Browse

Records of the magnetic variations are different at every observatory. They depend mainly on the latitude of the observatory and the local time. To give a quantitative measure of the amount of magnetic disturbance at any time, we need to rely on magnetic indices. Usually, local K-index is preferred as indicator of the geomagnetic activity in a specific area. Each observatory assigns a digit ranging from 0 to 9 to both H and D, for every three-hour interval starting at midnight, universal time (UT). Recently, in De...

The study of the dynamic behavior of the Earth’s magnetic field and its interaction with the Solar wind is an important for better understanding of the processes in the magnetosphere and on the surface of the Earth’s ground. This dynamic system is created due to solar-terrestrial interactions. The effects on the variations of the magnetic field induced by geomagnetic storms are strongly dependent on the local time and the latitude. Our goal is to study of the spectral characteristics of the ULF geomagnetic field v...

One of the most important sources of ambient air pollution in the urban area is traffic, which generates two inorganic pollutants with severe effects on human health, namely nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and ozone (O3). The lockdown imposed in the context of COVID-19 pandemic dramatically decreased the level of traffic. In this respect, the paper aims to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on ambient air quality, by monitoring NO2 and O3 concentrations within the INCERC Bucharest Branch, part of NIRD URBAN-INCER...

The article describes the LoRaWAN network. LoRaWAN is a communication protocol that provides long-distance communication with low power consumption. Long Range Wide Area Networks (LoRaWAN) is open-center access (MAC) layer technology designed for long-distance connections with a large number of low-energy devices. LoRaWAN devices in various network settings use the most modern network simulator (NS-3). First, one device and its mobility are introduced. Due to its properties, the protocol is very popular in the fie...

Low-carbon development is an inevitable choice to solve environmental problems and achieve sustainability. The European Union set a goal to become carbon neutral by 2050 and then proposed a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) to tackle carbon leakage and enhance the effectiveness of European climate policies. The EU is Russia`s largest trading partner, so this mechanism could potentially have a significant impact on the Russian exporters of fossil fuels and carbon-intensive products and the country`s economy...

Porous supports including oxides and polymers have been employed for enzyme immobilization for many years. In recent times, the research focus has been placed on hierarchical structures, dependencies on pore sizes, and the use of magnetic porous oxides for magnetic recovery. The presence of pores or cavities where enzymes could locate to create an optimal degree of crowding achieved in cells is not a prerequisite, but it could significantly enhance the catalytic activity of biocatalysts. For the last five years, t...

Solutions to the environmental problems associated with the burning of coal in power plants are in poor condition. One of the main problems is the continuous growth and accumulation of ash and slag waste (ASW). Ash and slag waste is a major source of raw materials for various industries. However, the degree of use of ash and slag waste at Russian thermal power plants does not exceed 2 million tons / year, with an annual output of 25-28 million tons. Modern methods of enrichment and processing allow the use of ash ...

Cement concrete pavements are very specific group of the road construction due to the different traffic loads and vary time difficulties in the course of maintenance and repairs. For the design of the planed repairs the increased requirements are imposed especially in the terms of repair life time cycle. The economical evaluation shall consider not only the value of the repair itself but also the cost connected with the diversion of air traffic during the execution of the maintenance and repairs. Therefore, is hig...

The prevention of major accidents involving hazardous substances is relatively well-controlled issue, nevertheless wastes, especially industrial ones, may exhibit similar hazardous properties as classified chemical substances and mixtures, but they are frequently not directly involved in the priorities area of major accident risk management. Among exceptions, mining wastes from processing, located in tailing facilities, are directly involved in the Seveso III Directive (2012/18/EU) and implemented in national legi...

The paper focuses on management tools that are used in project work leading to the construction of a new sorting line for municipal waste treatment. The aim of the article was to describe possible project management tools that are used in the management of the company and individual project phases and activities. The construction of a modern waste sorting facility responds to a change in EU and Czech directives. This area is so specific that it cannot be affected by the situation around the COVID 19 pandemic, whic...

