Western sanctions are only strengthening Putin’s grip on power

Russia has been hit by an unprecedented package of sanctions following its invasion of Ukraine. Sergey Alexeev argues that the current sanctions are only likely to push the country further toward authoritarianism. He suggests that economic transition theories could be used to better optimise sanctions and help foster democratic alternatives

Three Essays on the Economics of Education and Inequality

University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Business.This thesis consists of three independent essays, unified by the common theme of inequality and education. Chapter 2 uses harmonized national panels for Australia, the United States and Germany to measure the role of home ownership on income inequality, polarization and intergenerational mobility. Australia stands out as the only country where home ownership drastically changes all three measures. The results of this paper provide strong reinforcement of the Canberra Group's (2001) recommendations to include all in-kind income sources for cross-country comparisons of income distributions. Chapter 3 continues exploring the topic of intergenerational persistence of income. It uses auction theoretical modelling to demonstrate a flaw in the centralized college admission system. The development of the test-preparation industry makes marks less informative about the underlying skills of the applicants. This is mainly due to the strategic interaction of applicants that inflates the marks. This, in turn, complicates sorting under the centralized college admission system for highly competitive colleges or specializations. Chapter 4 continues exploring the topic of education. It identifies a demand shock on one specific type of college graduates on the Russian labor market in the early 1990s. The shock changed the structure of employed professionals and technicians, influenced income inequality, and provides a parsimonious explanation for the behavior of the college wage premium in Russia from 1985 to 2015. The nature of the demand shock indicates that firms were deploying organizational technologies in response to a rapid desertion of central planning

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To relax the local authorities and to receive the guests of high rank «with no tie» the so-called «Fisherman's House» was built at the source of Angara-river, near Lake Baikal. Vladimir Ivanov, a young architect, was noticed by his skillful performa nee of exclusive orders and became the author of this house. At the time of ferroconcrete boom the proposal to build a wooden guest house turned out to be unexpectedly to the point and was graciously approved. The economic department was entrusted to select the men good for carpenter's work, and the forestry department was entrusted to provide thick round timber. And the work started. But, as it usually happens, the workers did not take the trouble and made the first eight rims of the current timber with an inappropriate diameter.And when Pavlov insisted on demolishing the construction and replacing the logs by the logs with the necessary diameter, the building work obeyed to his will and was finished suecessfully.The architecture of the house is not the derived action of the saw and the fret-saw. It is a technology of the axe. It is natural, convincing and original. It is no use to look for the local sources in it. It grew up in the area of timber and cold winter. And this clear and efficient action kept the construction from the annoying vulgarity and provided Siberian exotics easily penetrating into one's soul, refined as it may be.One of the eminent guests said with admiration: «Even if Pavlov had created nothing more, he would have justified his professional choice with this single house.» Why not to say it as a good toast. However, this is a suitable case to add: style is an absence of style. It is a taste.After the Fisherman's House Irkutsk architects were attracted by wood. They followed the strictness in wood and, as much as they could, created a couple of successful remakes, until the cylinder logs and ... new Russian architects appeared. With their own aesthetics.After Pavlov had left Irkutsk, near his house appeared another one, it was not a log house, and its style was glaringly unfriendly. And soon the Fisherman's House burnt down. Not with vexation, but naturally, with smoke and fire. The author of the building next door considers the rebuilding of the lost house unpractical

Orienting Ordered Scaffolds: Complexity and Algorithms

Despite the recent progress in genome sequencing and assembly, many of the currently available assembled genomes come in a draft form. Such draft genomes consist of a large number of genomic fragments (scaffolds), whose order and/or orientation (i.e., strand) in the genome are unknown. There exist various scaffold assembly methods, which attempt to determine the order and orientation of scaffolds along the genome chromosomes. Some of these methods (e.g., based on FISH physical mapping, chromatin conformation capture, etc.) can infer the order of scaffolds, but not necessarily their orientation. This leads to a special case of the scaffold orientation problem (i.e., deducing the orientation of each scaffold) with a known order of the scaffolds. We address the problem of orientating ordered scaffolds as an optimization problem based on given weighted orientations of scaffolds and their pairs (e.g., coming from pair-end sequencing reads, long reads, or homologous relations). We formalize this problem using notion of a scaffold graph (i.e., a graph, where vertices correspond to the assembled contigs or scaffolds and edges represent connections between them). We prove that this problem is NP-hard, and present a polynomial-time algorithm for solving its special case, where orientation of each scaffold is imposed relatively to at most two other scaffolds. We further develop an FPT algorithm for the general case of the OOS problem

Primary Au prospecting results in the Logrosán area (Central Iberian Zone, Spain).

The Central Iberian Zone presents an exceptional geological interest for its great exploration potential for a number of elements including gold. Metallogeny within the area is mainly related to regional metamorphism and late magmatic activity during the Variscan orogeny. In 2013-2014 junior company Mineral Exploration Network Ltd. has carried out an extensive prospecting field work with a primarily view to discover Au within the area around Logrosan granitic pluton (Cáceres, Spain). The main output of the survey was a localization and presorting of potentially mineralized territory unites at the extensive spatial scale (more than 240 sq. km). The known gold showings in the Central Iberian zone are considered to be synorogenic with a mainly metamorphic fluid source. As arsenic commonly forms widespread geochemical haloes near practically all orogenic gold deposits and appears to be easily and credibly measured by express analytical methods (XRF), it was selected as one of the major pathfinder elements for the initial prospecting. Designed geochemical survey allowed delineating potential target area with contrastive complex As-W-Zn-Pb anomaly in soil sediments and significant quantities of gold particles in heavy mineral concentrates. Placer gold particles analyses and their typomorphic features confirmed nearby primary gold source existence. The suggested scope of work proved to be efficient for assessing mineralization potential and selecting perspective target areas for a detailed drilling.  La Zona Centro Ibérica muestra un interés geológico excepcional debido a su gran potencial de exploración de gran número de elementos, incluido el oro. La metalogenia en esta área está relacionada con un metamorfismo regional y posterior actividad magmática durante la orogenia Varisca. Durante el periodo 2013-2014, la compañía Mineral Exploration Network Ltd llevó a cabo una prospección importante en el campo con una primera observación de Au dentro del área del plutón granítico de Logrosan (Cáceres, España). El primer objetivo de la campaña fue la localización y acotamiento de la zona potencialmente mineralizada a gran escala (más de 20 Km2). El oro descrito es considerado sinorogénico con una fuente principal relacionada con fluidos metamórficos. Como el arsénico aparece frecuentemente constituyendo geoquímicos halos cerca de la mayoría de los depósitos orogénicos de oro y parecen ser medidos fácilmente mediante métodos analíticos (XRF), fue seleccionado como uno de los principales elementos marcadores para realizar la prospección inicial. Los análisis geoquímicos seleccionados permitieron delimitar la zona de interés mediante el contraste del complejo anómalo As-W-Zn-Pb en los sedimentos del suelo y cantidades significativas de partículas de oro en concentraciones de minerales pesados. Los análisis de las partículas de los placeres de oro y sus características tipomórficas confirmaron inicialmente la presencia de oro. El objetivo inicial de este trabajo consistió en mostrar la eficiencia para tasar el potencial de mineralización y seleccionar las áreas idóneas para realizar perforaciones