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Rural areas in the Baltic countries are characterized by economic stagnation and demographic decline. These areas are making every effort to transition to a modern knowledge-based economy. The delay in development is associated with the aging of the population, unskilled labor, and as a result of this, the inability to develop knowledge-intensive enterprises, to support innovative and technical start-ups. Decline in the countryside The European Commission calls the process of ?inner peripheralization?, which is ch...

Environmental issues have gained importance across national borders. Climate change mitigation is one of the major global purposes. To achieve the goal it is necessary to solve a number of issues. The key one is to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases emissions while keeping high growth rates of living standard, industry and economy. Some countries develop such technologies to decrease greenhouse gases emissions, in particular, carbon capture and storage technologies (CCS technologies). Meanwhile, the development...

It is a well-known fact that green spaces play an important role in the life of a modern city. They improve the air quality and conditions of the urban environment, increase its attractiveness, promote preservation of the landscape biodiversity and provide favourable conditions for recreation of the population. However, the issue of streamlining the indicative information about the green areas of cities (town) within the country, including its cartographical visualization and popularization for the population at l...

The continuous development of data acquisition and processing techniques in planetary geomagnetic observatories and satellite data, allows at this time to extract as complete information about the morphology and evolution over time of the terrestrial geomagnetic field. The Sun, the source of all energy on Earth, heat the planet and drive the motions of atmosphere. The brightness of the Sun with 11-years solar cycles with 0.1% variation may be explaining the major driving changes in weather patterns on Earth. At th...

Companies worldwide are facing the challenge of transitioning to green economy, which is the result of a concerted effort together with governments, agencies, organizations to reduce the environmental burden of the modern activities in all sectors: manufacturing, transportation, energy production, etc. One generally accepted method of transition represents investing in renewable energy. In order to evaluate the impact of these investments indicators, such as NOx emissions, carbon footprint, energy consumption and ...

The study of ways and means of introducing adventive vegetation species into the of steppe zone landscapes ecosystems is an important aspect in the processes of temporal and spatial landscapes transformation study. Natural anthropogenic landscapes are artificial systems created based on the zonal vegetation natural framework but at the same time supported by humans. Often, native species of vegetation are replaced in the anthropogenization process and are replaced by species that are not the area characteristic. I...

Drilling and blasting operations are one of the most important mining processes in open pit mines which encompass the crucial part of mining costs. Today, despite the development of mechanized drilling in surface mining, blasting operation has remained as an inseparable part of mining operations in most open pit mines. This paper tries to develop a mathematical model for finding an optimal length and width of the blast block for minimizing drilling and blasting costs in open pit mines. With the approach, the most ...

A studies were conducted of the template method for the formation of a 3D scaffold. As templates, previously prepared particles of NaCl, lactose, and calcium alginate were investigated. The particle-shaped template was introduced in different volume ratios with a PLGA solution containing dispersed agglomerates of hydroxyapatite nanoparticles (HAP NPs). For functionalization of the surface, scaffolds were immersed in an aqueous solution of chitosan for the purpose of physical adsorption of chitosan molecules on the...

The development of the oil industry, transition to digitalization of fields and development of new technologies require an understanding and forecasting of macroscale processes throughout the porous region, as well as reliable theoretical and numerical models. On the other hand, validation of such models requires knowledge of fluid dynamics in the pore space over a wide range of Reynolds numbers. To study the basic laws of local hydrodynamics of turbulent filtration flow inside the pores, including boundary layers...

There are many studies focusing on indoor air quality in primary and secondary schools. Nevertheless, studies in nursery schools are still few. Concentrations of indoor air pollutants are typically 2-5 times higher, and occasionally 100 times higher than outdoors. Children spend more time in nursery and preschools than in any other indoor microenvironment besides home. It is generally assumed that preschool students are more susceptible to the adverse effects of poor indoor air quality (IAQ) than elementary or mid...

