Publications

The Arctic Council is well-positioned to play a leadership role in better understanding the impact of Covid-19 in the Arctic and spearheading activities to respond to the pandemic in the short-, medium- and longer-term. This briefing document was prepared to inform initial discussions regarding the coronavirus pandemic in the Arctic at the Senior Arctic Officials’ executive meeting (SAOX) on 24-25 June 2020. It draws together available information – to date (June 2020) – about the impact of Covid-19 in the Arctic: Briefing Document for SAOs June 2020 For public release Page 10 of 83 Covid-19 and the actions taken to respond in the Arctic region. The document draws from a wide spectrum of sources, reflecting the complex and intricate nature of how Covid-19 affects Arctic peoples and communities, including national and subnational statistical databases and tools, peer-reviewed articles, policy statements, technical guidelines, field surveys, and local observations from Arctic communities.

Museum Diplomacy in the Digital Age explores online museums as sites of contemporary cultural diplomacy.

Building on scholarship that highlights how museums can constitute and regulate citizens, construct national communities, and project messages across borders, the book explores the political powers of museums in their online spaces. Demonstrating that digital media allow museums to reach far beyond their physical locations, Grincheva investigates whether online audiences are given the tools to co-curate museums and their collections to establish new pathways for international cultural relations, exchange and, potentially, diplomacy. Evaluating the online capacities of museums to exert cultural impacts, the book illuminates how online museum narratives shape audience perceptions and redefine their cultural attitudes and identities.

Museum Diplomacy in the Digital Age will be of interest to academics and students teaching or taking courses on museums and heritage, communication and media, cultural studies, cultural diplomacy, international relations and digital humanities. It will also be useful to practitioners around the world who want to learn more about the effect digital museum experiences have on international audiences.

How do local leaders govern in a large dictatorship? What resources do they draw on? Yoram Gorlizki and Oleg Khlevniuk examine these questions by looking at one of the most important authoritarian regimes of the twentieth century. Starting in the early years after the Second World War and taking the story through to the 1970s, they chart the strategies of Soviet regional leaders, paying particular attention to the forging and evolution of local trust networks.

An addressee factor, as a constituent characteristic of a scientific text, takes into account a specific recipient to implement high-quality scientific communication. The need to consider this factor is explained by the search for ways to popularize scientific knowledge dissemination by means of scientific publications. The author's understanding of the aggregate “portrait” of the reader – his/her social, intellectual, cultural, educational parameters – should be reflected in the content and structure of the scientific written product. The authors present the analysis of such key concepts as “scientific text”, “addressing of the text”, “addressee”, “sender”. The article defines the characteristics of an article as a product of scientific communication which reflects the specificity of the individual-personal perception of information by the sender. Here is an attempt to prove that the nature of scientific interaction is becoming more individualized and personalized. There is an urgent need to find means and methods of the sender identifying the potential requirements of the addressee of the scientific message.

This book presents recent non-asymptotic results for approximations in multivariate statistical analysis. The book is unique in its focus on results with the correct error structure for all the parameters involved. Firstly, it discusses the computable error bounds on correlation coefficients, MANOVA tests and discriminant functions studied in recent papers. It then introduces new areas of research in high-dimensional approximations for bootstrap procedures, Cornish–Fisher expansions, power-divergence statistics and approximations of statistics based on observations with random sample size. Lastly, it proposes a general approach for the construction of non-asymptotic bounds, providing relevant examples for several complicated statistics. It is a valuable resource for researchers with a basic understanding of multivariate statistics.

EDULEARN20 Proceedings include all presented papers at EDULEARN20 conference.

This collection of articles highlights the most interesting new results from the IX Moscow International Operations Research Conference, the largest Russian meeting in this field, held every three years for leading experts. These papers will interest researchers and organizations specialized in OR, Game Theory, System Analysis, Macro- and Micro-economic Modelling, and Actuarial Mathematics. The volume may be a source for PhD and Master students in the specified areas. The proposed methods for optimal decision making will be useful for insurance and auditing companies, banks, and others. The volume consists of three parts; the first includes game-theoretic models, the second part considers innovations and their possible opposite impact to the growth of GDP and social welfare, as well as new methods for improving reliability of banks’ credit risks, monopolistic competition under heterogeneous labor, interregional trade and different ways of developing the Russian banking system. The last part contains articles on a wide range of optimization problems and their applications.

