Publications

The article presents the results of a study aimed at clarifying the determinants that describe the petitioning activity of residents of East and West Germany. The research materials were 1036 petitions from the German-speaking segment of Change.org: 322 petitions (East Germany), 714 petitions (West Germany); 2012- 2018). Based on the analysis of electronic petitions, a thematic classifier was created that divided all petitions into 18 thematic groups (human rights, animal protection; culture, politics, migration issue, proposals for reforming certain areas of life, transport system, Internet, protection and support for people with disabilities and rare diseases, financial questions, environmental protection, housing issues, weapons / spirits / tobacco / drugs, healthcare, elderly people, education, sports, sustainable development). Statistically significant differences between eastern and western territories in a comparative analysis of petitions were found only in the animal protection thematic group. As a result of the study, it turned out that the bipolar construct “east-west”, rooted in the historical logic of the legacy of socialism and capitalism in the German territories, is not capable of explaining the logic of the petitioning activity of modern Germans. According to the results of the study, the historical heritage / separation factor is guessed in the socio-economic problems of the regions, but it is not decisive in determining the values and civic activism of German residents.

The article discusses the influence of temperament on the academic performance of the first-year students at HSE-Nizhny Novgorod on the example of the Faculty of Informatics, Mathematics and Computer Science (IM&CS). The analyses were done with the help of statistics and educational data mining. The baseline data for the study is information about students, obtained by a survey: the information about temperament, degree of extraversion, stability, and other personality traits of students. The study involved students of the first and second years of the faculty of the IM&CS 2017-2018 academic year. Further, psychological factors affecting the average score and the probability of re-training for students with different temperaments were identified. A certain connection between temperament and academic success, which makes possible the prediction of "risky" students, was found. Various machine learning methods are used: the kNN-method and decision trees. The best results were shown by decision trees. As a result, first-year students are classified into three groups (Good, Medium, Bad) according to the degree of risk of getting academic debt. The practical result of the research was the recommendations to the educational office of the Faculty of IM&CS to pay attention to risky students and assist them in the educational process. After the end of the summer session, the classification results were checked. The article also presents an algorithm for finding risky students, taking temperament into account.

The aim of the study is to compare the strategies of the Russian and American media in justifying the need to comply with international obligations on atmosphere and climate protection in the context of solving national propaganda tasks and to describe their dominant propaganda models. The research methods comprise the technique of intent-analysis by Ushakova and Pavlova, as well as the technique of rhetorical deconstruction by Ibarra and Kitsuse. Empirical materials of the research include texts of the of Russian and American media (“Izvestia”, “Rossiyskaya Gazeta”, “Gazeta.Ru”, “The New York Times”, “The Washington Post”, “USA Today”: 104 articles; 01/01/2012 - 01/01/2017). It was found that the propaganda models of the Russian and American media correspond to the description of propaganda within the state by Ellul under the two-party system of the state: the ruling party conducts propaganda for itself, the opposition party conducts propaganda against the ruling party. The propaganda model of the American media in this area of information competition between the two states can be characterized as the “propaganda model of the leader”, and the propaganda model of the Russian media - the “opposition propaganda model”

The article deals with the autobiography of Paul Claudel in his essay Ma Con-version written in 1913 at the request of readers. The readers believe that his biography no longer belongs to him, so the experience of his conversion should be of common property. It reveals his confessional retrospective traits and self-awareness in “biographical” literary works. Different types of confession, features of preaching, self-expression and autobiography are interwoven in the essay. The language of the essay is poetic and polysemantic. Distance is manifested in many ways in Claudel’s works, from the explicit biographical author – “moi, Paul” to the literary author – “le poète”. The writer begins in a confessional, indecisive man-ner, but as he becomes more professional, he resorts to the “biographical author” less willing-ly, more often remaining on the sidelines as a literary author. There is less open reflection in the collection of works Conversations (1926–1937), so the poet discusses reality, but he does not describe his feelings and actions as he did when he was younger. Claudel's autobiography combines the sacred and the secular, while the intimate and the public act as a “preparatory” stage to a multi-volume exegetic “novel”.

The images of countries in the news of Russian media about the COVID-19 pandemic in the context of popular critical geopolitics were analyzed in the article. 465 texts of the Russian media (01.01.2019 - 03.20.2020) were identified based on the keyword “coronavirus” and processed using computer linguistics. For the eastern countries (China, Iran, South Korea and Japan) and the western (USA, Italy, Spain, France), as well as for “Russia”, semantic fields were reconstructed. Based on the analysis of semantic fields, the images of countries facing a pandemic were interpreted. It turned out that they write about the east in the context of a border beyond which there is a danger of infection. The image of the eastern countries in the news about the coronavirus is consistent with the prevailing media images of the east as a distant and little-known geopolitical space. The media discourse on the pandemic in China contains people and viruses as storytelling actors, which, according to the author of the article, may indicate the preservation of the outdated strategy of “demonization” of China (as a habitat for the infection).

