Publications

Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference Neurobiology of Speech and Language Organised by the Laboratory of Behavioural Neurodynamics, Saint Petersburg State University September, 2019. Edited by Olga Shcherbakova, Yury Shtyrov Saint Petersburg, Russia

Continuing miniaturization of electronic devices, together with the quickly growing number of nanotechnological applications, demands a profound understanding of the underlying physics. Most of the fundamental problems of modern condensed matter physics involve various aspects of quantum transport and fluctuation phenomena at the nanoscale. In nanostructures, electrons are usually confined to a limited volume and interact with each other and lattice ions, simultaneously suffering multiple scattering events on impurities, barriers, surface imperfections, and other defects. Electron interaction with other degrees of freedom generally yields two major consequences, quantum dissipation and quantum decoherence. In other words, electrons can lose their energy and ability for quantum interference even at very low temperatures. These two different, but related, processes are at the heart of all quantum phenomena discussed in this book.This book presents copious details to facilitate the understanding of the basic physics behind a result and the learning to technically reproduce the result without delving into extra literature. The book subtly balances the description of theoretical methods and techniques and the display of the rich landscape of the physical phenomena that can be accessed by these methods. It is useful for a broad readership ranging from master's and PhD students to postdocs and senior researchers.

 

What can be done to improve East and West Bridges? What’s the role of interculturalists in East and West Bridging Building Capacity? How can we create training opportunity for interculturalists, thus to develop their East and West sensitivity, and consequently the knowledge and competence that can be for them useful to increase East and West reciprocal worldview’s understanding, and to forge intercultural dialogue and cooperation?

These were the questions that inspired the organization of East & west Conference, that for the first time put together SIETAR Russia and SIETAR Europa members, and that took place from 26th to 28th of October 2018 at the Higher School of Economics (HSE) in Puskin, Russia (nearby St. Petersburg).

\East & West 2018 event intended to create a cross-boarders learning space, where SIETAR members, from the fresh establish SIETAR Russia, and from the old established SIETAR Europa members, could meet openly and learn from each other, from each other’s culture, and from each other’s cultural perspectives. And this is what happened.

 

This book deals with mathematical modeling, namely, it describes the mathematical model of heat transfer in a silicon cathode of small (nano) dimensions with the possibility of partial melting taken into account.  This mathematical model is based on the phase field system, i.e., on a contemporary generalization of Stefan-type free boundary problems. The approach used is not purely mathematical but is based on the understanding of the solution structure (construction and study of asymptotic solutions) and computer calculations. The book presents an algorithm for numerical solution of the equations of the mathematical model including its parallel implementation. The results of numerical simulation concludes the book. The book is intended for specialists in the field of heat transfer and field emission processes and can be useful for senior students and postgraduates.​

This book analyzes the state of global governance in the current geopolitical environment. It evaluates the main challenges and discusses potential opportunities for compromise in international cooperation. The book’s analysis is based on the universal criteria of global political stability and the UN framework of sustainable development. By examining various global problems, including global economic inequality, legal and political aspects of access to resources, international trade, and climate change, as well as the attendant global economic and political confrontations between key global actors, the book identifies a growing crisis and the pressing need to transform the current system of global governance. In turn, it discusses various instruments, measures and international regulation mechanisms that can foster international cooperation in order to overcome global problems.

Addressing a broad range of topics, e.g. the international environmental regime, global financial problems, issues in connection with the energy transition, and the role of BRICS countries in global governance, the book will appeal to scholars in international relations, economics and law, as well as policy-makers in government offices and international organizations.

The EPiC Series in Language and Linguistics publishes high quality collections of papers in language, linguistics and related areas.

Language policy and usage in the post-communist region have continually attracted wide political, media, and expert attention since the disintegration of the USSR in 1991. How are these issues politicized in contemporary Estonia, Latvia, and Ukraine? This study presents a cross-cultural qualitative and quantitative analysis of publications in leading Russian-language blogs and news websites of these three post-Soviet states during the period of 2004–2017. The most notable difference observed between Ukraine and the two Baltic countries is that many Russian-writing users in Ukraine’s internet tend to support the position that the state language, i.e. Ukrainian, is discriminated against and needs special protection by the state, whereas the majority of the Russian-speaking commentators on selected Estonian and Latvian news websites advocate for introducing Russian as a second state language. Despite attempts of Ukraine’s government to Ukrainize public space, the position of Ukrainian is still perceived, even by many Russian-writing commentators and bloggers, as being ‘precarious’ and ‘vulnerable’. This became especially visible in debates after the Revolution of Dignity, when the number of supporters of the introduction of Russian as second state language significantly decreased. In the Russian-language sector of Estonian and Latvian news websites and blogs, in contrast, the majority of online users continually reproduce the image of ‘victims’ of nation-building. They often claim that their political, as well as economic rights, are significantly limited in comparison to ethnic Estonians and Latvians. The results of Maksimovtsova’s research illustrate that, notwithstanding differences between the Estonian as well as Latvian cases, on the one hand, and Ukraine, on the other, there is an ongoing process of convergence of debates in Ukraine to those held in the other two countries analyzed in terms of an increased degree of ‘discursive decommunization’ and ‘derussification’.

Is it possible for Russian energy companies to develop an effective business strategy based on the restrictions and rules of strategic documents of national scale? Today Russian Energy Strategy sets the benchmarks for business. The set of methods allows for the analysis of open sources and materials for the development of national and corporate strategies. Scenario conditions of development are one of the areas of analysis. The CGE model is used by the World Bank, IMF, OECD and the European Commission for studying economic scenarios, but it has not found applicaton in the Russian energy strategy. Other management technologies in demand by Russian companies are not used in the energy strategy either (e.g.balanced scorecard).

