Enemies or allies? The Crimean war and britishrussian technical cooperation in the Urals

The article was submitted on 10.06.2015.This article studies one aspect of British-Russian cooperation between the 1840s and 1850s, involving the exchange of technical staff. The research is based on clerical records and act sources, deposited in archival materials of central and local governmental bodies of the Russian mining industry. The specific features of cooperation are illustrated by examples of service of Englishmen at Ural factories. The author analyses circumstances of recruitment and conditions of work of high-qualified engineers as well as of ordinary masters. During the period in question, Englishmen were the most requested specialists because they were thought to possess advanced technological experience and knowledge. Such a perception extended to all, not just to the representatives of professions requiring the highest education and qualification. In the second half of the 1840s - early 1850s, a team of shipbuilders led by the engineer, James Carr, worked in the Ural plants. During this period the Russian government actively invited mechanics, hammer workers, molders and masters of puddling. Englishmen often were appointed to higher positions to deal with the technical part of Ural state factories. The exchange of experience was carried out during the common work of British and Russian engineers and masters as well as in the process of training. The paper displays the ambiguity of such interaction and difficulties, which arose due to faults of either one or the other side. The sources, documenting recruitment and dismissal of foreigners, describe cases when the hiring of invited specialists did not bring the expected results. The author reveals the reasons and consequences of failed attempts of using British technological experience at Russian plants. Among them include technical unpreparedness of the Ural industry, the inconsistency between the qualification of foreigners and the tasks for which they were invited and finally insufficient awareness of the Russian side concerning the recruited technicians’ professional skills. Biographies of English specialists (engineers, mechanics, etc.) are considered in the context of international conjuncture, which at the time was characterized by an increase in tension in English-Russian relations and the upcoming war. The paper demonstrates that the attitude of some British men towards their service in the Urals changed for the worse because the Crimean war had begun. Others continued their contract work in the Urals in spite of the military confrontation between Russia and England. The activity of British technical specialists in the Urals was a reflection of peculiarities in English-Russian relations, in which cooperation in economic and technological spheres could coexist with a drastic deterioration of political relations.Статья посвящена исследованию одной из сторон британско-российского сотрудничества в 1840-50-е гг., заключавшейся в обмене техническими кадрами. Исследование проведено на основе делопроизводственных и актовых источников, отложившихся в фондах центральных и местных органов управления российской горной промышленностью. Особое место среди них занимают контракты с британскими специалистами, а также служебная переписка. Характерные черты технического сотрудничества проиллюстрированы яркими примерами службы англичан на заводах Урала. Проанализированы обстоятельства вербовки и условия работы по контрактам как высококвалифицированных инженеров, так и рядовых мастеров. В изучаемый период англичане оказались наиболее востребованными специалистами, поскольку считались носителями передового технологического опыта и знаний. Такое восприятие распространялось на всех, а не только на представителей профессий, требующих наибольшей образованности и квалификации. Выявлен персональный состав британских специалистов. Во второй половине 1840-х - начале 1850-х гг. на уральских заводах работала команда корабельных мастеров во главе с инженером Джеймсом Карром, которая обеспечила развитие судостроения. Активно приглашались в этот период механики, молотовые мастера, специалисты по пудлингованию, формовщики. На высшие должности по технической части уральских казенных заводов нередко назначались выходцы из Англии. Обмен опытом осуществлялся во время совместной работы британских и русских инженеров и мастеров, а также в ходе обучения. В статье показана неоднозначность этого взаимодействия, сложности, возникавшие по вине и той и другой стороны. Источники, документирующие процессы найма и увольнения специалистов не давало ожидаемых результатов. Выявлены причины и последствия неудавшихся попыток использования британского технологического опыта на российских заводах, среди которых техническая неподготовленность уральской промышленности, несоответствие квалификации приглашенных иностранцев тем задачам, которые перед ними ставились, недостаточная осведомленность российской стороны о профессиональном уровне контрактуемых. Судьбы британских специалистов (инженеров, механиков и пр.) рассматриваются в контексте международной конъюнктуры, характеризовавшейся в исследуемый период нарастанием напряженности в англо-русских отношениях с последующими военными действиями. Показано, что отношение одних британцев к службе на Урале менялось в негативную сторону в связи начавшейся Крымской войной, другие же, несмотря на военную конфронтацию России и Англии, продолжали работать на уральских заводах, не прерывая контрактов. Деятельность британских технических специалистов на Урале является ярким отражением специфики англо-русских отношений, в которых сотрудничество в сфере экономики и технологий могло проходить наряду с жестким обострением внешнеполитических отношений.Статья подготовлена в рамках реализации гранта Правительства РФ по привлечению ведущих ученых в российские образовательные учреждения высшего профессионального образования и научные учреждения государственных академий наук и государственные научные центры Российской Федерации (Лаборатория эдиционной археографии, Уральский федеральный университет). Договор № 14.А12.31.0004 от 26.06.2013 г

