Natural Sciences

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.


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.

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 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.

This book focuses on crisis management in software development which includes forecasting, responding and adaptive engineering models, methods, patterns and practices. It helps the stakeholders in understanding and identifying the key technology, business and human factors that may result in a software production crisis. These factors are particularly important for the enterprise-scale applications, typically considered very complex in managerial and technological aspects and therefore, specifically addressed by the discipline of software engineering. Therefore, this book throws light on the crisis responsive, resilient methodologies and practices; therewith, it also focuses on their evolutionary changes and the resulting benefits.


This is a companion book to Asymptotic Analysis of Random Walks: Heavy-Tailed Distributions by A.A. Borovkov and K.A. Borovkov. Its self-contained systematic exposition provides a highly useful resource for academic researchers and professionals interested in applications of probability in statistics, ruin theory, and queuing theory. The large deviation principle for random walks was first established by the author in 1967, under the restrictive condition that the distribution tails decay faster than exponentially. (A close assertion was proved by S.R.S. Varadhan in 1966, but only in a rather special case.) Since then, the principle has always been treated in the literature only under this condition. Recently, the author jointly with A.A. Mogul'skii removed this restriction, finding a natural metric for which the large deviation principle for random walks holds without any conditions. This new version is presented in the book, as well as a new approach to studying large deviations in boundary crossing problems. Many results presented in the book, obtained by the author himself or jointly with co-authors, are appearing in a monograph for the first time.

The Volume includes a Special Section on "Analytical and Computational Methods in Probability"

The materials of the 5th International conference on stochastic methods are presented including the following directions: probability and statistics (analytic modelling, asymptotic methods and limit theorems, stochastic analysis, Markov processes and martingales, actuarial and financial mathematics, et al.); applications of stochastic methods (queueing theory and stochastic networks, reliability theory and risk analysis, probability in indistry, economics and other areas, computer science and computer networks, machine learning and data analysis, etc.).

7th International School and Conference "Saint-Petersburg OPEN 2020" on Optoelectronics, Photonics, Engineering and Nanostructures was held on April 27 - 30, 2020. The Organizer of the conference is the Alferov Federal State Budgetary Institution of Higher Education and Science Saint Petersburg National Research Academic University of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Initially, the School and Conference was supposed to be held in full-time format at the Alferov Academic University (Saint-Petersburg, Russia), as it happened in the past. However, due to the restrictions imposed by the city authorities on holding mass events due to the threat of the spread of the COVID-19 infection, the conference committees decided to move the conference to the online format. The conference consisted of poster reports presented by the participants and online oral presentations by invited speakers. Posters and video reports of the participants were posted on the conference website. Invited speakers made their presentations online. During their speeches, participants could discuss and ask questions in the chat. The School and Conference included a series of invited talks given by leading professors with the aim to introduce young scientists with actual problems and major advances in physics and technology.

The article suggests the integration of a neural network as a parallel element base in a telecommunication system. In this case, the ability to learn or adapt to external conditions is applied as the main advantage. For telecommunication systems in conditions when it is possible, this ability will improve noise immunity, reliability, operability, etc. The article considers an example of the integration of a neural network into a discrete matched signal filter. It is noted that the use of parallel mathematical methods in signal processing leads to the maximum effect of increasing the quality parameters of such telecommunication elements

Artificial intelligence and machine learning helps to improve the quality of customer service and change the methods of companies’ activities. For this reason, enterprises should consider integrating these technologies into digital transformation plans to remain competitive. Low-code machine learning platforms allow companies and business professionals with minimal coding experience to create applications and fill in the gaps of the personnel in their organization. Automated machine leaning (AutoML) technology represents the next step in the evolution of machine learning, providing non-technical companies with the ability to create machine learning applications quickly and cheaply

The article discusses the possibilities of studying the state of the social sphere according to the repository of the Moscow Government open data portal by administrative districts and city districts using Business Intelligence Platforms and Data Science and Machine Learning Platforms intellectual technologies. Opportunities are presented for using machine learning technologies for business analytics platforms to identify hidden patterns in order to make informed management decisions