High-resolution imagery guarantees excellent quality of coastal topographic surveys. Alongside the rapid progress of remote sensing, digital photogrammetry and image processing in recent years using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) provide outstanding opportunities for mapping the coastal zone, including the coverage of difficult-to-access areas, as is the Northern Bulgarian coast. Both spatial planning and integrated coastal zone management require highly accurate and up-to-date geodata, being among the main reaso...

Primary and secondary mineral resources are of strategic importance for the EU. Most EU countries (including Slovenia) are already part of the pan-European Minerals Intelligence Network which provides consistent and organized data information on primary and secondary mineral resources on the European level. It was established in previous projects as EuroGeoSource, Minerals4EU, ProSUM, Mica and ORAMA. The Eastern and south Eastern European (ESEE) region represents a gap in this network, but at the same time is also...

Commonly the product’s life cycle ends up with waste. Conventionally the remains go to the landfill, earlier times – a dumpsite, the least manageable waste disposal method. To ensure that lost to society materials are treated with high priority, the European Union (EU) has implemented the Circular Economy Action Plan, continuing the monitoring of old dumpsites. The hierarchy of waste management points at preventing raw material use at first sight, but the following steps point at material reuse and recycling. The ...

Polycrystalline photovoltaic (PV) panels of various orientations were installed in Riga, Latvia, for long-term monitoring and determination of the efficiency in real operation conditions depending on the environmental parameters. Results of the first couple of years of monitoring are summarised in this paper. Analysis of the available energy and environmental data allows for the quantitative estimation of actual efficiency depending on spatial orientation and following comparison with manufacturer?s values. The cl...

Municipalities can take various measures to prevent damage from extreme rainfall events like increasing the dimension of the combined sewer system, separate them into foul and storm sewer systems, increase the infiltration capacity of the subsoil by reducing the (poorly permeable) paved surface, increase the infiltration surface in (underground) facilities or increase the permeability of the paving, install green / blue roofs to ensure delayed drainage and evaporation of water to the atmosphere or by building stor...

Interest in polymer materials with a metallized coating is growing every day. Polyimide (PI) with high heat-resistant properties and a low coefficient of thermal expansion is one of the promising materials for metallization. Polyimide metallized films are used as highly reflective materials for space technologies, and they are also used to produce materials for adaptive and flexible optical devices. Polyimides have good dielectric properties. The process of metallization of polyimide films is studied and the optim...

Considerable effort of scientific community was made in order to substitute traditional energy resources for green and renewable one. One of possible solution of this issue is wide hydrogen application for energy production. Hydrogen can be produced by different ways including water electrolysis, hydrocarbons and alcohols steam reforming, however, in last case hydrogen purification is needed. Membrane hydrogen separation can serve as good alternative compared to rectification or adsorption process. Beside combinat...

The cascade water system of the Azov Sea basin is a set of geochemical barriers. Here, water masses of different mineralization mix, and the hydrological and hydrodynamic conditions change. As a result, there is a sharp change in the physical, chemical, and biogeochemical characteristics of all components of the aquatic ecosystem, including bottom sediments. Bottom sediments are a more conservative component of the aquatic landscape in comparison with the water mass. The content of pollutants in the samples taken ...

Green energy from solar, wind, and water in the nearest future will make a maximum contribution to global energy balance, substituting combustion technologies for energy production. However, considerable efforts need to be made in this direction, therefore, carbon dioxide caption technologies and hydrogen purification technologies are needed for a transition period to reduce the burden on nature. Hydrogen can be considered a green energy source. It can be obtained from water using electrolysis or hydrocarbons, alc...

Renewable and waste resources valorization can considerably improve the ecological issues of modern industry and transport sectors of economy. Methanol to hydrocarbon reaction process can be considered one of the possible ways for biomass valorization, resulting in hydrocarbons formation applicable to the chemical industry and transport applications. This way includes biomass gasification process to form a syn-gas, the next step typically includes syn-gas transformation into methanol and the last one includes meth...

