Publications

This special conference starts the new series, and therefore, it launches a tradition to follow, and an opportunity for a rapid spin up. This ICCQ conference was organized by the HSE and leading IT innovative companies such Huawei and Yandex. The ICCQ 2021 attracted a number of renowned experts including Jens Palsberg, Anders Møller, and David West. The papers were submitted from the world over. The conference attracted speakers and attendees from the USA, Europe, and Asia; therefore, this is truly an international event. Although ICCQ started as a relatively small single-day conference, it immediately gained the IEEE support. The plan for the next years is to embrace the world while keeping high quality standards.

We believe that Russian religious philosophy of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has great importance for Christian theology and philosophy. Russian thinkers, rooted in the tradition of the Church Fathers, strove for an integral knowledge of reality, based on the unity of faith and reason. Such philosophers and theologians as Peter Chaadaev, Alexei Khomiakov, Vladimir Soloviev, Evgenii Trubetskoi, Pavel Florensky, Sergei Bulgakov, Nikolai Berdyaev, Semyon Frank, Georges Florovsky, and Aleksei Losev had penetrating insight into the nature of reality and thought deeply about religion and culture, science and philosophy, and history and society. Their legacy deserves a prominent place in contemporary philosophical and theological discussions. The series Ex Oriente Lux aims to meet this need. It serves as a way to bring Eastern Christian intuitions into the current post-secular philosophical and theological context. Each volume focuses on one Russian thinker and includes a selection of essays on the thinker’s main ideas in historical and contemporary contexts. The books are prepared by Western and Russian scholars, thus creating a space for intellectual dialogue. The series comes out of research connected with the annual conferences on Russian religious philosophy held in Krakow, Poland. The “Krakow Meetings” are organized jointly by the Pontifical University of John Paul II in Krakow and the Edith Stein Institute of Philosophy in Granada, Spain.

This book describes various approaches in modelling financial risks and compiling ratings. Focusing on emerging markets, it illustrates how risk assessment is performed and analyses the use of machine learning methods for financial risk assessment and measurement. It not only offers readers insights into the differences between emerging and developed markets, but also helps them understand the development of risk management approaches for banks. Highlighting current problems connected with the evaluation and modelling of financial risks in the banking sector of emerging markets, the book presents the methodologies applied to credit and market financial risks and integrated and payment risks, and discusses the outcomes. In addition it explores the systemic risks and innovations in banking and risk management by analyzing the features of risk measurement in emerging countries. Lastly, it demonstrates the aggregation of approaches to financial risk for emerging financial markets, comparing the experiences of various countries, including Russia, Belarus, China and Brazil.

This book constitutes revised selected papers of the 9th International Conference on Analysis of Images, Social Networks and Texts, AIST 2020, held in Moscow, Russia, in october 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the conference was held online. 

The 14 full papers, 9 short papers and 4 poster papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 108 qualified submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on ​natural language processing; computer vision; social network analysis; data analysis and machine learning; theoretical machine learning and optimization; process mining; posters.

Challenges of the 21st Century: Democracy, Environment, Inequalities, Intersectionality  

This IV ISA Forum of Sociology will be our first virtual Forum, with over 800 sessions, more than 3,000 papers and the participation of sociologists from 125 countries.

This Forum will be a unique opportunity to gather our research results and analyses of the extraordinary time we live and study, of its impact on individuals and societies and on four global challenges it has intensified: democracy, environment, inequalities and intersectionality.

During six days, hundreds of panels will explore the world in the pandemic and the world that may come out of it based on research grounded in the field and topics of the ISA Research Committees, Working and Thematic groups. Young researchers and experienced scholars from different regions of the world will expose their analyses of societies and sociology in the pandemic. Leading scholars from different continents will share their perspectives in the Forum’s Opening and Closing Plenaries: Michael Burawoy, Isabel Casimiro, Manuel Castells, Ashish Kothari, Rita Segato, Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Maristella Svampa. This Forum will also be an opportunity for our global community to pay tribute to three of our most distinguished colleagues to which special panels are dedicated: Immanuel Wallerstein, Erik Olin Wright and Marielle Franco.

The pandemic has stressed how deeply interdependent we have become and accentuated the need of a more global sociology. Epistemologies of the South and intersectional perspectives on democracy, ecology and social justice are more than alternative options for sociology in the 21st century. There are at its core and have deeply transformed it. Opening more spaces for our colleagues from the Global South has been a central goal in this Forum. We are particularly pleased to host semi-plenary sessions set up by the Brazilian Sociological Society with the Porto Alegre Local Organizing Committee, by the Latin American Sociological Association and by the Latin American Council of Social Sciences, and that the president of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa will join us in the closing session.

