Publications

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

In culturally diverse societies, one of the biggest questions on our minds is 'how shall we all live together?' Mutual Intercultural Relations offers an answer to this fundamental and topical issue. By exploring intercultural relationships between dominant/national and non-dominant/ethnic populations in seventeen societies around the world, the authors are each able to chart the respective views of those populations and generate 'universal' principles of intercultural relations. The research reported in this book is guided by three psychological hypotheses which are evaluated by empirical research. It was also carried out comparatively in order to gain knowledge about intercultural relations that may be general and not limited to a few social and political contexts. Understanding these general principles will offer help in the development of public policies and programmes designed to improve the quality of intercultural relations in culturally diverse societies around the world.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Data Analytics and Management in Data Intensive Domains, DAMDID/RCDL 2016, held in Ershovo, Moscow, Russia, in October 2016.

The 16 revised full papers presented together with one invited talk and two keynote papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 57 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on semantic modeling in data intensive domains; knowledge and learning management; text mining; data infrastructures in astrophysics; data analysis; research infrastructures; position paper.

This book is a doctoral dissertation. It is devoted to technology transfer from the West (primarily from Finland) to the Soviet forestry industry during a period of rapid modernization under the rule of Nikita Khrushchev during the 1950s and 1960s.This dissertation examines the role that technology transfer from the other side of the Iron Curtain played in Soviet modernization from 1955 to 1964. How did technical cooperation with a Western country develop in the context of the Cold War? How and in what forms did Soviet institutions and engineers transfer technologies? How did they deal with more advanced machinery and new expertise? How did they apply the new technologies and how did Soviet domestic research develop? Did these technologies help renew machinery, launch new production and enhance the development of the industry, as expected? If not, why? And, in general, did these foreign technologies lead to technological modernization? In answering these questions, the dissertation sometimes refers to previous periods in order to trace continuities and change. 

The book is designed to provide assistance to economics students (CEFR correlation: B2-C1) in studying English for Specfic Purposes (ESP) and arouse their interest in global economic problems.  Authentic texts  on  economic conditions of selected OECD member-countries  alongside  Brazil, China, India, Mongolia  are aimed at developing reading, writing, speaking, lexical  and critical thinking skills through a variety of exercises.

The book is a result of the first ever study of the transformations of the higher education institutional landscape in fifteen former USSR countries after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. It explores how the single Soviet model that developed across the vast and diverse territory of the Soviet Union over several decades has evolved into fifteen unique national systems, systems that have responded to national and global developments while still bearing some traces of the past. The book is distinctive as it presents a comprehensive analysis of the reforms and transformations in the region in the last 25 years; and it focuses on institutional landscape through the evolution of the institutional types established and developed in Pre-Soviet, Soviet and Post-Soviet time. It also embraces all fifteen countries of the former USSR, and provides a comparative analysis of transformations of institutional landscape across Post-Soviet systems. It will be highly relevant for students and researchers in the fields of higher education and and sociology, particularly those with an interest in historical and comparative studies.

What many anthropologists regard as the major step in political development occurred when, for the first time in history, previously autonomous villages gave up their individual sovereignties and were brought together into a multi-village political unit--the chiefdom. Though long neglected as a major stage in history, recent years have seen the chiefdom come in for increased attention. As its importance has been more fully recognized, it has become the object of serious scholarly analysis and interpretation. In this volume specialists in political evolution draw on data from ethnography, archaeology, and history and apply fresh insights to enhance the study of the chiefdom. The papers present penetrating analyses of many aspects of the chiefdom, from how this form of political organization first arose to the role it played in giving rise to the next major stage in the development of human society - the state.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Application and Theory of Petri Nets and Concurrency, PETRI NETS 2017, held in Zaragoza, Spain, in June 2017. Petri Nets 2017 is co-located with the Application of Concurrency to System Design Conference, ACSD 2017.

The 16 papers, 9 theory papers, 4 application papers, and 3 tool papers, with 1 short abstract and 3 extended abstracts of invited talks presented together in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 33 submissions. The focus of the conference is on following topics: Simulation of Colored Petri Nets, Petri Net Tools.- Model Checking,  Liveness and Opacity,  Stochastic Petri Nets,  Specific Net Classes, and  Petri Nets for Pathways.

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.