Extracting information from a text is an undivided part of modern NLP applications. Ontologies and semantic networks play important role in sense disambiguation problem, helping us distinguish concept nodes in text inputs. As we know, every language is always changing. Each generation of people adds something new to it, and new terms and word forms emerge while others become deprecated and people stop using them. Therefore modern linguistic ontologies have to store this information within a concept node. In this p...

Progress in new technologies brings with it unknown dangers and risks. The biggest development of the last few years is the use and production of fine and ultrafine particles (aerodynamic diameter less than 2.5 ?m), which, according to new studies, may have a negative impact on human health. It is very important to deal with this problem, especially from the point of view of workers who are at the front line of contact with these new materials, and it means that they are also at the greatest risk. There is yet no ...

The study of spatial heterogeneity of phytosanitary state of seeding and agricultural crops plantings is necessary for the widespread introduction of the precision farming system, which would make it possible to achieve a significant reduction in the pesticide load on agrocenoses and the environment. In Russia, the methodology for studying the heterogeneity of the phytosanitary state of agrocenoses is developed on the experimental base of the Menkovsky branch of the Agrophysical Research Institute. For this purpos...

The article presents the issue of scale deposits in sanitary installations. Scale contributes to improper operation of sanitary devices and leads to their degradation. Scale build-up in pipes and measuring elements results in higher water consumption due to inaccurate estimation of this resource consumption. The consequence is that devices based on process automation do not work properly due to disturbances in the actual water flow. The formation of deposits also leads to economic and ecological losses, as sanitar...

Microbial biomass was evaluated by determining the content of soil phospholipids in the upper and illuvial horizons of different-age kastanozems and solonetzes of the Bronze Age, Early Iron Age and Medieval time, located on various soil-forming rocks, in the zone of dry steppes, as well as in modern background soils. The microbial biomass in the upper horizon of modern Kastanozem on loess-like loams was 2800 ?g per g of soil that was 3 and 4 times higher than that in the upper horizon of modern kastanozem and mode...

In a model laboratory experiment, the succession of the microbial community during the decomposition of food products of a protein (sheep meat, cow curd), lipid (sheep fat) and polysaccharides (millet) was studied. Data on the dynamics of changes in the content of organic carbon, active microbial biomass, and respiratory response to the adding the low-molecular-weight compounds (amino acids and carboxylic acids) into the soil were obtained. It was found that the slowest decomposition of fat occurs after two months...

The European mining industry is an active sector. Mining operations disturb large volumes of land and produce huge quantities of waste. The tailings dams of the mining industry occupy large areas representing a huge cost in terms of operation/maintenance, health, safety, environment and economy. This paper is an overview of the possible sustainable waste management strategies that are targeted on the reuse of residues as secondary resources. Therefore, it is focused on restoring mine tailings as inert materials to...

The European mining industry is an active sector. Mining operations disturb large volumes of land and produce huge quantities of waste. The tailings dams of the mining industry occupy large areas representing a huge cost in terms of operation/maintenance, health, safety, environment and economy. This paper is an overview of the possible sustainable waste management strategies that are targeted on the reuse of residues as secondary resources. Therefore, it is focused on restoring mine tailings as inert materials to...

Wheat (Triticum L.) is a cereal which has a unique role in the global economy due to its technological and production value. The aim of this paper was to highlight the variation of the amount of mineral substances from thirty one varieties of wheat grains cultivated in Romania, from various origins such as: Romanian, German, French, Austrian, etc. Twenty-four grains samples were of common wheat (Triticum aestivum), two wheat samples were of Triticum monococcum and five wheat samples were of Triticum spelta. All th...

Apatite ore is a source of phosphorus for the mineral fertilizers production, and one of the most demanded raw materials for today. The growth of processed raw materials increases the volume of stockpiled processing waste. Such secondary mineral deposits are of interest as a potential object to be involved into processing. The paper studies apatite-nepheline processing waste stored in tailing dumps during different temporal periods. The authors have performed a mineralogical and chemical analysis of stored waste s...