Sari Hanafi, President of the ISA Geoffrey Pleyers, President of the IV ISA Forum of Sociology

We discuss the applicability of multiphase lattice Boltzmann method for the simulation of the drop oscillation. We demonstrate that the simulation of the single drop excited to the first eigenmode does follow Rayleigh formula. Simulations show no sensitivity to the number of the discrete velocities with D3Q19 and D3Q27 representations of the distribution function in three dimensions. The boundaries do influent the motion of the drop—division of the computational area by the even and the odd number of cells comes out important and leads to symmetry violence. The second part of the chapter describes the oscillations of the ensemble of three drops due to the excitation of the central drop in the first eigenmode. The motion of the backdrops does strongly depend on the viscosity of the fluid. We provide future details of simulations.

The relevance of studying the regulation of protein-ligand interactions is due to the emergence of new views on the role of metabolites and their key importance in vital processes. To study the protein-ligand interaction, the AB0 antigen-antibody blood system and the enzyme-substrate system of dehydrogenases were used as a test system, and ethanol was used as an influencing factor. In experiments performed with A and B blood erythrocyte antigens, natural AB0 system antibodies and monoclonal antibodies under the influence of ethanol performed change of the degree of agglutination and the time to onset of erythrocyte agglutination. It was found that ethanol can regulate the enzyme-substrate interactions of dehydrogenases: lactate dehydrogenase (EC 1.1.1.27), glyceraldehyde phosphate dehydrogenase (EC 1.1.1.12), and α-glycerol phosphate dehydrogenase (EC 1.1.1.8). The increase in the activity of studied enzymes under the influence of ethanol in the whole blood hemolysate was 2.5 - 3 times higher than in the isolated medium (with pure enzyme preparations).

This book offers new perspectives on the environmental history of the lands that have come under Russian and Soviet rule by paying attention to ‘place’ and ‘nature’ in the intersection between humans and the environments that surround them

This book highlights interdisciplinary insights, latest research results, and technological trends in Business Intelligence and Modelling in fields such as: Business Intelligence, Business Transformation, Knowledge Dissemination & Implementation, Modeling for Logistics, Business Informatics, Business Model Innovation, Simulation Modelling, E-Business, Enterprise & Conceptual Modelling, etc. The book is divided into eight sections, grouping emerging marketing technologies together in a close examination of practices, problems and trends. The chapters have been written by researchers and practitioners that demonstrate a special orientation in Strategic Marketing and Business Intelligence. This volume shares their recent contributions to the field and showcases their exchange of insights.

This volume presents the original text, accompanied by an English translation and commentary, of a hitherto unpublished Syriac composition, entitled the Marvels Found in the Great Cities and in the Seas and on the Islands. Produced by an unknown East Syrian Christian author during the late medieval or early modern period, this work offers a loosely organized catalogue of marvellous events, phenomena, and objects, natural as well as human-made, found throughout the world. The Marvels is a unique composition in that it bears witness to the creative adoption by Syriac Christians of the paradoxographical literary mode of ‘aǧā’ib that enjoyed great popularity among their Arabic- and Persian-speaking Muslim neighbours. In this composition, the East Syrian author blends together a number of different paradoxographical traditions: some inherited from the earlier Christian works in Syriac, such as the Alexander Romance, some borrowed directly or indirectly from Muslim geographical and other works, and some, apparently, circulating as a part of local oral lore. Combining entertainment and didacticism, he provides his audience with a fascinating panorama of imaginary geography, which at the same time has unmistakable Christian features.

This edition makes a fascinating Syriac work available to a wider audience, and provides detailed insights into the rich assortment of traditions creatively woven together by its author. Thanks to the combination of the original text, English translation and commentary, it will be of interest to scholars and readers alike.

Chapters gathered in Syriac Hagiography: Texts and Beyond explore a wide range of Syriac hagiographical works, while following two complementary methodological approaches, i.e. literary and cultic, or formal and functional. Grouped into three main sections, these contributions reflect three interrelated ways in which we can read Syriac hagiography and further grasp its characteristics: “Texts as Literature” seeks to unfold the mechanisms of their literary composition; “Saints Textualized” offers a different perspective on the role played by hagiographical texts in the invention and/or maintenance of the cult of a particular saint or group of saints; “Beyond the Texts” presents cases in which the historical reality behind the nexus of hagiographical texts and veneration of saints can be observed in greater details.

In Memory and Identity in the Syriac Cave of Treasures: Rewriting the Bible in Sasanian Iran Sergey Minov examines literary and socio-cultural aspects of the Syriac pseudepigraphic composition known as the Cave of Treasures, which offers a peculiar version of the Christian history of salvation. The book fills a lacuna in the history of Syriac Christian literary creativity by contextualising this unique work within the cultural and religious situation of Sasanian Mesopotamia towards the end of Late Antiquity. The author analyses the Cave’s content and message from the perspective of identity theory and memory studies, while discussing its author’s emphatically polemical stand vis-à-vis Judaism, the ambivalent way in which he deals with Iranian culture, and the promotion in this work of a distinctively Syriac-oriented vision of the biblical past.