The subject area of this article applies to a study of low frequency noise - mainly infrasound signals generated by the operational indoor power transformer. The object of the study is localized in south Poland with a total apparent power equal to 1250 kVA. In addition, the power transformer is located away from national roads and motorways. Scope of the performed analysis includes designation of time runs, depicting temporal changes, and designation of frequency spectra of the recorded low frequency signals. Eval...

Today a sufficient number of analytical methods for determining extraction indicators for geotechnologies that produce broken ore has been developed. At the same time, they are characterized by certain difficulties, mainly due to the restriction in more fully taking into account the structural (geometrical) complexity of the production horizon and loading points. Therefore, the numerical simulation of the outflow of bulk material by discrete element method is becoming increasingly important to improve the reliabil...

Vibration driving of piles into a soil is a complex mechanical process, accompanied with such phenomena, as a changing of structure of soil surrounding the driving element, soil liquefaction, decreasing of friction forces between soil and surface of the driving element. During vibratory driving of sheetpiles and piles the vibrations arise in the surrounding soils. The effect of these vibrations on closely located buildings or structures may lead to damage or destruction due to additional uneven ground settlement, ...

In this work, we investigated the solvent effect on the process of lignin hydrogenolysis using polymer-based catalyst 3%Ru/HPS. Liquid products of lignin hydrogenolysis process in a variety of solvents include a large number of individual compounds belonging to different classes of organic substances. These products include the substances resulting from the conversion of the solvents, and the typical products of the conversion of lignin (benzene and phenol derivatives). The main derivatives of phenol are methoxyph...

Reasons for complete mixing of meromictic reservoir are an interesting scientific problem. There are many salt lakes of meromictic type. Water column in such lakes is not mixed down to the bottom for at least one year. So two layers are formed: an upper layer saturated with oxygen and a bottom layer without oxygen but with hydrogen sulphide accumulate. There is a water layer with large density gradient between them, while in the upper and near-bottom layers density gradients are small. In case of mixing of the upp...

When fermenting dairy environments under conditions other than optimum, due to the formation of an exopolysaccharide capsule in lactic acid bacteria, resistance to aggressive external factors, such as acidity, temperature, and ultrasound, increases. The synthesis of exopolysaccharides contributes to the intensification of milk fermentation and an increase in the proportion of physically and chemically bound moisture. The purpose of the experiment was to study the activity of polysaccharide biosynthesis by a consor...

Processing of weathered material from UG2 ore for recovery of Platinum group minerals (PGMs) is a challenging task due to poor recoveries and high chromite grade in the flotation concentrates. The flotation behaviour of the weathered and non-weathered ores of Middle Group 4 (MG 4) was investigated at different mining pit depths using sodium isobutyl xanthate as a collector, Sendep 30D as depressant and Senfroth 200 as a frother. The milling tests work were conducted prior to flotation. The results depicted that, t...

Lately, the optical wireless communication systems (OWC) are beginning to be more developed. Because of the rapid development of the technology and the desire of an eco-friendlier environment, the conventional lighting systems began to be replaced by LED lighting systems. The advantages of this systems are that the energy is more efficiently used, the lifespan is longer, and they generate lower heat. The new developed Visible light communication (VLC) technology can be used, besides illumination, to transmit data ...

Northern European Seas environment has different sources of radionuclide contamination, both natural and artificial. In present work the radionuclide content of sediment samples (obtained in 2016-2018) of Keret Bay of Chupa Estuary, Kandalaksha Gulf of a semi-enclosed Arctic sea ? White Sea, Russia has been studied. Keret Bay is a small semi-isolated tidal estuary in the South-West part of Kandalaksha Gulf. The mouth of Keret river affected by strong tidal motion and spring flood. We have taken sediment samples in...

To date, titanium and magnesium production is based on chlorine technology, which, for all its merits, is characterized by a high level of formation of industrial products and waste. In particular, ?Ust-Kamenogorsk Titanium and Magnesium Plant? JSC annually produces 30?35 thousand tons of solid chloride wastes, which contain 700?1400 tons of titanium oxide. Part of titanium chloride waste is leached with water and neutralized with calcium hydroxide to pH 7-8.5. The resulting pulp pumps are pumped into sludge colle...

