Publications

This is a brief textbook on complex analysis intended for the students of upper undergraduate or beginning graduate level. The author stresses the aspects of complex analysis that are most important for the student planning to study algebraic geometry and related topics. The exposition is rigorous but elementary: abstract notions are introduced only if they are really indispensable. This approach provides a motivation for the reader to digest more abstract definitions (e.g., those of sheaves or line bundles, which are not mentioned in the book) when he/she is ready for that level of abstraction indeed. In the chapter on Riemann surfaces, several key results on compact Riemann surfaces are stated and proved in the first nontrivial case, i.e. that of elliptic curves.

This special issue of Theory of Computing Systems consists of extended journal papers originally presented at the 13th International Computer Science Symposium in Russia (CSR 2018) held on June 6–10, 2018 in Moscow, Russia. The event was hosted by National Research University Higher School of Economics and chaired by Vladimir V. Podolskii. Preliminary versions of these papers presented at the conference appeared in LNCS 10846. The Program Committee, chaired by Fedor V. Fomin, invited several authors to submit extended journal versions of their papers to this special issue. All submissions were reviewed in accordance with customary high standards.

The book gives a detailed modern account of real and functional analysis. 

Life insurance is one of the substitute investments for social protection at the micro level for individuals and households. Like state social insurance, life insurance mitigates the social risks of aging, unemployment, reduced health, poverty and simultaneously saving for future well-being. Such social reasons and social surroundings and common economic factors affect life insurance. Demographic pressure with the aging of the population, the transformation of social protection and the influence of information and communication technologies impact the social determinants of life insurance. In this work, we assess the relationship between life insurance premiums and social indicators: demographic, labour and social protection in 24 countries of the European Union in 2007–2017. We found that the Gini index, health-care expenditures and average wages have the largest influence on life insurance. Other determinants, such as old dependency and life expectancy ratios, replacement of unemployment, population growth and self-employment, did not show a significant relation with life insurance. When analysing countries, we found a more precise picture: the selected social indicators have a significant impact on life insurance in the Netherlands, Greece and Italy and the smallest in Norway, France and Slovakia. The findings provide policy implications for the development of life insurance in the European Union, as well as for social policy and social insurance.

This book focuses on crisis management in software development which includes forecasting, responding and adaptive engineering models, methods, patterns and practices. It helps the stakeholders in understanding and identifying the key technology, business and human factors that may result in a software production crisis. These factors are particularly important for the enterprise-scale applications, typically considered very complex in managerial and technological aspects and therefore, specifically addressed by the discipline of software engineering. Therefore, this book throws light on the crisis responsive, resilient methodologies and practices; therewith, it also focuses on their evolutionary changes and the resulting benefits.

Akkadian, the oldest surviving Semitic language and one of the most important Ancient Near Eastern languages, is one of the best documented languages of the ancient world. This nine volume encyclopedic set presents a detailed compendium of Akkadian vocabulary that will prove a vital resource for students and scholars of language, Ancient Near Eastern studies, and all those with a wider interest in Akkadian writings.

In this article, our ultimate goal is to transform a graph’s adjacency matrix into a distance matrix. Because cluster density is not observable prior to the actual clustering, our goal is to find a distance whose pairwise minimisation will lead to densely connected clusters. Our thesis is centred on the widely accepted notion that strong clusters are sets of vertices with high induced subgraph density. We posit that vertices sharing more connections are closer to each other than vertices sharing fewer connections. This definition of distance differs from the usual shortest-path distance. At the cluster level, our thesis translates into low mean intra-cluster distances, which reflect high densities. We compare three distance measures from the literature. Our benchmark is the accuracy of each measure’s reflection of intra-cluster density, when aggregated (averaged) at the cluster level. We conduct our tests on synthetic graphs, where clusters and intra-cluster density are known in advance. In this article, we restrict our attention to unweighted graphs with no self-loops or multiple edges. We examine the relationship between mean intra-cluster distances and intra-cluster densities. Our numerical experiments show that Jaccard and Otsuka-Ochiai offer very accurate measures of density, when averaged over vertex pairs within clusters.

The economies of Central and Eastern Europe, Caucasus, and Central Asia (CEECCA) grew at a varying pace in 2000–2019, with an average rate of 6.5 percent per annum (GDP, PPP). This economic progress was accompanied by some positive changes in environmental performance, but not in all areas and not in all countries in the region.

Positive-Unlabeled (PU) learning is an analog to supervised binary classification for the case when only the positive sample is clean, while the negative sample is contaminated with latent instances of positive class and hence can be considered as an unlabeled mixture. The objectives are to classify the unlabeled sample and train an unbiased positive-negative classifier, which generally requires to identify the mixing proportions of positives and negatives first. Recently, unbiased risk estimation framework has achieved state-of-the-art performance in PU learning. This approach, however, exhibits two major bottlenecks. First, the mixing proportions are assumed to be identified, i.e. known in the domain or estimated with additional methods. Second, the approach relies on the classifier being a neural network. In this paper, we propose DEDPUL, a method that solves PU Learning without the aforementioned issues. The mechanism behind DEDPUL is to apply a computationally cheap post-processing procedure to the predictions of any classifier trained to distinguish positive and unlabeled data. Instead of assuming the proportions to be identified, DEDPUL estimates them alongside with classifying unlabeled sample. Experiments show that DEDPUL outperforms the current state-of-the-art in both proportion estimation and PU Classification and is flexible in the choice of the classifier.