Western countries in the media discourse on coronavirus are lined up in a hierarchy. The United States and France receive a personified representation directly related to their political leaders. Ordinary people suffering from coronavirus disappear in the US pandemic media discourse. All media attention is focused on President Trump. The image of the United States is constructed as an image of a hegemonic country. The image of France is semantically one of the most complex and ambivalent. The image of Spain is being reconstructed through the suffering of people in a pandemic, as well as through the participation of the state in protecting citizens from the infection. The image of Italy is constructed as the image of a close, sympathetic and vulnerable country.

Russia in the discourse of Russian media at the initial stage of the pandemic is being constructed as a resisting (not infected) territory. It turns out that the geopolitical media discourse in a pandemic preserves the most typical intentions.

This article overviews studies exploring the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on education systems and their responses to lockdown restrictions, comparing available findings with international statistics based on continuous education system monitoring. Global organizations acknowledge disruption of traditional educational processes and emergency transition to distance learning during the pandemic. Scientific literature examines accessibility of online education, alternative forms of distance learning, and the pandemic-induced financial constraints on universities inhibiting new construction, social support for students, scholarship application, professional development of faculty members, and research growth. The pandemic illuminated the issue of inequality in education, which worsened as a result of emergency transition to online studies. In particular, researchers focus on the most vulnerable groups of students, such as children from low-income families, children from migrant backgrounds, and students with disabilities.

Projects aimed at studying the digitalization of education account for the biggest chunk of research inspired by the new pandemic reality. A number of studies discuss not just formal transition to distance education but a major technology shift that allows using the unique opportunities provided by digital technologies, which is especially important when teaching to medical students.

Theoretical inquiry is a distinctive feature of scientific discourse, as compared to the discourse of international expert and analytical reports on the problems of education in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Research on changes to the learning process makes it possible to reconstruct the direct and indirect, as well as latent, threats of the pandemic.

The authors of this article proceed from the fact that, as a result of the intensive development of digital  technologies, a digital society has formed an understanding of life, in which many habitual social practices have been  transformed into digital ones. In particular, digital technologies have contributed to the fact that communication on  personal, social and commercial issues has moved to a different, virtual level. However, in a number of areas, digital  communication causes problems and communication disruptions. For example, previous studies have highlighted  high levels of consumer dissatisfaction with companies using digital communication tools. Especially a lot of criticism  is caused by answerphones, recently widely popular and used increasingly by public and commercial institutions.  The article examines the new ways companies  use to deliver their message to an existing or potential customer, as  well as the quality and customer ratings of some of these solutions. In addition, the authors tried to identify factors  that influence consumer satisfaction w hen communicating with companies in the digital environment. The main  research methods are analysis of previous projects results, interviews and online survey. The article is based on the  results of the research conducted in the city of Nizhny Novgorod. The city residents expectations for the automated  communication system used in the modern world between the user and the service provider in case when com- munication is initiated by the consumer to solve  his problems were studied on the example of telecommunications  companies. These expectations were divided into six groups, and a comparative quantitative assessment of con - sumer expectations and the actual quality of communication was made. A low  level of satisfaction with new ways  of communication between companies and consumers was detected, and factors influencing consumer attitudes  were identified. In general, the study showed that the formed factors determine the priority directions of transfor - mation of the communication practices of companies and are the basis for the balance of technologies and human  resources at the enterprise.

     The purpose of this textbook is to consider within the framework of the main topics studied in the course "Marketing Research", approaches, methods and tools that lead to the successful conduct of market research and analysis of the obtained data. When studying such a subject as "Marketing Research", it is necessary to familiarize yourself with the basic terms, approaches to conducting research, methods of data collection, methods of calculating and filling in the sample, tools for data collection and analysis.

     To ensure that the subject of "Marketing Research" does not remain a formal theory for the reader, the textbook provides practical examples of research activities that reflect the use of certain research tools in practice.

     At the same time, the authors take into account that the main research concepts remain almost unchanged, but there are areas of market research that are undergoing changes. In this regard, along with the consideration of traditional approaches to conducting market research with their methods and tools, the textbook is supplemented with material on the use of digital technologies in research activities, which reflects the large-scale development of the digital sector of the economy.