State Policy in the Recruitment of Foreign Specialists IN Ural Factories (the 1st Half of the 19th Century)

The article was submitted on 16.08.2014.The article considers the policy of foreign technical specialists to Russia the referring to documents reflecting the activities of state metallurgical factories in the Urals in the 1st half of the 19th century. An important element of the administrative system in the industry was the management of foreign specialists’ activities. Not only did it include the regulation of their work as participants of the production process, but also a number of additional forms and methods of influence. The author draws upon studies of employment and higher payment conditions, means of recruitment, forms of social welfare and measures for maintenance of the high social status of foreigners and concludes that the provision of profitable conditions of service, welfare and comfort in everyday life was the key method of attracting foreigners. Apart from invitations and recruitment, mechanisms for keeping specialists at the factories proved significant in foreigner-related policy.В статье рассматривается политика по привлечению иностранных технических специалистов в Россию на основе документов, отложившихся в результате деятельности казенных металлургических заводов Урала первой половины XIX в. В системе специального управления промышленным производством особое место занимало управление иностранными специалистами. Оно включало в себя не только регулирование деятельности иностранцев как участников производственного процесса, но и ряд дополнительных форм и инструментов воздействия. На основе исследования условий найма, способов вербовки, критериев выплат повышенного жалованья, разнообразных видов социального обеспечения, мер по поддержанию подчеркнуто высокого социального статуса иностранцев автором сделан вывод о том, что создание выгодных условий службы и обеспечение достатка и комфорта в повседневной жизни являлись ключевыми методами привлечения иностранных специалистов. Кроме того, важными стратегическими элементами политики в отношении иностранцев выступали не только меры по приглашению и приему их на службу, но и механизмы дальнейшего удержания на заводах.Исследование выполнено при поддержке гранта РНФ «Акторы российской имперской модернизации (XVIII — начало XX в.): региональное измерение» (№ 14-18-01625)

Modeling of the Labour Force Redistribution in Investment Projects with Account of their Delay

The mathematical model of the labour force redistribution in investment projects is presented in the article. The redistribution mode of funds, labour force in particular, according to the equal risk approach applied to the loss of some assets due to delay in all the investment projects is provided in the model. The sample of the developed model for three investment projects with the specified labour force volumes and their defined unit costs at the particular moment is given

Fast rate of evolution in alternatively spliced coding regions of mammalian genes

BACKGROUND: At least half of mammalian genes are alternatively spliced. Alternative isoforms are often genome-specific and it has been suggested that alternative splicing is one of the major mechanisms for generating protein diversity in the course of evolution. Another way of looking at alternative splicing is to consider sequence evolution of constitutive and alternative regions of protein-coding genes. Indeed, it turns out that constitutive and alternative regions evolve in different ways. RESULTS: A set of 3029 orthologous pairs of human and mouse alternatively spliced genes was considered. The rate of nonsynonymous substitutions (d(N)), the rate of synonymous substitutions (d(S)), and their ratio (ω = d(N)/d(S)) appear to be significantly higher in alternatively spliced coding regions compared to constitutive regions. When N-terminal, internal and C-terminal alternatives are analysed separately, C-terminal alternatives appear to make the main contribution to the observed difference. The effects become even more pronounced in a subset of fast evolving genes. CONCLUSION: These results provide evidence of weaker purifying selection and/or stronger positive selection in alternative regions and thus one more confirmation of accelerated evolution in alternative regions. This study corroborates the theory that alternative splicing serves as a testing ground for molecular evolution