World experience confirms the possibility of adjusting corporate strategies for the benefit of society. Danish Energy Strategy prescribes a smooth transition to alternative energy sources and active implementation of smart energy resources. Experience of Norway in this area is also important. The third energy package of the EU defines the rules of the game in the European market influencing the business models, strategies and long-term deliveries of external counterparties.

Taking into account not only the world trends: slower growth in demand, diversifying energy structure, increasing competitiveness of renewable energy sources, increasing supply from developing countries, tightening climate norms, but also other factors (e.g. Russia being under sanctions, etc.) will allow the company to act as a partner of the state in some issues, and at the same time as an independent entity: its strategy is determined by the board of directors. Modern management technologies allow us to specify and quantify the characteristics of the national energy strategy, and to reflect the priorities in the development strategies of companies. The conditions of the state policy and the parameters of the companies' strategies will have more points of contact and reduce the risk of deviation from the declared goals. The adjustment of the restrictions and rules of the national energy strategy will reduce the risks of imbalance in the actions of society and business. Revision of the program document is possible due to organizational design and methodological support.

This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the gapping dataset for Russian that consists of 7.5k sentences with gapping (as well as 15k relevant negative sentences) and comprises data from various genres: news, fiction, social media and technical texts. The dataset was prepared for the Automatic Gapping Resolution Shared Task for Russian (AGRR-2019) - a competition aimed at stimulating the development of NLP tools and methods for processing of ellipsis. In this paper, we pay special attention to the gapping resolution methods that were introduced within the shared task as well as an alternative test set that illustrates that our corpus is a diverse and representative subset of Russian language gapping sufficient for effective utilization of machine learning techniques.

The coursebook is aimed at systematization and generalization of students ' knowledge in the field of English grammar. It consists of 14 chapters, including theoretical information on the main grammatical topics and training exercises.

This coursebook designed for 1-2 year students of the academic bachelor level of English language proficiency at level A1–B1 (Elementary – Intermediate), students in areas of training 01.03.01 Mathematics, 01.03.02 "Applied mathematics and Informatics", 09.03.04 Software engineering, 38.03.01 "Economics", 38.03.02 "Management of business", 38.03.05 "Business-Informatics", 40.03.01 "Jurisprudence", 45.03.01 "Philology", 45.03.03 "Fundamental and applied linguistics", the level of higher education – bachelor's degree (qualification: academic/applied BA).

As a tribute to their academic teacher and to further his interests, the students of Prof. Dr. Laurent Waelkens collected fifteen scholarly contributions on ius commune graeco-romanum, written by academics from eleven different countries, mainly but not exclusively from Eastern Europe. The book consists of three main parts. In the first part, four authors focus on the Graeco-Roman law in the Roman Empire itself. In the second part, five contributions concern the influence of Graeco-Roman law outside of the Byzantine Empire. The six contributions of the third and final part study the impact of the Western ius commune tradition on Eastern European countries. Thus, the volume highlights the continued importance of the study of Roman law for the understanding of our common pan-European legal heritage.

in the present paper author explains the results of using Smart TV as a tool for Industry 4.0, in particular for media industry, also measuring of Quality-of-Service and new business development. A Smart TV is a single connected device or intelligent sensor which increases industry performance through the number of services by using the existing network infrastructure. Thanks to special tracking and analyzing information on board Smart TVs help to improve the service for VoD service provider and product quality for Vendor. Results of applying several methods for problem solving will be reviewed at present material

This book concentrates on in-depth explanation of a few methods to address core issues, rather than presentation of  a multitude of methods that are popular among the scientists. An added value of this edition is that I am trying to address two features of the brave new world that materialized after the first edition was written in 2010. These features are the emergence of “Data science” and changes in student cognitive skills in the process of global digitalization.  The birth of Data science gives me more opportunities in delineating the field of data analysis. An overwhelming majority of both theoreticians and practition-ers are inclined to consider the notions of ‘data analysis” (DA) and “machine learning” (ML) as synonymous. There are, however, at least two differences between the two. First comes the difference in perspectives. ML is to equip computers with methods and rules to see through regularities of the environment - and behave accordingly. DA is to enhance conceptual understanding. These goals are not inconsistent indeed, which explains a huge overlap between DA and ML. However, there are situations in which these perspectives are not consistent.  Regarding the current students’ cognitive habits, I came to the conclusion that they prefer to immediately get into the “thick of it”.  Therefore, I streamlined the presentation of multidimensional methods. These methods are now organized in four Chapters, one of which presents correlation learning (Chapter 3). Three other Chapters present summarization methods both quantitative (Chapter 2) and categorical (Chapters 4 and 5). Chapter 4 relates to finding and characterizing partitions by using K-means clustering and its extensions. Chapter 5 relates to hierarchical and separative cluster structures. Using encoder-decoder data recovery approach brings forth a number of mathematically proven interrelations between methods that are used for addressing such practical issues as the analysis of mixed scale data, data standardization, the number of clusters, cluster interpretation, etc. An obvious bias towards summarization against correlation can be explained, first, by the fact that most texts in the field are biased in the opposite direction, and, second, by my personal preferences. Categorical summarization, that is, clustering is considered not just a method of DA but rather a model of classification as a concept in knowledge engineering. Also, in this edition, I somewhat relaxed the “presentation/formulation/computation” narrative struc-ture, which was omnipresent in the first edition, to be able do things in one go. Chapter 1 presents the author’s view on the DA mainstream, or core, as well as on a few Data science issues in general. Specifically, I bring forward novel material on the role of DA, including its successes and pitfalls (Section 1.4), and classification as a special form of knowledge (Section 1.5). Overall, my goal is to show the reader that Data science is not a well-formed part of knowledge yet but rather a piece of science-in-the-making.  