The article explores the eluding borderline between the human and the animal resulting from the numerous bestial metaphors in Turgenev’s short story. The framework of the analysis is provided by Bakhtin’s notions of the universal whole and the animal as an elementary being. From the prism of Turgenev’s perception of nature, elementary and universal prove to be closely related with each other. Their interaction determines Gerasim’s attitude to Mumu, defined as care. The opposition between universality and the small world of human power relations, associated with the decrepit Barynja, constitutes the main conflict in the story. It is finally argued that universality also ultimately determines the deeds of the story’s characters, as well as the nature of their “guilt.”

Objective. Identify strategies a formation of “subordinate subject” and analyzes the strategies of obedience and resistance in  self-narrative about encountering difficulties in childhood and adulthood.

Background. Obedience refers to classical problems in social psychology (experiments by S. Asha, S. Milgram, F. Zimbardo, S. Moskovichi, etc.). Forms of obedience are suggestibility, conformity, pliability, submission to authority; these forms are manifested in submission to internal imperatives; to authority persons; to small group; as well as situations. Along with conformity as a personal characteristic researchers study obedience based on the adoption of the role and regulation of role behavior. Role basis of subordination allows us to consider obedience as a condition for socialization. Resistance in psychological research is less common, which is associated with cultural standards and cultural priorities that influence the formation of research areas.

Results. According to the results of the study, young people under 30 years have different interpretations than older interviewees, but differences are of an age rather than generational nature.

Conclusions. The results of the study allow us to suggest that strategies of resistance were form at the childhood while overcoming internal issues and conflicts with peers. In adulthood, the strategy of subordination are stereotyped (stories about obedience to parents), stable scenarios resistance were construct in area to social challenge.

In recent works on learning representations for graph structures, methods have been proposed both for the representation of nodes and edges for large graphs, and for representation of graphs as a whole. This paper considers the popular graph2vec approach, which shows quite good results for ordinary graphs. In the field of natural language processing, however, a graph structure called a dependency tree is often used to express the connections between words in a sentence. We show that the graph2vec approach applied to dependency trees is unsatisfactory, which is due to the WL Kernel. In this paper, an adaptation of this kernel for dependency trees has been proposed, as well as 3 other types of kernels that take into account the specific features of dependency trees. This new vector representation can be used in NLP tasks where it is important to model syntax (e.g. authorship attribution, intention labeling, targeted sentiment analysis etc.). Universal Dependencies treebanks were clustered to show the consistency and validity of the proposed tree representation methods.

In this paper, a deep learning method study is conducted to solve a new multiclass text classification problem, identifying user interests by text messages. We used an original dataset of almost 90 thousand forum text messages, labeled for ten interests. We experimented with different modern neural network architectures: recurrent and convolutional, as well as simpler feedforward networks. Classification accuracy was evaluated for different architectures, text representations, and sets of miscellaneous parameters.

The conventional reading of the “ancient” chapters of Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita attributes the role of an active moral subject to Pilate and a largely passive role to Ieshua. Proceeding from this assumption, the encounter between these characters is interpreted as an ethical event, in which Pilate is sup- posed to make decisions based entirely on his own will. This paper challenges this reading by arguing that Ieshua, generally considered the epitome of love, is the actual source of the events in which Pilate is involved. This idea is demonstrated by a comparison with the early Christian experience that views divine love as prior to power and intellect. The analysis traces Pilate’s inner transformation caused by the impact of proactive love and of the actual person of Ieshua, rather than his ideas, which clarifies the meaning of the encounter of these protagonists in Bulgakov’s novel.

Non-profit organizations deliver a wide range of meaningful resources to communities in such diverse areas as education, arts, culture, medicine, social service and others. However, as compared to the private sector, their funding potential is much more limited. Increasing social and economic impact of the non-profit sector is a reason why there is a need in persistent efforts to enhance these opportunities. State contracts have a good potential to be regarded as one of the most essential sources of funding for non-profit organizations in the social sphere. Recently passed laws ensure substantial benefits for socially oriented non-profit organizations when participating in public procurement. Nevertheless, despite existence of norms allowing socially oriented NPOs to get preferences in tenders, presence of the non-profit sector in Russian public procurement market is still insignificant. The study seeks to analyze peculiarities of Russian public procurement legislation. Another purpose of the study is to investigate barriers to   functioning of Russian NPOs in the public procurement market.  The major question of the study to be asked is the following: why did the state order fail to become one of the drivers for the development of the non-profit sector in Russia? First, we consider the functioning mechanisms of socially oriented NPOs in the public procurement market. Then, we analyze the results of the expert interview, which let us identify the following barriers limiting participation of NPOs in public procurement: economic, financial, social and organizational barrier. Finally, we make a conclusion that for the majority of non-profit organizations state order is an optional source of funding in view of the identified barriers, and make recommendations on attracting socially oriented NPOs in the field of public procurement. The study is relevant for the government and public authorities, since it can serve as a starting point for improving the mechanisms of attracting the non-profit sector in the sphere of public procurement.