Research background: Ethnic identity development, while universal, is also recognized as an especially important prerequisite for economic and social life among indigenous populations [1, 2]. Global transformations such as technology, industrialization, global warming and political and economic forces are impacting positive ethnic identity development in indigenous populations around the world. Purpose of the article: The purpose of this study is to examine gender differences in ethnic identity erosion in the adolescent indigenous Nenets population of the Russian Siberian Arctic Region. Methods: The study sample included 78 children in boarding schools from the northern area of Western Siberia. To define ethnic identity, the "Types of Ethnic Identity" questionnaire [3] was used. Findings & Value added: The study results show that across 8th-9th grade as well as 10-11 grade Nenets adolescent boys perceive their ethnic identity positively. However, the same indicators show girls do not view their ethnic identity as positively. There are also several other interesting gender differences that emerge between the students in each grade. This may be the result of specific gender differences in perceptions about the economic and social realities of tundra life, the position of women in traditional societies as well as the impact of global transformations on indigenous populations overall.

Coherently organised into seven parts, the book provides a structure through which EU-Russia relations can be studied in a comprehensive yet manageable fashion. It provides readers with the tools to deliver critical analysis of this sometimes volatile and polarising relationship, so new events and facts can be conceptualised in an objective and critical manner. Informed by high-quality academic research and key bilateral data/statistics, it further brings scope, balance and depth, with chapters contributed by a range of experts from the EU, Russia and beyond. Chapters deal with a wide range of policy areas and issues that are highly topical and fundamental to understanding the continuing development of EU-Russia relations, such as political and security relations, economic relations, social relations and regional and global governance.

The article presents a study of the reasons and motives for the emergence of educational requests from managers of a modern University. It was found that managers ' educational requests contradict real needs, and their motives are associated with weak and strong knowledge, which depends on their age and professional experience, and not on the University profile. Thus, the authors presented a variant of interaction between pro- ject teams based on strong knowledge.

This textbook on political geography is devoted to a discipline concerned with the spatial dimensions of politics. This course is an introduction to the study of political science, international relations and area studies, providing a systemic approach to the spatial dimension of political processes at all levels. It covers their basic elements, including states, supranational unions, geopolitical systems, regions, borders, capitals, dependent, and internationally administered territories. Political geography develops fundamental theoretical approaches that give insight into the peculiarities of foreign and domestic policies. The ability to use spatial analysis techniques allows determining patterns and regularities of political phenomena both at the global and the regional and local levels.

Matching students with universities in Russia occurs via a complicated procedure. Most students are admitted based on the Unified State Exam (USE)—a standardized government-organized test, while the most selective universities enroll the winners of the Olympiads—intellectual competitions for high-schoolers. Olympiads have a long history in Russia—enthusiasts organized the first mathematical competitions in the 1960s. Today, there are hundreds of Olympiads in which high school students compete in all school subjects and in non-curriculum fields, such as robotics, critical thinking, creative writing, and business. Some Olympiad awards (in most cases, at the university's discretion) open the doors to a bachelor's program bypassing all examinations; others exempt students from certain subjects in USE.

In this paper, we test whether sanctions applied to an entire group on account of the free-riding of one of its members can promote group cooperation. To measure the efficiency of such collective sanctions, we conducted a lab experiment based on a standard public good game. The results show that, overall, collective sanctions are ineffective. Moreover, when subjects are able to punish their peers, the level of cooperation is lower in the regime of collective sanctions than under individual sanctions. Both outcomes can be explained by a general disapproval of the collective responsibility for an individual fault: in the post-experimental survey, an absolute majority evaluated such regimes as unfair. While collective sanctions are not an effective means for boosting group compliance, there are nevertheless two insights to be gained here. First, there are differences across genders: under collective sanctions, men’s level of compliance is significantly higher than under individual sanctions, while the opposite is true for women. Second, there were intriguing differences in outcomes between the different regime types. Under collective sanctions, a person who is caught tends to comply in the future, at least in the short term. By contrast, under individual sanctions, an individual wrongdoer decreases his or her level of compliance in the next period.

New societal trends are unfolding, such as digitalization, sharing economy and consumer awareness. They will highly influence future energy demand and, depending on their realization, enhance or counteract projected energy efficiency gains. Therefore, these trends have to be accompanied by policies with a strong focus on reducing energy demand (including Energy Efficiency First). This work analyzes quantitatively for all sectors how New Societal Trends interact with energy efficiency (policies).

An extensive consultation with European experts identified 12 new societal trends that are likely to shape future energy demand. Based on these, four energy demand scenarios were developed for 2050. Using literature review and expert consultations, the impacts on all sectors were evaluated taking these trends explicitly into account. The results show that New Societal Trends can have a crucial impact on future energy demand beyond mere techno-economic potentials. In the best case scenario, “New Trends Efficient”, they can reduce final energy demand by 67% compared to the EU “Baseline” scenario in 2050. While in the “Worst Case” scenario, they could increase final energy demand by 40%.

This paper opens up the discussion on how New Societal Trends will shape future energy demand and emphasizes the crucial role of policy-making therein.

The article presents the basic principles of the event research methodology, which is one of the most popular empirical tools in corporate finance, and mergers and acquisitions. It introduces the main methodoloigies for calculating expected and abnormal returns, the main approaches for testing abnormal returns and measuring the statistical significance of the results and it also notes the advantages and limitations of the methodology. The basic concept has been expended taking into account the results of modern work aimed at the improving the methodology. The applicability and its relevance were verified based on anallysis of spotline publications for 2015-2020.

