Publications

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.

This book focuses on how school facilities can affect children’s learning outcomes, identifying parameters that can inform the design, implementation, and supervision of future educational infrastructure projects. It reflects on aspects for which the evidence could be strengthened, and identifies areas for further exploratory work.

In America today, two communities with sub-Saharan African genetic origins exist side by side, though they have differing histories and positions within society. This book explores the relationship between African Americans, descendants of those Africans brought to America as slaves, and migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, who have come to the United States of America voluntarily, mainly since the 1990s. Members of these groups have both a great deal in common and much that separates them, largely hidden in their assumptions about, and attitudes towards, each other. In a work grounded in extensive fieldwork Bondarenko and his research team interviewed African Americans, and migrants from twenty-three African States and five Caribbean nations, as well as non-black Americans involved with African Americans and African migrants. Seeking a wide range of perspectives, from different ages, classes and levels of education, they explored the historically rooted mutual images of African Americans and contemporary African migrants, so as to understand how these images influence the relationship between them. In particular, they examined conceptions of ‘black history’ as a common history of all people and nations with roots in Africa. What emerges is a complex picture. While collective historical memory of oppression forges solidarity, lack of knowledge of each other’s history can create distance between communities. African migrants tend to define their identities not by race, but on the basis of multiple layers of national, ethnic, religious and linguistic affinities (of which African Americans are often unaware). For African Americans, however, although national and regional identities are important, it is above all race that is the defining factor. While drawing on wider themes from anthropology and African studies, this in-depth study on a little-researched subject allows valuable new understandings of contemporary American society.

he “Greek Crisis” in Europe: Race, Class and Politics, critically analyses the publicity of the Greek debt crisis, by studying Greek, Danish and German mainstream media during the crisis’ early years (2009-2015). Mass media everywhere reproduced a sensualistic “Greek crisis” spectacle, while iterating neoliberal and occidentalist ideological myths. Overall, the Greek people were deemed guilty of a systemic crisis, supposedly enjoying lavish lifestyles on the EU’s expense. Using concrete examples, the study foregrounds neoorientalist, neoracist and classist stereotypes deployed in the construction and media coverage of the Greek crisis. These media practices are connected to the “soft politics” of the crisis, which produce public consensus over neoliberal reforms such as austerity and privatizations, and secure debt repayment from democratic interventions.

Contributors to this volume discuss a variety of ways the African past (African history) influences the present-day of Africans on the continent and in diaspora: cultural (historical) memory as a factor of public (mass) consciousness; the impact of the historical past on contemporary political, social, and cultural processes in Africa and African diaspora.

This volume is an output of a research project implemented as part of the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE).

Proceedings. - Prague, April 23–24, 2019. IEEE Catalog Number: CFP19P59-CDR. ISBN: 978-1-5386-6524-4.

Copyright and Reprint Permission: Abstracting is permitted with credit to the source. Libraries are permitted to photocopy beyond the limit of U.S. copyright law for private use of patrons those articles in this volume that carry a code at the bottom of the first page, provided the per-copy fee indicated in the code is paid through Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923. For reprint or republication permission, email to IEEE Copyrights Manager at pubspermissions@ieee.org. All rights reserved. Copyright ©2019 by IEEE.

This book presents the history of globalization as a network-based story in the context of Big History. Departing from the traditional historic discourse, in which communities, cities, and states serve as the main units of analysis, the authors instead trace the historical emergence, growth, interconnection, and merging of various types of networks that have gradually encompassed the globe. They also focus on the development of certain ideas, processes, institutions, and phenomena that spread through those networks to become truly global. 

The book specifies five macro-periods in the history of globalization and comprehensively covers the first four, from roughly the 9th – 7th millennia BC to World War I. For each period, it identifies the most important network-related developments that facilitated (or even spurred on) such transitions and had the greatest impacts on the history of globalization.  

By analyzing the world system's transition to new levels of complexity and connectivity, the book provides valuable insights into the course of Big History and the evolution of human societies.

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Urban population is growing worldwide. Our societies are facing grand challenges like climate change and growing inequalities between people. There is an increasing need to develop cities that are environmentally and socially sustainable, functional and supporting well-being of their inhabitants. When striving towards these goals, transportation and mobility play a crucial role. Easy and environmentally sustainable mobility options are called for in most cities. For these to attract users, they need to be safe and pleasant, providing positive experiences and well-being in addition to efficiency in time or cost.