This book is the result of the 5th edition of the Seminar on International and Comparative Labour Law, organized, under my direction, by Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and the International Society for Labour and Social Security Law in Venice (7-11 May 2018). The Seminar was entirely dedicated to the topic “The Role of the State and Industrial Relations” and during the Young Scholars Session organized at the conclusion of the Seminar, chaired by Prof. Stefano Bellomo, several young Phd Students and Research Fellows, which actively participated to the call for paper launched by the ISLSSL, came from all over the world to discuss about the industrial relations system and about the role of the State, adopting different perspectives: national, European and supranational.

Everywhere you look, there are signs of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. R&D on leading digital technologies is conducted around the world, exploring novel technologies aimed at cyber-physical systems, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Blockchain, 3D Printing, Virtual Reality, AI, and many more. With these rapid changes in technology comes social evolution and the potential for future social crises.  

Understanding Industry 4.0: AI, the Internet of Things, and the Future of Work looks to determine the most probable oncoming changes in key areas of the economy, to highlight the most important professions of the future, and to offer recommendations for their correct selection and successful mastering. Including sections on careers in education, medicine, R&D, and agriculture, among others, economics experts Bruno S. Sergi, Elena G. Popkova, Aleksei V. Bogoviz, and Tatiana N. Litvinova explore the vastly changing modern workplace and offer a guide to navigating through and adapting to this evolution.  

For researchers and students of management, economics, and business, this is an unmissable exploration of the new frontier of Industry 4.0.

Describes the potential growth poles of the modern global economy and substantiates their advantages compared to the current growth poles Includes fundamental substantiation and practical recommendations Discusses the process of overcoming the consequences of the global financial crisis The book

"Conflict-free" Socio-Economic Systems: Perspectives and Contradictions analyses crisis as a component of the growth and development process of economic systems, and its role within the economic cycle. 

 

The scientific treatment of the role of crisis in the development of economic systems has traditionally been divided into two conceptual approaches. The first conceptual approach views crisis as a possibility to reconsider the trajectory of economic development of both the national systems and the global economic system overall. However, most scholars, politicians, and experts focus on the second conceptual approach, within which economic crisis is seen as a temporary failure in the work of a system which hinders the process of economic growth and development. This became a precondition for proclaiming a new course of development of the modern national and global economic system oriented at sustainability. 

 

This book provides a strong theoretical and methodological basis to sustainable development of economic systems, for researchers and scholars in the area of economic theory and sustainable economics. In locating the role of crisis within socio-economic systems, Popkova advocates the concept of a "conflict-free" system as the landmark of global economic development.

Fei Xiaotong (费孝通) (2 November 1910 - 24 April 2005) was the prominent anthropologist and sociologist of China. He was one of the first sociologists and anthropologists who conducted anthropological studies of the life of Chinese society. He was a political journalist and a “cultural intermediary” who published articles about the West in Chinese in China, and about China in English in the West. Fei Xiaotong’s career was full of ups and downs that were associated with the political situation in the country. Finally, after 1978 and starting of the period of Economic Reform and Openness he could re-enter public and scientific life, and officially became a respected academic and a public intellectual which dedicated all his life to the investigation of Chinese society and social problems. For many people, Fei Xiaotong’s works became the first sources, from which it was possible to obtain various information about the Chinese village. His works made us think about the laws of social development and on what methods they should be studied. He believed that it was necessary not only to develop sociology but to go its way, to strive to develop Chinese sociology with all its specifics. Fei Xiaotong devoted his entire life to studying Chinese society and the changes taking place in it. The main stimulus that inspired him all his life was the hope that the Chinese peasants will live better and better, and with them, China will become stronger and more prosperous state.

Being the largest economy in the Eurasian region, Russia’s labor market affects economic performance and well-being in several former Soviet countries. Over the period 2000–2017, the Russian labor market survived several deep crises and underwent substantial structural changes. Major shocks were absorbed largely via wage adjustments, while aggregate employment and unemployment showed little sensitivity. Workers have paid the price for this rather stable employment situation in the form of volatile wages and a high risk of low pay.

This article argues that our desire to manipulate and control nature through our use of technology is the cause of our current climate crisis. It then explores alternative ways of using technology and relating to the natural world.

Multiway trees are one of the most popular solutions for the big data indexing. The most commonly used kind of the multiway trees is the B-tree. There exist different modifications of the B-trees, including B+-trees, B*-trees and B*+-trees considered in this work. However, these modifications are not supported by the popular open-source relational DBMS SQLite. This work is based on the previous research on the performance of multiway trees in the problem of structured data indexing, with the previously developed multiway trees C++ library usage. In this research the B*+-tree was developed as the data structure which combines the main B+-tree and B*-tree features together. Also, in the research the empirical computational complexities of different operations on the B-tree and its modifications were measured as well as the memory usage. The purpose of the current work is the development of the SQLite RDBMS extension which allows to use B-tree modifications (B+-tree, B*-tree and B*+-tree) as index structures in the SQLite RDBMS. The modifications of the base data structure were developed as a C++ library. The library is connected to the SQLite using the C-C++ cross-language API which is developed in the current work. The SQLite extension implements the novel algorithm for selecting the index structure (one of B-tree’s modifications) for some table of a database. The provided SQLite extension is adopted by the SQLiteEventLog component of the LDOPA process mining library. In addition, the experiment on the counting the empirical computational complexities of operations on the trees of different types is conducted using the developed in this work SQLite extension.