Recent Applications of Financial Risk Modelling and Portfolio Management is a pivotal reference source that provides vital research on the use of modern data analysis as well as quantitative methods for developing successful portfolio and risk management techniques. While highlighting topics such as credit scoring, investment strategies, and budgeting, this publication explores diverse models for achieving investment goals as well as improving upon traditional financial modelling methods. This book is ideally designed for researchers, financial analysts, executives, practitioners, policymakers, academicians, and students seeking current research on contemporary risk management strategies in the financial sector.

Doctoral education is of prime importance worldwide. In many countries, there is severe shortage of doctoral degree holders, while in others there is an oversupply in many fields. There is a global debate on the best ways of providing doctoral training. To illustrate global trends, the book analyses the current realities of doctoral education with the help of case studies based on fourteen countries and one continent.  It includes an overview of the state of the literature on doctoral education as well as an analysis of doctoral education from a historical perspective with a detailed comparative discussion. Trends and Issues in Doctoral Education: A Global Perspective also examines the challenges and ideas of current and proposed reforms in doctoral education.  

This fifty-eighth volume of the Annotated Leading Cases of International Criminal Tribunals contains decisions taken by the ICTR in the years 2013-2014. It provides the reader with the full text of the most important decisions, identical to the original version and including concurring, separate and dissenting opinions. Distinguished experts in the field of international criminal law have commented on these decisions.

This book gathers the best papers presented at the first conference held by the Russian chapter of the Association for Information Systems (AIS). It shares the latest insights into various aspects of the digitalization of the economy and the consequences of transformation in public administration, business and public life. Integrating a broad range of analytical perspectives, including economic, social and, technological, this interdisciplinary book is particularly relevant for scientists, digital technology users, companies and public institutions.

This book gathers the best papers presented at the first conference held by the Russian chapter of the Association for Information Systems (AIS). It shares the latest insights into various aspects of the digitalization of the economy and the consequences of transformation in public administration, business and public life. Integrating a broad range of analytical perspectives, including economic, social and, technological, this interdisciplinary book is particularly relevant for scientists, digital technology users, companies and public institutions.

Science diplomacy emerged in the early years of the 21st century as a new vocabulary and a new concept in international relations, although the practice of science diplomacy has deep historical roots and various forms that were not labeled as such before. Science diplomacy refers to professional practices at the intersection of the world of science and that of diplomacy. It is also a subject of study that gives rise to a scholarly literature. Basically, the rationale of science diplomacy is twofold: advancing a country’s national interest and addressing global challenges. Science diplomacy encompasses a great range of activities to promote and secure a state’s foreign policy objectives and of activities to secure global public good at the transnational level, such as using scientific advice and expertise, enabling international scientific cooperation, bringing scientists on board of diplomatic negotiations, or appointing science attachés to embassies. International scientific cooperation is sometimes confused in the discourse with science diplomacy. However, if scientific cooperation is possible only with diplomatic assistance, serves a nation-state’s foreign policy objectives, promotes national interests, or aims to address global issues, then it is science diplomacy. Otherwise, it is not. Science diplomacy is also closely related to a state’s political system and beliefs because the effective use of science diplomacy contributes a great deal to a state’s power and influence in world politics and in international relations, and it helps to generate soft power of attraction and cooperation. A few notable institutions are active in science diplomacy, promote international dialogue on global issues, disseminate practices, and take part in the debate of the science diplomacy concept. They include the Center for Science Diplomacy of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the International Network for Government Science Advice (INGSA), and the Science Diplomacy Center of Tufts University, and multilateral scientific organizations, such as the International Institute for Applied System Analysis, the International Science Council, and the Science Diplomacy Thematic Network at the University of the Arctic. National and international academies of sciences sometimes intervene in this debate. Professional literature on science diplomacy is abundant and academic literature is growing as well, which has not led, however, so far to the emergence of a genuine theory of science diplomacy. This article aims to guide readers in their comprehension of science diplomacy and of the related debates through a selection of sources that shed light on science diplomacy both in theory and in practice from various viewpoints.

