of law that are rarely discussed together – food law and the environment, food law and human rights, food law and animal welfare – this collection of chapters will prove a valuable resource both for officials working in food governance and security and for lawyers and scholars concerned with environmental management, sustainable development, and human rights around the world.

Historians devote a great deal of attention to the diplomacy that led Russia into the Great War, but have tended to neglect the course of this diplomacy once the fighting erupted. This volume addresses that lacuna with a broad range of essays examining the foreign relations of the empire, as well as its republican and early Soviet successors, from the July 1914 Crisis to the end of the Civil War in 1922.

Written by distinguished and emerging scholars from North America, Europe, Russia, and Japan, the essays make abundant use of Russian archival collections, largely inaccessible until the 1990s, to reassess the conjectures and conclusions previously drawn from other sources. While some chapters focus on traditional “diplomatic” history, others adopt new “international history” by placing Russia’s relations with the world in their social, intellectual, economic, and cultural contexts.

Arranged in roughly chronological order, the first volume covers the late imperial period, from 1914 through mid-1916, while the second proceeds through the revolutions of 1917 and the Civil War, up to the end of that conflict in 1922. Together, these books’ comments should foster a renewed appreciation for international relations as a central element of Russia’s Great War and Revolution.

the Great War, but have tended to neglect the course of this diplomacy once the fighting erupted. This volume addresses that lacuna with a broad range of essays examining the foreign relations of the empire, as well as its republican and early Soviet successors, from the July 1914 Crisis to the end of the Civil War in 1922. Written by distinguished and emerging scholars from North America, Europe, Russia, and Japan, the essays make abundant use of Russian archival collections, largely inaccessible until the 1990s, to reassess the conjectures and conclusions previously drawn from other sources. While some chapters focus on traditional “diplomatic” history, others adopt new “international history” by placing Russia’s relations with the world in their social, intellectual, economic, and cultural contexts. Arranged in roughly chronological order, the first volume covers the late imperial period, from 1914 through mid-1916, while the second proceeds through the revolutions of 1917 and the Civil War, up to the end of that conflict in 1922. Together, these books’ comments should foster a renewed appreciation for international relations as a central element of Russia’s Great War and Revolution.

This book examines the development of bilateral energy relations between China and the two oil-rich countries, Kazakhstan and Russia.

Challenging conventional assumptions about energy politics and China’s global quest for oil, this book examines the interplay of politics and sociocultural contexts. It shows how energy resources become ideas and how these ideas are mobilized in the realm of international relations. China’s relations with Kazakhstan and Russia are simultaneously enabled and constrained by the discursive politics of oil. It is argued that to build collaborative and constructive energy relations with China, its partners in Kazakhstan, Russia, and elsewhere must consider not only the material realities of China’s energy industry and the institutional settings of China’s energy policy but also the multiple symbolic meanings that energy resources and, particularly, oil acquire in China.

China’s Energy Security and Relations with Petrostates offers a nuanced understanding of China’s bilateral energy relations with Kazakhstan and Russia, raising essential questions about the social logic of international energy politics. It will appeal to students and scholars of international relations, energy security, Chinese and post-Soviet studies, along with researchers working in the fields of energy policy and environmental sustainability.

asks whether the Caspian functions as a conceptual framework for various forms of exchange in commerce, diplomacy, political culture, forces of dissent and revolutionary movements, movement of peoples, material culture, art, and literature as well as ecology, disease, navigation and maritime culture. Are there tangible historical ties in the early modern and modern periods between regions of the Caspian littoral – Iran, the South Caucasus, Dagestan, Russia, and Central Asia? In what ways do exchanges in this region connect to neighboring, more established cultural and political spheres and with broader trends of global history? Can these ties create a viable field of study beyond Middle Eastern, Eurasian, and Russian studies to underscore interregional connections? Can the Caspian be conceptualized as an alternative or as a compliment to more established frames, such as the Persianate World or Central Eurasia and the steppe? To what extent can the links within this region be separated from state-centered histories of Iran and the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union?

As the EU’s relations with Russia remain at an all-time low and continue to be in a state of paralysis, marked by de-institutionalisation, inertia and estrangement, the EU’s policy towards Russia seems up for review. By taking stock of the implementation of the EU’s Global Strategy and the five principles that are guiding EU-Russia relations, this volume provides a forward-looking angle and contributes to a better understanding of the current EU-Russia relationship and the prospects for overcoming the existing deadlock. By bringing together European and Russian scholars and adopting an interdisciplinary perspective that combines insights from EU studies, international relations, and European and international law, the book provides a comprehensive and holistic view on the state of affairs in EU-Russia relations.