Maps and diagrams have long been used by science and education. The results and achievements of geography, astronomy, biology, economics have always been presented in the form of maps. Modern methods and tools of network science allow to deeper understand collaboration because relations between agents of activity are represented as a map. For many collaborative educational systems maps of relations between agents and activity products are built automatically. However, these diagrams are not used in educational practice as tools for better learning. The paper provides examples of how the diagrams were used in educational practice in order to support a group reflection of collaborative activities.

Creativity loosely refers to activities in the visual arts, music, design, film and performance that are primarily intended to produce forms of affect and social meaning. Yet, over the last few decades, creativity has also been explicitly mobilized by governments around the world as a ‘resource’ for achieving economic growth. The creative economy discourse emphasizes individuality, innovation, self-fulfillment, career advancement and the idea of leading exciting lives as remedies to social alienation. This book critically assesses that discourse, and explores how political shifts and new theoretical frameworks are affecting the creative economy in various parts of the world at a time when creative industries are becoming increasingly ‘industrialized.’ Further, it highlights how work inequalities, oligopolistic strategies, competitive logics and unsustainable models are inherent weaknesses of the industrial model of creativity. The interdisciplinary contributions presented here address the operationalization of creative practices in a variety of geographical contexts, ranging from the UK, France and Russia, to Greece, Argentina and Italy, and examine issues concerning art biennials, museums, DIY cultures, technologies, creative writing, copyright laws, ideological formations, craft production and creative co-ops.

‘Language, Linguistics, Communication’ is designed for students, teachers and everyone whose interests lie in the field of language and linguistics. The textbook focuses on building and developing four basic language skills: reading, writing, listening, speaking, in which students are expected to cope with input texts in the discipline and to produce output texts throughout the course.

This book, a philosophical consideration of Soviet socialism, is not meant simply to revisit the communist past; its aim, rather, is to witness certain zones where capitalism’s domination is resisted—the zones of countercapitalist critique, civil society agencies, and theoretical provisions of emancipation or progress—and to inquire to what extent those zones are in fact permeated by unconscious capitalism and thus unwittingly affirm the capitalist condition.

By means of the philosophical and politico-economical consideration of Soviet socialism of the 1960 and 1970s, this book manages to reveal the hidden desire for capitalism in contemporaneous anticapitalist discourse and theory. The research is marked by a broad cross-disciplinary approach based on political economy, philosophy, art theory, and cultural theory that redefines old Cold War and Slavic studies’ views of the post-Stalinist years, as well as challenges the interpretations of this period of historical socialism in Western Marxist thought.

Science, technology and innovation (STI) studies are interrelated, as are STI policies and policy studies. This series of books aims to contribute to improved understanding of these interrelations. Their importance has become more widely recognized, as the role of innovation in driving economic development and fostering societal welfare has become almost conventional wisdom. Interdisciplinary in coverage, the series focuses on the links between STI, business, and the broader economy and society. The series includes conceptual and empirical contributions, which aim to extend our theoretical grasp while offering practical relevance. Relevant topics include the economic and social impacts of STI, STI policy design and implementation, technology and innovation management, entrepreneurship (and related policies), foresight studies, and analysis of emerging technologies. The series is addressed to professionals in research and teaching, consultancies and industry, government and international organizations.

This book is an analysis of the developments associated with the Belt and Road Initiative (B&RI) five years after Xi Jinping announced both the Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB) and the 21st Maritime Silk Road (21MSR). Together, these two dimensions constitute the B&RI, providing the so-called Chinese ‘project of the century’ with regional, inter-regional and global reach. This book aims at assessing the impact of the B&RI in all these dimensions and levels of influence. This is a current and promising theme, not only in the short and medium terms, but also within a broader timescale, reflecting Chinese strategic thinking itself, since Chinese philosophy and culture are oriented towards long-term and inter-generational perspectives. Likewise, both the title of this publication and the way it has been organized result from the empirical perception that China asserts a conservative attitude towards foreign affairs, redesigned in multiple dimensions, to create a perception of domestic unity and global prestige. In this vein of thought, the B&RI is already influencing and will continue to influence, directly or indirectly, the current economic and political order.

The authors introduce ongoing child welfare reform in Russia, consider the international and national context, as well as the main drivers of these reforms and their current results. In addition, a literature review of field is also provided. Child welfare reform in Russia builds on the idea of every child’s right to grow up in a family. The main aim is to deinstitutionalize the child welfare system by promoting adoptions and fostering, restructuring the remaining residential institutions into home-like environments and creating community-based family support services. The chapter introduces the main concepts and terminology used to describe the child welfare system, the research questions of the volume, and employs a neo-institutionalist framework as the theoretical framework of the book. The volume analyses how reform is implemented, which echoes a fundamental change in the ideological premises of child welfare policy. Thus, the reform has shifted the course of the child welfare policy in Russia. The volume examines how the reforms are affecting the institutions and practices of child welfare in Russia, what kind of institutional change has followed the shift in the ideals, and what are the intended and unintended consequences of these reform processes. Finally, the chapter gives a brief overview of the chapters in the volume.