The role of an English course in transferable skill acquisition

Transferable skills (TS) have become an important part of the Higher Education agenda, and the English language department contributes to their development as well. However, there is little information on students’ perceptions of TS development in subject disciplines, not to mention the role of a language course in the TS framework. 53 self-completion questionnaires of the 3rd year bachelor degree engineering students were analyzed in order to understand the patterns of TS acquisition. The majority of respondents feel that they have developed TS mainly through solving problems in their subject disciplines. The main mission of the Department of Modern Languages and Communication is perceived primarily as building confidence in public speaking as well as in discussions within a group. There is little evidence of generalization from writing IELTS exam type assignments in the English class and writing in the discipline, and this fact needs closer attention

Overview of the CLEF 2023 SimpleText Lab:Automatic Simplification of Scientific Texts

There is universal consensus on the importance of objective scientific information, yet the general public tends to avoid scientific literature due to access restrictions, its complex language or their lack of prior background knowledge. Academic text simplification promises to remove some of these barriers, by improving the accessibility of scientific text and promoting science literacy. This paper presents an overview of the CLEF 2023 SimpleText track addressing the challenges of text simplification approaches in the context of promoting scientific information access, by providing appropriate data and benchmarks, and creating a community of IR and NLP researchers working together to resolve one of the greatest challenges of today. The track provides a corpus of scientific literature abstracts and popular science requests. It features three tasks. First, content selection (what is in, or out?) challenges systems to select passages to include in a simplified summary in response to a query. Second, complexity spotting (what is unclear?) given a passage and a query, aims to rank terms/concepts that are required to be explained for understanding this passage (definitions, context, applications). Third, text simplification (rewrite this!) given a query, asks to simplify passages from scientific abstracts while preserving the main content.</p

Industrial Identity of the Urals in the Representation of a Foreigner According to the Materials of the Works of Frederic Le Play

The article analyzes the ideas of the French sociologist and mining engineer Frederic Le Play about the Urals. The sources are the works of the scientist on sociology (which consider working conditions, living standards, “moral habits” of the Ural workers), personal correspondence, as well as office work materials (deposited in the funds of the mining administration). It is shown that the scientist considered many features of social organization and culture within the Ural mining complex to be similar to the situation in Western European industrial centers. At the same time, the Urals possessed their own specifics, and in general, it seemed to be a region by no means provincial, despite its geographical distance from the capitals, but quite fitting into the general European sociocultural context.В статье анализируются представления об Урале французского социолога и горного инженера Фредерика Ле Пле. Источниками выступают труды ученого по социологии (где рассматриваются условия работы, уровень жизни, «моральные привыч- ки» уральских рабочих), личная корреспонденция, а также делопроизводственные материалы (отложившиеся в фондах горной администрации). Показано, что ученый считал многие черты социальной организации и культуры в рамках уральского горно-заводского комплекса схожими с положением в западноевропейских промышленных центрах. В то же время Урал обладал собственной спецификой и в целом представлялся регионом отнюдь не провинциальным, несмотря на географическую отдаленность от столиц, а вполне вписывающимся в общеевропейский социокультурный контекст.Статья подготовлена при финансовой поддержке Российского научного фонда в рамках проекта № 19-78-10095 «Индустриальная идентичность территорий России: уральские региональные сообщества и дискурс об Урале в культуре XVIII–XX вв.»

Effects of methamphetamine administration on information gathering during probabilistic reasoning in healthy humans.