Non-destructive testing technology methods are usually used for detection, location  and sizing of both surface and internal defects of different nature. The School of  Non-Destructive Testing of the Tomsk Polytechnic University, Russia, is promoting  scientific research and industrial applications of non-destructive testing technology,  which includes microwave, acoustical (ultrasonic), infrared, magnetic, vibration,  radiography, visual and other testing and related methods, for safety of operation of  medical and industrial processes.  Today, there is a need for educational materials that will help in the formation  and continuous training of their specialists in non-destructive testing. This tutorial  can be used as a complementary technical document to enhance the skills of NDT  professionals and as a basic resource to educate managers and decision makers in  the industry about the future of NDT.  The current timely book presents recent advantages and perspective directions in  scientific investigations and industrial applications of non-destructive testing in  different areas including medicine, quality assurance, sensors and engineering  systems: ultrasionic tomography, infrared inspection and spectral analysis, surface  material control, diagnostics of metal nanopowders, biomedical engineering.  NDT takes centre stage in our technological world, books that highlight what is  possible are both welcome and instructive. I am delighted to see this comprehensive  book take shape and promote the field to the next generation of researchers looking AQ1 for new avenues to explore.

Given Australia’s lack of energy security strategy, it is not surprising that the country is void of institutional knowledge and know-how of Russian foreign energy strategy. The ‘lucky country’ as it were, relies entirely on sea-lines of communication to the north to supply fuel and to export Australian coal and natural gas. Australia has entered the 2020s as the world’s largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporter; however, maintaining complacency in Canberra’s current export activities will ultimately lead to a long-term security crisis. This book critically examines Russian energy strategy in the Asia-Pacific, with a view to determining the security implications for Australia. Russia is important for global energy security chains because of its vast resource wealth and its geographical position – a pivotal position to supply both the European and Asian markets. Australia has no such luxury, geographically constrained as an island continent; it relies on the nearby Asia-Pacific import market to demand our energy and to facilitate the delivery of our national oil supplies. Understanding Russian foreign energy strategy in the region is crucial given the growing energy requirements in Australia’s emerging Asia-Pacific arena.

This volume provides an understanding of how systems of child protection evolve in disparate cultural, social and economic contexts. Using the former Soviet Union as a starting point, it examines how 13 countries have developed, defined and evolved their system of protecting children and providing services to families over the last 25 years since independence. The volume runs an uniform approach in each country and then traces the development of unique systems, contributing to the international understanding of child protection and welfare.   This volume is a fascinating study for social scientists, social workers, policy makers with particular interest to those focusing on children, youth, and family issues alike as each chapter offers a clear and compelling view of the central changes, competing claims and guiding assumptions that have formed each countries individual approach to child protection and family services.    

The 50th volume in the book series ‘Global Perspectives on Higher Education' offers a stimulating and thoughtful assessment of higher education from a global perspective which addresses the challenges and prospects for the next decade. The challenges now faced by higher education and its likely future prospects and patterns are examined in terms of policy papers and case studies. Five broad topics are considered: the situation of academic faculty, the demand for access, the role of the university in society and its governance, funding trends, and higher education’s international dimensions.

The book aims to trace and explain the historical evolution of Moscow, the capital of the Tsardom of Russia, Soviet Union and Russian Federation, as a political entity and political community, and to understand what place Moscow occupied within the Russian political space and what role it played in Russian political life for centuries until 2018. The authors consistently examine the dramatic political history of the contemporary Russian capital in the Moscow (13th – 17th centuries) and St. Petersburg (18th – 19th centuries) epochs, in the Soviet period, in the post-Soviet era, and identify its key points and the most pivotal events.

This book consists of seven chapters, each providing a different point of view on the topic of critical thinking, which is defined as the analysis of facts to form a judgment. Chapter One aims to develop a method for improving students’ critical thinking skills using cooperative learning. Chapter Two focuses on an education program designed to develop students’ creativity and critical thinking skills and the impact this program had on teachers in Portuguese public schools. Chapter Three discusses the methods of teaching critical thinking that are most suitable for the Russian educational community. Chapter Four analyzes the importance of critical thinking skills for fighting misinformation in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, around which many unscientific rumors and conspiracy theories are propagated alongside truthful information. Chapter Five also concerns the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically in connection with the natural human bias towards optimism and how this bias distorts risk assessment in health-related decisions but also provides a sense of control and hope. Chapter Six discusses how teachers can leverage Donald Trump’s proclivity towards manipulative rhetoric, glaring fallacies, and conspiracy theories for teaching critical thinking skills, as well as the potential pitfalls of doing so. Finally, Chapter Seven aims to rethink Essential Learning Outcomes by examining what skills are valued by employers and proposes a strategy of cross-listing courses to facilitate skill acquisition across disciplines.

The BIS indicated in July 2020 an unprecedented rise in default risk correlation as a result of pandemics-induced credit risks’ accumulation. A third of the world banking assets credit risk measurement depends on the Basel internal-ratings-based (IRB) models. To ensure financial stability, we wish IRB models to be accurate in default probability (PD) forecasting. There naturally arises a question of which model may be deemed accurate if the data demonstrates the presence of the default correlation. The existing prudential IRB validation guidelines suggest a confidence interval of up to 100 percentage points’ length for such a case. Such an interval is useless as any model and any PD forecast seem accurate. The novelty of this paper is the justification for the use of twin confidence intervals to validate PD model accuracy. Those intervals more concentrate around the two extremes (default and its absence), the higher the default correlation is.