We characterize mutation-finite cluster algebras of rank at least 3 using positive semi-definite quadratic forms. In particular, we associate with every unpunctured bordered surface a positive semi-definite quadratic space V , and with every triangulation a basis in V , such that any mutation of a cluster (i.e., a flip of a triangulation) transforms the corresponding bases into each other by partial reflections. Furthermore, every triangulation gives rise to an extended affine Weyl group of type A, which is invariant under flips. The construction is also extended to exceptional skew-symmetric mutation-finite cluster algebras of types E.

Purpose – Knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) firms focus on applying their expert knowledge to help solve the business problems of their clients: these clients confronted major new problems due to the COVID-19 pandemic and policy measures such as social distancing and travel restrictions, designed to reduce the rapid spread of the illness. Many KIBS were reliant upon extensive contact with clients, and within teams working on projects; they found their practices disrupted. This study aims to examine how KIBS are evolving to cope with both the sets of changes: those in their own operations, and those involving the emerging business problems of clients. Design/methodology/approach – The main data sources are material contained in websites of a sample of leading firms in a range of KIBS sectors, and in media reports and other documentation of efforts to confront the pandemic. Findings – The results indicate considerable efforts in KIBS to address emerging client problems, as well as to adapt their own practices. Their substantial role in confronting the pandemic and associated business difficulties has implications for future crises. KIBS are likely to be important players in shaping responses not only to future pandemics but also to the looming climate crisis. Originality/value – The study demonstrates the growing role of KIBS and their ‘‘second knowledge infrastructure’’ in modern economies, exemplified by their role in the context of an emerging crisis

Abstract Purpose This paper explores the phenomenon of ribbon-cutting ceremonies for new overseas subsidiaries and demonstrates the possibility of modifying such ceremonies to place greater emphasis on intra-organizational communications. Design/methodology/approach A careful study of 200 videos on 73 ribbon-cutting ceremonies in Russia between 2012 and 2018. Findings Under the current prevalent design, ribbon-cutting ceremonies mostly entail interorganizational communication, i.e., communication between foreign investors and representatives of the authorities of the host country. Meanwhile, in addition to the standard ribbon-cutting ceremonies, we observe several videos on intra-organizational communication, i.e., pseudoformal meetings between the team from the corporate headquarters and employees of a newly built factory. During such meetings, top corporate executives express the importance of the factory vis-à-vis the future of the whole corporation, state their expectations for the further development of the factory’s production facilities, postulate the desired working atmosphere in the factory, and appeal for the commitment and assistance of the employees in safeguarding the future of the investment. Originality/value The findings provide a basis for a broader discussion on the role of ribboncutting ceremonies as staged large-scale events organized by firms to articulate, highlight, disseminate, rationalize, as well as mobilize internal and external support for their strategy.

Transition to distance learning during the COVID‑19 lockdown in spring 2020 was a challenge to the education system in general and higher education in particular. Applied Sciences were unanimously recognized as the most affected due to their focuson practical skills, being closely tied to the institutional infrastructure, and a moderate curriculum digitalization. This article describes student experiences during the spring semester of academic year 2019/20, using data obtained from 30 interviews with students in Engineering, Technology & Applied Sciences, Health & Medical Sciences, and Arts & Culture degrees. Delivery of lectures and practical classes, placements, dissertations, and faculty–student interactions are analyzed. Findings are consistent with the widely discussed perception of education during the pandemic not as distance learning but rather as emergency remote teaching that requires supportive measures to compensate for time loss in learning as well as solutions to technical and methodological issues.

We investigate a well-known phenomenon of the appearance of the crossover points, corresponding to the intersections of the solubility isotherms of the solid compound in supercritical fluid. Opposed to the accepted understanding of the existence of two fixed crossover points, which confine the region of the inverse isobaric temperature dependence of the solubility, we have found that these points tend to shift with the change of the temperature and in the limit of the certain threshold value they converge to a single point. We demonstrate this analyzing the solubility data of a set of poorly soluble drug compounds, which have been computed in a wide area of the phase diagram via the approach, based on the classical density functional theory. Thorough analysis of the available in the literature experimental solubility data is found to be in an agreement with our conclusions, as one can find that the wider temperature region of the experimental study is, the more pronounced effect of the crossover points drift can be observed.

This talk deals with new, innovative, data exfiltration techniques using laser printers. The aim is to understand the possibilities offered by laser printing to insert data subliminally on paper during printing when using office printers. These techniques are similar to those used in auxiliary channel attacks or sidechannel/covert channel attacks), which mainly target confidential environments requiring a high level of security (military, state, industrial sectors). By using the print function, not only it is possible to hide a message (invisible to the public eye) but also to decipher it easily once printed on a paper sheet. The objective is to make people aware of the need of strong security management of printers against unauthorized access to avoid data breach. The main reason lies in the fact that a simple malware hooking the print queue may enable confidential information to be added to legitimate documents and organize the leakage of sensitive information. Demos of our techniques will be made during the talk and source codes will be released.