The ultramafic-mafic rocks in southwestern part of Turkey, are called as the Yesilova ophiolite was firstly described by Sarp [1]. The Yesilova ophiolite represents an ophiolite suite with missing row character and is comprised tectonites, followed upwards by ultramafic-mafic cumulates, gabbroic rocks, plagiogranite and basalt from the bottom to the top. The pegmatite gabbro is very minor lithology within the olivine gabbro and/or tectonite and formed in lenticular shaped or thin dike. They are greenish grey in co...

One of the major problems in the world is the fight against environmental and water pollution, greenhouse gases, fine dust particles, the major producer, along with them, carries goods and passengers as the main responsible for all this. This requires the use of degradable materials, the deployment of energy-efficient machinery, the construction of appropriate energy-saving facilities and buildings. Additionally, the advent of electric vehicles makes it necessary to build new electrical routes on the one hand. On ...

Molecular simulation methods were used to describe the spiral-structure of halloysite (7 A) loaded with irinotecan in Materials Studio modeling environment. Halloysite is a clay mineral commonly used as a drug delivery system for a variety of molecules due to its suitable characteristics and its morphology. Irinotecan is a semi-synthetic drug used in the treatment of colorectal cancer and exists in an active lactone form and an inactive hydroxyl-acid anion form[1]. In this work, the anionic form of the irinotecan ...

The Lazy Bledowskie well field located in the area of the Upper Silesia (southern Poland) abstracts water from the Triassic carbonate aquifer. The aquifer is additionally heavily drained by the Zn-Pb ore mines. Due to a deterioration of groundwater quality, caused mainly by sulphate concentration reaching 317 mg/L, most of the wells have been closed and currently only 2 wells are exploited. Sulphates origin in water has been a concern issue of many researchers. However, there are difficulties in identification of ...

This study examines potential organizational and economic problems that business entities may face when developing measures to improve safety when handling wastes with hazardous components. The study was conducted on the example of waste of a large machine-building enterprise. More than 80% of all industrial wastes (by mass) are moderately hazardous, slightly hazardous and practically non-hazardous waste. Less than 10% waste is extremely hazardous and highly hazardous. As part of the work, more than 40 types of wa...

Creating roads in agricultural land covers many aspects like legal eligibility, planning and design, road safety, quality assurance, mobilization of resources, environmental protection, social contribution, maintenance management, research and development provision, etc. Currently, the issue of construction agricultural roads is underestimated. Priority is given to highway construction. Society is not institutionally, scientifically and resource prepared to promote this process. The goal of the paper is to examine...

Nowadays the tackling climate change is the greatest sustainability and environmental challenge for the world. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as the political forum, particularly Paris meeting held in 2015, agreed that international and national actions on climate change are necessary. Climate change has already become significant in Europe, with the mean temperature increasing, and extreme weather events becoming more frequent. Europe (i.e., Latvia) is warming faster than many ...

The paper deals with the problems of the modern economy in terms of the system paradigm, the possible progressive development of socio-economic systems based on the law of harmony, expediency socio-humanitarian model of society. The decisive role in the country's economy is emphasized in the quality of human resources, the harmonization of which requires a high level of intellectual capital and good physical health with the reduction in the working-age population. The studies revealed the problems of efficiency an...

The way of maintenance and updating the real estate cadastre is regulated, at present, by the Act of May 17,1989, The Law of Geodesy and Cartography [6] and by the decree of the Minister of Regional Development and Building Industry of March 29,2001 ? the cadastral law [1]. Updating the cadastre at the stage of setting out a building object is of particular importance; it has specified tax effects. Usually, the charge due to a property tax is increased what results from the real discontinuation of agricultural act...

One of the most negative effects of the development of our civilization is global warming. The results of many studies and analyzes clearly confirm that it is human activity that is the main cause of changes that occur in the natural environment, which in turn also leads to climate change. Increasing emissions of greenhouse gases and other harmful gaseous, liquid and solid substances cause very intense destruction of our ecosystem. This, in turn, results in irreversible changes in the natural environment, which ca...