The current pilot study investigated the psychological mechanisms behind ethnic outgroup aggression, a significant outcome of intergroup conflicts. While previous research suggested several impactful predictors of ethnic outgroup aggression, such as intergroup contact and nationalism, no attempt has been made to synthesize all these constructs into a single cross-cultural study. Building on existing research, this pilot study is the first to assess a refined framework where we tested a proposed mediation model according to nationalism and emotion regulation mediate the relationship between intergroup contact, susceptibility to persuasion, and intergroup anxiety on the one hand and ethnic outgroup aggression on the other hand within a cross-cultural sample. An online questionnaire was distributed using convenience sampling among 2482 students with an ethnic majority background living and studying in ten (European) countries. Multigroup path analysis supported the larger part of the hypothesized model where we found that emotion regulation partially mediated the relationship between susceptibility to persuasion as a predictor and aggression as an outcome. As expected, we found that the higher the susceptibility to persuasion, the higher the emotion regulation, and the higher the regulation, the lower the aggression in all countries. Our pilot study provided preliminary evidence that emotion regulation, nationalism and susceptibility to persuasion are critical for the understanding of ethnic outgroup aggression in ethnically diverse societies. Future research needs to be carried out focusing on the development of an intergroup anxiety assessment in which possible gender differences in assessed constructs are considered.

We construct a mirabolic analogue of the geometric Satake equivalence. We also prove an equivalence that relates representations of a supergroup to the category of GL(N − 1, C[[t]])-equivariant perverse sheaves on the affine Grassmannian of GLN . We explain how our equivalences fit into a more general framework of conjectures due to Gaiotto and to Ben-Zvi, Sakellaridis and Venkatesh.

MiRNA isoforms (isomiRs) are single stranded small RNAs originating from the same pri-miRNA hairpin as a result of cleavage by Drosha and Dicer enzymes. Variations at the 5ʹ-end of a miRNA alter the seed region of the molecule, thus affecting the targetome of the miRNA. In this manuscript, we analysed the distribution of miRNA cleavage positions across 31 different cancers using miRNA sequencing data of TCGA project. As a result, we found that the processing positions are not tissue specific and that all miRNAs could be correctly classified as ones exhibiting homogeneous or heterogeneous cleavage at one of the four cleavage sites. In 42% of cases (42 out of 100 miRNAs), we observed imprecise 5ʹ-end Dicer cleavage, while this fraction was only 14% for Drosha (14 out of 99). To the contrary, almost all cleavage sites of 3ʹ-ends (either Drosha or Dicer) were heterogeneous. With the use of only four nucleotides surrounding a 5ʹ-end Dicer cleavage position we built a model which allowed us to distinguish between homogeneous and heterogeneous cleavage with the reliable quality (ROC AUC = 0.68). Finally, we showed the possible applications of the study by the analysis of two 5ʹ-end isoforms originating from the same exogeneous shRNA hairpin. It turned out that the less expressed shRNA variant was functionally active, which led to the increased off-targeting. Thus, the obtained results could be applied to the design of shRNAs whose processing will result in a single 5ʹ-variant.

We explore a doubly-greedy approach to the issue of community detection in feature-rich networks. According to this approach, both the network and feature data are straightfor- wardly recovered from the underlying unknown non-overlapping communities, supplied with a center in the feature space and intensity weight(s) over the network each. Our least- squares additive criterion allows us to search for communities one-by-one and to find each community by adding entities one by one. A focus of this paper is that the feature-space data part is converted into a similarity matrix format. The similarity/link values can be used in either of two modes: (a) as measured in the same scale so that one may can meaningfully compare and sum similarity values across the entire similarity matrix (summability mode), and (b) similarity values in one column should not be compared with the values in other columns (nonsummability mode). The two input matrices and two modes lead us to developing four different Iterative Community Extraction from Similarity data (ICESi) algorithms, which determine the number of communities automatically. Our experiments at real-world and synthetic datasets show that these algorithms are valid and competitive.

There are two different modal logics: the logic T assuming contingency and the logic K = assuming logical determinism. In the paper, I show that the Aristotelian treatise On Interpretation (Περί ερμηνείας, De Interpretatione) has introduced some modal-logical relationships which correspond to T. In this logic, it is supposed that there are contingent events. The Nāgārjunian treatise Īśvara-kartṛtva-nirākṛtiḥ-viṣṇoḥ-ekakartṛtva-nirākaraṇa has introduced some modal-logical relationships which correspond to K =. In this logic, it is supposed that there is a logical determinism: each event happens necessarily (siddha) or it does not happen necessarily (asiddha). The Nāgārjunian approach was inherited by the Yogācārins who developed, first, the doctrine of causality of all real entities (arthakriyātva) and, second, the doctrine of momentariness of all real entities (kṣaṇikavāda). Both doctrines were a philosophical ground of the Yogācārins for the logical determinism. Hence, Aristotle implicitly used the logic T in his modal reasoning. The Madhyamaka and Yogācāra schools implicitly used the logic K = in their modal reasoning.

