Study of an induction-type liquid-metal MHD generator

Construction and performance tests of induction type liquid potassium magnetohydrodynamic generato

Search for optimal design of sectional drills with replaceable many-sided plates at railway rails drilling

The power analysis technique of sectional drills with replaceable many-sided plates at railway rails drilling has been offered. It allowed increasing tool working capacity. The technique is based on summation of specific cutting force component by the length of working areas of plates cutting rims. The increase of working capacity is achieved due to decreasing cutting force radial components of each of the plat

An Approach to Designing the Interface of the Automated Documentary System

n the paper the procedure for calculation, designing and estimation of the ergonomics of the interface of systems of document circulation is considered. The original computation procedure and the data received during the designing of the interface of documentary system are given

Development and validation of 'AutoRIF': Software for the automated analysis of radiation-induced foci

Copyright @ 2012 McVean et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Background: The quantification of radiation-induced foci (RIF) to investigate the induction and subsequent repair of DNA double strands breaks is now commonplace. Over the last decade systems specific for the automatic quantification of RIF have been developed for this purpose, however to ask more mechanistic questions on the spatio-temporal aspects of RIF, an automated RIF analysis platform that also quantifies RIF size/volume and relative three-dimensional (3D) distribution of RIF within individual nuclei, is required. Results: A java-based image analysis system has been developed (AutoRIF) that quantifies the number, size/volume and relative nuclear locations of RIF within 3D nuclear volumes. Our approach identifies nuclei using the dynamic Otsu threshold and RIF by enhanced Laplacian filtering and maximum entropy thresholding steps and, has an application ‘batch optimisation’ process to ensure reproducible quantification of RIF. AutoRIF was validated by comparing output against manual quantification of the same 2D and 3D image stacks with results showing excellent concordance over a whole range of sample time points (and therefore range of total RIF/nucleus) after low-LET radiation exposure. Conclusions: This high-throughput automated RIF analysis system generates data with greater depth of information and reproducibility than that which can be achieved manually and may contribute toward the standardisation of RIF analysis. In particular, AutoRIF is a powerful tool for studying spatio-temporal relationships of RIF using a range of DNA damage response markers and can be run independently of other software, enabling most personal computers to perform image analysis. Future considerations for AutoRIF will likely include more complex algorithms that enable multiplex analysis for increasing combinations of cellular markers.This article is made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund

Urban demographic decline in the traditional industrial regions of the Urals (1959–2010)

