Статьи

Relevance. Africa presents a unique case: despite having the lowest urbanization levels in the world, it demonstrates the highest rates of urban population growth. Universities in large African cities play a key role in developing human capital by providing educational opportunities and training in digital skills necessary for participation in the digital economy. Objective. This article aims to assess the relationship between digital higher education, a key component of human capital, and economic development in African countries. It also explores the Digital Education Index and the factors influencing it in African cities and countries. We hypothesize that the composite Digital Education Index will reveal connections between economic development, urbanization, digital infrastructure, and digital education. Data and Methods. The study uses data from African cities and countries for 2019-2022, sourced from Trading Economics, the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Free Apply, UNESCO, and the World Intellectual Property Organization. The methodology is based on an index approach, using measures of central tendency. The Digital Education Index is calculated through three sub-indices: technical accessibility of digital technologies, financial-economic accessibility of digital education, and population digital skills. Results. Digital education contributes to human capital development in Africa while reducing inequality and social vulnerability. However, progress in improving the Digital Education Index has been limited, as African universities face challenges such as restricted technology access and low living standards, which limit access to paid education. Conclusion. The study provides policy recommendations highlighting the importance of a comprehensive approach to addressing the challenges of digital education development in Africa.

Relevance. The adoption of new technologies and the rapid emergence of innovation spur high-tech production and export-led economic growth. We aim to provide fresh evidence on the determinants of high-tech exports, considering different macroeconomic factors within the framework of the gravity model. Research Objective. The aim of the research is to empirically assess the impact of macroeconomic instability, tax policies, natural resources endowment, human capital, and institutional environment on the promotion of high-tech exports. Data and Methods. In considering the institutional indicator, six distinct indices from the World Bank are examined, and a common indicator is computed using principal component analysis. The econometric modeling uses a panel dataset covering the world’s 80 largest economies from 1996 to 2019. To test the assumptions of the gravity model and tackle the heteroscedasticity problem, the Poisson Pseudo Maximum Likelihood methodology is employed. Results. Higher inflation and unemployment rates are found to significantly decrease high-tech exports, while government external debt contributes to their enhancement. Tight tax policy and an increase in tax contribution are counterproductive in spurring high-tech exports. A negative and significant result is found for resource endowment, indicating that an increase in resource exports is counterproductive for technological advances and high-tech production. In most cases, the institutional environment and human capital significantly promote high-tech exports. Conclusions. Based on the presented empirical findings, we offer recommendations for the government to stimulate high-tech exports.

Relevance. The digital economy and the digitalization of business and public administration are progressing rapidly in Russia. However, significant disparities in ICT access, usage, and outcomes between regions persist, potentially contributing to widening socio-economic inequalities. Research objective. This study aims to demonstrate that digital skills are a key factor in regional development. It tests the hypothesis that regions with disparities in Internet adoption and digital skills also experience disparities in regional development, as reflected in key socio-economic indicators. Additionally, the study analyzes the impact of digital skills on per capita income and unemployment. Data and methods. The study uses data from a sociological survey conducted by the Federal Statistics Service (Rosstat) and the Higher School of Economics to characterize the digital skills of the population. Principal component analysis is applied to construct a composite index, the Internet Adoption Index, which reflects both the accessibility and use of the Internet across Russian regions. This index, alongside digital skills data, is used to group regions. Two-sample t-tests for equal and unequal variances are employed for initial comparisons of regional indicators. In the second stage, regression analysis is used to test the hypothesis that without improved digital skills, access to ICT does not lead to higher personal income or lower unemployment. Results. The study reveals that only 12 out of the considered 83 Russian regions exhibit relatively high levels of Internet adoption and above-average digital skills. Despite well-developed infrastructure, many regions still have low levels of digital proficiency. The age and gender structure of the population have little impact on regional digital skills. However, regions with greater access to the Internet and higher digital skills show higher economic growth, higher incomes, and lower unemployment. Conclusion. The findings provide strong evidence that digital skills are closely linked to socio-economic development. The results highlight the importance of policies aimed at improving digital literacy, particularly as the digital economy continues to expand.