High-quality aluminum films on GaAs substrates are studied experimentally. The critical temperature of superconductivity is found to increase markedly with decreasing the film thickness. The observed phenomenon is considered as a manifestation of the quantum confinement effect, which affects both the density of states and the electron–phonon interaction.  

The Eurasian Economic Union (‘EAEU’) – an international organization for regional economic integration in post-Soviet space – has a judicial body aimed at ensuring uniform application of law. This article argues that the EAEU Court will struggle in achieving its aim as there are issues of independence, it has diminished powers, and limits have been imposed on its interpretative practices, at least as compared to its predecessor. This may lead to problems in respecting the rule of law and ‘dis-integrates’ the judiciary in the sense of a common system involving national courts. At the same time, it is also argued that, although the Court’s procedural and substantive powers have been limited, the attempt to limit certain interpretative powers of the Court can hardly result in meaningful consequences for the development of law.

We consider an economic geography setting in which firms are free to choose one of the following organizational types: (i) integrated firms, which perform all their activities at the same location, (ii) horizontal firms, which operate several plants producing the same good at different locations, and (iii) vertical firms, which perform distinct activities at separated locations. We show that there exists a unique organizational equilibrium, which typically involves the coexistence of various organizational forms. We also give necessary and sufficient conditions for the three types of firms to coexist within the same region and show that transportation and communication costs have opposite effects on firms’ organizational choices. This suggests that, depending on its nature, the supply of a new transportation infrastructure may lead to contrasted locational patterns.

We consider products of independent \(n \times n\) non-Hermitian random matrices \(\X^{(1)}, \ldots, \X^{(m)}\). Assume that their entries, \(X_{jk}^{(q)},  1 \le j,k \le n, q = 1, \ldots, m\), are independent identically distributed random variables with zero mean, unit variance. G\"otze -- Tikhomirov~\cite{GotTikh2011} and O'Rourke--Sochnikov~\cite{Soshnikov2011} proved that under these assumptions the empirical spectral distribution (ESD) of \(X^{(1)} \cdots X^{(m)}\) converges to the limiting distribution which coincides with the distribution of the \(m\)-th power of random variable uniformly distributed in the unit circle.  In the current paper we provide a local vesion of this result. More precisely, assuming additionally that  \(\E |X_{11}^{(q)}|^{4+\delta} < \infty\) for some \(\delta > 0\), we prove that ESD of \(X^{(1)} \cdots X^{(m)}\) converges to the limiting distribution  on the optimal scale up to \(n^{-1+2a}, 0 < a < 1/2\) (up to some logarithmic factor).  Our results generalize the recent results of Bourgade--Yau--Yin~\cite{Bourgade2014a}, Tao--Vu~\cite{TaoVu2015a} and Nemish~\cite{nemish2017}.  We also give further development of Stein's type approach to estimate the the Stieltjes transform of ESD.

Background

In the past decade, several studies have examined the effects of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on long-term episodic memory formation and retrieval. These studies yielded conflicting results, likely due to differences in stimulation parameters, experimental design and outcome measures.

Objectives

In this work we aimed to assess the robustness of tDCS effects on long-term episodic memory using a meta-analytical approach.

Methods

We conducted four meta-analyses to analyse the effects of anodal and cathodal tDCS on memory accuracy and response times. We also used a moderator analysis to examine whether the size of tDCS effects varied as a function of specific stimulation parameters and experimental conditions.

Results

Although all selected studies reported a significant effect of tDCS in at least one condition in the published paper, the results of the four meta-analyses showed only statistically non-significant close-to-zero effects. A moderator analysis suggested that for anodal tDCS, the duration of the stimulation and the task used to probe memory moderated the effectiveness of tDCS. For cathodal tDCS, site of stimulation was a significant moderator, although this result was based on only a few observations.

Conclusions

To warrant theoretical advancement and practical implications, more rigorous research is needed to fully understand whether tDCS reliably modulates episodic memory, and the specific circumstances under which this modulation does, and does not, occur.

Metacognitive monitoring is a powerful tool that supports our ongoing cognitive processes (Flavell, 1976). In applied settings, such as when we are trying to learn a new language, monitoring the learning progress may determine the difference between success and failure. One way to measure metacognitive monitoring in relation to learning new material is the so-called Judgments of Learning (JOLs). JOLs are estimations of future success in recalling recently learned information. Depending on the confidence that we have in remembering the new information later, we may decide to keep rehearsing it or just move on. Existing research shows that several variables can mislead our JOLs in relation to the subsequent recall accuracy; at the same time, other variables that influence the recall itself do not affect JOLs. Perceptual fluency, manipulated in different sensory modalities by e.g. font size or presentation volume, leads to differences in JOLs (e.g., higher JOLs for bigger font size), although recall accuracy remains the same regardless of the manipulation. On the other and, the animacy manipulation (e.g., dog vs. table) does not affect JOLs but animate words are remembered better. Our main aim was to study JOL brain correlates for variables that differently affect JOLs and memory. Participants were presented with words in an easy- or difficult to-read font that referred to animate or inanimate objects while EEG was recorded. For each word, participants had to choose on a 0-100% scale the confidence they had in remembering it in near future. We found a higher P2 response for high- (70–100%) than to medium- JOLs (40–60%) ratings, which may reflect attentional recruitment resulting in modulation of perceptual processing. Furthermore, we found a  greater P600 response for medium- than high-JOLs, suggesting a deeper reanalysis of these type of “less confident” answers. When animacy and perceptual fluency are split between medium and high-JOLs, we found LPC (late positive component) only for animacy, being showing a higher amplitude for the high- than medium-JOLs.. This might indicate a higher involvement of memory processes during the processing of animacy-related information. Finally, when comparing difficult type font words rated with medium and high-JOLs, we obtained larger P3b for high-JOLs rated words, which may attributed to their deeper evaluation. This is the first evidence of differential brain signatures for JOLs depending on their ratings level and different experimental manipulations. Our results highlight the relevance of metacognitive evaluations in the cognitive processing.