When the Iron Curtain lifted in 1989 it was seen by some as proof of the final demise of the ideas and aspirations of the radical left. Not many years passed, however, before the critique of capitalism and social inequalities were once again the main protest themes of social movements. This book provides an account of radical left movements in today’s Europe and how they are trying to accomplish social and political change. The book’s various chapters focus on social movement organizations, activist groups, and networks that are rooted in the left-wing ideologies of anarchism, Marxism, socialism, and communism in both newly democratized post-communist and longstanding liberal-democratic polities. The questions addressed include: How are radical left movements influenced by the political and social contexts in which they are situated? How do they interact with other political actors? How does contemporary radical left activism differ from “new” and “old” social movements on the one hand, and radical left parliamentary parties on the other? And what does it mean to be ”radical left” in liberal-democratic (or semi-democratic, or even semi-authoritarian), capitalist European societies today after the fall of state socialism.

After decades of dominant Marxism-Leninism, the post-Soviet Russian political space offers a multiplicity of discourses associated with the contemprary state and its various organs - such as the party, the presidential administration, the burocracies and media - or with the different places of ideological production revealing plurality and fluidity within Russian political languages and evoking many of the neo-conservativist ideological constructs promoted by the Kremlin. The apparent demise of Russian notions of Liberalism, its polymorphism, the influence of the Soviet experience, perestroika, the effects of the turbulent 1990s, in addiction to the effect of Western thought and foreign policies on Russia's liberal ideas and expectations, determine the role of the remaining institutions and actors that promote political , economic, and constitutional liberalism and manifest an alternative discourse that, although weakened, is still credible.

Representation theory of big groups is an important and quickly developing part of modern mathematics, giving rise to a variety of important applications in probability and mathematical physics. This book provides the first concise and self-contained introduction to the theory on the simplest yet very nontrivial example of the infinite symmetric group, focusing on its deep connections to probability, mathematical physics, and algebraic combinatorics. Following a discussion of the classical Thoma's theorem which describes the characters of the infinite symmetric group, the authors describe explicit constructions of an important class of representations, including both the irreducible and generalized ones. Complete with detailed proofs, as well as numerous examples and exercises which help to summarize recent developments in the field, this book will enable graduates to enhance their understanding of the topic, while also aiding lecturers and researchers in related areas.

This textbook on Instructional Design for Learning is a must for all education and teaching students and specialists. It provides a comprehensive overview about the theoretical foundations of the various models of Instructional Design and Technology from its very beginning to the most recent approaches. It elaborates Instructional Design (ID) as a science of educational planning. The book expands on this general understanding of ID and presents an up-to-date perspective on the theories and models for the creation of detailed and precise blueprints for effective instruction. It integrates different theoretical aspects and practical approaches, such as conceptual ID models, technology-based ID, and research-based ID. In doing so, this book takes a multi-perspective view on the questions that are central for professional ID: How to analyze the relevant characteristics of the learner and the environment? How to create precise goals and adequate instruments of assessment? How to design classroom and technology-supported learning environments? How to ensure effective teaching and learning by employing formative and summative evaluation? Furthermore, this book presents empirical findings on the processes that enable effective instructional designing. Finally, this book demonstrates two different fields of application by addressing ID for teaching and learning at secondary schools and colleges, as well as for higher education.

A complex analysis of the social and economic consequences of China, Ukraine, and Russia’s accession to the WTO was used to identify recommendations for the most successful adaptation of Russia to WTO standards. Russia tries to adapt to the WTO standards. The study focuses on the Chinese experience. China’s membership in the WTO is extremely useful for Russia from due to China’s positive influence on the development of its economy , as there has been expansion in the industrial and production sectors of its economy and promotion of goods in world markets, as well as an opportunity to use the WTO’s legal instruments for national domestic market protection.

China’s positive experience as a WTO member somehow contrasts with the described experience of Ukraine. An assessment of Ukraine’s versatile policy and its association with the EU allowed concluded that it is impossible for Ukraine to follow two ways at once: that of Eurasian integration and that of European integration.

Recently, the aggravated trade, economic and political confrontations between Russia and its American and European partners spurred radical changes in Russia’s economic strategy. Areas of such transformations can be determined by understanding both the positive and negative experiences of Russia’s old trade partners, namely China and Ukraine as they joined the world economic environment.