В статье на материале русской культурно-языковой традиции анализируется явление, при котором тот или иной мифологический персонаж ранее не существовал в системе верований, а был порожден языковым знаком или фрагментом текста. По своей природе имена изучаемых персонажей восходят к вербальным знакам двух типов: 1) имена персонажей, образованные от узуальных единиц лексической системы — нарицательных слов (роди́мчик ‘припадок, сопровождающийся судорогами и потерей сознания’ > персонаж Ро́дька) или имен собственных (лес Хéмерово в Архангельской области, топоним > леший Хéмеровский); 2) имена персонажей, имеющие текстовую природу, — это конструкции, синтагмы, которые существуют как взаимосвязанное целое только в составе «материнского» текста, а затем «мигрируют» за его пределы (Лель, И́лия < песенные припевы алё-ле, ай люли). Для возникновения нового персонажа требуется два стимула — собственно языковой (наличие имени, которое «ищет» себе план содержания) и культурный (семиотически насыщенный контекст: ситуация, связанная с опасностью, запретом, предзнаменованием, агрессией, магическими практиками). Комбинация этих стимулов встречается нередко, поэтому мифологическому номинативному фонду практически гарантировано постоянное обновление. Авторы показывают, что творение персонажей на основе языковых стимулов в рамках кабинетной мифологии реализует те же механизмы, что и в рамках «простонародной» традиции.

This paper describes the development of an agile project management system. This research is relevant because of the feature of agile projects consisting of changing requirements. We developed the architecture of the backlog and tasks management system, including a duration prediction module. Using the developed system, managers have the opportunity to divide project processes into sprints depending on the prediction and value for the stakeholders. The authors propose a method for predicting agile project duration by formalising the application of expert Story Point evaluation and subsequent Monte Carlo simulation. Based on the developed method, an algorithm for the dynamic prediction of task duration was designed. Integration of the developed method into the system made it possible to reduce the assumptions and limitations associated with updating user story data and participation in the projects of new and cross-functional teams. The developed system allows managers to cope with agile project bottlenecks.

This paper claims to show that the making of technology and the material agency of technical objects can be analyzed analogously to the making of meaning through words and speech acts. It proposes the development of a more comprehensive view on the making and working of technology that connects the social pragmatist approach of technical practice and symbolic interagency (Kant, Dewey, Mead) with the linguistic concept of pragmatics and speech acts (Peirce, Wittgenstein, Austin). Both, speech acts and technical acts can be considered as two modes of meaning-making in the social construction of reality. Furthermore, the paper exhibits some parallels between the objectification processes of language and technology. It emphasizes how both evolve from early stages of signs and tools in practical contexts to encoded collections of grammatical rules and technological toolslater on. Doing things with concrete things (technology) reveals two different modes of “efficacy” (Jullien). There is implicit experienced efficacy in the language of directed material forces and causes and also an explicit ascribed efficacy in the language of instituted ends–means relations. The text explores the analogy between language and technology through the lenses of semantics, syntax, pragmatics, and grammar. It emphasizes the importance of such an extended pragmatist/pragmatics approach in the face of new technologies that exhibits a high degree of self-activity, more modes of intra-action between physical and digital objects, and a growing interactivity at interfaces with human actors and environmental factors. They can be more appropriately understood, conceptualized, and also designed as sociotechnical constellations of distributed agencies between people, machines, and programs.