The bond market is a key securities market and emerging economies present exciting, new investment opportunities. This timely book provides insights into these emerging bond markets through empirical models and analytical databases, i.e. Bloomberg, Eikon Refinitiv and the Russian Cbonds.

The book looks at the dynamics of the development of emerging bond markets, their competitiveness, features and patterns using macro and micro level data. It also takes into consideration various securities type i.e. government, corporate, sub-federal and municipal bonds, to identify respective challenges and risks. The book also analyses factors that may inhibit or stimulate a well-balanced financial market. It includes case studies of Asian, Latin American and Russian bond markets, as also as cross-country comparisons.

It will be a useful reference for anyone who is interested to learn more of the bond market and the modelling techniques for critical data analysis.

Background: Between 1999 and 2008 Russia experienced a flare-up of transmission of vivax malaria following its massive importation with more than 500 autochthonous cases in European Russia, the Moscow region being the most affected. The outbreak waned soon after a decrease in importation in mid-2000s and strengthening the control measures. Compared with other post-eradication epidemics in Europe this one was unprecedented by its extension and duration. Methods: The aim of this study is to identify geographical determinants of transmission. The degree of favourability of climate for vivax malaria was assessed by measuring the sum of effective temperatures and duration of season of effective infectivity using data from 22 weather stations. For geospatial analysis, the locations of each of 405 autochthonous cases detected in Moscow region have been ascertained. A MaxEnt method was used for modelling the territorial differentiation of Moscow region according to the suitability of infection re-emergence based on the statistically valid relationships between the distribution of autochthonous cases and environmental and climatic factors. Results: In 1999–2004, in the beginning of the outbreak, meteorological conditions were extremely favourable for malaria in 1999, 2001 and 2002, especially within the borders of the city of Moscow and its immediate surroundings. The greatest number of cases occurred at the northwestern periphery of the city and in the adjoining rural areas. A significant role was played by rural construction activities attracting migrant labour, vegetation density and landscape division. A cut-off altitude of 200 m was observed, though the factor of altitude did not play a significant role at lower altitudes. Most likely, the urban heat island additionally amplified malaria re-introduction. Conclusion: The malariogenic potential in relation to vivax malaria was high in Moscow region, albeit heterogeneous. It is in Moscow that the most favourable conditions exist for vivax malaria re-introduction in the case of a renewed importation. This recent event of large-scale re-introduction of vivax malaria in a temperate area can serve as a case study for further research.

The assessment of bioclimatic conditions at the national scale remains a highly relevant task. It might be one of the main parts of the national strategy for the sustainable development of different regions under changing climatic conditions. This study evaluated the thermal comfort conditions and their changes in Russia according to gridded meteorological data from ERA-Interim reanalysis with a spatial resolution of 0.75o × 0.75o using the two most popular bioclimatic indices based on the human energy balance: physiologically equivalent temperature (PET) and universal thermal comfort index (UTCI). We analyzed the summer and winter means of these indices as well as the repeatability of different thermal stress grades for the current climatological standard normal period (1981–2010) and the trends of these parameters over the 1979–2018 period. We revealed the high diversity of the analyzed parameters in Russia as well as significant differences between the contemporary climate conditions and their changes in terms of mean temperature, mean values of bioclimatic indices, and thermal stress repeatability. Within the country, all degrees of thermal stress were possible; however, severe summer heat stress was rare, and in winter nearly the whole country experienced severe cold stress. Multidirectional changes in bioclimatic conditions were observed in Russia against the general background of climate warming. The European part of the country was most susceptible to climate change because it experiences significant changes both in summer and winter thermal stress repeatability. Intense Arctic warming was not reflected in significant changes in thermal stress repeatability.

Abstract. The article is devoted to a most specific type of Languages for specific purposes – the language of literature. The organizing law of the unity of all elements of art form creates style. It turns text into complete identity reproducing the unity of life in the art world created by the author. One of the carriers of style is rhythm. Rhythm turns a simple sequence of speech elements into a significant sequence – a unity of meaning-making process. The objective of the article is to master the working approaches to the intricacies of lingual rhythm as related to the informational content of utterance and to demonstrate the living connection between the rhythmic patterns of utter­ances and their semantic-functional patterns. Rhythm defined as a highly integrated substance is interpreted in terms of the organic part of the general in­formation rendered by topical chunks of speech. In imaginative speech, it constitutes an important functional sphere powerfully affecting the reader’s perceptions, both rational and emotional. The hypothesis proposed is that at the basis of all speech production lies rhythm as alternation of repeated elements of various categorical statuses. 