NECTAR conference is organized with a title “Towards Human Scale Cities – Open and Happy” to reflect the new requirements of urban transportation. This 15th NECTAR conference, organized in Helsinki 5th - 7th June 2019, provides presentations by world-class keynotes Mikael Colville-Andersen and Professor Tim Schwanen, who approach human scale mobility from the viewpoints of a designer and a researcher. More than 140 scientific presentations explore advancements in the field of transport, communication and mobility, with a particular focus on good quality mobility options for people. The focus of the conference is urban transportation and the new possibilities that open data and digital technologies provide for mobility solutions and their research. Presentations provide food for thought concerning mobility choices and quality, new mobility solutions like MaaS, and policies that are implemented to support them.

Helsinki offers an interesting environment for the 2019 NECTAR conference. It is the home of the busiest passenger harbor in Europe with a twin-city development with Tallinn across the bay, and a major air transportation hub between Europe and Asia. It is one of the fastest growing capital regions in Europe, with large densification developments taking place in old logistic centers: harbor areas of Jätkäsaari and Kalasatama and a train depot in Pasila. Public transportation is valued high by citizens, as well as politicians and planners making investment decisions for the future. First robotized buses are in operation and MaaS solutions are emerging. New bike sharing system is one of the most used in the world and has expanded to cover most of the city region. As everywhere in Europe, new forms of micromobility from electronic scooters to electric longboards are appearing on the streets making planners and police puzzled. The city has profiled itself as an open city: large amounts of open data about the region have been made available and the region of Helsinki is committed to open and transparent decision 

and policy making. This supports also research in the major universities: University of Helsinki and Aalto University, the local organizers of the conference.

We anticipate that the conference days will forward our thinking on how to make cities more sustainable, functional and pleasant for people, and how to study them scientifically in a meaningful and transparent manner.

This book gathers the outcomes of several scientific events that were organized and conducted by the Institute of Scientific Communications (Volgograd, Russia) and the leading universities of the Volgograd region. The contributing authors include more than 700 scholars from various cities and regions of Russia. 124 works were selected out of 3,000 papers on the preconditions of formation, transformation, and legal provision of social institutes, topics that are in high demand in connection with a core aspect of digital modernization – the Internet of Things. The book is intended for a broad target audience, including scholars of various generations and various disciplines. These include young researchers (undergraduates and postgraduates) and recognized scholars (professors and lecturers) who study the socioeconomic and legal consequences of the emergence and dissemination of digital technologies, including the Internet of Things. In addition, the book will benefit all those who are interested in the development of the information society, information and telecommunication, and digital technologies. The content is divided into three logical parts, the first of which is devoted to the essence of the process of institutionalization and legal regulation of the information society.

The materials of The International Scientific – Practical Conference is presented below. The Conference reflects the modern state of innovation in education, science, industry and social-economic sphere, from the standpoint of introducing new information technologies. It is interesting for a wide range of researchers, teachers, graduate students and professionals in the field of innovation and information technologies.

Based on the synthesis of a large empirical and theoretical literature on centre-region relations in China and Russia, Federalism in China and Russia is one of the first attempts to integrate this literature from different disciplines into a coherent common framework. Libman and Rochlitz argue that the divergence in growth performance between Russia and China can be – at least partially – explained by a number of features of the Chinese system of centre-regional relations.The authors offer a comparative analysis of the development of centre-region relations in Russia and in China and explore several dimensions of these relations: fiscal ties and incentives; bureaucratic practices; flows of information; and local government practices, while addressing the determinants of divergence between both countries. They also examine how the Chinese system has recently started to change, by adopting several features of the Russian model, which might be one of the reasons for China’s declining growth performance in recent years.Federalism in China and Russia should be read by scholars in public economics, political economy and comparative politics, as well as by students and policy analysts. For scholars, the book serves as a point of reference in studying the comparative evolution of the two countries. It will enrich the discussion on fiscal federalism, centre-region relations and sub-national political regimes, and could potentially become an important part of syllabi in political economy, public economics and comparative politics courses. For policy analysts, the book offers a comprehensive survey of the evolution of centre-periphery relations of the two countries and the differences between them, which is important to better understand the overall development of Russia and China.