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions:

The paper tests the hypothesis that the larger the population of language speakers, the smaller the number of second languages mastered by these speakers.

Design/methodology/approach:

We match the size of the population of 29 Dagestanian languages and the number of second languages spoken by the speakers of these languages from 54 villages, and run a Poisson mixed effects regression model that predicts the average number of second languages spoken by speakers from first-language communities of different size.

Data and analysis:

Data for this study comes from two sources. The information on the population of Dagestanian languages is based on the digitalized census of 1926. The information on the number of second languages in which the residents of Dagestan are proficient is taken from the database on multilingualism in Dagestan (4032 people).

Findings/conclusions:

The study supports the hypothesis that the size of language population is negatively correlated with the multilingualism of the language community.

Originality:

The paper is the first to test the correlation between the size of language population and the level of multilingualism of its speakers using statistical methods and a large body of empirical data.

Significance and implications:

Population size is a factor that could have influenced patterns of language evolution. The population is interrelated with other factors, one of which is long-standing multilingualism. The methodological lesson of this research is that there is a difference in the level of multilingualism within a range of populations where the largest was about 120,000 people.

Limitations:

The data is limited to one multilingual region. The revealed correlation probably does not hold for areas where language communities do not interact with their neighbors and even speakers of minority languages can be monolingual, or for the territories where many people migrated and the area where a language is spoken was discontinuous.

The goal of the paper is to develop a new algorithm for predicting whether the company will go bankrupt on the base of unbalanced data. To do it, we propose to consider the classification as a multi-objective optimization problem and construct a prediction model as an ensemble while minimizing the parameters FPR (False Positive Rate) and FNR (False Negative Rate) at the same time. To create the ensemble, the proposed algorithm of a Multi-Objective Classifier Selection (MOCS) selects only classifiers that belong to the Pareto-optimal set in FPR/FNR space; that is, there is no dominance between them, and they satisfy some additional conditions. In the general case, MOCS is determined by three parameters: two threshold values that limit false rates (FNR and FPR), and the crowding distance, which defines the uniqueness of the classifier's results. We tested the proposed algorithm on data collected from 2457 Russian companies, 456 of which went bankrupt, and 5910 Polish companies, 410 of which received bankruptcy status. Datasets contain features such as financial ratios and business environment factors. In the testing, we used more than 70 combinations of under-sampling, over-sampling, and no sampling methods with static and dynamic classification models. Final ensembles include seven classifiers for the Russian dataset and four classifiers for the Polish dataset combined by soft voting rule. In both cases, the proposed algorithm produces a significant improvement of prediction results as in terms of standard metrics (geometric mean, the area under the ROC curve) and in the visual representation in the FNR/FPR space, namely in the shift from a Pareto-optimal set of classifiers.

Recent statistics report that more than 3.7 million new cases of cancer occur in Europe yearly, and the disease accounts for approximately 20% of all deaths. High-throughput screening of cancer cell cultures has dominated the search for novel, effective anticancer therapies in the past decades. Recently, functional assays with patient-derived ex vivo 3D cell culture have gained importance for drug discovery and precision medicine. We recently evaluated the major advancements and needs for the 3D cell culture screening, and concluded that strictly standardized and robust sample preparation is the most desired development. Here we propose an artificial intelligence-guided low-cost 3D cell culture delivery system. It consists of a light microscope, a micromanipulator, a syringe pump, and a controller computer. The system performs morphology-based feature analysis on spheroids and can select uniform sized or shaped spheroids to transfer them between various sample holders. It can select the samples from standard sample holders, including Petri dishes and microwell plates, and then transfer them to a variety of holders up to 384 well plates. The device performs reliable semi- and fully automated spheroid transfer. This results in highly controlled experimental conditions and eliminates non-trivial side effects of sample variability that is a key aspect towards next-generation precision medicine.

Modern information access systems hold the promise to give users direct access to key information from authoritative primary sources such as scientific literature, but non-experts tend to avoid these sources due to their complex language, internal vernacular, or lacking prior background knowledge. Text simplification approaches can remove some of these barriers, thereby avoiding that users rely on shallow information in sources prioritizing commercial or political incentives rather than the correctness and informational value. The CLEF 2021 SimpleText track will address the opportunities and challenges of text simplification approaches to improve scientific information access head-on. We aim to provide appropriate data and benchmarks, starting with pilot tasks in 2021, and create a community of NLP and IR researchers working together to resolve one of the greatest challenges of today.

