Education in the Era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Development Vector, Prospects and Challenges for Russia

Modern civilisation has entered the era of the fourth industrial revolution, characterised by digital, Internet and cyber-expansion, virtualisation, mobile technologies, robotisation, global changes in energy, nano- and biotechnologies. It entails significant changes in all spheres of human activity. There is a mass need for entirely new professions. Scientific and technological progress gives the society not only broad prospects but also brings new challenges and threats. There is a tight (not always fair) competition between the leading countries of the world and transnational corporations for domination in entering the sixth technological order, to lead in digital technologies and artificial intelligence. At this stage, educational systems should provide revolutionary changes based on the latest scientific achievements. One more dangerous threat is that the achievements of modern science and high technologies are not always used for the benefit of humanity, that is, large-scale cyber-attacks, hybrid wars, public consciousness manipulation. Form this point, the formation of a single global educational space, taking into account the humanistic needs of the society, seems really important. The fourth industrial revolution leads to personality changes and not always in a positive direction. This is especially true of the generation “Y” or “network generation”, consuming “intellectual fast food” and easily falling under the influence of others and becoming a victim of manipulation. It also includes the problem of virtual reality, which influences the person so profoundly that he/she falls out of the real world. Obviously, education must also undergo a systemic transformation, based on the characteristics of the modern information society and the globalising world that has entered the postmodern and mass media era. The issues mentioned above are deeply and critically analysed and discussed in this study both from the global and BRICS (precisely Russia) countries perspective. The authors eventually suggest some ways to solve them

The solution of multi-scale partial differential equations using wavelets

Wavelets are a powerful new mathematical tool which offers the possibility to treat in a natural way quantities characterized by several length scales. In this article we will show how wavelets can be used to solve partial differential equations which exhibit widely varying length scales and which are therefore hardly accessible by other numerical methods. As a benchmark calculation we solve Poisson's equation for a 3-dimensional Uranium dimer. The length scales of the charge distribution vary by 4 orders of magnitude in this case. Using lifted interpolating wavelets the number of iterations is independent of the maximal resolution and the computational effort therefore scales strictly linearly with respect to the size of the system

Simulation of the transmission spectrum of long-period fiber gratings structures with a propagating acoustic shock front

In this paper, we investigate modification of transmission spectra of long‐period fiber grating structures with an acoustic shock front propagating along the fiber. We simulate transmission through inhomogeneous long‐period fiber gratings, π‐shift and reflective π‐shift gratings deformed by an acoustic shock front. Coupled mode equations describing interaction of co‐propagating modes in a long‐period fiber grating structures with inhomogeneous deformation are used for the simulation. Two types of apodization are considered for the grating modulation amplitude, such as uniform and raised‐cosine. We demonstrate how the transmission spectrum is produced by interference between the core and cladding modes coupled at several parts of the gratings having different periods. For the π‐shift long‐period fiber grating having split spectral notch, the gap between the two dips becomes several times wider in the grating with the acoustic wave front than the gap in the unstrained grating. The behavior of reflective long‐period fiber gratings depends on the magnitude of the phase shift near the reflective surface: an additional dip is formed in the 0‐shift grating and the short‐wavelength dip disappears in the π‐shift grating