This work is devoted to the study of applicability of modern methods of machine learning to the task of automatic classification of scientific articles and abstracts. For this purpose, the study of such models of machine learning as artificial neural networks, random forest, logistic regression, and support vector machine (with taking into account such a feature of scientific texts as a large number of terms specific for various categories) was carried out. Separately, the stages of data collection and extraction of text characteristics are considered. The results of research are used in development of a decision support system for assignment of scientific texts to the code of the department or abstract journal of All-Russian Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of Russian Academy of Sciences.

The parameters of unstable short-living isotopes are studied from the mathematical point of view. The values of the chemical potential and activity parameters that determine the neutron halo arising when the neutron separates from the nucleus of an unstable isotope are calculated. The analogy between nuclear physics and economics is considered from the point of view of such parameters as excitation energy, spin, rate of turnover, and time.

Based on the materials of an empirical study conducted by the authors, the article highlights the features of the working life of representatives of three generations of Russian workers. Particular attention in the study is paid to analyzing the value-motivational structure of respondents and assessing the role of the informal component in the social and labor behavior of workers of different age categories in modern Russian organizations. It is concluded that the specifics of the working path of representatives of the three studied generations of Russian workers have significant differences due to changes in public order in all the main aspects of working life: attitude to the choice of profession, informal relations at work, expectations of employees from the employer, trade union, government and team, valuable orientation and labor motivation. However, there are a number of common points - universal values inherent in each generation, despite socio-economic and political changes.

 For $\Gamma$ a cofinite Kleinian group acting on $\mathbb{H}^3$, we study the Prime Geodesic Theorem on $M=\Gamma \backslash \mathbb{H}^3$, which asks about  the asymptotic behaviour of lengths of primitive closed geodesics (prime geodesics) on $M$.   Let $E_{\Gamma}(X)$ be the error in the counting of prime geodesics with length at most $\log X$.  For the Picard manifold, $\Gamma=\mathrm{PSL}(2,\mathbb{Z}[i])$,  we improve the classical bound of Sarnak, $E_{\Gamma}(X)=O(X^{5/3+\epsilon})$, to $E_{\Gamma}(X)=O(X^{13/8+\epsilon})$. In the process we obtain a mean subconvexity estimate for the Rankin--Selberg $L$-function attached to Maass--Hecke cusp forms. We also investigate the second moment of $E_{\Gamma}(X)$ for a general cofinite group $\Gamma$, and show that it is bounded by $O(X^{16/5+\epsilon})$.

We develop a new method for studying sums of Kloosterman sums related to the spectral exponential sum. As a corollary, we  obtain a new proof of the estimate of Soundararajan and Young for the error term in the prime geodesic theorem.

We prove new upper bounds for a spectral exponential sum by refining the process by which one evaluates mean values of L-functions multiplied by an oscillating function. In particular, we introduce a method which is capable of taking into consideration the oscillatory behaviour of the function. This gives an improvement of the result of Luo and Sarnak when $T\geq X^{1/6+2\theta/3+\epsilon}$. Furthermore, this proves the conjecture of Petridis and Risager in some ranges. Finally, this allows obtaining a new proof of the Soundararajan-Young error estimate in the prime geodesic theorem.

Competition for resources is a fundamental characteristic of evolution. Auctions have been widely used to model competition of individuals for resources, and bidding behaviour plays a major role in social competition. Yet, how humans learn to bid efficiently remains an open question. We used model‐based neuroimaging to investigate the neural mechanisms of bidding behaviour under different types of competition. Twenty‐seven subjects (nine male) played a prototypical bidding game: a double action, with three “market” types, which differed in the number of competitors. We compared different computational learning models of bidding: directional learning models (DL), where the model bid is “nudged” depending on whether it was accepted or rejected, along with standard reinforcement learning models (RL). We found that DL fit the behaviour best and resulted in higher payoffs. We found the binary learning signal associated with DL to be represented by neural activity in the striatum distinctly posterior to a weaker reward prediction error signal. We posited that DL is an efficient heuristic for valuation when the action (bid) space is continuous. Indeed, we found that the posterior parietal cortex represents the continuous action space of the task, and the frontopolar prefrontal cortex distinguishes among conditions of social competition. Based on our findings, we proposed a conceptual model that accounts for a sequence of processes that are required to perform successful and flexible bidding under different types of competition.