Microbial contamination of foods leads to food poisoning in consumers. The uncontrolled application of antibiotics in animal husbandry, which is the case for the developing countries in general, generates their global environment accumulation and the formation of antibiotic-resistant strains. This problem can also refer to food preservatives obtained by chemical synthesis. On the other hand, fermentation and pickling are traditional cooking methods in most countries to prevent microbial spoilage. The producing org...

Expansion of the transport infrastructure of the Krasnodar Territory (Russia), in connection with the development of new land plots, as well as an increase in the tourist flow to the region, it became necessary to build facilities in difficult engineering and geological conditions on landslide slopes in hard-to-reach areas. As one of the measures to protect against landslide movements of surface rocks and to strengthen weakened sections of slopes, structures of bored piles, restrained in non-displaceable soils, ar...

The increased content of suspended fine mineral particles in technological and waste waters of mining enterprises and the need to reduce their content to prescriptive concentrations before recycling or discharging into natural water bodies make it necessary to develop new approaches to water conditioning. Despite a variety of existing technological solutions, it’s a problem to select a water conditioning method that simultaneously provides low cost and environmental acceptability. The solution to this task is the ...

The quality of agricultural products grown and collected at the facilities of the agro-industrial complex and the raw materials obtained for various industries largely depends on the ecological state of the geological environments. To quickly eliminate possible contamination, it is necessary to solve the problems of their early detection, localization and forecasting with the help of special technical means. In this aspect, it is promising to use groups of geoelectric control methods that allow to effectively regi...

Technology of self-propagating high-temperature synthesis (SHS) is used to obtain ligature in Fe-B system. The SHS Technology can also be successfully used for obtaining ligatures from metallurgical waste, which is the subject of investigation in the presented paper. To separate melted alloy of Fe-B and slag of the process, synthesis is carried out in centrifugal machine. Separation degree between melted alloy of Fe-B and slag in the graphite cup inside the rotating reactor, and, therefore, output degree of final ...

Peltier thermoelectric modules (TEM) have a number of key advantages over compressor cooling systems (ease of use for both cooling and heating, high operational characteristics due to the absence of moving parts, etc.). Ensuring smooth and accurate regulation of the TEM temperature regime requires the development and application of effective automatic control systems. To create complex temperature change profiles, it is necessary to increase the order of the control system, which causes a stability problem. To ana...

The Volga is a cascade of lowland reservoirs since 1982. This allows flood prevention, river-sea navigation and hydropower generation. The creation of a cascade of hydropower plants led to the flooding of fertile floodplain lands, a decrease in water quality, and drastic algal blooms in the summer season. The alternative solution includes establishment of combined renewable energy plants containing floating solar and pumped storage plants near the existing hydropower plants. This is tentatively estimated to lower ...

For the development of traffic management systems in order to optimize it, especially traffic control at intersections, it is necessary to model traffic flows and their main characteristics. The purpose of this work is to propose a methodology for creating such models, to develop algorithms that simulate the operation of traffic lights and the movement of vehicles, to develop an application that plausibly simulates traffic flows and their control. In this work, for modeling the transport system, we proposed the pr...

Building of a shopping center was planed in Riga city, Latvia. Unfortunately, the center was located in the former dump site place where the about eight meters thick waste body contained an irregular mixture of oil products, Phenols, Detergents and metals: Copper, Lead and Chromium. It was presumed that these dissolved in groundwater contaminants should enter the nearby lake and dich. It was found out that cleaning of the place was not time and cost effective. It was necessary to reduce the concentration of these ...

The article is devoted to the discussion of the application of the complex of technicalsolutions developed by the authors of the article aimed at eliminating the gorenje firesthat arise and develop within the landfills of solid municipal waste near urbanizedterritories. As is known, due to the growing number of municipal solid waste landfillsnear settlements, a number of geoecological problems are increasing, among which themost acute are the problems of pollution of the lower layer of air, surface andunderground ...