The article was submitted on 17.04.2016.Рассмотрена демографическая катастрофа, постигшая города старопромышленного Урала в 1960–2000-е гг. Целью автора стало выявление масштаба этого явления. Под «депрессивным городом» понимается стадия его развития, характеризующаяся, по сравнению с предшествующим периодом, спадом производства, появлением безработицы, снижением инвестиционной и миграционной привлекательности и сопровождающаяся оттоком населения. Исследование основывается на расчетах демографической динамики и сопоставлении в разрезе отдельных городских поселений Урала результатов всесоюзных, а затем всероссийских переписей населения 1959, 1970, 1979, 1989, 2002 и 2010 г. Проблемы городов Урала находятся в одном ряду с аналогичными кризисными явлениями, которые отмечались в ХХ в. в американских городах района Аппалачей, в городах немецкого Рура, в английских угледобывающих и металлургических районах. Разработанная автором методика выявления депрессивных поселений предполагает использование двух демографических критериев: во-первых, это убыль населения города более чем на 5 % за десятилетие, а, во-вторых, устойчивость отрицательного демографического баланса на протяжении нескольких десятилетий. В соответствии с этой методикой было установлено, что в позднесоветский период (1959–1989) депрессивный характер развития демонстрировали 18 городов Урала. Депрессивные тенденции в 1960–1980-е гг. носили на Урале очаговый характер и поражали прежде всего горнодобывающие ареалы и некоторые центры металлургического производства. В 1990-е и 2000-е гг. структурные экономические реформы и переход к рыночным формам хозяйствования, вызвавшие резкий спад производства, массовую безработицу, падение уровня жизни населения, привели к тому, что в состоянии депрессии оказались 56 депрессивных городов. Только города Республики Башкортостан, связанные с отраслями нефтехимической промышленности, демонстрировали прирост населения, в остальных регионах наблюдалась значительная его убыль. Депрессия городов Урала на рубеже XX–XXI вв. изменила свой характер с очагового на субрегиональный, поражая целые агломерации и территориальные производственные комплексы. Уральские мегаполисы оказались не способны поглотить весь исходящий из малых и средних городов региона миграционный поток, что привело к общему оттоку населения с Урала. Суммарный же итог процесса деградации городов за два постсоветских десятилетия составил в среднем 6,4 % убыли населения по всем городам Уральского макрорегиона.This article considers the demographic disaster that occurred in traditional industrial Ural cities between the 1960s and the 2000s and demonstrates its scale. A ‘depressed city’ is a term denoting a stage in a city’s development: it is characterised by a decline in production, the emergence of unemployment, and a decrease in investment and migration, all of which is followed by a fall in population. This research is based on calculations and comparisons of the demographic dynamics found in the All-Soviet Union and All-Russian censuses of 1959, 1970, 1979, 1980, 2002, and 2010 from the perspective of a number of individual Ural towns. The Urals have faced the same problems as American cities of the Appalachian region, German cities of the Ruhr district, and British coalmining and metallurgical regions in the 20th century. The author proposes a method for revealing depressed settlements. It uses two demographic criteria: first, a decrease of population exceeding five percent per decade and, second, the stability of a negative demographic balance across several decades. In accordance with this method, it is established that during the late Soviet period (1959–89) 18 Ural towns could be characterised as depressed. Between the 1960s and 1980s, such tendencies had a local nature in the Urals, mainly affecting mining areas and some metallurgical centres. However, between the 1990s and 2000s structural economic reforms and a shift to market forms of economic management caused a dramatic decline in production, mass unemployment, and a drop in living standards: 56 Ural cities thus became depressed. Only the cities of Bashkortostan, where petrochemical production has a significant presence, showed population growth, while other regions witnessed a significant loss of population. Once a local problem, depression became a sub-regional phenomenon striking entire agglomerations and territorial production complexes. Major Ural cities were unable to absorb all of the migration from settlements and towns of the region, which caused an outflow of population from the Urals. The two post-Soviet decades can be characterised by large-scale urban decline in the Urals: there was, on average, a 6.4 per cent population decrease in all the cities of the Ural macro-region.Исследование осуществлено при поддержке Российского гуманитарного научного фонда, проект № 15-31-01226 «Сравнительное изучение развития старопромышленных районов угледобычи России и Польши в ХХ веке»

Digital media and young correspondents temptations: risks of conflict

The article refers to three temptations that young journalists face by dealing with information and communication technologies, and the consequences this situation might lead to. These are: the loss of factchecking, reducing the social significance of information, manipulation of reality, switching attention to the author and the audience at particular cases and other risks. All of them turn into negative examples for beginners. The authors believe that it is necessary to introduce the junior reporters do the competence of critical thinking.В статье идет речь о трех соблазнах, которым подвержены начинающие журналисты при постоянном использовании информационно-коммуникативных технологий, и последствия, к которым они могут привести. Это: утрата навыков проверки информации, снижение социальной значимости распространяемых сведений, манипулирование фактами, переключение внимание автора и аудитории на частные случаи и другие риски. Все они имеются в практике современной российской журналистики и могут стать отрицательными примерами для начинающих авторов. Мы считаем, что наряду с цифровой необходимо развивать у молодых корреспондентов и компетентность критического мышления

Russian Media Criticism in Terms of Digital Media: Search for New Methods of Interaction with Audience