In this paper various analytic techniques are combined in order to study the average of a product of a Hecke L-function and a symmetric square L-function at the central point in the weight aspect. The evaluation of the second main term relies on the theory of Maass forms of half-integral weight and the Rankin-Selberg method. The error terms are bounded using the Liouville-Green approximation.

In this paper, a physical and mathematical interpretation of the passage from the Bose distribution to the Fermi distribution of nuclear matter is presented. We consider the notion of "coat" and introduce the notion of "lacunary indeterminacy", which is a region that contains a neighborhood of the activity a = 0 and is the boundary between the Bose particle region and the Fermi particle region when the nucleon separates from the atomic nucleus. Our approach yields previously unknown expressions for extremal values of activity in passing from a Bose-type region to a Fermi-type region provided we know the de Broglie wavelength and the volume of the atomic nucleus.

We show that the complex solution for the classical equations has direct physical meaning, if one uses quasi-classical approach. This combination of the quantum and classical logic, when applied to the Newton system, provides a real, “visible to a naked eye” quantization of the vortex momenta.

Multi-Agent Pathfinding (MAPF) is the problem offinding paths for multiple agents such that everyagent reaches its goal and the agents do not col-lide. Most prior work on MAPF was on grids, as-sumed agents’ actions have uniform duration, andthat time is discretized into timesteps. We proposea MAPF algorithm that does not rely on these as-sumptions, is complete, and provides provably op-timal solutions. This algorithm is based on a noveladaptation of Safe interval path planning (SIPP), acontinuous time single-agent planning algorithm,and a modified version of Conflict-based search(CBS), a state of the art multi-agent pathfinding al-gorithm. We analyze this algorithm, discuss its prosand cons, and evaluate it experimentally on severalstandard benchmarks.

Chapter describes the legal framework of surrogate motherhood in Russia. Apart from providing the reader with a general overview of Russian legal regulation, the author specifically focuses on such issues as the rights of a surrogate mother, the rights of intending parents particularly in the context of the best interests of the child, access to surrogate motherhood as a type of assisted reproductive technology, issues related to parenthood and international surrogacy arrangements.

The purpose of this article is to identify problems of the industrial relations at the local level in Russia. The study looks at the parties and mechanism of social dialog in companies. A brief historical review of social dialog in Russia and description of its levels helps to identify the place of collective contract as a source of labour law.

In this paper we consider general scene recognition problem for analysis of user preferences based on his or her photos on mobile phone. Special attention is paid to out-of-class detections and efficient processing using MobileNet-based architectures. We propose the three stage procedure. At first, pre-trained convolutional neural network (CNN) is used extraction of input image embeddings at one of the last layers, which are used for training a classifier, e.g., support vector machine or random forest. Secondly, we fine-tune the pre-trained network on the given training set and compute the predictions (scores) at the output of the resulted CNN. Finally, we perform object detection in the input image, and the resulted sparse vector of detected objects is classified. The decision is made based on a computation of a weighted sum of the class posterior probabilities estimated by all three classifiers. Experimental results with a subset of ImageNet dataset demonstrate that the proposed approach is up to 5% more accurate when compared to conventional fine-tuned models.

This article focuses on Lahuti’s poem Dāstān-e gol (The Story of a Rose), which has not been included in any of the poet’s published collections. The conspicuous absence of that poem from printed sources is due to the peculiar circumstances of its creation in 1938.It was written as a private letter, and its only addressee and intended reader was Josef Stalin (1878–1953), the leader of the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until his death. A typewritten copy of the poem has been preserved in the Lahuti archive. Poems to and about Stalin constitute a special genre of Soviet poetry; by the end of the 1930s, a great many such unrestrained panegyrics had been composed. However, the poem deviates markedly from other poetry of the genre in a very special way: it was not meant for publication; it was addressed directly to Stalin and served a very specific purpose ‒ to convey a private message from the poet to the ruler asking to right the wrong. We preface our publication of the text with the story behind the poem; this story sheds some light on the poem’s pragmatic goal and on the subsequent fate of its author. We publish Dāstān-e gol in full, in a Persian–English parallel translation, and conclude this article with a short analysis of the poem. Here we focus mostly on the rhetorical strategy of persuasion chosen by Lahuti in his attempt to influence the emotions of the ruler by means of poetry, in accordance with old Persian custom.