This book contains an in-depth overview of the current state of the recently emerged and rapidly growing theory of Gnk groups, picture-valued invariants, and braids for arbitrary manifolds. Equivalence relations arising in low-dimensional topology and combinatorial group theory inevitably lead to the study of invariants, and good invariants should be strong and apparent. An interesting case of such invariants is picture-valued invariants, whose values are not algebraic objects, but geometrical constructions, like graphs or polyhedra.

In 2015, V O Manturov defined a two-parametric family of groups Gnk and formulated the following principle: if dynamical systems describing a motion of n particles possess a nice codimension 1 property governed by exactly k particles then these dynamical systems possess topological invariants valued in Gnk.

The book is devoted to various realisations and generalisations of this principle in the broad sense. The groups Gnk have many epimorphisms onto free products of cyclic groups; hence, invariants constructed from them are powerful enough and easy to compare. However, this construction does not work when we try to deal with points on a 2-surface, since there may be infinitely many geodesics passing through two points. That leads to the notion of another family of groups — Γnk, which give rise to braids on arbitrary manifolds yielding invariants of arbitrary manifolds.

Topical Problems of Green Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering 2019 (TPACEE 2019)

The global COVID-19 pandemic and an unexpected recession of a dangerous magnitude have provided strong reasons to look at the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) from three points of view: the SDGs as a victim of the recession 2020; the SDGs as an opportunity for better coordination on the way out of recession; and the SDGs as an object of modernization for better adaptation to the realities on “the global ground”. The BRICS countries are, naturally, the primary group of interest for developing and implementing the SDGs on the global scale as a way of catching up. “Pandemic protocol” and additional indicators are proposed as an urgent update to several SDGs.

Two studies examined factors that would influence people’s preferences for interaction with a perpetrator of sexism. In Study 1 (n = 348), participants preferred to interact (being friends or developing a relationship) with an intelligent person regardless of whether or not that person was sexist. Study 2 (n = 614) replicated this finding and confirmed that where a perpetrator had a high level of intelligence, people were more willing to interact with them, regardless of the perpetrator’s sex and the perceived commission or non-commission of sexist behavior. Moreover, Study 2 provides evidence that participants’ hostile sexism beliefs are a significant covariate of a willingness to interact with unintelligent women. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for the understanding of person perception.

Adsorption of fluids in nanoporous media causes mechanical stresses which results in deformation. This phenomenon is ubiquitous and its magnitude depends on the pore size and geometry. Adsorption and adsorption-induced deformation are typically modeled in slit-shape or convex (cylindrical or spherical) pores. However, many porous materials are composed of spherical grains, so that the pores are formed by the intergranular spaces between the convex solid surfaces. Here we present a first theoretical study of adsorption-induced deformation in non-convex pores, in particular we studied the templated mesoporous carbons. The model is based on classical density functional theory within the local density approximation applied to the description of hard sphere interactions. We predict the adsorption isotherms and solvation pressure isotherms for nitrogen adsorption in CMK-3 carbons. The shape of adsorption isotherm matches the shape of experimental isotherm. The predicted solvation pressure isotherms are qualitatively different from the solvation pressure isotherms in cylindrical pores. We attribute this difference to formation of liquid bridges between the adjacent rods. Our results suggest that adsorption-induced deformation in materials with non-convex pores cannot be predicted within the existing models. These results may shed some light on understanding adsorption-induced deformation of consolidated granular media.

This paper expands the existing informational and analytical opportunities of application of the results of business tendency surveys which solve the problem of the loss of valuable statistical information in its traditional aggregation into simple and composite indicators. Based on methods of multidimensional classification, we develop and discuss an algorithm of statistical analysis that significantly raises the analytical opportunities for the more wide measurement of trajectories of development and short-term fluctuations of the information technology (IT) industry. This allows the construction of behavioural models of business tendency data which improve the understanding of the business cycle in more detail. Furthermore, the empirical results confirm the possibility of receiving various information which increases the analytical potential of business tendency surveys.