This is the second part of a 2-year course of abstract algebra for students beginning a professional study of higher mathematics.1 This textbook is based on courses given at the Independent University of Moscow and at the Faculty of Mathematics at the National Research University Higher School of Economics. In particular, it contains a large number of exercises that were discussed in class, some of which are provided with commentary and hints, as well as problems for independent solution that were assigned as homework.Working out the exercises is of crucial importance in understanding the subject matter of this book.

This book is intended for novice researchers in various fields, who would like to learn how to write academic texts and publish their work in international peer-reviewed journals. The book contains extensive material on writing conclusions, including their content, structural elements, vocabulary, grammar, and style.

 

Each chapter includes a wide range of tasks and activities with the purpose to familiarize the readers with the main genre and stylistic features of informative abstracts and provide them with practice in drafting and writing conclusions to their current research projects.

 

The book is accompanied by answer keys.

 

The book is likely to be most useful to proficient users at level C1 and above.

 

In this paper we investigate multi-server queueing systems with regenerative input flow and independent service times with finite mean. Various service disciplines are considered: systems with a common queue and systems with parallel queues when an arrived customer chooses server in accordance with a certain rule and stays in a chosen queue until the moment of service start. We define some classes of disciplines and establish the necessary and suffcient condition of stability.

his paper examines the academic context in which the Russian-Polish legal scholar Leon Petrazycki formed a transdisciplinary approach in legal philosophy, which served as a basis for development of legal sociology by his followers. The author contends that Petrazycki’s legal conception included “social engineering”, “living law”, and other aspects that allow characterizing his conception as one of the branches of legal realism. These realist stances were afterwards reconsidered by Gurvitch, Timasheff and other his followers who placed Petrazycki’s legal ideas into a framework of sociological jurisprudence. Going back to the beginnings of this approach, the author studies the common places in legal and economic sciences at the turn of the XX century, and foremost the predominating orientation to empirical data with discrimination of metaphysical speculation. The author asserts that the prevailing orientations at that epoque formed similar attitudes to understanding of legal and economic behaviors of social actors in countries seemingly belonging to different intellectual cultures. In this context, the author draws certain parallels between the methodological programs of Petrazycki and von Schmoller.

Physics of many-body systems where particles are restricted to move in two spatial dimensions is challenging and even controversial: On one hand, neither long-range order nor Bose condensation may appear in innite uniform 2D systems at nite temperature, on the other hand this does not prohibit super uidity or superconductivity. Moreover, 2D superconductors, such as cuprates, are among the systems with highest critical temperatures. Ultracold atoms are a platform for studying 2D physics. Uniquely to other physical systems, quantum statistics may be completely changed in an ultracold gas: an atomic Fermi gas may be smoothly crossed over into a gas of Bose molecules (or dimers) by tuning interatomic interactions. We review recent experiments where such crossover has been demonstrated as well as critical phenomena in the Fermi-to-Bose crossover. We also present simple theoretical models describing the gas at different points of the crossover and compare the data to these and more advanced models.

Purpose – This paper aims to analyse the mainstream and emerging global challenges and trends in the global agriculture sector. The analysis leads to a discussion on the present state of the Russian agroindustry and possible future strategies for adaptation in the context of the rapidly changing global environment. 

Design/methodology/approach – The design of this study is based on the application of the core methods of Foresight. First, a trend analysis is undertaken using reviews and expert methods. Trends identified are mapped using a social, technological, economic, environmental, political and value (STEEPV) framework to ensure that a broad range of trends are covered, which may be stemming from various factors affecting the agriculture sector. The analysis of the big picture of global trends and challenges, interacting with country-specific structural factors, translates are translated into the opportunities and threats, which will in turn help to develop possible strategies for adaptation. 

Findings – This study develops two adaptive strategies for the development of the Russian agroindustry that are feasible in different short- and long–term time horizons. The first strategy is considered to be the most likely choice for the period before 2020. It includes radical imports’ substitution (of commodities as well as machinery and high-tech components) for ensuring national food security with inevitable temporary setbacks in efficiency and labour productivity. The second strategy, which becomes feasible after 2020, considers re-integrating Russia into global supply chains and expanding commodities exports (volumes and nomenclature) based on full-scale technological modernization with the use of international capital. 

Research limitations/implications – The study design is based on the assumption that Russia’s position as a country, which is highly self-sufficient on basic agricultural products and large exporter of crop commodities and fertilizers, will remain unchanged in the horizon of at least 20 years. However, long-term forecasts should also scrutinize the possibility of radical structural changes. Therefore, future research should concentrate on wild cards that can completely disrupt and transform the Russian agriculture industry and as well as the whole economy. 