The rapid development of such natural language processing tasks as style transfer, paraphrase, and machine translation often calls for the use of semantic similarity metrics. In recent years a lot of methods to measure the semantic similarity of two short texts were developed. This paper provides a comprehensive analysis for more than a dozen of such methods. Using a new dataset of fourteen thousand sentence pairs human-labeled according to their semantic similarity, we demonstrate that none of the metrics widely used in the literature is close enough to human judgment in these tasks. A number of recently proposed metrics provide comparable results, yet Word Mover Distance is shown to be the most reasonable solution to measure semantic similarity in reformulated texts at the moment.

The process of employment in labour market involves several sides: employers, employees, educational system and state authorities. From the economic point of view a labour market is close to the market with imperfect competition. The one of the most informative indicators is skills, which provide an extensive information about competences and abilities of the worker. However, the sets of such skills are dynamically changing in different industries, organizations and even certain vacancies.

The article studies the mutual influence of electrical and thermal processes due to their simultaneous occurrence in the printed circuit assemblies of optoelectronic devices (OEDs) in real operating conditions. An increase in the accuracy of computer modeling of electrical and thermal processes can be achieved by switching from the separate modeling of these processes used in engineering practice to their joint simultaneous modeling according to the proposed unified integrated electrothermal model. The authors use the existing in physics electrothermal analogy of mathematical descriptions of these processes. The resulting loads of heat dissipations power and temperatures of electrical radio products placed on the OED printed circuit boards makes it possible to identify hidden potential failures in them during design. When using integrated digital twin, it is possible to identify pre-failure situations during the operation of the OED.

This paper discusses the recent introduction of master planning tool in the Russian system of urban planning. Public authorities claim that under obsolescence and rigidity of the existing system of spatial planning master plans should become an effective solution for urban growth and development. Despite all the attention, published master plans have an unclear legal status and their introduction often results in some degree of overlap and blurring with existing spatial development institutions. The research critically examines i) how master plans are (not?) being incorporated in existing urban planning institutes ii) the reasons of master planning practice emergence. Going beyond transitional frameworks, the study discusses institutional change in urban planning in a post-socialist city.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation is considered as a promising diagnostic and therapeutic approach, despite the fact that its mechanisms remain poorly understood. Theoretical models suggest that TMS-induced effects, within brain tissues, are rather local and strongly depend on the orientation of the stimulated nervous fibers. Using diffusion MRI, it is possible to estimate local orientation of the white matter fibers and to compute effects, that TMS impose at each point of them. The computed effects may be correlated with the experimentally observed TMS effects. However, since TMS effects are rather local, such relationships are likely to be observed only for a small subset of the reconstructed fibers. In this work, we present an approach for finding such a TMS-targeted subset of fibers, within a cortico-spinal tract, following stimulation of the motor cortex. Finding TMS-targeted groups of fibers is an important task for both (1) better understanding of the neuronal mechanisms, underlying the observed TMS effects and (2) development of future optimization strategies for TMS-based therapeutic approaches.

The centrepiece of the government's new economic model are 13 ambitious projects that align with The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Over a six-year period to 2024, the government is investing more than than US$ 1 trillion in science, the digital economy, ecology, health, education, housing and other areas. Readiness for the Fourth Industrial Revolution is a cross-cutting priority of the 13 projects and the national strategy for artificial intelligence. The government is espousing a goal-oriented management system to strengthen national competitiveness, independence and security. There are plans to develop world-class infrastructure in selected regions for ‘a new geography of science’. One challenge will be to raise expenditure on research and education, especially since improving the quality of public universities is a priority. Since 2015, solar, gas and wind consumption have progressed each year but the use of renewable energy is being hampered by the centralized management of the Russian energy sector, higher consumer prices for renewable energy and the rigours of the country’s cold climate.