In reaction to the environmental challenge, many firms are looking for the ways how to integrate sustainability into their operations, business models and strategies. Very often sustainable initiatives go beyond the boundaries of a focal firm engaging a wide variety of partners within the supply chain. In conditions of countries with institutional deficiencies and voids such as emerging economies, the task of sustainability integration is challenging as many critical conditions needed for sustainability development are missing. To understand how firms can integrate sustainability initiatives in their supply chains under the conditions of environmental uncertainty, this paper aims to investigate firm-level and supply chain drivers that stimulate sustainability implementation in Russian firms.

Using Auroux's description of Fukaya categories of symmetric products of punctured surfaces, we compute the partially wrapped Fukaya category of the complement of k+1 generic hyperplanes in ℂℙ^n, for k≥n, with respect to certain stops in terms of the endomorphism algebra of a generating set of objects. The stops are chosen so that the resulting algebra is formal. In the case of the complement of (n+2)-generic hyperplanes in ℂP^n (n-dimensional pair-of-pants), we show that our partial wrapped Fukaya category is equivalent to a certain categorical resolution of the derived category of the singular affine variety x_1 x_2 ... x_{n+1}=0. By localizing, we deduce that the (fully) wrapped Fukaya category of n-dimensional pants is equivalent to the derived category of x_1 x_2 ... x_{n+1}=0. We also prove similar equivalences for finite abelian covers of the n-dimensional pair-of-pants.

We propose a conjectural extension in the positive characteristic case of well known Deligne’s theorem on the existence of super fiber functors. We prove our conjecture in the special case of semisimple categories with finitely many isomorphism classes of simple objects.

We define and discuss some general properties of residual categories of Lefschetz decompositions in triangulated categories. In the case of the derived category of coherent sheaves on the Grassmannian G(k,n), we conjecture that the residual category associated with Fonarev’s Lefschetz exceptional collection is generated by a completely orthogonal exceptional collection. We prove this conjecture for k = p, a prime number, modulo completeness of Fonarev’s collection (and for p = 3 we check this completeness).

An LCK manifold with potential is a quotient M of a Kähler manifold X equipped with a positive plurisubharmonic function f, such that the monodromy group acts on X by holomorphic homotheties and maps f to a function proportional to f. It is known that a compact M admits an LCK potential if and only if it can be holomorphically embedded to a Hopf manifold. We prove that any non-Vaisman, compact LCK manifold with potential contains a complex surface (possibly singular) with normalization biholomorphic to a Hopf surface H. Moreover, H can be chosen non-diagonal, hence, also not admitting a Vaisman structure.

We survey some results about rational curves on hyperkähler manifolds, explaining how to prove a certain deformation-invariance statement for loci covered by rational curves with negative Beauville–Bogomolov square.

Structural transformations that preserve properties of formal models of concurrent systems make their verification easier. We define structural transformations that allow to abstract and refine elementary net systems. Relations between abstract models and their refinements are formalized using morphisms. Transformations proposed in this paper induce morphisms between elementary net systems as well as preserve their behavioral properties. We also show application of the proposed transformations to the construction of a correct composition of interacting workflow net components.

The main goal of this research is to identify specific sociolinguistic patterns in Russian professional crisis communication discourse. This chapter addresses hybridity of Russian crisis communication professional rhetoric, primarily focusing on a combination of two types of discourses: black public relations defense and crisis communication. The study contains a qualitative pilot analysis of nonacademic expert texts on crisis communication. Critical discourse analysis applied to professional discourse provides insight into culture-related specifics of this field in Russia. The research is followed by two case descriptions of organizational crises to illustrate possible interference of black public relations defense discourse into crisis communication practice in Russia. The results provide practical implications for cross-cultural communication with Russian public relations professionals and set direction for future research in this field.

In this paper, I explore the constraints on the distribution of the perdurative prefix pro- in Russian. Applying several diagnostics proposed by Tatevosov (2009; 2013), I show that the perdurative pro- is a “selectionally restricted” prefix associated with an additional restriction: it can combine with a predicate built on a secondary imperfective stem only under a pluractional interpretation. I argue that this restriction is an instantiation of a more general semantic requirement imposed by the perdurative: it can be formed from a predicate if there are no subevents making up the activity component of this predicate that are in Landman’s (1992) “stage-of relation”

We consider rates of approximation of distributions of weighted sums of independent, identically distributed random variables by the Edgeworth correction of the 4-th order.