This article examines the attitude of the Russian society toward the Russian-Chinese relations in general and toward the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) megaproject in particular. An analysis is made of the Russian scientific, official and expert discourse, based on methods of critical geopolitics, as well as investigating the grass-roots ideas concerning China and the BRI Initiative. It is found that expert discourse is dominated by negative and neutral analytical publications, whereas official discourse and grass-rout ideas have a clearly positive connotation, although occasionally with some wariness. The critical nature of expert discourse in respect of China reflects distrust Chinese politics from Russian specialists, associated with the lack of comparability of the demographic and economic potentials of the two countries and the ambitions of the Chinese leadership. It is established that in foreign scientific circles, the Russian strategy of the “turn to the East” is perceived skeptically. The authors do not believe in a real possibility that Chinese and Russian projects can be reconciled in the implementation of the strategic interests of the Russian Federation, referring to the different interests of the two countries. It is noted that the fears of unequal competition are encouraged by the Chinese side approach to joint projects focused primarily on the needs of China, as well as by the obvious difference in the interests of the two States. The main obstacle to a further development of bilateral cooperation is a credibility gap on either side of the Russian-Chinese border. Field studies in the Russian-Chinese borderland in Zabaikalskii krai confirmed this conclusion, showing that at the regional and local level the Russian-Chinese relations are sharply asymmetric.

We show that both the dKP hierarchy and its strict version can be extended to a wider class of deformations satisfying a larger set of Lax equations. We prove that both extended hierarchies have appropriate linearizations allowing a geometric construction of their solutions.

National neighbourhood have a significant influence on the life of people living along the state borders. They shape human interactions across borders and border residents’ attitude towards neighbours. Many concepts like ‘neighbourhood’, ‘proximity’, ‘trust’, ‘(un)familiarity’, and ‘otherness’ are usually used to explain this processes in border studies. However, insufficient attention has been paid to the comparing of perceptions, life strategies and everyday life of borderland population depends on neighbouring policy, border regime and neighbourship. Here we focus on different Russian borders with Ukraine (the new contested border in Crimea), Kazakhstan (the EAEU`s internal border), and China (old international and contact border) using different sources of information, including expert interviews as well as field observations and focus groups conducted with locals. We find that people differentiate between the neighbors they know and the neighbouring state they do not trust. Significant differences between neighbouring territories, unfamiliarity, and otherness are not allowed to get in the way of contact, because it is this contact that allows local residents to make a living. In conclusion, our results suggest that while the objective differences between the various sections of Russian borders serve to diversify the neighbourhood situations, their subjective perceptions and social representations serve to unite them.

We examine the effects of computer-based versus paper-based assessment of critical thinking skills, adapted from English (in the U.S.) to Chinese. Using data collected based on a random assignment between the two modes in multiple Chinese colleges, we investigate mode effects from multiple perspectives: mean scores, measurement precision, item functioning (i.e. item difficulty and discrimination), response behavior (i.e. test completion and item omission), and user perceptions. Our findings shed light on assessment and item properties that could be the sources of mode effects. At the test level, we find that the computer-based test is more difficult and more speeded than the paper-based test. We speculate that these differences are attributable to the test’s structure, its high demands on reading, and test-taking flexibility afforded under the paper testing mode. Item-level evaluation allows us to identify item characteristics that are prone to mode effects, including targeted cognitive skill, response type, and the amount of adaptation between modes. Implications for test design are discussed, and actionable design suggestions are offered with the goal of minimizing mode effect.

Though the agreement on ceasefire between Armenian and Azerbaijani troops in Nagorno-Karabakh was concluded more than 25 years ago, there is no progress in the negotiations between the sides. The conflict is intrinsically related to the partition of territory between the areas de facto controlled by the non-recognized Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh, boundaries of which do not match the administrative borders of Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region in the Soviet period, and Azerbaijan. This paper considers the geopolitical situation of Nagorno-Karabakh through the lenses of its cross-border interactions and bordering. This notion widely used in contemporary border studies means not only border delimitation and management, but also the constant process of change in their functions, regime, and social importance. Such change can result, for instance, from the transformation of political strategies, shifts on the international arena and bilateral relations, currency exchange rates and global market prices, as well as in the course of the everyday practice and interactions. The authors analyzed first the existing pattern of borders in the context of security. Then they characterized de-bordering and interactions between Nagorno-Karabakh and its patron state, Armenia, describing the adaptation of the Karabakhi population and economy to the lack of international recognition. The demarcation line with Azerbaijan remains one of the rare cases of a completely closed border. One of the main and potentially long-term obstacles in finding a solution is the cultivation of the «image of the enemy» on both sides of this border.

The experimental results on the ratios of branching fractions R(D)=B(B→Dτ-ντ)/B(B→Dℓ-νℓ) and R(D∗)=B(B→D∗τ-ντ)/B(B→D∗ℓ-νℓ), where ℓ denotes an electron or a muon, show a long-standing discrepancy with the standard model predictions, and might hint at a violation of lepton flavor universality. We report a new simultaneous measurement of R(D) and R(D∗), based on a data sample containing 772×106 BB events recorded at the ϒ(4S) resonance with the Belle detector at the KEKB e+e- collider. In this analysis the tag-side B meson is reconstructed in a semileptonic decay mode and the signal-side τ is reconstructed in a purely leptonic decay. The measured values are R(D)=0.307±0.037±0.016 and R(D∗)=0.283±0.018±0.014, where the first uncertainties are statistical and the second are systematic. These results are in agreement with the standard model predictions within 0.2, 1.1, and 0.8 standard deviations for R(D), R(D∗), and their combination, respectively. This work constitutes the most precise measurements of R(D) and R(D∗) performed to date as well as the first result for R(D) based on a semileptonic tagging method. © 2020 authors.