The Article is dedicated to the analysis of alterations that occur in the structural land use in the territory of large cities and to formation of proposals on improvements of the city policy in the area of land use, infrastructure development and ecology. St. Petersburg, that is one of the largest Russian cities, is used as an example for the analysis. However, the tendencies and issues identified in the article may be considered generic for all large cities of Russia. The article is based on the analysis of the ...

The purpose of this study is to develop approaches for the monitoring the environmental and reputational risks of building industry’s companies; to confirm the hypothesis that it is possible to use audited financial and environmental reports as sources for monitoring. The basis of the author's idea is the conceptual approaches of the international standards on auditing and true view tasks, as tools to guarantee the reliability of the results of monitoring environmental indicators in conjunction with key audit issu...

By adopting the Multiannual Financial Framework (MMF), the European Union (EU) sets the priorities and objectives for the EU. The achievement of the objectives set out in the multi-annual budget is closely linked to the implementation of the Member States' national policies and strategies, as well as to the programming documents for the administration of the European Investment Funds. In order to track the progress of the EU Member States in the implementation of economic and social cohesion policy, the authors ha...

The article includes estimates to confirm that the energy of the water of the Oka and Volga rivers at their confluence has being sufficient to erode transfer the volume of surrounding sedimentary rocks, and forming a height difference of about 100 m between the right and left banks and creating a unique landscape of stunning beauty and attractiveness. This phenomenon is due to the work of the Coriolis force and therefore is ubiquitous. However, at the confluence of the Oka and Volga rivers the transfer of sediment...

The Volga River is essentially a cascade of reservoirs that provide hydroelectric energy. This technical solution made it possible to produce electricity for industrialization, to ensure the passage of river-sea vessels between five seas and to stop floods on the Volga River. Although often considered a green energy source, there are environmental and economic considerations that should be accounted for in a holistic and sustainable perspective, i.e. a life cycle of ca. 50 years, areal inundation by reservoir wate...

At present, in time of sustainable environment, people views are increasingly focused on the energy performance of buildings. In recent years, there has been a huge increase in the rate of insulation of buildings. Thermal insulation of facades and roofs of buildings has been theoretically mastered and practically realized. Recently, we have also encountered thermal insulation of foundation structures to prevent heat leakage through massive concrete foundation structures into the subgrade. As clear from the availab...

The purpose of this publication is to assess the multi - risk of hydro meteorological hazards (drought, hail, snowfall and snow accumulation, fog, floods, winds, fires) on the territory of the Danube Water Management District (DWMD). DWMD is one of the four districts designated for water management on the territory of the Republic of Bulgaria. For this purpose, an approach for multi-risk assessment has been developed, which is part of the overall risk management process. It includes three stages: risk identificati...

The paper demonstrates relevance of diagnostics and monitoring of tailings as collectors of liquid mining wastes. The author has been an initiator and supervisor of the development of the methodological bases of combining multilevel observations to monitor hydraulic structures of tailings of mining enterprises. Monitoring observations are carried out at four levels: satellite, aerial, surface and subsurface (underground). The satellite level includes GPS geodesy, processing and analysis of optical and radar images...

Present paper is a brief story about Bulgarian efforts to integrate data, products and services in Bulgaria into a newly established scientific infrastructure named a National Geoinfomation Center (NGIC) and its efforts to assess and communicate the information about natural hazards and risks to the general public. We started two years ago with the ambitious goal of uniting our observations and research in the area of monitoring and investigation of the Earth’s interior and the near-Earth space. The instrumental u...

Requirements for performing environmental self-monitoring (ESM) of various installations are set in the Russian legislation. However, large industrial plants often need to develop and run Industrial Environmental Monitoring (IEM) Programmes not at source but within the zone of influence, which in Russia is defined as the area at the boundaries of which concentrations of contaminants emitted by the pollution source reach 5 % of respective maximum allowable concentrations (ambient air quality standards). IEMP object...