Dear Colleagues, It is time for another continuation of tradition for SIBCON, the prime forum of Tomsk IEEE Chapter to share the latest academic and technical accomplishments in the fields of control, microwave, wireless, electron devices, and related areas. I would like to welcome all the participants, and especially, to express the warmest gratitude to all the paper presenters for sharing their valuable experiences with us, on behalf of the organizing committee of SIBCON-2021, Kazan. The technical program for the SIBCON Conference spans most of the key areas in control, wireless and mobile communications, from the physical properties up through the packing. Among the topics receiving, the largest numbers of papers for this year's conference were technology of microwave electron devices, signal processing, antennas, and network systems. As is evident from just those categories alone, the technical program will almost assuredly provide some topics of interest for all attendees. A total of 100 papers were received as a result of the open call, which is the highest number in SIBCON history. In keeping with the goal at SIBCON to become one of the quality conferences, the acceptance rate was less. Many reviewers have participated in the paper review and selection processes. Besides, some papers concern Kazan Scientific Center was invited. The conference kicks off with a Plenary Session delivered by Prof. E.A. Magid, General Chair of SIBCON. I could think of no better way to start this conference off than with an opportunity for all of us to share valuable insights into the possibilities of the Kazan Scientific community to enter modern technologies into the commercial marketplace. The Technical Program Committee prepared a rich, diverse, and up-to-date program that should satisfy your interest in learning about revolutionary and evolutionary developments in control, robotics, and microwave fields and supporting technologies. Together with the high power keynote and executive sessions, conference tutorials, the overall program of SIBCON brings into focus the two threads of our topic: the convergence of circuit design and packing, and the integration of micro- and nanotechnologies. We also have an outstanding technical program for the conference, with papers on many important aspects of AI systems. Many people expended a great deal of effort to put this technical program together. I would like to extend our sincere thanks and appreciation for the exceptional work rendered by all track chairs as well as the session chairs and TPC members. I would first like to thank all young participants who submitted their papers on modern topics. Special thanks to sponsors for their support and generous sponsorship. Finally, I would like to express my appreciation to the leadership of KFU to join us in this wonderful hospitality. The Technical Program Committee and I look forward to seeing you here. We hope that you will enjoy the technical, cultural, and natural selections we are preparing for you.  

Context is increasingly recognised as a critical explanatory variable in accounting for commonalities and differences in human resource management. Giving expression to it in research models holds the prospect of enhancing theory development, deepening our appreciation of embedded practices in diverse territories, and opening up new lines of enquiry. However, contextualisation presents a significant research challenge and increasingly, international academic research networks that bring together scholars from different countries in the co-production of knowledge represent a key approach to rising to this challenge. This volume documents aspects of the development of one such network, namely the Cranet Network on International Human Resource Management, and presents a series of recent contributions from the network. The chapters highlight, inter alia, the limits to convergence in human resource management as a result of contextual determinism, the role of institutional actors, markets, and work regulation in accounting for variations in practices, the contextual specificities and dynamics at play in transition economies, along with key methodological challenges that arise when seeking to build cumulative comparative knowledge via network collaborations of this nature.

The recently finalized Basel Framework continues allowing banks to use internal data and models to define risk estimates and use them for the capital adequacy ratio computation. World-wide there are above two thousand banks running the Basel internal models. However, there are countries that have none of such banks. For them there exists a dilemma. Namely, which transition path to adopt out of the two. The voluntarily one as in the EU or the mandatory one as in the US. Our objective is to take the investor perspective and benchmark those two modes. Thus, we wish to find whether there is a premium for any of them, or perhaps that they are equivalent. The novelty of our research is the robust estimate that investors prefer mandatory transition style to the voluntarily one. Such a preference is reflected in the rise of the mean return and decline in stock volatility for the transited banks in the US and right the opposite consequences in the EU. However, we should be cautious in interpreting our findings. Such a preference may not only be the premium for the breakage of the vicious cycle and the ultimate improvement in the banks’ risk-management systems and the overall financial stability. It may also hold true if and only if the mandatory transition for particular institutions is accompanied by a restriction for other banks in the region to transit. Our findings are of value primarily to the emerging economies like Argentine and Indonesia. 

This paper studies the indicators of public procurement efficiency as perceived by public buyers and suppliers and what barriers must be overcome for them to consider public procurement efficient. The analysis, based on an online survey of Russian procurers and suppliers in 2020, reveals that, despite the importance of fighting corruption and increasing competition, most procurers and suppliers consider the supply of high-quality goods and timely contract execution the most important criteria. The natural experiment with COVID-19 has mitigated the rigidity of the regulation problem but exacerbated the ambiguity problem. During the pandemic, public procurement contract execution worsened. To improve procurement efficiency, the regulator should clearly specify its requirements and consider the main participants’ interests.

During periods of financial turmoil, depositor behaviour is influenced by the economic information environment, which is largely formed by the media—at least for retail depositors. Therefore the severity of bank runs during financial crises, and their efficiency might be conditional on the volume of the bad news appearing in the media during a crisis. If the news flow remains unrestrained, then the probability of bank runs will increase due to the information sensitivity of depositors. Examining whether it is possible to reduce the severity of bank runs during a crisis by controlling the media, we use the panel data 28 countries from 2001 until 2016. We analyze the impact of media freedom on the growth rate of retail deposits: the major role in bank runs is usually played by unsophisticated individual depositors. Generally the results do not support the hypothesis that changes in the degree of media freedom directly influence behavioural strategies of retail depositors during financial crises. However information limitations may be an instrument to support the market discipline mechanisms: higher media freedom during crises seems to blur the information environment depositors make decisions in. Media restrictions could also prevent the financial literacy effect from dilution during financial crises, ensuring that market discipline is not further undermined.