This paper discusses the application of genetic algorithms for the scheduling of electric rolling stock maintenance. The main objective is to improve the automated train scheduling system of uniformity maintenance process with a variety of maintenance resources, including the limited resources. The methods of graph theory and Bellman principle allow us to get the entire set of suitable maintenance schedules and choose which maintenance corresponds to the train schedule, and the minimum differs from the optimal one according to the selected criteria. Traditionally, it takes a significant amount of time and the main problem is using the criterion of uniformity maintenance under limited resources. In this case, we used genetic algorithm for optimization. The results showed that the genetic algorithm is an effective tool for optimization of maintenance scheduling.

Abstract. The history of Russian liberalism reflects the transformation of intellectual and political culture that took place in Russia from the eighteenth to the beginning of the twentieth century. The legacy of the Russian liberal thinkers requires close attention and study because it allows us to formulate the most important and relevant question: is the liberal project even possible in Russia? This chapter attempts to analyze the main ideas of the political philosophy of Russian liberalism and considers different national models of liberalism, such as those allowing for traditional cultural values, among other things. This analysis proposes a new intellectual tradition of Russian liberalism, as distinct from the Soviet version, and also introduces the reader to the historical-philosophical tradition of research on Russian liberalism from the eighteenth to the beginning of the twentieth century.Abstract The history of Russian liberalism reflects the transformation of intellectual and political culture that took place in Russia from the eighteenth to the beginning of the twentieth century. The legacy of the Russian liberal thinkers requires close attention and study because it allows us to formulate the most important and relevant question: is the liberal project even possible in Russia? This chapter attempts to analyze the main ideas of the political philosophy of Russian liberalism and considers different national models of liberalism, such as those allowing for traditional cultural values, among other things. This analysis proposes a new intellectual tradition of Russian liberalism, as distinct from the Soviet version, and also introduces the reader to the historical-philosophical tradition of research on Russian liberalism from the eighteenth to the beginning of the twentieth century.

 

 

In the current study we aimed to investigate differences in the subjective experience of various “high”-quality choices made in real life situations. We compared the contents of "good", "happy", "successful", "right" and "genuine" choices.

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. 

Kondratiev long cycle is generally treated as a phenomenon of a modern world economy. However, the existence of major cycles before the Industrial Revolution does not contradict the theoretical views of Kondratiev, the founder of the long-waves theory. We have discovered Kondratiev’s documents, which show him going farther back in history. The key question we are trying to answer is why are major cycles not associated with a pre-industrial economy? We also have at our disposal a number of unknown and little-known historiographical sources, which indicate that Soviet researchers cared about the existence of long cycles in the preindustrial period. At the same time, Soviet scientists had done a tremendous amount of work to construct the time series on historical data of Russia. Using this data, we concluded that the existence of Kondratiev waves in the Russian Empire was very probable.

This paper examines the impact of the 34% increase in pensions in Russia at the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010 on the labor market participation of pensioners. Several particular features of the pension system in Russia allow us to estimate the net effect of income from such a reform. For evaluation, we used a method combining difference-in-difference and regression discontinuity methods. The results showed that real pension growth by a third reduced labor force participation rate by 6–7.1% for men and by 6–6.4% for women. The heterogeneity of the impact of this reform was also investigated. Estimates showed that the effect was lower for more educated people or those living in villages and was completely absent among those who rated their health as poor or very bad.

The spread of digital technologies changes production processes and business models, which has important effects for diversification of the economy. The fourth industrial revolution and the Industrial Internet of Things open up new opportunities for the introduction of technologies, having a significant impact on the production cycle, starting with highly automated production lines and ending with the large-scale implementation of technological solutions designed to improve productivity, optimize costs, quality and reliability. Defining digital transformations, primarily in the manufacturing industry as a strategic imperative for the entire economy, for the first time, based on opinions and intentions of entrepreneurs (short and medium-term), key aspects of the digitalization process in Russian medium, high-tech and low-tech manufacturing industries are revealed. A set of tendencies in the development of digital technologies by their main types is presented, the level of industry participation in digital transformation is shown, as well as many other important digital transformation processes in enterprises that are not measured by quantitative statistics. For all the studied industries, factors hindering digital transformation are identified and ranked.