In this work, we present a Real-Time (RT), on-site, machine-learning-based methodology for identifying human cancers. The presented approach is reliable, effective, cost-effective, and non-invasive method, which is based on Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy—a vibrational method with the ability to detect changes as a result of molecular vibration bonds using Infrared (IR) radiation in human tissues and cells. Medical IR Optical System (IROS) is a tabletop device for real-time tissue diagnosis that utilizes FTIR spectroscopy and the Attenuated Total Reflectance (ATR) principle to accurately diagnose the tissue. The combined device and method were used for RT diagnosis and characterization of normal and pathological tissues ex vivo/in vitro. The solution methodology is to apply Machine Learning (ML) classifier that can be used to differentiate between cancer, normal, and other pathologies. Excellent results were achieved by applying feedforward backpropagation Artificial Neural Network (ANN) with supervised learning classification on 76 wet samples. ANN method shows a high performance to classify; overall, 98.7% (75/76 biopsies) of the predictions are correctly classified and 1.3% (1/76 biopsies) is wrong classification.

In this paper, we consider the task of one-shot object detection, which consists in detecting objects defined by a single demonstration. Differently from the standard object detection, the classes of objects used for training and testing do not overlap. We build the one-stage system that performs localization and recognition jointly. We use dense correlation matching of learned local features to find correspondences, a feed-forward geometric transformation model to align features and bilinear resampling of the correlation tensor to compute the detection score of the aligned features. All the components are differentiable, which allows end-to-end training. Experimental evaluation on several challenging domains (retail products, 3D objects, buildings and logos) shows that our method can detect unseen classes (e.g., toothpaste when trained on groceries) and outperforms several baselines by a significant margin. Our code is available online.

The article deals with language as cultural heritage of nation. Russian students of English when facing lingual phenomena that do not occur in their mother tongue avoid certain typically English lexical units and structures, which impoverish their speech and violate inter- cultural communication. To help students get insights into the inner structure of the units and expose the mechanism of their functioning, we turn to the ideas of Structuralism – Theory of Oppositions – and present the meaning of a unit by means of paradigmatic correlation of lingual forms by which certain functions are expressed. When word-forms are represented in the binary privative opposition framework, it reveals a bundle of differential features (strong features) exposing its categorical properties. By means of gradual opposition framework exposed are the remnants of the extinct dual rank of the category of number in modern English, whose function has since Indo-European period of its development been replaced by simple plural. It is evident that the seme of duality is present in the lexico-semantic structure of certain English lexemes, which expresses the concept of two as contrasted to many. Component analysis helps reveal lexical units containing the seme of duality in their lexico-semantic structure and to study their functioning in speech in the system of modern English. Traces of numerical duality are also found in numerous binary oppositions of grammatical categories and in some fossilized forms. The worked-out series of training exercises might give proper results for students to better understand the mechanisms of the English language operating. The article deals with language as cultural heritage of nation. Russian students of English when facing lingual phenomena that do not occur in their mother tongue avoid certain typically English lexical units and structures, which impoverish their speech and violate inter- cultural communication. To help students get insights into the inner structure of the units and expose the mechanism of their functioning, we turn to the ideas of Structuralism – Theory of Oppositions – and present the meaning of a unit by means of paradigmatic correlation of lingual forms by which certain functions are expressed. When word-forms are represented in the binary privative opposition framework, it reveals a bundle of differential features (strong features) exposing its categorical properties. By means of gradual opposition framework exposed are the remnants of the extinct dual rank of the category of number in modern English, whose function has since Indo-European period of its development been replaced by simple plural. It is evident that the seme of duality is present in the lexico-semantic structure of certain English lexemes, which expresses the concept of two as contrasted to many. Component analysis helps reveal lexical units containing the seme of duality in their lexico-semantic structure and to study their functioning in speech in the system of modern English. Traces of numerical duality are also found in numerous binary oppositions of grammatical categories and in some fossilized forms. The worked-out series of training exercises might give proper results for students to better understand the mechanisms of the English language operating.

Recent research has shown the advantages of using autoencoders based on deep neural networks for collaborative filtering. In particular, the recently proposed Mult-VAE model, which used the multinomial likelihood variational autoencoders, has shown excellent results for top-N recommendations. In this work, we propose the Recommender VAE (RecVAE) model that originates from our research on regularization techniques for variational autoencoders. RecVAE introduces several novel ideas to improve Mult-VAE, including a novel composite prior distribution for the latent codes, a new approach to setting the β hyperparameter for the β-VAE framework, and a new approach to training based on alternating updates. In experimental evaluation, we show that RecVAE significantly outperforms previously proposed autoencoder-based models, including Mult-VAE and RaCT, across classical collaborative filtering datasets, and present a detailed ablation study to assess our new developments.