Contents Authors................................................................................................................................ 7 Acknowledgements............................................................................................................9 Executive summary ........................................................................................................... 11 1. Introduction....................................................................................................................13 Riccardo Valentini, Pekka Leskinen, Pieter Johannes Verkerk, Gert-Jan Nabuurs, George Safonov and Elena Kulikova 2. State of Russian forests and forestry............................................................................17 Dmitry Zamolodchikov, Anatoly Shvidenko, Sergey Bartalev, Elena Kulikova, Alexander Held, Riccardo Valentini and Marcus Lindner 2.1 Major characteristics of Russian forests..........................................................17 2.2 Natural forest disturbances.............................................................................. 21 2.3 Forest governance and use..............................................................................26 2.4 Ecosystem functions and services of Russia’s forests....................................28 2.5 Key challenges in forest resource management..............................................35 2.6 Key messages.................................................................................................... 38 3. Climate change in Russia – past, present and future................................................. 45 Riccardo Valentini, Dmitry Zamolodchikov, Christopher Reyer, Sergio Noce, Monia Santini and Marcus Lindner 3.1 Observed changes of Russian climate in recent decades.............................. 45 3.2 Climate change scenarios................................................................................48 3.3 Key messages.....................................................................................................51 4. Climate change and Russian forests: impacts, vulnerability and adaptation needs... 53 Christopher Reyer, Marcus Lindner, Dmitry Zamolodchikov, Anatoly Shvidenko, Martin Gutsch and Sergey Bartalev 4.1 Observed impacts of climate change...............................................................53 4.2 Projected impacts.............................................................................................56 4.3 Vulnerability assessment................................................................................. 61 4.4 Adaptation needs............................................................................................. 64 4.5 Key messages....................................................................................................67
5. Climate-Smart Forestry in Russia and potential climate change mitigation benefits.............................................................................................................................. 73 Bas Lerink, Mariana Hassegawa, Alexander Kryshen, Anton Kovalev, Eldar Kurbanov, Gert-Jan Nabuurs, Sergei Moshnikov and Pieter Johannes Verkerk 5.1 Introduction...................................................................................................... 73 5.2 Approach and general scenario assumptions.................................................74 5.3 Case study: Republic of Karelia.......................................................................78 5.4 Case study: Republic of Mari El.......................................................................84 5.5 Case study: Angara macro-district (Krasnoyarsk kray).................................. 91 5.6 Concluding remarks, discussion and implications....................................... 98 5.7 Key messages...................................................................................................101 6. The role of the bioeconomy in climate change mitigation in Russia..................... 105 Pekka Leskinen, Jo Van Brusselen, Mariana Hassegawa, Alexander Alekseev, Natalia Lukina, Olga Rakitova, George Safonov, Elena Kulikova and Mikhail Safonov 6.1 Introduction.................................................................................................... 105 6.2 The bioeconomy concept in Russia...............................................................106 6.3 The link between bioeconomy and climate change mitigation.................. 107 6.4 State of Russian forest industry and potential for bioeconomy................... 111 6.5 Sectoral development and outlook................................................................. 113 6.6 Summary and conclusions: Opportunities and challenges for a bioeconomy in Russia.....................................................................................123 6.7 Key messages...................................................................................................125 7. Conclusions.................................................................................................................. 131 Pekka Leskinen, Jo Van Brusselen, Marcus Lindner, Gert-Jan Nabuurs, Pieter Johannes Verkerk, Natalia Lukina, Sergey Bartalev and Elena Kulikova 7.1 Forest resources............................................................................................... 131 7.2 Climate change impacts, adaptation and mitigation....................................132 7.3 Forest management........................................................................................ 133 7.4 Enabling environment for a bioeconomy......................................................134 7.5 Holistic view.................................................................................................... 135 7.6 Key messages and next steps ........................................................................ 136