Practical implications – This paper suggests a number of recommendations on national science and technology policy for the three main industries of the Russian agricultural sector: crop husbandry, animal breeding and food processing (the fisheries sector is excluded from the scope of this paper). In addition, this paper proposes a number of measures towards alleviating the institutional barriers to raise the investment attractiveness of the sector. 

Originality/value – The novelty of this paper lies in the originality of the research topic and methodology. The Russian agricultural sector has rarely been studied in the context of global agricultural challenges and threats taken on the highest level of aggregation beyond commodity market analysis or agro-climatic and logistics factors. There are few or no studies that lay out a map of possible long-term strategies of Russian agroindustry adaptive development. The Foresight methodology applied in this study is customized to better fit the practical purposes of the study.

Purpose – This paper aims to describe and discuss the architecture of Russia’s Technology Foresight System (TFS). This paper introduces the reader to the integration of the TFS into the public administration system and, specifically, into the national strategic planning system.

Design/methodology/approach – To do so, the authors fall back on more than 10 years of experience in performing foresight exercises for Russian policy makers of their institution.

Findings – Thereby, the paper highlights the implications arising from the interaction between sectoral and national components of TFS and on application of the results of foresight studies (implemented within the framework of TFS) for the strategic planning.

Originality/value – Russia has a long history of technological planning and forecasting and engages regularly in extensive foresight activities of both national and sectoral relevance. Also, Russia’s leadership repeatedly stresses the importance of such foresight activities which are outlined by a national law since 2014.

Models of slow-wave structures are used in simulating millimetre band devices are considered in the research. It is reasonable to use axially-symmetric slow-wave structures (SWS) for designing millimetre band traveling wave tubes (TWT). Simulating of considered slow-wave structure's 3D model produced in HFSS software package [1]. The program that is outlined in [2] is used for calculation of dispersion characteristics. The model of slow-wave structure cell bases on the results of calculation. The nature of the distribution of the electromagnetic field in the system depends on the interaction features of electrons and the field in the TWT with slow-wave structure. The discrete approach described in [3] is the most common for solving this type of problems. It is electrodynamically justified to use difference equation for description of the discrete interaction in a traveling wave tube, in which the phase of the field in the interaction gaps in the longitudinal direction remains constant. The difference form of the electrodynamic theory of excitation allows to justify the use of one or another mathematical model for constructing a finite-difference equation [4]. The coefficients of the finite-difference equation have a certain electrodynamic significance because they are calculated through the transmission matrix coefficients of the 2-N pole. Mathematical model of discrete interaction becomes more accurate when accuracy of coefficients of the finite-difference equation increases. In the research the 2-N pole is sextopole that appears form octopole in case of excitation current absence. The resulting sextopole is a mathematical model of the slow-wave structure cell. Coefficients of the obtained 2-N pole justifies accuracy, realism and recuperation of Electrodynamic characteristics of the simulated resonator slow-wave structure. Specification of discrete interaction processes in traveling-wave tubes, and electrodynamic processes in the SWS is ensured by the correct selection of the transmission matrix coefficients.

Jonathan D. Smele’s comprehensive account fits well into the prolonged centenary of the Russian imperial crisis marked by the Great War, the Russian Revolution of 1917, and the protracted conflict that the author calls the “‘Russian’ Civil Wars.” The book is a valuable addition to the new body of literature that will, hopefully, bring about a better understanding of one of the bloodiest civil wars in human history, provide convincing answers to some of the many remaining questions about its causes and consequences, and uncover new blind zones in the plethora of events that unfolded in Northern Eurasia between 1916 and 1926.

The aim of this short note is to give a simple proof of the non-rationality of the double cover of the three-dimensional projective space branched over a sufficiently general quartic.

We have considered core approaches to the problem of fictional objects. For each model authors covered the problem whether everything fictional exists or not in terms of evaluation, separating groups of objects, quantifying or existing in modal worlds. The article contains brief overview of the approaches for dealing with fictional objects and evaluating statements containing fictional objects as their part.