Russian Doctoral Education: Between Teaching and Research

Linear two-timescale stochastic approximation (SA) scheme is an important class of algorithms which has become popular in reinforcement learning (RL), particularly for the policy evaluation problem. Recently, a number of works have been devoted to establishing the finite time analysis of the scheme, especially under the Markovian (non-i.i.d.) noise settings that are ubiquitous in practice. In this paper, we provide a finite-time  analysis for linear two timescale SA. Our bounds show that there is no discrepancy in the convergence rate between Markovian and martingale noise, only the constants are affected by the mixing time of the Markov chain. With an appropriate step size schedule, the transient term in the expected error bound is $o(1/k^c)$ and the steady-state term is ${\cal O}(1/k)$, where $c>1$ and $k$ is the iteration number. Furthermore, we present an asymptotic expansion of the expected error with a matching lower bound of $\Omega(1/k)$. A simple numerical experiment is presented to support our theory.

The authors  consider how the size and characteristics of labor migration flows in the post-Soviet space have transformed living conditions in the origin and destination areas. Post-Soviet labor migration annually involves several million people. In consequence, the well-being of millions of households in the relatively poor countries of origin of migrant workers (in the recent past, Azerbaijan; now, Armenia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Ukraine) depends on the export of labor. In the countries of destination, primarily in the main center of the regional (Eurasian) migration system, Russia, as well as in Kazakhstan, migrant workers have occupied important niches in the labor market, substantially contributing to the functioning of selected sectors of the economy and meeting the needs of private households. Labor migration in the postSoviet space is characterized by a large proportion of undocumented migrants and the predominance of low-skilled workers. 

Over the past 60 years, the topic of social inequality has been one of the key to educational research. Since the 90's years of the last century, thanks to the advent of international monitoring, the main focus is on comparisons of different countries in terms of educational opportunities, as well as academic and social segregation in schools. At the same time, it is known that even within countries, especially those with a great geographical extent, differences in access to educational resources and in learning outcomes can be very large.

Our work complements the existing discussion on spatial inequality in education. In this paper, we analyze the hierarchical structure of the educational system in countries with a moderate level of centralization, when access to resources can vary at three levels: between schools in a municipality, between municipalities in regions and between regions. We analyze the variation of school ICT-resources, teachers’ characteristics, and students’ outcomes in Russian language, mathematics and computer science on between- and within-regional levels. For these aims, we operate a unique dataset of nearly 40 000 Russian schools.

Our results show the existing gap between Russian schools, municipalities, and regions in access to educational resources and educational results. The uneven distribution of resources between territories, as a result of unbalanced decentralized policy, creates a situation of “double penalty” or “double bonus” for students.

In this paper we investigate non-rationality of divisors on 3-fold log Fano fibrations (X,B)→Z under mild conditions. We show that if D is a component of B with coefficient ≥t>0 which is contracted to a point on Z, then D is birational to ℙ^1×C where C is a smooth projective curve with gonality bounded depending only on t. Moreover, if t>1/2, then genus of C is bounded depending only on t.

By 2050, the elderly population is expected to reach 2 billion, with 80% living in low- and middle-income countries. In today’s COVID-19 pandemic reality, income and health support for these older adults is a critical concern.  What have the world’s countries been doing to ensure that their elderly do not live in poverty? Are there national policies to ensure their health needs are adequately met?  How are the countries helping working adults who are responsible for providing caregiving to their elderly parents? In this paper, the globally comparable, quantitative data is used to examine the availability of social security policies relevant to older adults across 193 United Nations member states.  These policies include the availability of contributory and non-contributory pensions to ensure that all older adults are guaranteed a minimum level of income. The paper also investigates the availability of health insurance to defray medical expenses in old age.  Finally, because many older adults must rely on their working adult children for care, the availability of leave for working adults to care for their elderly family members’ health needs is examined.  Throughout the paper, the differences in policy coverage by region and country income level, with particular attention paid to low- and middle-income countries, are analyzed. The recommendations on addressing throughout the world the issues of avoiding aging population to live in poverty and meeting their health needs are formulated.