In the paper, three algorithms for predicting protein side-chain conformations are suggested and discussed. All proposed approaches analyze the local neighborhood of the target residue to avoid'steric clashes'. Strong and weak points of the algorithms are described, and ways of improving their outcomes are suggested. The approach based on predicting conformations for all residues in a protein chain segment appears to be the most promising.
We derive a quadratic recursion relation for the linear Hodge integrals of the form $〈τ_2^nλ_k〉$. These numbers are used in a formula for Masur-Veech volumes of moduli spaces of quadratic differentials discovered by Chen, Möller and Sauvaget. Therefore, our recursion provides an efficient way of computing these volumes.
A novel method for finding roots of polynomials over finite fields has been proposed. This method is based on the cyclotomic discrete Fourier transform algorithm. The improvement is achieved by using the normalized cyclic convolutions, which have a small complexity and allow matrix decomposition, as well as methods of adapting the truncated normalized cyclic convolutions calculation. For small values of degree of the error-locator polynomial the novel method has not only the smallest multiplicative complexity, but the full computational complexity of this method is also less than with other methods. Thus, the multiplicative complexity of the novel method in comparison to the method of affine decomposition (the Fedorenko-Trifonov method) is up to ten times less, although the additive complexity is approximately 10-15\% more. The novel method has matrix representation convenient for implementation.
A complete description of trees with maximal possible number of maximum independent setsamong all 𝑛-vertex trees with exactly 𝑙 leaves is obtained. For all values of the parameters 𝑛 and 𝑙, the extremal tree is unique and is the result of merging the endpoints of 𝑙 simple paths.
A systematic study of the phosphine additives influence on the activity of a ruthenium catalyst in reductive amination without an external hydrogen source was carried out. [CymeneRuCl2]2 was used as a reference catalyst, and a broad set of phosphines including Alk3P, Alk2ArP, Ar3P and X3P was screened. Three complexes of general formula (Cymene)RuCl2PR3 were isolated in a pure form, and their catalytic activity was compared with the in situ generated complexes. Nonhindered triarylphosphines with electron acceptor groups were found to be the most perspective activating agents, increasing the activity of the catalyst approx. six times, Alk2ArP ligands have less noticeable influence, while trialkylphosphines strongly deactivate the ruthenium catalyst.
A systematic study of the phosphine additives influence on the activity of a ruthenium catalyst in reductive amination without an external hydrogen source was carried out. [CymeneRuCl2]2 was used as a reference catalyst, and a broad set of phosphines including Alk3P, Alk2ArP, Ar3P and X3P was screened. Three complexes of general formula (Cymene)RuCl2PR3 were isolated in a pure form, and their catalytic activity was compared with the in situ generated complexes. Nonhindered triarylphosphines with electron acceptor groups were found to be the most perspective activating agents, increasing the activity of the catalyst approx. six times, Alk2ArP ligands have less noticeable influence, while trialkylphosphines strongly deactivate the ruthenium catalyst.
The Keap1-Nrf2 signaling axis is a validated and promising target for cellular defense and survival pathways. This minireview discusses the potential off-target effects and their impact on future drug development originating from Keap1-targeting small molecules that function as displacement activators of the redox-sensitive transcription factor Nrf2. We argue that small-molecule displacement activators, similarly to electrophiles, will release both Nrf2 and other Keap1 client proteins from the ubiquitin ligase complex. This non-specificity is likely unavoidable and may result in off-target effects during Nrf2 activation by targeting Keap1. The small molecule displacement activators may also target Kelch domains in proteins other than Keap1, causing additional off-target effects unless designed to ensure specificity for the Kelch domain only in Keap1. A potentially promising and alternative therapeutic approach to overcome this non-specificity emerging from targeting Keap1 is to inhibit the Nrf2 repressor Bach1 for constitutive activation of the Nrf2 pathway and bypass the Keap1-Nrf2 complex.
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.
We study singularities of optimal solutions in a problem of controlling the Timoshenko beam vibrations. The Timoshenko beam vibrations are described by a system of two coupled hyperbolic equations. Controls are introduced as external bounded forces. We consider the problem of minimizing the mean square deviation of the Timoshenko beam from the equilibrium position. For some initial conditions we reduce this problem to the optimal control problem for ordinary differential equations. We study the case of two-dimensional controls. For some initial positions of the beam, we prove that the optimal solutions have a Fuller type singularity. We give an asymptotic representation of the corresponding family of optimal trajectories.