In this article a combination of two modern aspects of games development is considered: (i) the impact of high quality graphics and virtual reality (VR) user adaptation to believe in realness of in-game events by user’s own eyes; (ii) modeling an enemy’s behavior under automatic computer control, called BOT, which reacts similarly to human players. We consider a First-Person Shooter (FPS) game genre, which simulates an experience of combat actions. We describe some tricks to overcome simulator sicknesses in a shooter with respect to Oculus Rift and HTC Vive headsets. We created a BOT model that strongly reduces the conflict and uncertainty in matching human expectations. BOT passes VR game Alan Turing test with 80% threshold of believable human-like behavior.

TBD

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The paper analyzes strategic planning of supply chains of contemporary companies. Strategic planning process is viewed in context of its relationship with other planning levels. Typical goals and tasks of strategic supply chain planning are formalized. Key methods of strategic modeling including heuristic, simulation, and mathematical programming are analyzed in terms of their strengths and weaknesses. Author proposes basic classification of models and formalizes structure of a typical supply chain model. Systematic overview of popular mathematical and business software in the research area is provided. It is highlighted that presented in the paper systemized results of analysis of strategic supply chain planning domain were used in developing corresponding methodological principles and strategy for a number of leading international companies.

In this paper, dispersion characteristics of "serpentine”-type slow-wave structures, which are promising for the terahertz range use, are calculated. For 3D-modeling, HFSS was used. Program described in work was used in the calculation. Using the obtained characteristics, octopole chain model of the slow-wave structure is constructed. Discrete approach is advisable in solving these problems. Justification of the applied mathematical model for the discrete interaction follows from the difference form of electrodynamic theory of excitation [3]. Requirements to coefficients of the resulting finite-difference equation are high, because their accuracy determines how close the mathematical model of the discrete interaction to the physical laws is. These coefficients have a certain electrodynamic sense and are obtained through the octopole transmission matrix coefficients.  In turn, this octopole is a mathematical model of the resonator slow-wave structure cell.

This paper presents recent results of studies in application of sequence-based pattern structures and emerging patterns to analysis of demographic sequences in Russia. This study is performed on data of 11 generations from 1930 till 1984 for the panel of three waves of the Russian part of Generation and Gender Survey, which took place in 2004, 2007, and 2011. The main goal is to develop methods of extracting emerging patterns (EP) with the following restrictions: the obtained patterns need to be (closed) frequent contiguous prefixes of the input sequences. These constraints were required by demographers for proper interpretation and understanding of early life course events that lead to adulthood. To fulfil this requirement we used modified FP-trees based on pattern structures of contiguous prefixes. After extraction of EP we use CAEP(Classification by Aggregating Emerging Patterns) classifier to predict gender of respondents using their demographic sequences of the first life course events. The best results in terms of TPR-FPR have been obtained for large values of minimum growth-rate parameter (with some objects left without classification).

This paper presents a description of the method of automated parametric and structural optimization of systems for ensuring thermal regime of microelectronic devices using modern information technologies.

What many anthropologists regard as the major step in political development occurred when, for the first time in history, previously autonomous villages gave up their individual sovereignties and were brought together into a multi-village political unit--the chiefdom. Though long neglected as a major stage in history, recent years have seen the chiefdom come in for increased attention. As its importance has been more fully recognized, it has become the object of serious scholarly analysis and interpretation. In this volume specialists in political evolution draw on data from ethnography, archaeology, and history and apply fresh insights to enhance the study of the chiefdom. The papers present penetrating analyses of many aspects of the chiefdom, from how this form of political organization first arose to the role it played in giving rise to the next major stage in the development of human society - the state.

The paper examines the changes in the physician’s motivation at work during the period of reforms the salary system started since 2008. These reforms have included a shift from fixed salary system to pay for performance remuneration as well as sufficient increase of salary. The data of six surveys of health workers implemented in 2007-2016 were used to reveal the hierarchy of physician’s motives at work and to track their changes during the period of time under consideration. The changes were minor, and the directions of these changes were rather opposite to the expected strengthening of financial motivation at work: the importance of the motive of earning money has moved from the first place. The share of doctors willing to work more and better on the condition of linking salary with labor contribution did not increase. In contrast, almost two-thirds of physicians believe that they are working on a high level of quality and performance. The majority of physicians desire to increase not a stimulating part of the salary but a base, fixed one. Doctors who receive bonuses for the intensity, quality and performance, and who have a higher amount of salary wish to see the share of fixed part of salary higher than it is now available. This is a clear indication of orientation of this professional to strengthening the protective function of the salary rather than to use increased opportunities for earning money.