Most modern democracies and states have adopted a large number of standards and norms to promote and harmonize international trade. The precautionary principle has come to complete this regulatory arsenal especially in the field of security of states and citizens, their health, their private life ... The aim is also to protect government agencies against wrong decisions, especially when uncertain, immature technologies are concerned. Social, political, institutional security and stability and now cybersecurity has become heavily dependent on these new forms of regulation. In this article we will show how this regulation arsenal could be exploited by cybercriminals. It is indeed possible through a broader vision of the notion of cyber attack to turn these norms and standards and this precautionary principle precisely against those they are supposed to protect. Among many possible scenarios, we consider a specific one for illustration with respect to the attack of voting machines. The m ain conclusion is that any (cyber)security risk analysis should now extend the mostly favoured technical view to a more operational vision in which non technical aspects also be included.

Yemen continues to occupy a peripheral place in Russian foreign policy. There are three reasons for this: the lack of serious economic interest for Russia, the illusory possibilities of strengthening the military presence there, and also the recognition of the dominant role of Saudi Arabia in the Yemeni conflict, relations with which began to improve again after the accession to the throne of King Salman in 2015. On the other hand, the deepening of the split within the Arab Coalition in Yemen, primarily between the UAE and Saudi Arabia, forces the Russian authorities not only to balance between the Yemeni actors, but already makes it part of the “Yemeni triangle” along with the UAE and Saudi Arabia. In other words, Russian involvement in the Yemeni crisis has its own limits, which are due to both domestic factors and the specifics of relations with the Gulf countries.

We are very pleased to welcome you to the First International Conference on Code Quality at the HSE University in Moscow, Russia. This special conference kicks off the new series, and therefore, we hope it launches a tradition to follow, and an opportunity for a rapid spin up. This ICCQ conference was organized by the HSE and a few leading IT innovative companies such Huawei and Yandex. We are happy that the ICCQ 2021 attracted such renowned experts as Jens Palsberg, Anders Møller, and David West, to mention a few. The papers were submitted from the world over, and choosing the best of best was a challenge even for our lofty jury. The conference attracted speakers and attendees from the USA, Europe, and Asia; therefore, this is truly an international event.

Post-Soviet countries have experienced historical periods, political regimes, and socio-economic systems that differ fundamentally from each other and have adopted diverse values and norms, which have inevitably influenced the nations’ gendered labor market structures. This chapter considers the differences in labor market position between young men and women in 10 post-Soviet countries over time. The main research question is whether young women in these countries have attained labor market statuses as intensive (in terms of working hours) and high (in terms of job positions) as those of their male counterparts over the last three decades. The study uses World Values Survey cross-section data (1981–2014) as a database. The target group is employed youth aged 18–29 years. Contrary to the initial hypothesis, a time-trend analysis reveals a trend towards differences in job position between young men and women in post-Soviet countries. The results of two binary logistic regressions demonstrate that being a young woman in post-Soviet countries decreases the probability of being employed full-time but that Russia is following the opposite trend. In addition, being a young woman in Russia and Kazakhstan increases the probability of holding a supervisory position relative to the probability for a young man.

Computer vision technologies are widely used in sports to control the quality of training. However, there are only a few approaches to recognizing the punches of a person engaged in boxing training. All existing approaches have used manual feature selection and trained on insufficient datasets. We introduce a new approach for recognizing actions in an untrimmed video based on three stages: removing frames without actions, action localization and action classification. Furthermore, we collected a sufficient dataset that contains five classes in total represented by more than 1000 punches in total. On each stage, we compared existing approaches and found the optimal model that allowed us to recognize actions in untrimmed videos with an accuracy 87%.

The paper studies the community detection problem on Telegram channels. The dataset is received from TGStat service and includes the information of 58k forwards between 100 politician Telegram channels. We implement modern clustering approaches to solve the problem of missing social links. Our study is based on a combination of structural features with strategy-based attributes, including indicators designed according to the nodes’ role in a network. Authors provide ten novel indicators, which are calculated for each network’s member per each message in order to vectorize a Telegram channel with regard to its strategy of information spread and the way of contacting other channels. Authors construct a metric-based graph of channel relations and cluster channels representations using network science techniques. Obtained results are studied using quantitative and qualitative analysis showing promising results in applying joint network-based and KPI-based models for the stated problem.

We study non-reference image and video quality assessment methods, which are of great importance for computational video editing. The object of our work is image quality assessment (IQA) applicable for fast and robust frame-by-frame multipurpose video quality assessment (VQA) for short videos.

We present a complex framework for assessing the quality of images and videos. The scoring process consists of several parallel steps of metric collection with final score aggregation step. Most of the individual scoring models are based on deep convolutional neural networks (CNN). The framework can be flexibly extended or reduced by adding or removing these steps. Using Deep CNN-Based Blind Image Quality Predictor (DIQA) as a baseline for IQA, we proposed improvements based on two patching strategies, such as uniform patching and object-based patching, and add intelligent pre-training step with distortion classification.