The work was supported by the Russian Science Foundation (project №19-18-00534).

Human memory is not a literal record of our experiences but a fallible and malleable cognitive process. Because of the reconstructive nature of memory, we are often prone to accept false events and recall them as truthful (Bartlett, 1932). One easy and reliable method to create and study false memories in the laboratory is the misinformation paradigm. In this paradigm participants are presented with a story (original information). After some time, parts of this story are presented again but now including some modifications (misinformation). Finally, the memory is measured for the original information, the misinformation, and, as control, some other incorrect information never presented before. The misinformation effect occurs when the percentage of misinformation accepted is higher than the acceptance of control incorrect information. This effect has been largely studied in relation to its applied relevance in eyewitness testimony research. Yet, the neural substrates and temporal dynamics of processing correct and false information remain scarcely studied. In this study the neural activity was recorded using EEG while participants performed a memory recognition test which comprised misinformation, true, and simply incorrect items. The only previous EEG study on neural correlates focused on misinformation pointed to the P3b and LPC (late positive component) ERPs components as the key to distinguishing between memories for correct and false memories. High P3b is linked with a strong match between the expectation and the stimuli presented. LPC is a late component around 400 to 800 ms after the stimulus presentation, associated with the recollection of accurate information. Our results show that for the contrasts of misinformation accepted vs rejected, and false information accepted vs rejected (correct rejections), P3b was significantly more positive when the inaccurate information was accepted. These differences suggest a larger cognitive workload on accepting this type of information than when it is correctly rejected. Furthermore, in both contrasts we found differences in P600 which is linked to reprocessing of detected anomalies in the input. Here, we found a more expressed P600 for accepted than for rejected misinformation. P600 was also stronger for correct rejections than false alarms. In this latter case, the higher P600 amplitude may reflect the detection and reanalysis of the rejection of this false information. Interestingly, in the case of acceptance of misinformation, the higher P600 amplitude suggest that participants are not totally blind to the inaccuracy of the misinformation, though still they accept it.

The work was supported by the Russian Science Foundation (project №19-18-00534).

The paper reviews the current situation of the Augmented Reality and Internet of Things markets. The implementing possibilities of AR for Big Data visualization from IoT devices are considered in this paper. The review and the analysis of methods, tools, products and data system of the visualization are presented. The paper provides an overview of the programs and devices of Augmented Reality, and an overview of development environments. The paper presents the existing classifications of computerized data visualization tools and proposes new classification, which takes into account interactive visualization, the purpose of the tool, the type of software product, the availability of ready-made templates, and other characteristics. The article proposes the architecture of the system for collecting data from IoT endpoint devices based on the Heltec modules. Experiments based on the developed experimental stand were carried out with Heltec devices of both versions to determine the number of losses with increasing distance between the sending device and the receiving device. The results of measuring the power consumption of these devices are presented in two modes: in standby mode and when sending a message to the Heltec endpoint device and in standby mode and when receiving a message for the base station. These studies were conducted using various data transfer protocols (LoRa, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth). The paper presents the result of the development of a digital twin of a university building and the development of augmented reality software for receiving data from real-time data collection devices.

A review and analysis of existing solutions for creating a system for collecting and converting the energy of HF radiation on the Internet of Things is conducted. We propose our development of a system for collecting and converting the energy of HF radiation on the Internet of Things. The result is a proprietary development of a system for collecting and converting high-frequency radiation energy, ready to work at a distance of no more than 0.94 meters from the Wi-Fi router according to the IEEE 802.11 standard. The output voltage in case of continuous operation of our harvester is 3.3 V, which is enough for power supply: temperature sensors with digital output, humidity sensors, and atmospheric pressure sensors. It is possible to achieve an increase in the working distance by increasing the power of the source of electromagnetic waves, to improve the gain of the transmitting and receiving antenna, or to increase the number of receiving antennas.

Some methodological foundations of effective construction of active media for innovative development are under consideration in the paper. The ideas of universal evolutionism, ecology understood in an extended sense, emergent properties of complex systems, time management, and the creating desirable futures turn to be useful here.

Abstract. The need to improve the investment climate and form a new efficient system of economic relations requires the use of new economic mechanisms, among which leasing is one of the most effective for the development of the real economy. The paper deals with the risk management problems of leasing companies and leasing projects. It discusses the activities of specialized leasing companies and methods of risk management of leasing transactions based on basic risk management processes in project management, analyzes various types of risks associated with lessors, discusses methodological approaches to managing risks of leasing companies in general, and economic and mathematical methods for assessing risks of default for lessees. An econometric model has been created that allows predicting confidence in the payment of lease payments or the default of the lessee. The obtained model excludes the subjective methods for assessing the potential client's solvency and is less labor-intensive in comparison with the scoring model and the method of expert assessment.

