Organization of project activities in the system of advanced training of teachers

Project activity occupies an important place in the system of professional development. Focused on a rapidly changing environment, it provides the widest opportunities for innovative development of the field of additional education. The implementation of project activities allows you to form important for students of courses, leading decisions in the context of global educational competition and high uncertainty of the educational environment. The purpose of the article is to study the experience of organizing project activities in the system of professional development of teachers. Project activity is a joint educational creative activity of course participants that has a common goal and agreed methods to achieve it. The article reveals the experience of project activities of students in the framework of the course "Management in education". In the process of implementing project activities, the project competence of students is formed. Project activity occupies an important place in the system of professional development. Its implementation allows you to radically change the entire learning process, make it active, creative and independent.

Taphonomic phenomenon of ancient hair from Glacial Beringia:perspectives for palaeoecological reconstructions

An accumulation of mammoth hair, discovered in the Bol'shaya Chukochya River valley (northeast Yakutia, Russia), was found to contain remains of terrestrial and aquatic organisms, including plants, insects, crustaceans, birds and mammals. Radiocarbon dating indicated that this post-mortem taphocoenosis represented multiple time periods. The mammoth hair was dated to older than 45 ka BP, the plants were dated to 12 750 +/- 50 a BP (which corresponds to a shift in the environmental conditions and landscapes during the formation of thermokarst in northeastern Russia) and the bird feathers were dated to 4115 +/- 40 a BP. A scenario of the formation of this fossil assemblage is proposed, covering the MIS 3-1 time range. The hair also yielded various Arctic branchiopod crustaceans, which inhabit shallow temporary water bodies and therefore are important for reconstruction of palaeoenvironments. The cladoceran subgenus Daphnia (Ctenodaphnia), currently absent from the Asian part of Beringia, is reported from this region for the first time. The study demonstrates that the discovered permafrostpreserved hair is a unique repository of Ice Age organisms.</p

An ancient bison from the mouth of the Rauchua River (Chukotka, Russia)

An incomplete carcass of an extinct bison, Bison ex gr. priscus, was discovered in 2012 in the mouth of the Rauchua River (69°30'N, 166°49'E), Chukotka. The carcass included the rump with two hind limbs, ribs, and large flap of hide from the abdomen and sides, several vertebrae, bones of the forelimbs and anterior autopodia, stomach with its contents, and wool. The limb bones are relatively gracile, which is unusual in bison, and a SEM study of the hair microstructure suggests higher insulating capacity than in extant members of the genus. Additionally, mitochondrial DNA analyses indicate that the Rauchua bison belonged to a distinct and previously unidentified lineage of steppe bison. Two radiocarbon dates suggest a Holocene age for the bison: a traditional 14C date provided an estimate of 8030±70 14C yr BP (SPb-743) and an AMS radiocarbon date provided an age of 9497±92 14C yr BP (AA101271). These dates make this the youngest known bison from Chukotka. Analysis of stomach contents revealed a diet of herbaceous plants (meadow grasses and sedges) and shrubs, suggesting that the early Holocene vegetation near the mouth of the Rauchua River was similar to that of the present day: tundra-associated vegetation with undersized plants

Grey wolf genomic history reveals a dual ancestry of dogs

The grey wolf (Canis lupus) was the first species to give rise to a domestic population, and they remained widespread throughout the last Ice Age when many other large mammal species went extinct. Little is known, however, about the history and possible extinction of past wolf populations or when and where the wolf progenitors of the present-day dog lineage (Canisfamiliaris) lived(1-8). Here we analysed 72 ancient wolf genomes spanning the last 100,000 years from Europe, Siberia and North America. We found that wolf populations were highly connected throughout the Late Pleistocene, with levels of differentiation an order of magnitude lower than they are today. This population connectivity allowed us to detect natural selection across the time series, including rapid fixation of mutations in the gene IFT8840,000-30,000 years ago. We show that dogs are overall more closely related to ancient wolves from eastern Eurasia than to those from western Eurasia, suggesting a domestication process in the east. However, we also found that dogs in the Near East and Africa derive up to half of their ancestry from a distinct population related to modern southwest Eurasian wolves, reflecting either an independent domestication process or admixture from local wolves. None of the analysed ancient wolf genomes is a direct match for either of these dog ancestries, meaning that the exact progenitor populations remain to be located.Peer reviewe