We evaluated our model on three IQA benchmark image datasets (LIVE, TID2008, and TID2013) and manually collected short YouTube videos. We also consider interesting for automated video editing metrics used for video scoring based on the scale of a scene, face presence in frame and compliance of the shot transitions with the shooting rules. The results of this work are applicable to the development of intelligent video and image processing systems.

Manga colorization is time-consuming and hard to automate. In this paper, we propose a conditional adversarial deep learning approach for semi-automatic manga images colorization. The system directly maps a tuple of grayscale manga page image and sparse color hint constructed by the user to an output colorization. High-quality colorization can be obtained in a fully automated way, and color hints allow users to revise the colorization of every panel independently. We collect a dataset of manually colorized and grayscale manga images for training and evaluation. To perform supervised learning, we construct synthesized monochrome images from colorized. Furthermore, we suggest a few steps to reduce the domain gap between synthetic and real data. Their influence is evaluated both quantitatively and qualitatively. Our method can achieve even better results by fine-tuning with a small number of grayscale manga images of a new style. The code is available at github.com.

This paper deals with the extreme value analysis for the triangular arrays, which appear when some parameters of the mixture model vary as the number of observations grow. When the mixing parameter is small, it is natural to associate one of the components with ”an impurity” (in case of regularly varying distribution, ”heavy-tailed impurity”), which ”pollutes” another component. We show that the set of possible limit distributions is much more diverse than in the classical Fisher-Tippett-Gnedenko theorem, and provide the numerical examples showing the efficiency of the proposed model for studying the maximal values of the stock returns.

The guarantee of an anonymous mechanism is the worst case welfare an agent can secure against unanimously adversarial others. How high can such a guarantee be, and what type of mechanism achieves it? We address the worst case design question in the n-person probabilistic voting/bargaining model with p deterministic outcomes. If n is no less than p the uniform lottery is the only maximal (unimprovable) guarantee; there are many more if p>n, in particular the ones inspired by the random dictator mechanism and by voting by veto. If n=2 the maximal set M(n,p) is a simple polytope where each vertex combines a round of vetoes with one of random dictatorship. For p>n>2, we show that the dual veto and random dictator guarantees, together with the uniform one, are the building blocks of 2 to the power d simplices of dimension d in M(n,p), where d is the quotient of p-1 by n. Their vertices are guarantees easy to interpret and implement. The set M(n,p) may contain other guarantees as well; what we can say in full generality is that it is a finite union of polytopes, all sharing the uniform guarantee.

Globalisation has provoked a deep transformation in international law, political affairs and governance with contradictory consequences. It has stimulated the cosmopolitan project of global constitutionalism, transnational integration and the unification of democratic standards. However, it also resulted in the fragmentation of international affairs, the deterioration of constitutional democracy and a feeling of a growing shortage in democracy on national and international levels of governance. The international debate on global legal stability therefore cannot ignore the problem of constitutional transformation. The most simple solution to the dilemma consists in the polarised opposition of two trends in the development of the international legal order, namely, integration (in the form of the constitutionalisation of international law) and its fragmentation (in form of the separation of different global constitutional regions, supra-national actors or regimes). According this view, the two rival trends cannot be coordinated and a sharp collision cannot be avoided. The result could be described as a “zero-sum game”, as progress in integration means an equal regress in fragmentation and vice versa. This approach is therefore useful as a methodological presumption grounded on the very abstract, linear and teleological vision of globalisation considering its development from a black and white perspective and associating it strictly with positive results—progress in human rights protection, the supremacy of law and law-based states. The current global pandemic, however, reveals the other side of globalisation—economic recession, legal contradictions, the prevalence of egoistic motives, and the perceived interests of separate regions and national states over general international values or a different interpretation of its content and “common” character. That simple fact makes it important to reconsider the complex character of legal globalisation and the reciprocal relations between its opposite sides—constitutionalisation and the fragmentation of international constitutionalism. Trying to balance the impact of these two opposing trends, the author analyses the positive and negative effects of globalisation on constitutional development regarding such issues as transnational constitutionalisation, democracy and national sovereignty, the changing place of multilayer constitutionalism, the international separation of powers, and the system of global governance in the establishment of transnational constitutional democratic legitimacy. From this point of view, the populist backslide in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) looks dangerous and unforeseen, but it is a systemic and potentially predictable reaction of global regions on the uneven character of integration, the lack of democratic legitimacy and a new answer to the contortions and dysfunctions of global governance. An adequate response to these challenges could be found in a new concept of constitutional integration based on ongoing dialogue between the transnational and national actors of legal globalisation. This dialogue is possible by using a conflict-mediation strategy, elaborated by international experts, especially, for the deliberation of complex and protracted conflicts, which have no clear practical solutions in the short to medium term.

In this paper, we derive a stability result for L1 and L∞ perturbations of diffusions under weak regularity conditions on the coefficients. In particular, the drift terms we consider can be unbounded with at most linear growth, and we do not require uniform convergence of perturbed diffusions. Instead, we require a weaker convergence condition in a special metric introduced in this paper, related to the Holder norm of the diffusion matrix differences. Our approach is based on a special version of the McKean-Singer parametrix expansion.