With the vow of non-possession being an essential concept in Russian monasticism, real monastic practices of the 17th-century Muscowy, as we can perceive relying on preserved documents, demonstrated certain negligence of the vow. Large monasteries acted as corporations that produced goods and traded them to cover living expenses. Although, in theory a monetary profit was not the goal, certain monasteries would often not only trade, but lend out money, sometimes even with interest. By the 2nd half of the 17th century in Muscowy, there existed not only monastic communities, but also independent monks only formally affiliated with some Moscow monastery. As a rule, they were natives of the South-Western regions of Russia (modern territories of Belorussia and Ukraine). In general, they​​​​​​​ were educated in Poland or in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, took their vows in home monasteries and then moved to Moscow in search of a better life or due Monks and money in the early modern Muscowy to war or social instability in homeland. They would enjoy greater mobility and freedom in their activities than a common monk would – they were employed at the Tzar’s court, interacted with boyars and church leaders. One of the most well-known monks of the type was the first Muscowy court poet and preacher Simeon Polotsky (1629-1680). His manifold background and experiences, as well as his preserved archives, inspired me to look into his​​​​​​​ financial situation: ways in which he earned and accumulated money, expenditures he may have faced during his life in a Moscow monastery and his service at Tzar’s court, currency of his savings. I will address in detail Simeon’s last will – a unique document, providing an extensive data on the financial sphere of Simeon’s life. The study is meant to be comparative, thus giving a general perspective​​​​​​​ on Simeon’s place in the economic structure of the Muscowy Tzar court and Moscow monastic and clerical communities.

Modern global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) receivers use temperature-compensated crystal oscillators (TCXO) as generators of reference frequency. One of the parameters of quartz oscillators is its stability to output frequency when oscillators are subject to acceleration and vibrations. Such a stability is assessed by g-sensitivity value. Relatively high g-sensitivity of quartz oscillators can result in large tracking errors within circuits of GNSS receivers operating in hard vibrational-dynamic conditions, up to loss of tracking which negatively affect functional capacities of GNSS receivers. The current paper describes a method of estimating g-sensitivity of TCXO mounted on GNSS receiver printed circuit board (PCB). Experimental results have proved the advantage of this method over other known methods of g-sensitivity assessment for TCXO used in GNSS receivers.

Different dynamic and noise characteristics of hardware-software systems of phase lock loops (PLL) within global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) receivers capable of operating under strong dynamic external effects have been considered in the present paper. Most operations in hardware-software systems are performed in processor at relatively low rate of time discretization, the signals of many satellite channels being successively processed by the processor. In the other, hardware part of the receiver, its own simultaneously operating channels correspond to each PLL system. A theoretical analysis of the considered PLL systems has been carried out by methods based on z-transformations. Then, these PLL systems were compared to each other with the help of simulation modeling in conditions of different dynamic impacts. In conclusion, some recommendations on selection of PLL systems of one or other type depending on GNSS receiver user's requirements have been given. These recommendations reflect the authors' previous experience in developing and designing commercial GNSS receivers.

Theoretical literature states that intra-industry trade (IIT) should be divided into horizontal and vertical flows (or trade in products with homogeneous and heterogeneous quality) that are influenced by different factors. Yet, the economists are still not sure about the proportion between horizontal and vertical IIT. Traditional approach relies on unit value as an indicator of product quality. However, it is associated with a number of problems such as arbitrariness of the threshold used to separate the types of trade. We propose the two alternative approaches to dissecting IIT: first, applying another product quality indicator (PRODY – per capita GDP associated with exporting a product) and, second, relying on countries’ product-level differences in the revealed comparative advantage (RCA). We also argue in favor of the new continuous treatment of the index-based unit value approach (in the spirit of the overlap calculation of the IIT itself) that finally helps to get rid of the arbitrary thresholds problem. However, then we reject the PRODY- and RCA-based approaches due to an undesirable behavior (low correlation with the share of exports to other EU countries, low shares of horizontal IIT for homogeneous products and other features), while the performance of the continuous form of the index-based unit value approach is found to be in line with the traditional unit value approach. We also argue that the two index-based modifications are preferable to the traditional unit value approach due to the higher shares of horizontal IIT for homogeneous products. We conclude that the median share of horizontal IIT for EU countries is still unknown due to fundamental uncertainty about the dissecting approach. At the same time, relative positions of countries for all forms of the unit value approach are quite stable, so there is much less uncertainty concerning the cross-country differences.

We propose a decomposition of weighted Theil index of export concentration into the quantity- and quality-driven terms and calculate the proposed components for 5038 product groups and 120 countries. We link our findings to the debate on the role of quality upgrading in structural transformation. The results do not support the idea that climbing quality ladders (or quality upgrading within the actually exported products) is the best way to proceed with structural transformation: for most countries, the share of the quality-driven component of weighted Theil index doesn’t exceed 20 per cent.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce applications of RUSMOD—a microsimulation model for fiscal incidence analysis in the Russian Federation. RUSMOD combines household survey micro-data and fiscal policy rules to simulate the Russian tax-benefit system: the size and distribution of taxes collected and benefits paid, and the impact of the system on different population groups. Microsimulation models, such as RUSMOD, are habitually used in developed countries, and can be versatile budgetary policy tools. Using this model, the current tax-benefit system in Russia is examined. The impact of the system is measured across the income distribution, age groups, family types, localities, as well as across time. One of the applications of RUSMOD this paper aims to assess is the role of the tax-benefit system in explaining the incidence of informal employment in Russia. The paper investigates whether the existing system creates disincentives for formalization in terms of reducing disposable incomes and increasing poverty and inequality, and whether a hypothetical tax reform would be able to reduce the opportunity costs of formalization for informal workers, improve distributional outcomes, and increase fiscal revenues.