The author of the article revealed, firstly, the change of the model of communication with the audience from vertical to horizontal, which provides the possibility of dialogue betweenthe parties through a variety of network communication services. Secondly, modern television critic can no longer be a regular commentator and interpreter of media texts. He or she should be able to manage the information flow by creating articles in various social networks, on the editorial board site or a personal blog. Thirdly, the criticism loses its uniqueness because anyone can broadcast his or her opinion thanks to the development of the Internet and mobile services competition. Professional criticism is competing with the mass one and increasingly loses its presentation of information efficiency that, in the opinion of the author of the article, makes it difficult to work on the formation of critical thinking audience.Автором статьи выявлено, во-первых, изменение модели коммуникации критика с аудиторией с вертикальной на горизонтальную, что предусматривает возможность осуществления диалога между сторонами посредством различных сетевых коммуникативных сервисов. Во-вторых, современный медийный критик уже не может быть обычным обозревателем и интерпретатором медийных текстов, он должен уметь управлять информационным потоком, который сам же и создает. В-третьих, критик теряет уникальность своего рода деятельности, потому что с развитием интернет- и мобильных сервисов конкуренцию ему может составить любой человек, имеющий свое мнение о телевизионной передаче. В настоящее время профессиональная критика конкурирует с массовой и все чаще проигрывает ей в оперативности подачи информации, что, на взгляд автора статьи, затрудняет работу по формированию критического мышления аудитории

State Budget of USSR in 1950s — 80s: Dynamics and Structure of Income

The dynamics and structure of the revenue side of the state budget of the USSR in the period from 1950 to 1989 are considered on the basis of official statistical collections published by the Ministry of Finance of the USSR. It is stated that the dynamics of the revenues of the state budget of the USSR during the entire studied period was positive. There was a constant increase in income, which had an average annual value of about 6,5 % in relation to the previous year, which made it possible to increase the budget by more than one third in almost every five-year period. It is indicated that in just the period under study, the revenue side of the state budget in-creased by 11,6 times. The author comes to the conclusion that the historical dynamics of the distribution of incomes between the budgets of different levels testifies to the growing tendency towards the decentralization of the Soviet economy. It was revealed that this trend looks less unambiguous if we trace the change in the share of revenues of the republican and local budgets in the structure of the USSR state budget. It is shown that the most important deterrent to the decentralization of the Soviet economy was budget regulation, which allowed the state, on the one hand, to withdraw to the budget most of the profits of the socialist economy, and on the other, to keep the budgetary resources of local authorities under control

State budget of USSR in 1950s — 80s: dynamics and structure of expenditures

The structure of the state budget expenditure of the USSR in its historical dynamics during the 1950s — 1980s is considered. The sources were statistical collections published by the Ministry of Finance of the USSR in the period under review, on their basis the electronic database “State Budget of the USSR” was created, according to which all the calculations presented in the article were carried out. It is noted that the dynamics of the state budget expenditures of the USSR during the entire period of the 1950s — 80s was positive. It is indicated that there was a constant increase in expenditures, which had an average annual value of about 6.5 %; in total, during the period under study, the expenditure part of the state budget increased by 11.6 times, and in per capita terms only by 7.3 times. It is shown that the structure of expenditures of the state budget of the USSR in the 1950s — 1980s included expenditures on the national economy, social and cultural events, public administration and defense. The author concludes that the construction of a welfare state in the USSR in the 1950s — 1970s, along with the burden of military spending, became a heavy burden on the budget system, limiting the government’s room for maneuver in the context of the budget crisis that broke out in the second half of the 1980s

Social Infrastructure of Soviet Enterprises in the 1950s-1980s: Sources and Mechanisms of Financing (Example of Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant)

The Sources and Mechanisms of Financing the Social Infrastructure of the Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant in the 1950s-1980s. This study examines the sources and mechanisms of financing the social infrastructure of the Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant, a large Soviet industrial enterprise, during the period of 1950s-1980s. The research is based on archival documents from the plant and its trade union organization, which are stored in the United State Archive of the Chelyabinsk Region. It was found that the plant had a significant amount of assets, including housing and a network of social, cultural, and sports facilities. Financing the social infra-structure of Soviet enterprises was a complex system that involved multiple independent sources. The plant made direct payments from its economic stimulation funds, covered the maintenance costs of various facilities transferred to the trade union organization, and covered losses from the housing and communal services system. In addition, funding for these facilities also came from the state budget, social insurance budget, trade union organization budget, targeted subsidies from the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions, revenues from self-supporting cultural and sports institutions, and others. The Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant was required to allocate up to 10 % of its profits towards maintaining its social infra-structure, while other sources of funding con-tributed comparable amounts