Kastykhtakh mammoth from Taimyr (Russia

a b s t r a c t Taimyr Peninsula is a unique region of Northern Russia, with spectacular outstanding finds of complete mammoth skeletons and carcasses. In 2008, a skeleton of a small female mammoth was found in the Upper Karga deposits of Kastykhtakh River valley. The animal lived during the Middle Valdai megainterstage (Weichselian, Denekamp Interstadial) about 32070e30565 BP. The skeleton contains 104 bones. The individual shows several peculiar features, including skeletal malformations, such as the fissure in the atlas&apos; neural arch, several fractures of ribs having been broken independently, sigmoid contact between lower molars m2 and m3, and a notable displacement of m2 relative to the axis of the mandible

Information Support of Russian Universities in Core Research Areas

Introduction: integration of scientific literature into education process, information support of teaching and research with scholarly information directly impacts the level of education and science and thus determine national and international university ranking and reputation. National system of information support for science and education has been established and successfully developed in Russia since 2006. The system provides access to subscribed scholarly resources. At the current stage of development of the national-wide information support, the key role belongs to the state-funded projects. The authors outline the problem of quantitative assessment of the level of information support in fields of scienc e in respect to different classificators. Materials and Methods: the study draws on bibliometric methods, keyword searches and analytical services and functionality of Web of Science Core Collection database. Materials and instruments include lists of resources subscribed within the projects of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation and Russian Foundation for Basic Research; sets of articles downloaded as a result of keyword searches; journal title lists of the WoS CC and Scopus and mappings of the WoS Categories and fields of science in classifications of OECD and the Ministry of Education and Scien ce of the Russian Federation. Results: we defined and calculated quantitative values of the parameter of information support for five priority areas of development of the Russian scientific and technological complex and six fields of science of the first level of the OECD classification and six branches of science used in the assessment of higher education institutions performed by the Ministry of Education a nd Science of the Russian Federation. Discussion and Conclusions: we compared results of the information support analysis for three subscription years 2015, 2016 and 2017. We found that the level of information support in the given priority areas and branches of science exceeded the pre-crisis level. Relatively low level of information support in two branches of science, namely Agricultural sciences and Humanities, is revealed. The list of additional resources in two above-mentioned branches of science is proposed. The methodology developed in this work enables mapping of online scholarly resources and research areas within different classificators. The latter provides tools for qualitative analysis and development of the map of information support in any particular university

Morphology and biomechanics of human heart

Object of study: A study of the biomechanical characteristics of the human heart ventricles was performed. 80 hearts were extracted during autopsy of 80 corpses of adults (40 women and 40 men) aged 31-70 years. The samples were investigated in compliance with the recommendations of the ethics committee. Methods: Tension and compression tests were performed with help of the uniaxial testing machine Instron 5944. Cardiometry was also performed. Results: In this work, techniques for human heart ventricle wall biomechanical properties estimation were developed. Regularities of age and gender variability in deformative and strength properties of the right and left ventricle walls were found. These properties were characterized by a smooth growth of myocardial tissue stiffness and resistivity at a relatively low strain against reduction in their strength and elasticity from 31-40 to 61-70 years. It was found that tissue of the left ventricle at 61-70 years had a lower stretchability and strength compared with tissues of the right ventricle and septum. These data expands understanding of the morphological organization of the heart ventricles, which is very important for the development of personalized medicine. Taking into account individual, age and gender differences of the heart ventricle tissue biomechanical characteristics allows to rationally choosing the type of patching materials during reconstructive operations on heart