Feynman formulas are representations of solutions to initial value problems, for some parabolic and Schrödinger equations, by the limits of integrals over finite Cartesian powers of some spaces. Two versions of these formulas which were suggested by Feynman himself are associated with names of Trotter and Chernoff respectively. These formulas can be interpreted as approximations for path integrals over spaces of functions of a real variable; the corresponding representations of the solutions to the said equations are usually known as Feynman-Kac formulas. This work presents some new Feynman type formulas, related to the Chernoff theorem, on Riemannian manifolds. The used manifolds are of boundend geometry which include all compact manifolds and also a wide range of non-compact manifolds. Sufficient conditions are established for a class of second order elliptic operators to generate a Feller semigroup on a generally non-compact manifold of bounded geometry. A construction of Chernoff approximations is presented for those Feller semigroups in terms of shift operators. This provides approximations for solutions to initial-value problems for parabolic equations with variable coefficients on the manifold. It also yields the weak convergence of a sequence of random walks on the manifold to the diffusion process associated with the elliptic generator. For parallelizable manifolds this result is applied to the Brownian motion

The paper investigates the impact of an electoral support for president for short- and long-term transfers between national and provincial governments in tutelary regimes. The research uses the case of Iran; the database covers 330 observations for 30/31 provinces for 2005-2015. The results show that Iranian presidents target short-term transfers for disloyal provincial elites, while long-term transfers do not show political connection with voting patterns. The results also allow for assuming that the key factor for the logic of distribution is a political competition.

To minimize credit risks, banks must first analyze the financial condition of a potential borrower and evaluate their creditworthiness. The technique used for this purposes should be comprehensive, accurate and reliable. However, criticism of existing approaches to assessing creditworthiness is often associated with their lack of flexibility and absence of industry-specific approach. The metallurgical industry is very important for the Russian economy. Many organizations operating in related industries consume the metallurgical production, and the products themselves have a significant share in national exports. Russian metallurgical organizations are leaders not only in the domestic, but also in the global market. The concepts of credit risk, insolvency and creditworthiness were studied. The milestones of assessing the creditworthiness of organizations were considered, the evolution of approaches to valuation was presented during the second half of the last century and to the present moment. A brief overview of existing banking practices is provided. The financial performance of Russian metallurgic enterprises were analyzed. Particular attention is paid to the review of industry leaders as examples of the most sustainable organizations. Based on the reporting data, the characteristics of financial indicators and capital structure inherent in the industry were identified. The process of creating the methodology for assessing creditworthiness, which would take into account the characteristics of metallurgical organizations, is presented. A compilation of financial ratios for analysis was selected, the probability of bankruptcy was estimated for each company in the sample. Based on panel data on 35 companies for 2014-2018, through using a logistic regression, a scoring model was built to assess the creditworthiness of metallurgical organizations. The result of the work was an express methodology that allows to assess the creditworthiness of a metallurgical organization quickly and transparently, and at the same time, with sufficient accuracy, taking into account industry specifics

We extend the basic theory of Andreev reflection (AR) in a normal metal/superconductor junction to the situation with an arbitrary time-dependent bias voltage V(t) across the junction. The central element of the theory is the fact that the Fourier transform of the AR amplitude has a casual structure. As an example, the theory is used to describe the current response to short pulses of the bias voltage, which create coherent superposition of quasiparticle states with different energies. The current oscillates in time, with the gap frequency Δ/ℏ, and also as a function of the pulse area ∫V(t)dt, with the period of the single-electron flux quantum e/h.

This paper, based on a large-scale online survey of suppliers conducted by the HSE IIMS in 2017, analyzed various conflict resolution strategies in public procurement. The specific feature of this sphere is the presence of the state as the dominant party in the contractual relationship, and the resulting differences in assessing the chances of protecting one’s interests in court, as well as the effectiveness of judicial conflict resolution mechanisms. At the same time, this paper proceeded from the fact that suppliers differ not only in their practice of resolving conflict situations after the conclusion of a contract but also in the type of behavior that determines the choice of each strategy. The survey results showed that the majority of suppliers prefer to resolve conflicts in public procurement using an out-of-court negotiation with procurers, while only 31% of respondents resort to judicial proceedings. At the same time, suppliers potentially involved in informal relations with procurers, are less likely to go to court and less often use negotiations. The paper will provide a possible explanation for the revealed patterns in the behavior of suppliers.