The paper discusses interregional differentiation in the distribution of electronic purchases among the population in Russia. The aim of the work is to find out what factors are primarily responsible for interregional gaps in the level of online channel use in consumer retail purchases. The study focuses on regional drivers and barriers for the spread of e-commerce. The results show that shares of users of stationary computers (desktops), users of smartphones, and gross regional product per capita are the main positive factors, and lack of trust in e-commerce channels is the main obstacle, while Internet access, age structure, educational level, urbanization, aggregated regional preferences for personal purchases and physical availability of retail trade outlets were found to be irrelevant.

Convergence of order O(1/ √ n) is obtained for the distance in total variation between the Poisson distribution and the distribution of the number of fixed size cycles in generalized random graphs with random vertex weights. The weights are assumed to be independent identically distributed random variables which have a power-law distribution. The proof is based on the Chen–Stein approach and on the derived properties of the ratio of the sum of squares of random variables and the sum of these variables. These properties can be applied to other asymptotic problems related to generalized random graphs

Past evidence on fertility responses to external shocks, including economic recessions and the outbreaks of infectious diseases, show that people often put their childbearing plans on hold in uncertain times. We study the most recent data on monthly birth trends to analyse the initial fertility responses to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our research, based on new Short-Term Fertility Fluctuations (STFF) data series (https://www.humanfertility.org/cgi-bin/stff.php), embedded in the Human Fertility Database (HFD), shows the initial signs of the expected “birth recession”. Monthly number of births in many countries fell sharply between October 2020 and the most recent month observed, often bringing about a clear reversal of the previous trend. Across 17 countries with lower fluctuations in births, the number of births fell on average by 5.1% in November 2020, 6.5% in December 2020 and 8.9% in January 2021 when compared with the same month of the previous year. Spain sustained the sharpest drop in the number of births among the analysed countries, with the number of births plummeting by 20% in December 2020 and January 2021. The combined effect of rising mortality and falling birth rates is disrupting the balance of births and deaths in many countries, pushing natural population increase to record low levels in 2020 and 2021.

A general scenario for an N-sequential conclusive state discrimination introduced recently in Loubenets and Namkung [arXiv:2102.04747] can provide a multipartite quantum communication realizable in the presence of a noise. In the present article, we propose a new experimental scheme for the implementation of a sequential conclusive discrimination between binary coherent states via indirect measurements within the Jaynes-Cummings interaction model. We find that if the mean photon number is less than 1.6, then, for our two-sequential state discrimination scheme, the optimal success probability is larger than the one presented in Fields, Varga, and Bergou [2020, IEEE Int. Conf. Quant. Eng. Comp.]. We also show that, if the mean photon number is almost equal to 1.2, then the optimal success probability nearly approaches the Helstrom bound.

Drawing on foundational arguments from the literature on emerging market institutional strategies, and employing a realist historical analysis, we present a retrospective on the Russian automotive industry. We begin by tracing the origins of the sector and synthesizing salient post World War II developments. We then recount the subsequent expansionary decade of the 1960s, followed by the stagnation of the late 1980s, culminating in the eventual collapse of socialism and the breakup of the USSR. Attracted by both the rapid growth in the local market, and the preferential tax rates that accompanied investments, we then document the swift expansion of production facilities in Russia by major global manufacturers in the 2000s. We show how eventually an ensuing sharp halt in local market growth, and an accompanying rise in spare production capacity, saw most manufacturers pursue institutional strategies aimed at obtaining new tax concessions and leveraging intra-industry cooperation, rather than divesting their recently established production facilities. Overall, our retrospective, in particular, calls attention to how global manufacturers were able not only to acquire and rejuvenate existing production facilities or install new greenfield ones, but also to exercise their agency in shaping the broader policy framework and in fashioning new sectoral institutions designed to buttress and sustain the industry.

The article analyses the short-term effects of aggregate economic sentiment on the expected GDP growth in Russia based on the results of regular large-scale surveys of business activity of the Federal State Statistics Service of the Russian Federation for the period 1998-2020. The main purpose of the study is to substantiate the predictive value of the opinions of economic agents in expanding macroeconomic information, including in crisis periods. The authors calculate a composite economic sentiment indicator (ESI), which combines quarterly information for the analysed period on 18 indicators of surveys with a sample of about 24,000 organizations of all size in basic kinds of economic activity, and 5,000 consumers in all Russian regions. The authors prove the possibility of using a vector autoregression model (VAR) with dummy variables to measure the relationship between GDP growth and ESI time series. Scenario estimates of GDP growth until the end of 2021 are based on the expected impulses in the ESI dynamics at the end of 2020, which differ in the amplitude and duration of their impact on economic growth, primarily due to the coronavirus effect. According to the results, under all possible scenarios for the development of business trends, national economic growth can exceed the level of the end of 2019, starting from the third quarter of 2021.