We prove that every rational trinomial affine hypersurface admits a horizontal polynomial curve. This result provides an explicit non-trivial polynomial solution to a trinomial equation. Also we show that a trinomial affine hypersurface admits a Schwartz-Halphen curve if and only if the trinomial comes from a platonic triple. It is a generalization of Schwartz-Halphen's Theorem for Pham-Brieskorn surfaces.

We explicitly construct pairs of elliptic curves defined over the algebraic numbers with large intersection of projective torsion points.

It is known that the moduli space of smooth Fano-Mukai fourfolds V 18 of genus 10 has dimension one. We show that any such fourfold is a completion of C 4 in two different ways. Up to isomorphism, there is a unique fourfold V s 18 acted upon by SL 2 ( C ). The group Aut( V s 18 ) is a semidirect product GL 2 ( C ) o ( Z / 2 Z ). Furthermore, V s 18 is a GL 2 ( C )-equivariant completion of C 4 , and as well of GL 2 ( C ). The restriction of the GL 2 ( C )-action on V s 18 to C 4 ↪ → V s 18 yields a faithful representation with an open orbit. There is also a unique, up to isomorphism, fourfold V a 18 such that the group Aut( V a 18 ) is a semidirect product ( G a × G m ) o ( Z / 2 Z ). For a Fano-Mukai fourfold V 18 neither isomorphic to V s 18 , nor to V a 18 , one has Aut 0 ( V 18 ) ∼ = ( G m ) 2 , and Aut( V 18 ) is a semidirect product of Aut 0 ( V 18 ) and a finite cyclic group whose order is a factor of 6.

This study estimates an attendance demand model in a reduced form, with uncertainty as one of the determinants of demand, to test the Uncertainty of Outcome Hypothesis (UOH), using data from the Russian Football Premier League (RFPL). These data fit our requirements for two reasons. First, there are few sellout matches, so demand for tickets in the RFPL is not restricted by stadium capacity. Secondly, there have hitherto been no articles devoted to the study of outcome uncertainty in the RFPL. The results indicate that the UOH does not explain the behavioural pattern of attendees in the RFPL. The dependence between the attendance and uncertainty is found to be U-shaped or even declining. We explain the U-shaped dependence by the visiting team effect; an attendee’s utility in the RFPL depends more on seeing a top team coming to the city than on the uncertainty of the outcome of the match.

We show that the monodromy group acting on $H^1(\cdot,\mathbb Z)$ of a smooth   hyperplane section of a del Pezzo surface over $\mathbb C$ is the entire   group $\mathrm{SL}_2(\mathbb Z)$. For smooth surfaces with $b_1=0$ and hyperplane section   of genus $g>2$, there exist examples in which a similar assertion is   false. Actually, if hyperplane sections of a smooth surface are   hyperelliptic curves of genus $g\ge3$, then the monodromy group   acting on the integer $H^1$ on hyperplane sections is a proper   subgroup of $\mathrm{Sp}_{2g}(\mathbb Z)$.

In the course of the Middle ages, the Copts experienced a variety of drastic changes in the attitude of Muslim rulers towards them, from confidence to disgrace. The latter included not only the increasingly rigorous tax policies, but also social and domestic constraints, which can be surely defined as religious discrimination. Though the Copts managed to regain the trust of the authorities by their profound skills in administrative and courtly functions and, of course, compromise in terms of religion, which allowed them to enjoy high ranks and other benefits of their proximity to the Egyptian court. This, in its turn, made them an outstanding social group and can be considered “positive discrimination” in contrast with the definitely negative discrimination based on confessional conditions. The question of the balance between positive and negative discrimination as an instrument of regulating intrastate social cooperation can be crucial for understanding the specific of these relationships during the described period. So, the main goal of this work is to trace historical precedents which can be considered either negative or positive discrimination, and their suppositional influence on the Copts’ turning into a minority.

Available at SSRN:  https://ssrn.com/abstract=2913517 The aim of this paper is to investigate the impact of external research collaborations on the scientific performance of academic institutions. Data are derived from the international SCOPUS database. We consider the number of citations of publications to evaluate university performance in Russia. To this end, we develop a non-overlapping generations model to evidence the theoretical idea of research externalities between academic institutions. Moreover, we implement different empirical models to test for the effect of external scientific collaborations on the institutional research quality. The results confirm an important positive impact of co-authoring process.

Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2931340  The aim of this paper is to investigate the role of Jacobian externalities stemmed from different technological sectors for international firms engaged both in environmental and in dirty activities. Firms’ innovation, measured, as the development of new patents, is a key factor behind the achievement of desired economic performances. Empirical literature usually deals with the integration between ecological efficiency and product value enhancement. The results of these studies lead to the lack of integrated innovation adoption behind environmental productivity performance.  In this work, we analyse the integration between more environmental goals in an original way, by applying different methodologies to compute technological proximity, based on the Mahalanobis approach. To this end, we use information from 240 large international firms, located in three economic areas: USA, Japan and Europe and we select their environmental and dirty patents from European Patent Office data.

Our empirical tests generally confirm the validity of the Olson - Huntington hypothesis suggesting a bell-shaped relationship between the level of economic development and the level of sociopolitical instability. According to this hypothesis, up to certain values of the average per capita income its growth tends to lead to increased risks of sociopolitical destabilization, and only in the upper range of this indicator its growth tends to be associated with the decrease of sociopolitical destabilization risks. Thus, for higher values of per capita income we deal with a negative correlation between per capita income and the risk of sociopolitical instability, and for lower values this correlation is positive. As a result, the maximum values of political instability tend to be observed in the mid-range of the GDP per capita spectrum rather than among the poorest or the richest countries.  However, our analysis has shown that for various indices of sociopolitical destabilization this curvilinear relationship can be quite different in some important details. On the other hand, we detect the presence of a very important exception. We show that the relationship between per capita GDP and the intensity of coups and coup attempts is not curvilinear; in this case we are rather dealing with a pronounced negative correlation; a particularly strong negative correlation is observed between this index and the logarithm of GDP per capita. We demonstrate that this fact makes the abovementioned bell-shaped relationship with respect to the integral index of sociopolitical destabilization considerably less distinct and makes a very significant contribution to the formation of its asymmetry (when the negative correlation between per capita GDP and sociopolitical destabilization among the richer countries looks much stronger than the positive correlation among poorer countries). However, our analysis shows that for all the other indices of sociopolitical destabilization we do witness the bell-shaped relationship assumed by the Olson - Huntington hypothesis. On the other hand, for example, in relation to such indices, as political strikes, riots and anti-government demonstrations we deal with such an asymmetry that is directly opposite to that mentioned above - with such an asymmetry, when a positive correlation between GDP and instability for poorer countries is much stronger than the negative correlation for richer countries. An especially strong asymmetry of this kind is found for such an important index of social and political destabilization, as the intensity of anti-government demonstrations. Thus, we arrive at the following conclusions. (1) Different types of political instability events have different functional relationships to changing levels of GDP/capita.  Some do have a curvilinear response, others have a monotonic one. They also are more frequent at certain ranges of GDP/capita that are not the same, but rather are particular to certain types of events. (2) These findings show that certain types of events are more common at lower levels of income and political development, while others are more common at mid-levels, and yet others (anti-government protests, strikes) are more common at higher levels. (3) The functional relationships are most often linear in rising stages, but exponential or logarithmic in their declines. There are thus generally strong asymmetries in how such events react to changes in GDP/cap in the lower vs. upper ranges. (4) The overall notion of a curvilinear relationship between instability and GDP/capita is thus too simple, obscuring important patterns that reveal a trajectory of varying kinds of instability developing and peaking at different levels of economic development.

We derive a simple necessary and sufficient condition on preferences for the market outcome to be socially optimal under monopolistic competition with input-output (IO) linkages. Preferences that satisfy this condition are typically non-CES and display pro-competitive effects, although they converge to the CES when IO linkages become negligibly weak. We show that the equilibrium with pro-competitive effects may deliver both excessive and insufficient entry of firms in equilibrium.

Let M be a complex manifold and L an oriented real line bundle on M equipped with a flat connection. An LCK ("locally conformally Kahler") form is a closed, positive (1,1)-form taking values in L, and an LCK manifold is one which admits an LCK form. Locally, any LCK form is expressed as an L-valued pluri-Laplacian of a function called LCK potential. We consider a manifold M with an LCK form admitting a global LCK potential, and prove that M admits a global, positive LCK potential. Then M admits a holomorphic embedding to a Hopf manifold.