The importance of this study is to underline the fact that the wind energy potential in the western part of the Black Sea basin can be considered significant, while the wave energy is lower in comparison with oceans. However, in winter time when energy consumption in Bulgaria and Romania is high, the wave energy presents the highest values. The aim of this research paper is to draw a comprehensive picture regarding the wave and wind energy near Bulgaria and Romania coastlines. More precisely, six locations were st...

In the mining industry, open pit mining is accompanied by the most significant disturbances in the landscape and hydrological conditions of the development area and disturbed or complete loss of soil cover over large areas. With the existing technology of stripping works, reclamation of disturbed lands is carried out separately and requires additional costs for its implementation, and in most cases is not carried out, which has led to a tendency of accumulation of disturbed lands. Currently, reclamation of disturb...

The article is devoted to the study of the formation of industrial clusters on the territory of the Southern Federal District (SFD) of the Russian Federation, as well as the rationale for the feasibility of this management activity, taking into account the industrial-industrial complex formed in the macroregion, represented in the sectors of the agro-industrial complex, chemistry and petrochemistry, metallurgy and engineering, food industry, etc. A statistical analysis of the main indicators of the development of ...

The use of development systems with open mined-up space due to increased technological risks associated with ensuring the sustainability of the rock mass. The main production technique that improves the safety of refining operations under these geotechnologies in the conditions of considerable depths is a multiple increase in the size of various types of pillars, leading, in turn, to a significant increase in mineral loss. Today, the mining situation of most steeply dipping polymetallic and gold deposits is due to...

This work presents laboratory experiments for the development and testing of methods for the selection of the cross-linked polymer for one fractured carbonate reservoir with high salinity (about 220 g/L). For this carbonate reservoir, the applicable industrial polymers are very limited because they cannot effectively increase the viscosity under such a high salinity. Therefore, a crosslinked polymer gel was proposed for enhanced oil recovery in this reservoir. For choosing the most suitable cross-linked polymer fo...

In the oil and gas industry the problem of utilizing produced water is solved by recirculating it and using it as a basis for fluids for hydraulic fracturing and the well killing. During the oil production formation water is extracted in association with it to the surface. Its component composition depends on both the chemical nature and geological age of rocks and it is formed as a rule with a significant impact of oil and gas on water that leads to a wide variety of its chemical properties. In the process of wor...

The quality of products in regions that specialize in viticulture and horticulture depends on many environmental factors, but the importance of the concentrations of trace ele-ments in the rhizosphere is no less important than the main elements of mineral nutri-tion. Viticulture in ancient times played a different role in the economy of Tauric Cher-sonesos at the near chora (on the Herakleian Peninsula (South-West Crimea)) and at the distant chora (in North-Western (NW) Crimea). Modern climatic and soil-lithologic...

Upper Volga basin is the most significant Upper Volga part of the Great Volga Route. Landscape-ecological studies were conducted on the regional (for the whole basin of the Upper Volga) and local levels (for key areas). The research covered the initial period of social-natural history of this region, from Stone Age till late medieval period. The research included processing and analysis of numerous published and archive materials of the area and subjects of studies, as well as complex landscape and historic-archeo...

The study was performed at the former Machow sulphur mine ? 871.7 ha of dump area reclaimed after open-cast strip mining. The area was characterized by the terrain structure and vegetation cover resulting from the reclamation process. The applied direction of reclamation for this area was agroforestry. The study showed the possibility of using Sentinel-2 satellite images and airborne laser scanning point clouds for the land use and land cover (LULC) mapping, especially forested areas and deriving precise informati...

Historical land-use and land-cover are the key input for the evaluation of past global change and nowadays processes. These studies lie in the intersection of physical and social geography, economy, history and archeology. The original combination of GIS technologies within landscape, historical, archaeological, paleogeographic methods forms the methodological basis of research. The main practical task is to identify the relations between landscape features and different types of environmental management and settl...

