Linguistic Characterization of Text on Environmental Topics

The article discusses the structural and semantic features of a regional newspaper text on environmental topics. The material contains 30 texts from the socio-political newspaper “Rech” of the city of Cherepovets, Vologda Oblast, published during 2017 - the Year of Ecology in Russia. It is shown that the newspaper text on environmental topics has the structure of an inverted pyramid, when important information is presented at the beginning of the article, and detailing is presented in the second part; the photographs accompanying the texts have a different visual-grammatical structure and can be interpreted as one-part and two-part sentences. In the semantic aspect, it is revealed that a larger number of contextual synonymous pairs than sets are formed; gradual antonyms are used; lexical units are included that fix the anthropocentric model of the interaction of man and nature. It is identified that there is a two-way interaction between the environmental event and the text: the event is the basis for creating the text, and vice versa, a newspaper text covering an environmental problem may precede one event or another. It is indicated that the newspaper text on environmental topics is characterized by a homogeneous presentation of the material, anthropocentricity and polyphonicity; softening the presentation of problematic information is achieved through the use of literary synonyms, gradual antonyms and relevant illustrations

Contemporary foreign language teachers training

The article deals with contemporary foreign language teacher’s training. Based on experience it is analyzed foreign language teacher’s training system in Russia and noted specific tendencies in teacher’s training and his/her personal qualities. The authors consider innovative approaches directed to contemporary teacher of the 21-st century who is a central facilitator of a foreign language educational process. Due to the research there were established the most effective learning techniques for development of teacher’s methodological thinking and his/her personal qualities formation (communication skills, empathy, creativity, reflexivity etc.

A Two-Dimensional MagnetoHydrodynamics Scheme for General Unstructured Grids

We report a new finite-difference scheme for two-dimensional magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) simulations, with and without rotation, in unstructured grids with quadrilateral cells. The new scheme is implemented within the code VULCAN/2D, which already includes radiation-hydrodynamics in various approximations and can be used with arbitrarily moving meshes (ALE). The MHD scheme, which consists of cell-centered magnetic field variables, preserves the nodal finite difference representation of div(\bB) by construction, and therefore any initially divergence-free field remains divergence-free through the simulation. In this paper, we describe the new scheme in detail and present comparisons of VULCAN/2D results with those of the code ZEUS/2D for several one-dimensional and two-dimensional test problems. The code now enables two-dimensional simulations of the collapse and explosion of the rotating, magnetic cores of massive stars. Moreover, it can be used to simulate the very wide variety of astrophysical problems for which multi-D radiation-magnetohydrodynamics (RMHD) is relevant.Comment: 22 pages, including 11 figures; Accepted to the Astrophysical Journal. Higher resolution figures available at http://zenith.as.arizona.edu/~burrows/mhd-code

Biodegradation Potential of SteccherinumOchraceum: Growth on Different Wood Types and Preliminary Evaluation of Enzymatic Activities

White-rot fungi isa source of a great variety of oxidative and hydrolytic enzymes suitable for biotechnological applications, e.g. in pulp and paper, textile and food industries, bioethanol production, degradation of recalcitrant environmental pollutants,and others. Steccherinumochraceum is a xylotrophicwhite-rot basidiomycetethat can be found in variousclimatic zones on different woody substrates (mostly well decayed). For this research, seventeenstrains of S. ochraceumwere collected in different regions of Russia from various wood substrates (aspen, alder, oak, hazel, birch and willow). Phylogeneticanalyseswere performedbasedon the nucleotide sequences of ITS1, ITS2, 5.8S rRNA, 28S rRNA, β-tubulin and tef1.Oxidaseandcellulaseactivitieswereassessedbyplate-tests with ABTS and CMC. Forevaluation of biodegradation potential,solid state fermentation on alder and pine sawdust wasperformed. Weightanddensitylossaswellas the C:Nratioweremeasuredafter 90 days of cultivation.All S. ochraceum strains exhibited high oxidative activity towards ABTS, indicating secretion of oxidative enzymes (i.e. laccases and class II peroxidases). Cellulase activity was medium or low for most strains and in some strains – absent. Allstrainswereabletodegradealderandpinesawdust. There was no correlation between the enzymatic activity, biodegradation potential and geographic origin of S. ochraceum strains. However, S. ochraceum strains isolated from the same wood substrates exhibited similar characteristics in most cases. Strain LE-BIN 3398 was the most effective for degrading both alder and pine sawdust and could be regarded as a promising source of oxidative enzymes for biotechnology. Keywords: basidiomycetes, biodegradation, solid state fermentation, oxidase activity, Steccherinumochraceu

Structure of Contextual Synonymic Rows in Russian and English Newspapers: Ecolinguistic and Contrastive Aspects

The article deals with the aspects of contextual synonyms functioning in Russian and English newspaper texts united by the theme of refugee migration in Europe. The relevance of the work is determined by its interdisciplinarity and combination of contrastive and ecolinguistic approaches. Contrastive approach consists in identification of common and distinctive features of the synonymic rows in English and Russian newspapers. Ecolinguistic approach involves determining the intensity of use of substandard tokens in the contextual synonymic rows. The research material are 18 contextual synonymic rows, formed by 4 newspapers - “Kommersant,” “Komsomolskaya Pravda,” “The Guardian Weekly,” “The Daily Mail.” The paper discusses the concept of contextual synonym and contextual synonymic row. There are 3 models of synonymic row including: (1) only literary units; (2) literary and colloquial lexemes; (3) literary, colloquial and substandard units. It was revealed that news texts in Russian and English high-quality publications characterized by the presence of expert assessments and targeted at the educated reader, differ by homogeneous material flow and primarily using standard tokens. Tabloid edition aimed at a wide readership often use colloquial synonyms. It is determined that Russian-language rows have a higher coefficient of colloquialisms (17.2 %) than the English (4.8 %)

Cosmic Rays from PeV to ZeV, Stellar Evolution, Supernova Physics and Gamma Ray Bursts

The recent success of a proposal from some time ago to explain the spectrum of cosmic rays allows some strong conclusions to be made on the physics of supernovae: In the context of this specific proposal to explain the origin of cosmic rays, the mechanism for exploding supernovae of high mass has to be the one proposed by Bisnovatyi-Kogan more than 30 years ago, which was then based on a broader suggestion by Kardashev: A combination of the effects of rotation and magnetic fields explodes the star. Interestingly, this step then leads inevitably to some further suggestions, useful perhaps for the study of gamma ray bursts and the search of a bright standard candle in cosmology

The comparative evaluation of the operational performance of the economies of constituent entities of the Russian Federation

The article consideres the existing practice of the comparative assessment of effectiveness of the economies of constituent entities of the Russian Federation, reveals its shortcomings, and the factors causing them, factors causing them, including the shortcomings of the system and indicators of state statistical reporting and methods for their determination, as well as the consequences of these shortcomings in the system of internal economic and social-labor relations. The authors ’proposals are based on the following: adopting, as a generalized indicator of the economic efficiency of the functioning of the economies of administrative-territorial entities of the country, the indicator of gross domestic income generated in their territories, regardless of which of them are registered; changes in the basic provisions for determining in statistical accounting the volumes of the gross domestic product and gross income, excluding from their volumes the cost of services, that do not represent in their content the newly created value