In the present article, we consistently develop the main issues of the Bloch vectors formalism for an arbitrary finite-dimensional quantum system. In the frame of this formalism, qudit states and their evolution in time, qudit observables and their expectations, entanglement and nonlocality, etc. are expressed in terms of the Bloch vectors -- the vectors in the Euclidean space R^{d²-1}, arising under decompositions of observables and states in different operator bases. Within this formalism, we specify for all d≥2 the set of Bloch vectors of traceless qudit observables and describe its properties; also, find for the sets of the Bloch vectors of qudit states, pure and mixed, the new compact expressions in terms of the operator norms that explicitly reveal the general properties of these sets and have the unified form for all d≥2. For the sets of the Bloch vectors of qudit states under the generalized Gell-Mann representation, these general properties cannot be analytically extracted from the known equivalent specifications of these sets via the system of algebraic equations. We derive the general equations describing the time evolution of the Bloch vector of a qudit state if a qudit system is isolated and if it is open and find for both cases the main properties of the Bloch vector evolution in time. For a pure bipartite state of a dimension d₁×d₂, we quantify its entanglement via the characteristics of the Bloch vectors for its reduced states. The introduced general formalism is important both for the theoretical analysis of quantum system properties and for quantum applications, in particular, for optimal quantum control, since, for systems where states are described by vectors in the Euclidean space, the methods of optimal control, analytical and numerical, are well developed.

Approximately twenty years ago, Laurent Itti and Christof Koch created a model of saliency in visual attention in an attempt to recreate the work of biological pyramidal neurons by mimicking neurons with centre-surround receptive fields. The Saliency Model has launched many studies that contributed to the understanding of layers of vision and the sphere of visual attention. The aim of the current study is to improve this model by using an artificial neural network as the spatial component of a model that generates saccades similar to how humans make saccadic eye movements. The proposed model uses a Leaky Integrate-and-Fire layer for temporal predictions, and replaces parallel feature maps with a deep learning neural network in order to create a generative model that is precise for both spatial and temporal shifts of attention. Our model was able to predict eye movements based on unsupervised learning from raw image input, combined with supervised learning from fixation maps retrieved during an eye-tracking experiment. The results imply that it is possible to match the spatial and temporal distributions of the model to spatial and temporal human distributions.

We estimate the n-gram entropies of English- language texts, using dictionaries and taking into account punctuation, and find a heuristic method for estimating the marginal entropy. We propose a method for evaluating the coverage of empirically generated dictionaries and an ap- proach to address the disadvantage of low coverage. In ad- dition, we compare the probability of obtaining a meaning- ful text by directly iterating through all possible n-grams of the alphabet and conclude that this is only possible for very short text segments.

The article examines the self-identification and professional values of the university community in post-Soviet Russia. On the basis of the corpus of the interviews, which were recorded by the Poletayev Institute for Theoretical and Historical Studies in the Humanities (Moscow) in the 2010s, the authors analyse how the contemporary Russian scholars consider the problems of university autonomy and university management, as well as the criteria to define an ideal University and an ideal Professor. Instead of the unique perceptions on the specifics of research and educational characteristics of university space and people, the present investigation represents the problematization of the basic definitions of university and its purposes by the contemporary Russian scholars.

Commuting is linked to fertility through demographic, social, and economic mechanisms. Average differences in first-birth rates of young, working women are estimated by a bivariate model with endogenous commuting. Empirical evidence based on administrative data (Sweden) reveals that commuting women have a lower probability of a first birth between 21-28 years of age and a higher probability between 29-32 years. Therefore, commuting women likely postpone their first child. Additional direct and spillover effects of commuting on fertility appear in income cross-municipal flows, diffusion of fertility norms across space, and changes in gender structure of the population of fertile age. A positive effect on relative income and social norms and a negative sex ratio effect are found significant both for commuting women and those who work in the municipality of their residence. Marginal effects for commuters are greater in magnitude.

Several results on presenting an affine algebraic group variety as a product of algebraic varieties are obtained.

We show existence of a natural rational structure on periodic cyclic homology, conjectured by L. Katzarkov, M. Kontsevich, T. Pantev, for several classes of dg-categories, including proper connective C-dg-algebras and dg-categories of local systems. The main ingredient is derived nilpotent invariance of A. Blanc's semi-topological K-theory, which we establish along the way.

Population annealing is a recent addition to the arsenal of the practitioner in computer simulations in statistical physics and beyond that is found to deal well with systems with complex free-energy landscapes. Above all else, it promises to deliver unrivaled parallel scaling qualities, being suitable for parallel machines of the biggest caliber. Here we study population annealing using as the main example the two-dimensional Ising model which allows for particularly clean comparisons due to the available exact results and the wealth of published simulational studies employing other approaches. We analyze in depth the accuracy and precision of the method, highlighting its relation to older techniques such as simulated annealing and thermodynamic integration. We introduce intrinsic approaches for the analysis of statistical and systematic errors and provide a detailed picture of the dependence of such errors on the simulation parameters. The results are benchmarked against canonical and parallel tempering simulations.