Jumping to conclusions (JTC) during probabilistic reasoning is a cognitive bias repeatedly demonstrated in people with schizophrenia and shown to be associated with delusions. Little is known about the neurochemical basis of probabilistic reasoning. We tested the hypothesis that catecholamines influence data gathering and probabilistic reasoning by administering intravenous methamphetamine, which is known to cause synaptic release of the catecholamines noradrenaline and dopamine, to healthy humans whilst they undertook a probabilistic inference task. Our study used a randomised, double-blind, cross-over design. Seventeen healthy volunteers on three visits were administered either placebo or methamphetamine or methamphetamine preceded by amisulpride. In all three conditions participants performed the "beads" task in which participants decide how much information to gather before making a probabilistic inference, and which measures the cognitive bias towards jumping to conclusions. Psychotic symptoms triggered by methamphetamine were assessed using Comprehensive Assessment of At-Risk Mental States (CAARMS). Methamphetamine induced mild psychotic symptoms, but there was no effect of drug administration on the number of draws to decision (DTD) on the beads task. DTD was a stable trait that was highly correlated within subjects across visits (intra-class correlation coefficients of 0.86 and 0.91 on two versions of the task). The less information was sampled in the placebo condition, the more psychotic-like symptoms the person had after the methamphetamine plus amisulpride condition (p = 0.028). Our results suggest that information gathering during probabilistic reasoning is a stable trait, not easily modified by dopaminergic or noradrenergic modulation.This was supported by a Clinical Scientist Award to Dr. Murray from the Medical Research Council (G0701911); by the University of Cambridge Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute, funded by a joint award from the Medical Research Council and Wellcome Trust (G1000183 and 093875/Z/10Z); by awards from the Wellcome Trust and the Bernard Wolfe Health Neuroscience Fund to Dr. Fletcher; and by the Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Facility (WTCRF) at Addenbrooke's Hospital. This work was partly conducted at the Clinical Neuroscience Research Unit, Connecticut Mental Health Center. The authors recognize the support of the Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services. This publication was also made possible by Clinical and Translational Science Awards grant UL1 RR024139 from the National Center for Research Resources and the National Center for Advancing Translational Science, components of National Institutes of Health, and the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official view of NIH.This is the final published version, also available from PLOS at http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0102683

Internal gravity waves in the energy and flux budget turbulence-closure theory for shear-free stably stratified flows

We have advanced the energy and flux budget turbulence closure theory that takes into account a two-way coupling between internal gravity waves (IGWs) and the shear-free stably stratified turbulence. This theory is based on the budget equation for the total (kinetic plus potential) energy of IGWs, the budget equations for the kinetic and potential energies of fluid turbulence, and turbulent fluxes of potential temperature for waves and fluid flow. The waves emitted at a certain level propagate upward, and the losses of wave energy cause the production of turbulence energy. We demonstrate that due to the nonlinear effects more intensive waves produce more strong turbulence, and this, in turn, results in strong damping of IGWs. As a result, the penetration length of more intensive waves is shorter than that of less intensive IGWs. The anisotropy of the turbulence produced by less intensive IGWs is stronger than that caused by more intensive waves. The low-amplitude IGWs produce turbulence consisting up to 90% of turbulent potential energy. This resembles the properties of the observed high-altitude tropospheric strongly anisotropic (nearly two-dimensional) turbulence.Peer reviewe

ОЦІНКА ЯКОСТІ ЖИТТЯ ПАЛІАТИВНИХ ПАЦІЄНТІВ ОДЕСЬКОГО ОБЛАСНОГО ЦЕНТРУ СОЦІАЛЬНО ЗНАЧУЩИХ ХВОРОБ ЗА СИСТЕМОЮ EuroQol-5D-5L

The quality of life of patients with tuberculosis in combination with HIV/AIDS was studied on the basis of the palliative department of the municipal non-profit enterprise «Odessa Regional Center of Socially Significant Diseases» under the system EuroQol-5D-5L.Вивчено якість життя пацієнтів із туберкульозом у поєднанні з ВІЛ/СНІДом на базі паліативного відділення Комунального некомерційного підприємства «Одеський обласний центр соціально значущих хвороб» за системою EuroQol-5D-5L.&nbsp