Effect of mechanical activation on the composition if mineral components in humic acids isolated from carbons

It is shown that the mechanical activation of oxidized and brown coals is accompanied by an increase in the yield of humic acids and in their content of functional groups. It was demonstrated by atomic-emission spectroscopy that, under a high-intensity mechanical treatment, mineral elements are redistributed in the coal substance and incorporated into the structure of humic acids

Universal Situation as a Literary-Semantic Phenomenon: On the Example of Works by N.S. Leskov

The starting point of the research was the understanding of the fact that a literary work is created and exists in a particular social and cultural area and that a writer is guided by existential universals, eternal themes, motives, images, typological genre components and poetical means. The individual style of an author is revealed by the presentation of universal situations and his perception of them. In the works by N.S. Leskov the key universal situations are transfiguration of a person and the world by a righteous man, leaving home and a comeback, deception. The realization of a universal situation of transfiguration of the world and a man are impossible without some righteous activity performed by characters. Righteous characters are able to increase their spiritual grace and with the help of it to transfigure space and time, the world and mankind. The situation of leaving and coming back home is connected with Leskov’s idea that a home is a place which is full of peace, coziness. It correlates with the concept of a home in Russian culture and is the basis of the author’s world vision peculiarities. Referring to such situation the writer illustrates the degradation of a person who has lost his home as well as his renunciation of roots and loss of moral landmarks. The universal situation of deception in Leskov’s Christmas tales has an effect of a distorting mirror, a change in value landmarks (from material and spiritual), moral lesson that highlights the axiological perception of the writer. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n3s7p9

The origins and spread of domestic horses from the Western Eurasian steppes

This is the final version. Available on open access from Nature Research via the DOI in this recordData availability: All collapsed and paired-end sequence data for samples sequenced in this study are available in compressed fastq format through the European Nucleotide Archive under accession number PRJEB44430, together with rescaled and trimmed bam sequence alignments against both the nuclear and mitochondrial horse reference genomes. Previously published ancient data used in this study are available under accession numbers PRJEB7537, PRJEB10098, PRJEB10854, PRJEB22390 and PRJEB31613, and detailed in Supplementary Table 1. The genomes of ten modern horses, publicly available, were also accessed as indicated in their corresponding original publications57,61,85-87.NOTE: see the published version available via the DOI in this record for the full list of authorsDomestication of horses fundamentally transformed long-range mobility and warfare. However, modern domesticated breeds do not descend from the earliest domestic horse lineage associated with archaeological evidence of bridling, milking and corralling at Botai, Central Asia around 3500 BC. Other longstanding candidate regions for horse domestication, such as Iberia and Anatolia, have also recently been challenged. Thus, the genetic, geographic and temporal origins of modern domestic horses have remained unknown. Here we pinpoint the Western Eurasian steppes, especially the lower Volga-Don region, as the homeland of modern domestic horses. Furthermore, we map the population changes accompanying domestication from 273 ancient horse genomes. This reveals that modern domestic horses ultimately replaced almost all other local populations as they expanded rapidly across Eurasia from about 2000 BC, synchronously with equestrian material culture, including Sintashta spoke-wheeled chariots. We find that equestrianism involved strong selection for critical locomotor and behavioural adaptations at the GSDMC and ZFPM1 genes. Our results reject the commonly held association between horseback riding and the massive expansion of Yamnaya steppe pastoralists into Europe around 3000 BC driving the spread of Indo-European languages. This contrasts with the scenario in Asia where Indo-Iranian languages, chariots and horses spread together, following the early second millennium BC Sintashta culture

Effect of mechanical activation on the composition if mineral components in humic acids isolated from carbons

It is shown that the mechanical activation of oxidized and brown coals is accompanied by an increase in the yield of humic acids and in their content of functional groups. It was demonstrated by atomic-emission spectroscopy that, under a high-intensity mechanical treatment, mineral elements are redistributed in the coal substance and incorporated into the structure of humic acids

Present-day and mid-Holocene biomes reconstructed from pollen and plant macrofossil data from the former Soviet Union and Mongolia

Fossil pollen data supplemented by tree macrofossil records were used to reconstruct the vegetation of the Former Soviet Union and Mongolia at 6000 years. Pollen spectra were assigned to biomes using the plant-functional-type method developed by Prentice et al. (1996). Surface pollen data and a modern vegetation map provided a test of the method. This is the first time such a broad-scale vegetation reconstruction for the greater part of northern Eurasia has been attempted with objective techniques. The new results confirm previous regional palaeoenvironmental studies of the mid-Holocene while providing a comprehensive synopsis and firmer conclusions. West of the Ural Mountains temperate deciduous forest extended both northward and southward from its modern range. The northern limits of cool mixed and cool conifer forests were also further north than present. Taiga was reduced in European Russia, but was extended into Yakutia where now there is cold deciduous forest. The northern limit of taiga was extended (as shown by increased Picea pollen percentages, and by tree macrofossil records north of the present-day forest limit) but tundra was still present in north-eastern Siberia. The boundary between forest and steppe in the continental interior did not shift substantially, and dry conditions similar to present existed in western Mongolia and north of the Aral Sea