Increased attention to the growth of collaborative consumption (CC) is primarily connected to rapid digital transformation and spread of information technology, in both developed and emerging markets. CC affects most areas of everyday life, changing transportation methods (Uber), short-term rent (Airbnb), ways of entertainment (Youtube), tasks (TaskRabbit), and financing (Kickstarter). As the younger generation representatives grew up in the era of social network and cyberspace, СС seems essential for them. The main objective of this study is to identify the typology of young customers based on their attitude to CC adoption factors in emerging markets, and specifically, the Russian market. The paper attempts to bridge the theoretical gaps by analyzing and systematizing different approaches to understanding the phenomenon of CC, considering the factors that affect СС of different generations. Based on the results of an online survey of 2038 Russian users, CC adoption factors for the younger generation have been identified. Based on the results of the online survey of 2038 Russian CC services users, seven factors of the CC adoption by the younger generation: difficulty of CC adoption, risk of fraud, economic and environmental benefits, hygienic issues, ownership as a status symbol, CC as a modern lifestyle, social norms, and approval of the reference group; and five clusters of the CC users have been identified.

This chapter provides an overview of the basic properties of the languages of the Nakh-Dagestanian (East Caucasian) family. Given the size of the family, we cannot cover even the most typical features in full here, let alone describe details of the variation that exists. Likewise, we cannot do full justice to all individual languages or even branches within the family and must instead confine the discussion to occasional mentions of languages and branches here and there. The goal of this chapter is to complement the body of previously published surveys of the family and its branches, such as van den Berg (2005b), Bokarev and Lomtatidze (1967), Klimov and Alekseev (1980), Smeets (1994), Alekseev (1998b), Hewitt (2004), and Job (2004), and to provide a state-of-the-art update on the major issues in the grammar of Nakh-Dagestanian. Where appropriate, we refer the reader to other chapters in this volume or to existing family- or branch-wide overview studies of specific phenomena. For reasons of space, however, we do not provide references to individual grammatical descriptions, except when citing examples from the literature. Examples without references are drawn from our own fieldwork.

The chapter presents an overview of grammaticalization processes in the Lezgic languages, which constitute a group of the East Caucasian (Nakh-Daghestanian) family.

Recently some specific classes of non-smooth and non-Lipsch-itz convex optimization problems were considered by Yu. Nesterov and H. Lu. We consider convex programming problems with similar smoothness conditions for the objective function and functional constraints. We introduce a new concept of an inexact model and propose some analogues of switching subgradient schemes for convex programming problems for the relatively Lipschitz-continuous objective function and functional constraints. Some class of online convex optimization problems is considered. The proposed methods are optimal in the class of optimization problems with relatively Lipschitz-continuous objective and functional constraints.

Recent developments in the apparel market created new tasks for computer vision application. One such challenge is designing a system for trying on clothes virtually in real-time. Proposed solutions require setting up a special stationary system for body capture and mostly generate animated avatar instead of overlaying the garments in real-time. We propose a framework that utilizes state-of-the-art monocular-based 3D skeleton reconstruction and parametric body generation techniques allowing to operate under constrained resources, such as smartphones. In addition, we also consider the problem of dealing with visual artifacts as a result of 3D projection on a real-time image and design a solution to reduce them based on iterative closest point method. © 2020 IEEE.

The equations of Loewner type can be derived in two very different contexts: one of them is complex analysis and the theory of parametric onformal maps and the other one is the theor of integrable systems.In this paper we compare the both approaches. After recalling the derivation of Loewner equations based on complex analysis we review one- and multi-variable reductions of dispersionless integrable hierarchies (dKP, dBKP, dToda and dDKP). The one-variable reductions are described by solutions of different versions of Loewner equation: chordal (rational) for dKP, quadrant for dBKP, radial (trigonometric) for dToda and elliptic for DKP.We also discuss multi-variable reductions which are given by a system of Loewner equations supplemented by a system of patial differential equations of hydrodynamic type. The solvability of the hydrodynamic type system can be proved by means of the generalized hodograph method.

The paper presents the first description of the verb paradigm in Kina Rutul, a single-village variety of the Rutul language (Lezgic, Nakh-Daghestanian) spoken in southern Daghestan. First, I make a distinction between the stative verbs with a reduced paradigm and morphologically canonical verbs with a fuller paradigm. I present the inventory and the paradigm of statives, some of which play a key role in the derivation of periphrastic forms. For canonical verbs, I describe all the synthetic forms derived from the three main stems, namely the perfective stem, the imperfective stem and the infinitive stem (the imperative/optative forms lie outside the scope of the paper). Then I analyse the structure of periphrastic forms, which are composed of a non-finite form and an auxiliary. 