National pride and social trust are often perceived and used as alternative grounds for social cohesion. While national pride is essentially exclusive, because shared only by compatriots, trust in social institution is not, and the general interpersonal trust measured as trust in strangers is inclusive by definition. These differences create an opportunity for a variety of interrelations between national pride and various dimensions of social trust, depending on how certain kinds of individuals and institutions are perceived in relation to a country’s identity. This paper presents the results of a research examining interrelations between national pride and social trust in Russia compared to other countries. The empirical data used in the research come from the most recent wave of the World Values Survey, released in 2020. The results show that in Russia, national pride is positively related to trust in all major social institutions, including even international organizations. This pattern is observed in most countries (with the notable exception of the USA, where correlations between national pride and trust in some institutions, such as the press and the UN, are negative). These positive correlations in Russia are the strongest for trust in the churches, the armed forces, and the government; in most other countries, the pattern is similar but much less pronounced: the relation to trust in other institutions is not that weaker. The relation of national pride to various dimensions of interpersonal trust reveals a deeper difference: unlike in most countries, in Russia, national pride has no negative relation to trust in people of another nationality or religion but is significantly negatively related to strangers. Thus, apparently Russian scoring high on national pride are more ready to accept people with any kind of identity, however different from their own, than people whose identity is unknown and undefined.

We consider a market with two sellers, each having one unit of identical product, who compete for potential buyers with one-unit demand and a private valuation of this product. First, firms simultaneously post their prices. Then buyers observe these prices and choose a seller to submit a request for purchase depending on their private valuation of the product. This framework is between the directed search theory and the theory of competing mechanisms. We prove that the private information about the consumer’s willingness to pay produces an equilibrium price dispersion and endogenous consumer separation.

The major stakeholders, including states (at least, in the global North) and transnational corporations (TNCs), have radically changed their attitude to the idea of mandatory human rights due diligence in the last decade. By asking what is behind these good intentions, and whether the mandatory corporate human rights due diligence models enforced so far are effective or represent an exercise in shooting blanks, and by combining a legal positivistic perspective with studies on governance and the production of knowledge, this article contributes to the legal and socio-legal assessment of these changes. Assessing the effectiveness of mandatory corporate human rights due diligence, this article discusses the inherent or implied features of this regulatory tool which restrict its ability to serve as an instrument to protect human rights. A special focus is made on two main restrictions that are specific for human rights due diligence: the regulatory boundary revealed in the auxiliary character of due diligence and its limed ability to serve as a standard of conduct, and the epistemic boundary, deriving from the conflicting role of companies as the architects and executives of knowledge production. To a certain extent, the legislative process can counterbalance some of these restrictions by setting up the substantive, precise obligations of companies, and by creating mechanisms of control and remediation. However, the analysis of nine different instruments reveals that neither states, nor the EU have used the potential of the regulatory force.

Let us consider a family F(alpha,beta,gamma,delta) of convex quadrangles in the plane with given angles  {alpha,beta,gamma,delta} and with the perimeter 2pi. Such quadrangle Q from  F(alpha,beta,gamma,delta) can be considered as a point (x_1,x_2,x_3,x_4) in 4-dimensional space R^4, where {x_1,x_2,x_3,x_4} ---  lengths of edges. Then to F a finite open segment I in R^4 is corresponded. A quadrangle in F, that corresponds to the midpoint of I$is called a balanced quadrangle. Let M be the set of balanced quadrangles. The function f:M -- > M is defined in the following way:  angles of the balanced quadrangle Q', Q'=f(Q), are numerically equal to edges of Q. The map f defines a dynamical system in the space of balanced quadrangles. In this work we study properties of this system.

We consider the damped/driven cubic NLS equation on the torus of a large period L with a small nonlinearity of size λ, a properly scaled random forcing and dissipation. We examine its solutions under the subsequent limit when first λ → 0 and then L → ∞. The first limit, called the limit of discrete turbulence, is known to exist, and in this work we study the second limit L → ∞ for solutions to the equations of discrete turbulence. Namely, we decompose the solutions to formal series in amplitude and study the second order truncation of this series. We prove that the energy spectrum of the truncated solutions becomes close to solutions of a damped/driven nonlinear wave kinetic equation. Kinetic nonlinearity of the latter is similar to that which usually appears in works on wave turbulence, but is different from it (in particular, it is non-autonomous). Apart from tools from analysis and stochastic analysis, our work uses two powerful results from the number theory.

Efficient scalability and process synchronization are critical for achieving high performance in distributed computing environments. Analysis of the scalability is usually done using intensive case studies, which give an answer only for the particular set of model parameters. We found an efficient way to analyze the time evolution in models simulated with the Parallel Discrete Event Simulations (PDES) approach. The essential feature of PDES is the concept of local virtual time (LVT) associated with the evolution of each process of the model. The LVT of processes evaluates in simulations and forms a complicated profile. These profiles remind the profiles of the surface growth in the physical devices. In physics, researchers use the concept of universality, which helps to divide the different regimes of the class’s surface growth—each class is described by some universal laws and does not depend on the details of the model. We demonstrate the applicability of this concept and present a model of LVT profile evolution in Personal Communication Service (PCS) model. The PCS network consists of a square grid of radio ports that serve users in their zone (cell). We build the LVT-PCS model, which describes the evolution of the LVT profile associated with the PCS model. We simulate the PCS model using the ROSS simulator (optimistic PDES) and compare results with those simulated by our LVT-PCS model.We found the profile demonstrates property, which is known in physics as roughening transition. We estimate the values of “critical” exponents for two models, which seem to belong to the same universality class. We believe that the similarity we found can be helpful for the preliminary analysis of the model scalability, process desynchronization, and possible deadlocks.