The paper is focused on testing the laser tracker?s accuracy characteristics using variance components. These characteristics (angle and distance measurement accuracy) are determined by adjustment of micro network measurement. The paper provides a brief description of laser trackers? testing, mainly aimed to standards that address the issue. This information defines a basis for a new testing method described in this paper. The provided experiment does not need any special metrological equipment and can be performe...

The concept of Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) is introduced with the intention to improve network performance and quality of experience for end users. MEC brings cloud capabilities at the network edge and thus it helps to reduce the latency, increases network efficiency and security, providing context and radio network information awareness for applications. The MEC deployment closer to the Radio Access Network (RAN) is the best way to receive radio network and location information, to manage the bandwidth, and...

The glacial lake Kucherla is located in the Altai Mountains at an altitude of 1790 meters above sea level. We use the 112 cm core obtained in March 2018 from the deepest part of the lake (45 m) for the study. In the process of coring, special attention was paid to the preservation of the upper layers of the bottom sediment (water - sediment boundary). Bottom sediments of the lake contain visual layers with a thickness of 1-3 mm. We count the layers using photographs of the optical sections. Counting the layers and...

In this study, activated carbon obtained from marine green algae biomass (AC-AB) was used as adsorbent for the removal of Pb(II) ions from aqueous media. The effect of initial solution pH, adsorbent dose, contact time and initial Pb(II) ions concentration were studied in batch system, at room temperature (22 ? 1?C), to determined the optimum experimental conditions. Thus, an initial solution pH of 6.5, 4.0 g AC-AB/L and at least 60 min of contact time were found to be optimal experimental conditions for the retent...

The hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna) is very widespread in Romania. In the southwestern part of the Banat, on the hilly and mountainous area, the hawthorn has very representative population. It is very often found in those areas in small groups of 4-15 shrubs and is most common found in the selvage of the forests and on the areas where are old forest roads, along the gardens of the meadows of the rivers from mountain areas. Also, hawthorn plants are often used by local population from these areas to make green fences...

In recent years, Latvians have shown increasing activity in creation of eco innovation in social sphere, which has caused a need to systematize and regulate it. Although a special legislation framework has been introduced to regulate social entrepreneurship in Latvia, social innovation is not legally regulated and organized yet. For the development of Latvia regions, it is necessary to enhance commercial activities of the population, which could result in welfare improvement and job creation. However, without publ...

Before the beginning of the 2000s, in the process of acquiring land in Russia, the main risks, that had to be analyzed and taken into account, were risks associated with the registration of land and with encumbrances. Issues, related to the ability to build on the land some constructed objects and carry out economic and other activities, as a rule, were not analyzed. The presence of zones with a special regime of land use allocated for environmental and sanitary requirements can significantly affect the achievemen...

Biogas production and its use in biogas plants presents established technology with the aim of production of renewable energy and also using organic residues with different origin. The main goal of this work was to analyse potential legume and grass crops in methane production as an alternative to corn silage. Ten different crops within individual variants were chosen as a potential source of biomass for biogas production: Medicago sativa L. (two varieties), Trifolium pannonicum L., Galega orientalis L., Lolium pe...

Among the current areas of modern geochemical research is the study of pollution of aquatic ecosystems with heavy metals. Mercury is a heavy metal that is subject to mandatory monitoring. The authors systematized the scattered data. This article presents an analysis of the occurrence of high and extremely high pollution of rivers of the Russian Federation with mercury over a long-term period. Every year, monitoring services record cases of multiple exceeding the maximum permissible concentrations of this metal. It...

This article describes the possibility of using lever hoists for handling loads in extracting mineral deposits of the Earth. Hoists and jacks are generally used for the lifting and towing of loads, for assembly and handling works in the construction industry, mining and other sectors of heavy industry. They are characterized by a simple but robust construction that is resistant to rough handling. Furthermore, they offer simple operation and minimum maintenance requirements. Lever hoists are offered on the market i...