The present study sought to test the hypothesis that the production of speech and the comprehension of speech in the left temporal lobe can be anatomically disassociated. Moreover, it is aimed to show that the standard intraoperative object naming task is not sufficient to test all the functionally essential areas in the left temporal lobe. In the introductory part of the article we described the existing information about the left temporal lobe and the awake surgery procedure.  In the course of the study, we collected and analyzed the data from intraoperative brain mapping of 25 patients with brain lesions – gliomas or pharmacoresistant epilepsy, who underwent awake craniotomy. All the patient went through intraoperative language mapping with the use of direct electrical stimulation. In order to map language production and comprehension modalities, in addition to the classical object naming task we used an additional task, the phonological judgment task. The results showed substantial dissociation between mapping of two tasks. According to these findings, we can conclude that the object naming task alone is not suitable for adequate brain mapping of the left temporal cortex. The same dissociation may be regarded as an argument in favor of the anatomical dissociation of the production and comprehension of speech in the left temporal cortex.

The Article Studies The Predictive Capabilities Of Qualitative Assessments Of Employment Expectations Obtained From Business Tendency Observations Of Entrepreneurial Activity, Which Are Currently A Widespread Source Of Economic Information Both In National And International Practice. The Study Is Based On Market Surveys Conducted By Rosstat, Which Characterize The Expected Level Of Business Activity In The Segment Of Small Enterprises From The 1st Quarter Of 2008 To The 2nd Quarter Of 2019. The Aim Of The Study Is To Prove The Existence Of A Stable Statistically Significant Relationship Between Predicted Estimates Of Employment With The Dynamics Of Growth Rate Cycles Of The Corresponding Quantitative Statistical Macro-Aggregates In Various Sectors And, Therefore, The Relevance Of Predictive Models Of Employment Change Based On The Results Of Business Surveys. It Is Shown That Entrepreneurial Assessments And Expectations Are Effective Predictive Indicators For Predicting Employment Dynamics In The Short Term (Two To Four Months) And Identifying Turning Points In Employment Dynamics In The Small Sector. Small Business, As One Of The Most Sensitive Segments, Is One Of The First To React To The Current Changes, Which Makes Forecasting In This Segment Especially Important.

We offer a new approach to proving the Chen-Donaldson-Sun theorem which we demonstrate with a series of examples. We discuss the existence of a construction of a special metric on stable vector bundles over the surfaces formed by a families of curves and its relation to the one-dimensional cycles in the moduli space of stable bundles on curves.  

The shadow of trade protectionism is hanging over the growth of world economy, affecting both developed and emerging economies. Motivated by anti-globalization rhetoric policymakers in the emerging and transitioning countries are increasingly using trade protectionism and other restrictive measures to shield domestic producers from foreign competition and strengthen own countries’ position in the global trade. Obviously, such interventions have impact on marketing strategies of firms domiciled and hosted in such markets. However, firm’s marketing and brand responses to trade protectionism have not been studied in the prior marketing literature. We aim to address this gap in two empirical studies, which utilize food embargo (as trade protectionist action) imposed by Russian government in 2014 as context of our study. For the first study, we surveyed marketing managers of 178 Russian and international brands and assessed differences in dimensions of brand strategy. We find that owners of the domestic umbrella brands put more emphasize on brand orientation, differentiation, and creation strong image than firms owning foreign brands. Alternatively, brand strategy of the foreign individual product brands focuses more on communicating functional benefits. The second study will adopt natural experiment design and use secondary data (trademark filings, financial information, and consumer attitudinal data) to measure impact of trade protectionism on brand differentiation and extension in a large sample of domestic and foreign firms/brands.

Inflation in advanced economies is low by historical standards but there is no threat of deflation. Slower economic growth is caused by supply-side constraints rather than low inflation. Below-the-target inflation does not damage the reputation of central banks. Thus, central banks should not try to bring inflation back to the targeted level of 2%. Rather, they should revise the inflation target downwards and publicly explain the rationale for such a move. Risks to the independence of central banks come from their additional mandates (beyond price stability) and populist politics.

Since the Euromaidan protests (2013-2014), Ukraine has had two presidents and four governments. In a difficult environment of external aggression, they have initiated various reforms aimed at bringing the country closer to the European Union and boosting growth. Progress has been partial and relies on international backing, with limited domestic appetite for reform.

Motivated by convex problems with linear constraints and, in particular, by entropy-regularized optimal transport, we consider the problem of finding ε-approximate stationary points, i.e. points with the norm of the objective gradient less than ε, of convex functions with Lipschitz p-th order derivatives. Lower complexity bounds for this problem were recently proposed in [Grapiglia and Nesterov, arXiv:1907.07053]. However, the methods presented in the same paper do not have optimal complexity bounds. We propose two optimal up to logarithmic factors methods with complexity bounds O~(ε−2(p+1)/(3p+1)) and O~(ε−2/(3p+1)) with respect to the initial objective residual and the distance between the starting point and solution respectively.

Ubiquitous in machine learning regularized empirical risk minimization problems are often composed of several blocks which can be treated using different types of oracles, e.g., full gradient, stochastic gradient or coordinate derivative. Optimal oracle complexity is known and achievable separately for the full gradient case, the stochastic gradient case, etc. We propose a generic framework to combine optimal algorithms for different types of oracles in order to achieve separate optimal oracle complexity for each block, i.e. for each block the corresponding oracle is called the optimal number of times for a given accuracy. As a particular example, we demonstrate that for a combination of a full gradient oracle and either a stochastic gradient oracle or a coordinate descent oracle our approach leads to the optimal number of oracle calls separately for the full gradient part and the stochastic/coordinate descent part.