We characterize open embeddings of Stein spaces and of $C^\infty$-manifolds in terms of certain flatness-type conditions on the respective homomorphisms of function algebras.  

This paper axiomatically studies the equal split-off set (Branzei, Dimitrov, Tijs 2006) as a solution for cooperative games with transferable utility. This solution extends the well-known (Dutta Ray 1989) solution for convex games to arbitrary games. By deriving several characterizations, we explore the relation of the equal split-off set with various consistency notions.

Education systems across the world are experiencing significant transformations. Grassroots innovators play an important role in these changes. To stimulate the development of grassroots innovations it is important to understand the mechanisms that underlie their creation. This paper investigates the motivation of individuals who initialize innovative projects in education. The approach to measuring motivation was adopted from the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics (PSED) initially developed for social and commercial entrepreneurs. The Russian version of the methodology was elaborated and validated to study educational innovators. The sample consists of 437 participants of the Competition for Innovation in Education (KIVO). Four types of motivation are identified: social, self-realization, status, financial. They are explained within the self-determination theory (SDT) and grassroots innovations. The social and self-realization motives are inherent in all the actors, while the other two vary among innovators. This motivational structure allows the authors to differentiate between specific types of innovators – social entrepreneurs and ‘non-entrepreneurs’. The discussion, following the conclusion in this article, focuses on which environment would be favorable for developing innovations, considering the personal motives for innovative activity. The results can be valuable for education policy.

This paper considers three hypotheses about the strategic origin of price dispersion in homogeneous product online sales. The first two are the $\varepsilon$-equilibrium and the quantal-response equilibrium (QRE) in a pure Bertrand setting involving the boundedly rational behavior of sellers. The third introduces the share of loyal consumers into the model of competition. These hypotheses were supported by estimations on experimental lab data. We test the hypotheses on a set of real prices for 30 models of household appliances collected from the largest Russian online marketplace Market.Yandex.ru. In contrast to the previously reported experimental data, we found very limited support for any of these explanations. QRE showed the best performance on the data. For most of the products it accurately predicts central tendency, i.e. the mean and the median. However, the shape of the observed price distributions is not explained well by any of the models. These results pose new challenges for theoretical explanations of observed Internet prices.

We study the properties of a sequence c_n defined by the recursive relation c_0/(n+1)+c_1/(n+2)+…+c_n/(2n+1)=0 for n>1 and c_0=1. This sequence also has an alternative definition in terms of certain norm minimization in the space L^2([0,1]). We prove estimates on growth order of c_n and the sequence of its partial sums, infinite series identities, connecting c_n with harmonic numbers H_n and also formulate some conjectures based on numerical computations.

Let S={s1<s2<s3<…} be the sequence of all natural numbers which can be represented as a sum of two squares of integers. For X≥2 we denote by g(X) the largest gap between consecutive elements of S that do not exceed X. We prove that for X→+∞ the lower bound g(X)≥(390/449−o(1))lnX holds.  This estimate is twice the recent estimate by R. Dietmann and C. Elsholtz.

We study properties of Markov chain Monte Carlo simulations of classical spin models with local updates. We derive analytic expressions for the mean value of the acceptance rate of the single-spin-flip algorithms for the one-dimensional Ising model. We find that for the Metropolis algorithm the average acceptance rate is a linear function of energy. We further provide numerical results for the energy dependence of the average acceptance rate for the 3- and 4-state Potts model, and the XY model in one and two spatial dimensions. In all cases, the acceptance rate is an almost linear function of the energy in the critical region. The variance of the acceptance rate is studied as a function of the specific heat.

Larger cities typically give rise to two opposite effects: tougher competition among firms and higher production costs. Using an urban model with substitutability of production factors and pro-competitive effects, I study the response of the market outcome to city size, land-use regulations, and commuting costs. For industries with low input shares of land, larger cities host more firms setting lower prices whereas for sectors with intermediate land shares larger cities accommodate more firms charging higher prices. Softer land-use regulations and/or lower commuting costs reinforce pro-competitive effects, making larger cities more attractive for residents via lower prices and broader product diversity.