Despite of the fact that the history of Initial Coin Offering (ICO) is short, new modification of it has already suggested. According to the ICORating , in the second half of 2018, the profitability of investments in blockchain startups decreased by 22%, and 58% of ICO projects announced in Q4 2018 were not able to raise more than 100,000 USD. Moreover, in Q4 2018 40% of projects with previously announced ICOs have already deleted their social network accounts and websites. The founder of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin (2015), who started the first ICO, proposed a new way of decentralized fundraising called DAICO in 2018. This new model will include elements of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO), and its purpose will be to minimize the difficulties and risks associated with the ICO. At the same time, in 2018 another model of financing appeared called Initial Exchange Offering (IEO) in order to minimize risks, problems of liquidity and the postponement of the listing of the tokens at the end of tokensale step. More than 70 IEOs listed on ICObench with average rating of 3.6 and 42 IEOs have been ended and raised $266 million in total. Nevertheless, there three types of tokens 95% of ICO projects are utility-based token. This makes ICO comparable to crowfunding. In order to be more attractive for investors the focus on a new wave of ICO projects is on the security type of tokens. The security token is any cryptocurrency that pays dividends, profits, shares or interest or invests in any other asset that also generates profits. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) use the Howey Test and concludes the securities token are securities in contract to classical utility token of ICO projects. In order to back by real assets and follow the SEC's guidance on compliance, issuance, and trading new model is called Security Token Offering (STO) and differs from ICO. All three new models are a new focus for small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) and investors. The absence of any type of academic works emphasizes the relevance and scientific novelty of the forthcoming research. The contribution to the existing literature is the systematization of information and comparison analyses of ICO, DAOICO, IEO and STO by method of case study.

Since 2013 Initial Coin Offerings (ICO) have allowed companies to attract financing with the help of cryptocurrencies. In August 2017, the total capitalization of the crypto currency market exceeded $150bln. From the 1st quarter of 2015 to November 2017, the volume of funds raised amounted to $3,78bln. Statistics of ICO shows that demand continues to grow with claims of over $15bln raised in the first half of 2018. The first quarter of 2019 ended with $902 million total raised funds and $8.4 million average raised funds. The increasing number of projects financed by ICO (4954 projects during 5 years) as an alternative method to venture capital (VC) or initial coin offering (IPO) is caused by several reasons: the possibility of reselling the received tokens at a higher price after the launch of the project or earlier; the possibility of obtaining the company's services at lower prices; the increased popularity of crypto currencies (e.g. Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc.); the expectation of high profitability; the high speed of transactions (including the speed of attracting initial investments) and anonymity. However, due to difficulties in regulation, the ICO market attracts smaller investments on average (average investments in ICO projects equal to $19 million in comparison with the average size of IPO - $207,2 million) and there exists more chance for manipulation in the market, which leads to the fact that the results relevant to the IPO market cannot be applied directly to ICO. Due to the fact that blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies are new tools in finance, and the data for research has just begun to appear, there is a limited number of academic papers in this area of studies. Moreover, they are devoted mainly to the description of the mechanisms of the ICO, the advantages and risks of ICO, the review of existing ICO and crypto exchanges, legislation. The absence of fundamental works emphasizes the relevance and scientific novelty of the forthcoming research.  The contribution to the existing literature is the identification of factors that affect the successful of ICO. Scientific novelty consists in the formation of the model evaluation of ICO success. Empirical results show that volatility of main cryptocurrencies has significant impact on the success of ICO. The constraints of the platform for Smart Contacts (ERC-20) and dependence on the Ethereum volatility overcome all other factors. Our data contributes with existence literature and shows the insignificance of sector of the project, almost all location region and fluctuation of influence of quality of team. This result may be explained by the uncertainty of the investor about the project (weak signals), absence of the regulation and legal framework. This result is beneficial for owners of companies since it is an argument for decreasing costs for marketing.

We give a simple recursion labeled by binary sequences which computes rational q,t-Catalan power series, both in relatively prime and non relatively prime cases. It is inspired by, but not identical to recursions due to B. Elias, M. Hogancamp, and A. Mellit, obtained in their study of link homology. We also compare our recursion with the Hogancamp-Mellit's recursion and verify a connection between the Khovanov-Rozansky homology of N,M-torus links and the rational q,t-Catalan power series for general positive N,M.

Recent work of the first author, Negut and Rasmussen, and of Oblomkov and Rozansky in the context of Khovanov-Rozansky knot homology produces a family of polynomials in q and t labeled by integer sequences. These polynomials can be expressed as equivariant Euler characteristics of certain line bundles on flag Hilbert schemes. The q,t-Catalan numbers and their rational analogues are special cases of this construction. In this paper, we give a purely combinatorial treatment of these polynomials and show that in many cases they have nonnegative integer coefficients.  For sequences of length at most 4, we prove that these coefficients enumerate subdiagrams in a certain fixed Young diagram and give an explicit symmetric chain decomposition of the set of such diagrams. This strengthens results of Lee, Li and Loehr for (4,n) rational q,t-Catalan numbers.