In a dialog with large language models (LLM) there is a coincidence of the addressee and addressee of the message, so such a dialog can be called autocommunication. A neural network can only answer a question that has a formulation. The question is formulated by the one who asks it, i. e. a human being. Human activity in dialog with neural networks provokes thoughts about the nature of such dialog. Composing prompts is one of the most creative parts of dialog with neural networks. But it is worth noting that a neural network is often better at composing prompts than a human. Does this mean that humans need to develop their questioning skills? In LLM-based dialog systems, the main value to the user is the ability to clarify and structure their own thoughts. The structuring of thoughts happens through questioning, through formulating and clarifying questions. Asking the right question is practically answering that question. Thus, thanks to autocommunication, the development, transformation, and restructuring of the human “I” itself takes place. Dialogue with large linguistic models acts as a discursive practice that allows people to formulate their own thoughts and transform their self through autocommunication. It is worth noting that for this kind of dialog, a certain image of the audience is normative or determinative of the material that can be produced in response to a given question. This is because the data for model training is provided by people, even if they do not and have never thought about it. Thus, a dialogic relationship develops between the generated text and the questioning audience that develops all participants in the communication.

This paper assesses the arguments of Emily M. Bender, Timnit Gebru, Angelina McMillan-Major and Margaret Mitchell in the influential article “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?” These arguments disputed that Language Models (LM) can communicate and understand. In particular, I discuss the argument that LMs cannot communicate because their linguistic productions lack communicative intent and are not based on the real world or a model of the real world, which the authors regard as conditions for the possibility of communication and understanding. I argue that the authors’ view of communication and understanding is too restrictive and cannot account for vast instances of communication, not only human-to-human communication but also communications between humans and other entities. More concretely, I maintain that communicative intent is a possible but not necessary condition for communication and understanding, as it is oftentimes absent or unreliable. Communication need not be grounded in the real world in the sense of needing to refer to objects or state of affairs in the real world, because communication can very well be about hypothetical or unreal worlds and object. Drawing on Derrida’s philosophy, I elaborate alternative concepts of communication as the transmission of an operation of demotivation and overwhelming of interpretations with differential forces, and of understanding as the best guess or best interpretation. Based on these concepts, the paper argues that LMs could be said to communicate and understand.

Our interest in this article is to investigate different approaches to enantiosemy in English. In the coverage of a variety of viewpoints introduced in the present article, reference is made to well-established traditional and most recent perspectives and approaches provided by both European and Russian scholars with the view of elucidating different principles of classification.

The data for the analysis are extracted from different dictionaries and British National Corpus in order to find distinct motivated meanings between opposite senses in the semantic structure of enantiosemic words. The analysis of the data enables us to reveal some regularities of antonymic relations which make it possible to regard them as special cases of polysemy in English.

For this reason we consider it crucial to disclose integral and differentiating semes, as well as different potential semes, which give rise to different associations.

В статье изучаются отдельные вопросы, касающиеся криминальной деятельности в сети Даркнет, а также особенностей его использования для преступлений различных категорий. Для этих целей был проведен опрос среди разных возрастных категорий. Проведенное исследование позволило узнать, насколько люди знакомы с даркнетом. Вместе с тем очевидно, что немалая часть проанализированных видов общественно опасной деятельности представлена и в традиционном интернете, что свидетельствует о переоцененности криминального значения темной сети.

Наверняка каждый из вас мог услышать или столкнуться при работе с вашим персональным компьютером с таким любопытным понятием, как DDos-Атака, оно как раз относится к информационной безопасности! DDoS-Атака - это один из способов, когда злоумышленники пытаются перезагрузить веб-ресурс или сеть, создавая огромное количество запросов на сервер. Информационная безопасность - это область, которая занимается защитой информации от различных угроз и рисков, таких как несанкционированный доступ, разрушение, утечка или модификация данных.

Наиболее популярными на сегодняшний день квантовыми вычислителями являются спиновые кубиты, а особенно можно выделить дырочные спиновые кубиты. Базовым материалом для реализации данной технологии считается германий. Главной особенностью германия является сильное спин-орбитальное взаимодействие, способность к масштабируемости и совместимость с классическим производственным процессом. В данной работе методом ab-initio расчета было произведено построение модели интерфейса Ge-Si и исследованы квантовые состояния интерфейса кремния и германия, представляющего собой тонкослойную структуру Ge, заключённую между слоями Si, при наличии в нём дырок с четным и нечетным числом. Были определены локализации дырочных состояний в интерфейсе, произведен анализ зарядового распределения в системе.