This paper describes key aspects of the structural and functional transformation of the Russian state statistics system as a core element of the future National Data Management System. Issues such as establishing a dialogue between the statistics service and users, integrating data from various sources, and intelligent data processing in the context of the digitalization of the economy are considered. New approaches and mechanisms should integrate and advance all of the previously achieved best results in methodology, observation areas, metrics, and other domains. Improvement areas include providing higher-quality information for policy shaping, businesses, individuals, and external partners. National statistics is expected to present an interconnected, objectively measurable model of socioeconomic processes and phenomena based on relevant theoretical concepts. In addition to using various sources of data, a necessary feature of the new system will be its reliance on a consistent conceptual framework and approaches to interpreting data, which will make it possible to integrate various data sources in the first place. Users of intelligent statistics are becoming not only active participants in primary data collection, accumulation and application processes, but are turning into “smart” consumers who develop statistical thinking and are able to derive the greatest possible benefits from the use of statistical data. Such skills should become an inherent (and possibly mandatory) component of any.

We consider tilings of the plane by two prototiles which are right triangles. They are called the small and the large tiles. The small tile is similar to the large tile with some similarity coefficient ψ. The large tile can be cut into two pieces so that one piece is a small tile and the other one is similar to the small tile with the same similarity coefficient ψ. Using this cut we define in a standard way the substitution scheme, in which the large tile is replaced by a large and a small tile and the small tile is replaced by a large tile. To every substitution of this kind, there corresponds a family of the so-called substitution tilings of the plane in the sense of [C. Goodman-Strauss, Matching Rules and Substitution Tilings, Annals of Mathematics 147 (1998) 181-223]. All tilings in this family are non-periodic. It was shown in the paper [N. Vereshchagin. Aperiodic Tilings by Right Triangles. In: Proc. of DCFS 2014, LNCS vol. 8614 (2014) 29--41] that this family of substitution tilings is not an SFT. This means that looking at a given tiling trough a bounded window, we cannot determine whether that tiling belongs to the family or not, however large the size of the window is. In the present paper, we prove that this family of substitution tilings is sofic. This means that we can color the prototiles ina finite number of colors and define some local rules for colored prototiles so that the following holds. For any tiling from the family, we can color its tiles so that the resulting tiling (by colored tiles) satisfies local rules. And conversely, for any tiling of the plane satisfying the local rules, by removing colors we obtain a tiling from the family. Besides, the considered substitution can be generalized to colored tiles so that the family of substitution tilings for the resulting substitution coincides with the family of tilings satisfying our local rules.

We propose that the “historically relevant” comparison of the Danish and Russian Empires from the early eighteenth century until the First World War presents a useful starting point for a promising research agenda. We motivate the comparison, noting that the two empires enjoyed striking geographical, political and institutional similarities. Beyond this, we also demonstrate that the two empires were bound together by war, royal marriage, and migration. We suggest some examples of what might be investigated, with a particular focus on agriculture, due to its importance to both Danish and Russian economic history. Finally, we zoom in on the role Danish experts played for developing the Russian butter industry.

In this paper we study the geometry of the total space Y of a cotangent bundle to a Kähler manifold N where N is obtained as a Kähler reduction from Cn. Using the hyperkähler reduction we construct a hyperkähler metric on Y and prove that it coincides with the canonical Feix-Kaledin metric. This metric is in general non-complete. We show that the metric completion Y~ of the space Y is equipped with a structure of a stratified hyperkähler space. We give a necessary condition for the Feix-Kaledin metric to be complete using an observation of R.Bielawski. Pick a complex structure J on Y~ induced from quaternions. Suppose that J≠±I where I is the complex structure whose restriction to Y=T∗N is induced by the complex structure on N. We prove that the space Y~J admits an algebraic structure and is an affine variety.