We describe the universal target of annular Khovanov-Rozansky link homology functors as the homotopy category of a free symmetric monoidal category generated by one object and one endomorphism. This categorifies the ring of symmetric functions and admits categorical analogues of plethystic transformations, which we use to characterize the annular invariants of Coxeter braids. Further, we prove the existence of symmetric group actions on the Khovanov-Rozansky invariants of cabled tangles and we introduce spectral sequences that aid in computing the homologies of generalized Hopf links. Finally, we conjecture a characterization of the horizontal traces of Rouquier complexes of Coxeter braids in other types.

We prove that the full twist is a Serre functor in the homotopy category of type A Soergel bimodules. As a consequence, we relate the top and bottom Hochschild degrees in Khovanov-Rozansky homology, categorifying a theorem of Kálmán.

We analyze multisector models with endogenous product variety and derive general results on the magnitude of welfare changes due to sector-specific price shocks. Intersectoral linkages magnify or dampen these shocks, depending on complementarity or substitutability in consumers’ preferences. Under the widely used combination of Cobb-Douglas-CES utilities and monopolistic competition, intersectoral linkages disappear. This does not hold with more general preferences or market structures, where sector-specific price shocks that are a priori welfare improving can turn out to be welfare worsening economy-wide. We illustrate this result with several examples, in particular where one sector is ‘granular’ and the other is monopolistically competitive.

Whether short-term learning of new words can induce rapid changes in cortical areas involved in distributed neural representation of the lexicon is a hotly debated topic. To answer this question, we examined magnetoencephalographic phase-locked responses elicited in the cerebral cortex by passive presentation of eight novel pseudowords before and immediately after an operant conditioning task. This procedure forced participants to perform an active search for unique meaning of four word-forms that referred to movements of their own body parts. While familiarization with novel word-forms led to bilateral repetition suppression of cortical responses to all eight pseudowords, these reduced responses became more selectively tuned towards newly learned action words in the left hemisphere. Our results suggest that stimulus repetition and active learning of semantic association have separable effects on cortical activity. They also evidence rapid plastic changes in cortical representations of meaningful auditory word-forms after active learning.

The paper presents the Business Climate Indicator (BCI) in the Russian manufacturing including the medium and high-tech (MHT) manufacturing industries. The authors explain the feasibility of a new alternative measure that summarizes common information of business tendency surveys cleared up of specific fluctuations in individual variables, and give arguments to prove its effectiveness. The resulting BCI reflects the quantitative changes in manufacturing growth more accurately and with a lead compared to the traditional confidence indicator. Identification of the BCI cyclic profile and its visualization through a tracer demonstrate all significant waves of manufacturers’ optimism and pessimism for the period from January 2005 to January 2019. To construct BCI-MHT, the units of observation and the input information are divided into three groups according to the technological level of industries. The dynamics of BCI-MHT is close to those of BCI; however, during the protracted recession in 2016-2018, the sentiments of manufacturers of medium- and high-tech products were less pessimistic compared with the sentiments of all manufacturers.

This article investigates issues related to a unique experiment carried out in Russia in unifying the collection of all obligatory payments. It analyzes the legal aspects of this approach and presents the variety of methods for collecting such payments. Notions of budget revenue and sources of revenue are considered. Special attention is paid to the forms and practices of tax farming and other obligatory payments. The article concludes that the budget legislation actually specifies various fiscal charges as sources of budget revenue. The real source of public revenue are the assets and resources making up the national wealth. Historical examples show that despite the generally accepted denial, tax farming is a normal method and can be applied along with the state monopoly and tax administration. The cases when tax farming is transformed into a state monopoly or excise and vice versa are not rare. Tax farming, which has continued to this day, is also referred to as parafiscal charges or quasi taxes.

Admixture is increasingly being recognized as an important factor in evolutionary genetics. The distribution of genomic admixture tracts, and the resulting effects on admixture linkage disequilibrium, can be used to date the timing of admixture between species or populations. However, the theory used for such prediction assumes selective neutrality despite the fact that many famous examples of admixture involve natural selection acting for or against admixture. In this paper, we investigate the effects of positive selection on the distribution of tract lengths. We develop a theoretical framework that relies on approximating the trajectory of the selected allele using a logistic function. By numerically calculating the expected allele trajectory, we also show that the approach can be extended to cases where the logistic approximation is poor due to the effects of genetic drift. Using simulations, we show that the model is highly accurate under most scenarios. We use the model to show that positive selection on average will tend to increase the admixture tract length. However, perhaps counter-intuitively, conditional on the allele frequency at the time of sampling, positive selection will actually produce shorter expected tract lengths. We discuss the consequences of our results in interpreting the timing of the introgression of EPAS1 from Denisovans into the ancestors of Tibetans.

We consider the damped/driver (modified) cubic NLS equation on a large torus with a properly scaled forcing and dissipation, and decompose its solutions to formal series in the amplitude. We study the second order truncation of this series and prove that when the amplitude goes to zero and the torus' size goes to infinity the energy spectrum of the truncated solutions becomes close to a solution of the damped/driven wave kinetic equation. Next we discuss higher order truncations of the series.

Previous studies have found that the increase in the proportion of youth in adult population can lead to an increased risk of political violence. However, studies of the influence of the ‘youth bulges’ on the intensity of non-violent protest activity have hardly been conducted. We hypothesize that ‘youth bulges’ could influence the rise of non-violent protests as well. We find that though in the absence of controls, there is a statistically significant negative correlation between the proportion of young people in the total adult population and the intensity of non-violent protests this correlation turns out to be positive after the introduction of controls for per capita GDP, urbanization, non-autocratic political regime and the proliferation of education.