For the optimal success probability under minimum-error discrimination of N≥2 arbitrary quantum states, we find new general lower and upper bounds and specify the relations between these new general bounds and the general bounds known in the literature. The new upper bound explicitly generalizes to N>2 the form of the Helstrom bound. For N=2, each of our new bounds, lower and upper, reduces to the Helstrom bound.

Our research is dedicated to identifying what allows schools operating in difficult social conditions to show good academic results. We answer this question through the conjugation of two theoretical frameworks: academic resilience and school effectiveness. We analyze several models of school effectiveness and compare resilient and struggling schools through them. The study uses a quantitative and qualitative mixed-methods design. Our main arguments are based on an analysis of interviews conducted with students, parents, teachers, and principals in different schools—3 resilient and 3 struggling. We conclude that the schools differ in the strategies they implement; the main problem facing struggling schools is not the lack of effective elements, but the presence of negative ones; in further studies of school effectiveness, it would be worth using an integrative model that combines both poles.

The paper discusses various aspects of digital environment and activity of enterprises from the Russian manufacturing sector in 2020 using the evidence from business tendency surveys. Based on aggregate sectoral and industrial assessments, such as the Digital Climate Index (DCI), the Digital Intensity Index (DII), the Digital Employment Index (DEI) and the Digital Vulnerability index (DVI), the dynamics of digital development during the COVID-19 crisis in 2020 is described. In general, according to the results obtained, we can conclude that, despite all the negative consequences and uncertainty associated, 2020 became a very significant point in terms of the digital transformation in manufacturing. Manufacturing businesses were both relatively resilient to the adverse business trends caused by the pandemic and were able to absorb the positive digital momentum generated by the pandemic.

We study, both theoretically and experimentally, the features on the current-voltage characteristic of a highly transparent Josephson junction caused by transition of the superconducting leads to the normal state. These features appear due to the suppression of the Andreev excess current. We show that by tracing the dependence of the voltages, at which the transition occurs, on the bath temperature one can obtain valuable information about the cooling mechanisms in the junction. We verify theory predictions by fabricating two highly transparent superconductor-graphene-superconductor (SGS) Josephson junctions with suspended and non-suspended graphene as an interlayer between Al leads. Applying the above mentioned technique we show that the cooling power of the suspended junction depends on the bath temperature as ∝T^3 close to the superconducting critical temperature.

In 2018, the official retirement age in Russia was abruptly raised from 60 to 65 for men and from 55 to 60 for women. The rise was motivated by the necessity to keep the deficit of the Russian Pension Fund, caused by population ageing and a shrinking labor force, under control. During years preceding this decision, the authorities had assured the population that no measures of this sort would be considered. The study assesses the initial causal effects of the 2018 increase in retirement age on the subjective well-being and economic sentiments of Russian individuals. Using the difference-in-differences and the synthetic control approaches, we show that people close to the retirement threshold and presumably most affected by the pension reform became less confident in the current and future economic situation in the country and in their personal future prospects and financial situation.

Using the unexpected outcome of Argentinian presidential primary elections in August 2019, which led to the country’s sovereign default, we investigate how the exposure of international bond funds to Argentinian sovereign bonds affected the discretionary sales of bonds by fund managers and flows by ultimate investors, conditional on fund liquidity and maturity structure. We find that more liquid and longer duration funds exhibit less sensitivity to pre-default funds’ exposure in terms of bond holding growth. Our second finding deals with asymmetric information among funds regarding the restructuring of post-default bonds and varying renegotiation costs. These costs are proxied by funds’ previous experience of holding the defaulted Argentinian debt interacted with fund’s distance to Buenos Aires. We confirm our hypothesis that the experienced North American funds with the lowest renegotiation costs retained more of their holdings of Argentinian bonds than all other groups

Confronted with COVID-19, high-income Gulf countries have done better than most of their middle- and low-income neighbours; Jordan and Morocco are also positive exceptions.

In 2021, Dzhunusov and Zaitseva classified two-dimensional normal affine commutative algebraic monoids. In this work, we extend this classification to noncommutative monoid structures on normal affine surfaces. We prove that two-dimensional algebraic monoids are toric. We also show how to find all monoid structures on a normal toric surface. Every such structure is induced by a comultiplication formula involving Demazure roots. We also give descriptions of opposite monoids, quotient monoids, and boundary divisors.