This paper seeks to contribute to the current discussion of world Englishes by showing how English is used in popular music reviews in Russia, a context that has not been addressed in previous research. Drawing on sets of textual and ethnographic data, we argue that English and Anglicisms contribute to the expressiveness and precision of musical reviews, enhance promotion of musical products and become part of the unique identity that ties Russian music fans together. We show how English evokes connections to global contexts in the local community and how Russian speakers use English resources creatively, adapting them to local needs and modifying English musical terms through Russian word-formation mechanisms, to make them more local.

The paper addresses the use of English in the Russian-based recruitment discourse. Language is viewed through the prism of the sociolinguistics of globalization and understood as a set of mobile trans-locally operative resources used to achieve specific goals of communication. The corpus for analysis includes job ads and résumés posted on the recruitment platforms HeadHunter and Super.Job, videotaped conversations of job seekers with recruiters and employers, and ethnographic interviews with recruitment professionals. We used discourse analysis, ethnographic methods, and quantitative measuring to analyze the data. The study consists of two stages. During the first stage, we found out that English can be used as the main language of recruitment or in the form of “insertions” in the Russian-based texts to demonstrate professionalism, position the company, and “filter” the candidates. The second stage revealed that the all-English segment of the Russian recruitment discourse has narrowed, while the use of English in “truncated” forms has increased. This dynamic is caused by the expansion of the digital segment of the Russian job market (social media, Internet channels), where English-mediated technologies are the main instrument of interaction with clients. It results in further hybridization and boosts translingualism in work-related settings. English, with its tendency to informal personified communication patterns, also affects the communicative conventions of the Russian-based recruitment discourse. The study demonstrates the growing role of English as an agent of global professional discourses and an intermediary between people and technologies.

The given research is devoted to the acute issue of efficiency of valuable assets positioning carried out by commercial banks. The paper is aimed at examining factors which affect the efficiency of securities placement by commercial banks, as well as an econometric analysis based on the least squares method of the significance of the selected factors and their impact on the efficiency indicator. While researching this issue the phenomenon of adaptability, which means the higher the price set is in comparison with the medium price scale the higher the underpricing at setting with corresponding other equal terms, was singled out The methods of critical literature review, statistical analysis, and econometric model creation have been used to justify it. Moreover, the research resulted in model creation which characterizes the state of a definite commercial bank to be ready for emission of assets by means of initial public offering.

The left frontal aslant tract (FAT) has been proposed to be relevant for language, and specifically for spontaneous speech fluency. However, there is missing causal evidence that stimulation of the FAT affects spontaneous speech, and not language production in general. We present a series of 12 neurosurgical cases with awake language mapping of the cortex near the left FAT. Tasks for language mapping included the commonly used action picture naming, and sentence completion, tapping more specifically into spontaneous speech. A task dissociation was found in 10 participants: while being stimulated on specific sites, they were able to name a picture but could not complete a sentence. Overlaying of these sites on preoperative white-matter tract reconstructions revealed that in each individual case they were located on cortical terminations of the FAT. This corroborates the language functional specificity of the left FAT as a tract underlying fluent spontaneous speech.

The article deals with the main character of the novel The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce and his attempts to rediscover his own self and to answer the question ‘Who am I?’ through his thoughts, memories and collaboration with the others.

Prevalence of oral diseases among children is an urgent problem that poses a threat to the health of the growing population in Russia. Dental pathology among children with disabilities has specific characteristics regarding its development, prevalence and intensity of the lesion. Statistically, dental morbidity of children with disabilities is much higher than in somatically healthy. This is due to a number of factors: a slowdown in the perception rate, underdevelopment of the cognitive sphere, violation of behavioral reactions and, as a consequence, inadequate compliance with necessary hygienic procedures. The authors consider that the major etiological factor resulting in the development of diseases of oral mucosa and periodontal condition in patients with neuropsychiatric pathology is absence or poor hygienic care of the oral cavity. The aim of the study is to assess the dental status of children with disabilities and autism spectrum disorders aged 3 – 8 years old. To determine this status, the method of defining and calculating indices reflecting the state of oral tissues was employed. The following indexes were used in the study: Fedorov-Volodkina hygienic index; simplified index of oral hygiene (OHI-S/GAMES-Y),; papillary-marginal-alveolar index (PMA); Index of tooth decay kp, KPU+kp. Dental examination revealed a high prevalence of dental diseases in children with ASD and cerebral palsy; in particular, multiple lesions of hard tissues of the teeth, periodontal inflammation were identified. The findings of the study showed that caries in children with limited abilities is mainly due to their low motivation to develop a habit of individual manual teeth brushing ritual.