This paper focuses on transformations of gender attitudes in a set of Arab societies covered by the Arab Barometer. We analyze age and cohort differences in thirteen countries using generalized additive modeling (GAM). We argue that stagnation or even retrogression of gender attitudes in some societies may be caused in part by an ideological shift of the 1970s–1980s, from largely secular and socialist-oriented national movements of the 1950s–1960s to the more conservative period often associated with the rise of political Islam. On the other hand, the youngest cohorts in those societies that have always promoted conservative gender attitudes are getting somewhat more liberal, although they remain slightly less gender egalitarian compared to other societies. We test our assumptions using the example of Yemen that was divided into two parts between 1967 and 1990: The South supported by the Soviet Union and the North influenced by Saudi Arabia and the Western bloc. We trace the support for gender egalitarianism across generations in the two parts of Yemen and show that the secular socialist ideology made a profound imprint on the attitudes of a whole generation and made those who were in their twenties back in the 1960s more egalitarian than the young people these days. The same is true for the other countries of the region that had some socialist experience.

How much of the variation in state effectiveness is due to the individuals and organizations responsible for implementing policy? We investigate this question and its implications for policy design in the context of public procurement, using a text-based product classification method to measure bureaucratic output. We show that effective procurers lower bid preparation/submission costs, and that 60% of within-product purchase-price variation across 16 million purchases in Russia in 2011-2015 is due to the bureaucrats and organizations administering procurement processes. This has dramatic policy consequences. To illustrate these, we study a ubiquitous procurement policy: bid preferences for favored firms (here domestic manufacturers). The policy decreases overall entry and increases prices when procurers are effective, but has the opposite impact with ineffective procurers, as predicted by a simple endogenous-entry model of procurement. Our results imply that the state’s often overlooked bureaucratic tier is critical for effectiveness and the make-up of optimal policies.

This paper analyses the contribution of higher education institutions (HEI) in Russia to gross regional product (GRP) growth. We explore the relationship between higher education coverage and rates of economic growth based on longitudinal economic growth models which are pooled regression, fixed effects, and regression with simultaneous fixed and spatial effects. In addition to the influence of HEI on economic growth, the model specifications also allow an investigation of the relationship between the territory accessibility of higher education and GRP growth, and the significance of higher education in regions with different structures of GRP. The main policy outcome of the paper is that universities can be considered as fully-fledged economic agents which make positive contributions to GRP growth. The development of regional higher education systems would lead to a positive effect on regional economic development. 

In this paper we study the problem of statistical inference on the parameters of the semiparametric variance-mean mixtures. This class of mixtures has recently become rather popular in statistical and financial modelling. We design a semiparametric estimation procedure that first estimates the mean of the underlying normal distribution and then recovers nonparametrically the density of the corresponding mixing distribution. We illustrate the performance of our procedure on simulated and real data.

Population annealing is a promising recent approach for Monte Carlo simulations in statistical physics, in particular for the simulation of systems with complex free-energy landscapes. It is a hybrid method, combining importance sampling through Markov chains with elements of sequential Monte Carlo in the form of population control. While it appears to provide algorithmic capabilities for the simulation of such systems that are roughly comparable to those of more established approaches such as parallel tempering, it is intrinsically much more suitable for massively parallel computing. Here, we tap into this structural advantage and present a highly optimized implementation of the population annealing algorithm on GPUs that promises speed-ups of several orders of magnitude as compared to a serial implementation on CPUs. While the sample code is for simulations of the 2D ferromagnetic Ising model, it should be easily adapted for simulations of other spin models, including disordered systems. Our code includes implementations of some advanced algorithmic features that have only recently been suggested, namely the automatic adaptation of temperature steps and a multi-histogram analysis of the data at different temperatures.

European regions experience accelerating ageing, but there is substantial regional variation in the process. This paper examines the effect of this variation on regional economic cohesion in Europe. We measure the effect of convergence or divergence in the share of the working age population on convergence or divergence in economies of NUTS 2 regions. The effect of convergence or divergence in ageing on economic convergence or divergence has been smaller than the effect of changes in productivity and labour force participation; yet, this effect was still quite substantial. Convergence of ageing leads only to economic convergence when the share of the working age population in rich regions exceeds that in poor regions and the former regions experience a substantial decline in the share of the working age population or the latter regions experience an increase. Our empirical analysis shows that in the period 2003-2012 an inverse relationship between convergence in ageing and economic convergence was the rule rather than the exception.