Let $T\subset\mathbb{R}$ and $(X,\mathcal{U})$ be a uniform space with an at most countable gage of pseudometrics $\{d_p:p\in\mathcal{P}\}$ of the uniformity $\mathcal{U}$. Given $f\in X^T$ (=\,the family of all functions from $T$ into $X$), the {\em approximate variation\/} of $f$ is the two-parameter family $\{V_{\varepsilon,p}(f):\varepsilon>0,p\in\mathcal{P}\}$, where $V_{\varepsilon,p}(f)$ is the greatest lower bound of Jordan's variations $V_p(g)$ on $T$ with respect to $d_p$ of all functions $g\in X^T$ such that $d_p(f(t),g(t))\le\varepsilon$ for all $t\in T$. We establish the following pointwise selection principle: {\em If a pointwise relatively sequentially compact sequence of functions $\{f_j\}_{j=1}^\infty\subset X^T$ is such that $\limsup_{j\to\infty}V_{\varepsilon,p}(f_j)<\infty$ for all $\varepsilon>0$ and $p\in\mathcal{P}$, then it contains a subsequence which converges pointwise on $T$ to a bounded regulated function $f\in X^T$.} We illustrate this result by appropriate examples, and present a characterization of regulated functions $f\in X^T$ in terms of the approximate variation.  

We study the problem of fairly allocating indivisible goods and focus on the classic fairness notion of proportionality. The indivisibility of the goods is long known to pose highly non-trivial obstacles to achieving fairness, and a very vibrant line of research has aimed to circumvent them using appropriate notions of approximate fairness. Recent work has established that even approximate versions of proportionality (PROPx) may be impossible to achieve even for small instances, while the best known achievable approximations (PROP1) are much weaker. We introduce the notion of proportionality up to the maximin item (PROPm) and show how to reach an allocation satisfying this notion for any instance involving up to five agents with additive valuations. PROPm provides a well motivated middle-ground between PROP1 and PROPx, while also capturing some elements of the well-studied maximin share (MMS) benchmark: another relaxation of proportionality that has attracted a lot of attention.

This paper presents a compositional conformance checking approach between nested Petri nets and event logs of multi-agent systems. By projecting an event log onto model components, one can perform conformance checking between each projected log and the corresponding component. We formally demonstrate the validity of our approach proving that, to check fitness of a nested Petri net is equivalent to check fitness of each of its components. Leveraging the multi-agent system structure of nested Petri nets, this approach may provide specific conformance diagnostics for each system component as well as to avoid to compute artificial boundaries when decomposing a model for conformance checking.

How can industrial policies lead to bank distress? In the 1890s, the Russian Empire, when undergoing rapid state-led industrialisation, grew by foreign capital inflows into the national debt and by the state’s procurement of industrial output. Concurrently, state policies incentivised industry to expand production. In 1899, the inflow of foreign capital fell sharply, initiating a financial crisis. Using newly-collected historical data and extensive narrative evidence, I find that government development policies were responsible for the industrial distress and, consequently, for the bank losses in the crisis. I also find that the banks which experienced greater distress had more personal connections to top government officials. These banks also had more personal ties to heavy industrial companies.

This paper represents a review of strategic level S&T policies in several leading (mostly OECDmember) countries. How are science and technology leadership being targeted and realized in most developed economies? What are the composition and drivers of such policies? How do the S&T policies and corresponding challenges transform over the last decade? These and some other questions constitute a discussion based on desk research comprising strategic documents, adopted in Germany, Sweden, China, Korea, and Japan. The outcomes provide certain S&T strategic options for further discussion, in terms of both, policy coordination and meeting the future challenges.

Adaptive introgression - the flow of adaptive genetic variation between species or populations - has attracted significant interest in recent years and it has been implicated in a number of cases of adaptation, from pesticide resistance and immunity, to local adaptation. Despite this, methods for identification of adaptive introgression from population genomic data are lacking. Here, we present Ancestry_HMM-S, a Hidden Markov Model based method for identifying genes undergoing adaptive introgression and quantifying the strength of selection acting on them. Through extensive validation, we show that this method performs well on moderately sized datasets for realistic population and selection parameters. We apply Ancestry_HMM-S to a dataset of an admixed Drosophila melanogaster population from South Africa and we identify 18 loci which show signatures of adaptive introgression, four of which have previously been shown to confer resistance to insecticides. Ancestry_HMM-S provides a powerful method for inferring adaptive introgression in datasets that are typically collected when studying admixed populations. This method will enable powerful insights into the genetic consequences of admixture across diverse populations. Ancestry_HMM-S can be downloaded from https://github.com/jesvedberg/Ancestry_HMM-S/.

We introduce a family of linear relations between cell-zeta values that have a form similar to product map relations and jointly with them imply stuffle relations between multiple zeta values.

We apply Weyl n-algebras to prove formality theorems for higher Hochschild cohomology. We present two approaches: via propagators and via the factorization complex. It is shown that the second approach is equivalent to the first one taken with a new family of propagators we introduce.