The democratic deficit problem in the EU polity is becoming more relevant in the context of the multifaceted crisis and the politicization of European integration. Taking into account that the category of resilience is actively used in the official EU discourse as a system’s ability to reform and to counter threats, it is interesting, from a research point of view, to consider the use of resilience as an analytical optics to view the current EU internal political development. This article analyzes, in terms of resilience, the attempts of the EU’s mainstream actors to improve the democratic elements of the EU’s institutional structure during the European Parliament (EP) elections 2019 and their relationships with the agents of EU politicization – right-wing populist actors. The main findings suggest that (1) EU politicization exacerbates the problem of the democratic deficit and forces mainstream actors to seek strategies to increase the resilience of the whole system; (2) in order to preserve their own subjectness in the face of growing populism and the politicization of European integration, mainstream actors choose a strategy of depoliticization, which has decreased the EU resilience; (3) right-wing populist actors are agents of politicization, they play an ambivalent role in relation to EU resilience, being a resource and a threat.

The ongoing pandemic of SARS-CoV-2 presents novel challenges and opportunities for the use of phylogenetics to understand and control its spread. Here, we analyze the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 in Russia in March and April 2020. Combining phylogeographic analysis with travel history data, we estimate that the sampled viral diversity has originated from 67 closely timed introductions into Russia, mostly in late February to early March. All but one of these introductions came from non-Chinese sources, suggesting that border closure with China has helped delay establishment of SARS-CoV-2 in Russia. These introductions resulted in at least 9 distinct Russian lineages corresponding to domestic transmission. A notable transmission cluster corresponded to a nosocomial outbreak at the Vreden hospital in Saint Petersburg; phylodynamic analysis of this cluster reveals multiple (2-4) introductions each giving rise to a large number of cases, with a high initial effective reproduction number of 3.7 (2.5-5.0).

Subword complexes were defined by A.Knutson and E.Miller in 2004 for describing Gröbner degenerations of matrix Schubert varieties. The facets of such a complex are indexed by pipe dreams, or, equivalently, by the monomials in the corresponding Schubert polynomial. In 2017 S.Assaf and D.Searles defined a basis of slide polynomials, generalizing Stanley symmetric functions, and described a combinatorial rule for expanding Schubert polynomials in this basis. We describe a decomposition of subword complexes into strata called slide complexes, that correspond to slide polynomials. The slide complexes are shown to be homeomorphic to balls or spheres.

The properties of a two-dimensional low density (n<<1) electron system with strong onsite Hubbard attraction U>W (W is the bandwidth) in the presence of a strong random potential V uniformly distributed in the range from -V to +V are considered. Electronic hoppings only at neighboring sites on the square lattice are taken into account, thus W = 8t. The calculations were carried out for a lattice of 24x24 sites with periodic boundary conditions. In the framework of the Bogoliubov - de Gennes approach we observed an appearance of inhomogeneous states of spatially separated Fermi-Bose mixture of Cooper pairs and unpaired electrons with the formation of bosonic droplets of different size in the matrix of the unpaired normal states.  

This paper presents a study in the format of general personology that involves an interpretation of ideas about personality explicated from cultural sources, in psychological concepts, methods of individual self-cognition and empirical approaches. A continuum of personological methods was applied that follows the selected format, including the hermeneutic method, the theoretical modeling method, and the method of constructing reflexive practices. The author puts forward the idea of the I-Other inner dialogue as an essential intrapersonal condition for the development of the I’s self-identity. In the concept of self-identity, its “achievement” is emphasized as the way in which the I’s tendency to maintain “self” meets the I’s challenges to “part with self” and to gain self-identity on a new level. The specifics of the original approach consisted in identifying mutually necessary oppositions that determine the paradoxes of self-identity that are “removed” when it is achieved. These oppositions include: I and the Other, the Real Other and the Inner Other, the I’s self-sufficiency and the need for dialogs with others, the attitude to self and the attitude to the Other, self-identity anddisdentification of the I with itself, the Other’s reflection and “viewpoint”, and the I for itself and the I for the Other. The “idea of the opposition” was applied to propose a structure for a developing dialogue focused on the multidimensional reflective disclosure of the I in relation to the Other from the position of the I-myself and from the position of the Inner Other. It is substantiated that such a dialogue (fulfilled by a person) can enrich and strengthen the self- identity of the I through the problematization and synthesis of I-representations obtained from these standpoints. The author’s idea was developed in the form of a continuum “hermeneutic model – theoretical model – reflexive model” that can be used in research and implementation of opportunities for the I’s self-identity achievement in the inner dialogue.