Compact Sources of OH Maser Emission in the Star-Forming Region Cep A

Since the North Caucasian Republics form part of the Russian Federation, conflict resolution efforts in the North Caucasus by third parties require action and approval by the central authorities in Moscow. The Russian Federation regards conflicts in the North Caucasus as an internal affair. For a government to benefit from the activities of such organizations, it is important that they are not regarded as counterproductive by the government. In the case of the North Caucasus, organizations do their work in some Republics under difficult circumstances, and are successful on the micro level. The problems the North Caucasus faces are however so immense, that we have to realize that both intergovernmental, non-governmental and governmental organizations have a long way to go to realize peace, prosperity and justice in the Republics.Keywords: conflict resolution; North Caucasus; Russian Federation

Spectra obtained from ground-based radio telescopes show the progressive release of CO, CH3OH, HCN, H2O (from OH), H2S, CS, H2CO, CH3CN, and HNC as comet Hale-Bopp (C/1995 01) approached the sun from 6.9 to 1.4 astronomical units (AU). The more volatile species were relatively more abundant in the coma far from the sun, but there was no direct correlation between overabundance and volatility. Evidence for H2O sublimation from icy grains was seen beyond 3.5 AU from the sun. The change from a CO-driven coma to an H2O-driven coma occurred at about 3 AU. The gas outflow velocity and temperature increased as Hale-Bopp approached the sun.

The article analyzes the phenomenon of politicized ethnicity in the North Caucasus, its influence on ethno-political processes and ways to reduce the risk-generating impact of this phenomenon on the ethno-political sphere of the region are proposed. The article summarizes the results of a series of studies conducted in the North Caucasus in 2018-2023: event analysis of the ethno-political situation, analysis of positive practices, mass and expert surveys, content analysis of the media, websites of national-cultural associations, blogosphere, content analysis of normative documents, content and discourse analysis of publications of North Caucasian historians. It is shown that the main factors in the politicization of ethnicity in the North Caucasus region are "hyperethnicity" and the institutionalization of ethnicity in the form of "national republics", as well as the ethno-territorial problems and claims caused by these phenomena, and the "memory paradigm" that has developed in the region. It is concluded that it is necessary to strengthen the all-Russian vector of the regional identity policy, and for this purpose a "revision" of the legislative framework in the federal subjects in the North Caucasus is required. Since at the present stage it is impossible and impractical to abandon the institution of republics, it is important to gradually introduce into the public opinion the principle of territoriality, and not titular ethnicity, as the basis of the republics in Russian Federation. It is relevant to change the humanitarian agenda of the North Caucasus, which can go in two directions: the reorientation of public consciousness to the problems of modernization of the region and the integration of the humanitarian space of the "Big South" - the North Caucasus and Southern federal districts. The reformatting of the "memory paradigm" can be achieved by expanding the historical panorama through positively oriented constructions of the historical past, as well as changing the scientific priorities of humanitarian research with an emphasis on topics related to the centuries-old experience of living together of peoples of different cultures. The materials of the article can be used in the preparation of a new Strategy of the state national policy of the Russian Federation.

A previously obtained dependence of the scattering angles of extragalactic radio sources on the background emissionmeasure toward the sources is used together with data on the background brightness temperature near the Galactic center at 43 and 10 GHz to calculate the scattering angles of compact extragalactic radio sources as a function of their angular separation from the compact source Sgr A*. It is shown that the distribution of the scattering angles of extragalactic sources as a function of the angular distance to Sgr A* has two scales. The extended component has an angular size at the half-intensity level of about 1° in longitude and about 0.5° in latitude. The calculated scattering angles for this component agree well with the observations. The narrow component is fairly symmetric and has a scale at the half-intensity level of about 5′. The scattering angle at the maximum of the narrow component is approximately a factor of 10 larger than the scattering angle for the broad component. The scattering angle begins to increase sharply at angular distances less than 6′ from Sgr A*. It is suggested that the narrow component is associated with the 7′ halo located in the Sgr A complex. A VLA survey of compact sources at 1400 MHz shows that compact extragalactic sources are not observed at angular distances of less than 14′ from Sgr A*, due to both enhanced scattering and a decrease in sensitivity due to the strong background emission with approach toward the Galactic center and the presence of strong compact sources in the sidelobes of the VLA beam, in particular, Sgr A*. The results obtained can be used to choose the optimal baselines and frequencies of interferometers in future observations of compact sources near the Galactic center.

The angular sizes of compact steep spectrum sources in the Peacock and Wall sample were found to decrease steeply with redshift, similar to the angular size-redshift variation for extended sources. This, however, could be an artefact if the compact sources are not all of the same nature. Models such as those of Subramanian and Swarup with a beam power of 1037 W were found to be compatible with compact sources being either young sources at an early stage of development or relatively weak sources in dense, active media where star formation is continuing.

Статья представляет анализ количественных данных, касающихся специфики процесса взросления индивида на Северном Кавказе. Исследование построено на материале общероссийского репрезентативного обследования «Человек, семья, общество», проведенного в 2013 г. В фокус наблюдения попали поколения 1970–1994 гг. рождения. Мы сравнили наступление событий, маркирующих взросление у жителей северокавказских республик с регионами России по следующим характеристикам: по частоте, возрасту, интенсивности и последовательности наступления событий. События, маркирующие взросление, разбиты на две группы: социодемографические(первая интимная близость, первое партнерство, первый брак и первое деторождение) и социоэкономические (завершение получения образования, первое отделение от родителей и первое трудоустройство). Показано, что на Северном Кавказе сохраняются более традиционные модели перехода во взрослую жизнь, нежели в остальных российских регионах: события в брачной и репродуктивной сферах наступают с более короткими интервалами, то есть сильно обуславливают друг друга; браки остаются превалирующей формой совместного проживания; деторождение происходит в более раннем возрасте и интенсивнее, чем в других регионах; гендерные различия в социодемографическом поведении почти отсутствуют, а в социально-экономическом – выражены сильнее, чем в другихрегионах. Тем не менее представленные данные указывают и на некоторые признаки демографической модернизации. Так, у молодых северокавказских мужчин (но не у женщин) наблюдается большее по сравнению с предшествующими поколениями разнообразие в последовательности событий, связанных с взрослением, то есть единая для всех норма заменяется разнообразием жизненных путей.

В статье исследуется влияние государственных мер поддержки рождаемости, прежде всего – выплат семейного (материнского) капитала на рождаемость в регионах Северного Кавказа. С этой целью изучаются тренды рождаемости в регионе по данным официальных источников (ежегодных данных Росстата и данных микропереписи населения Российской Федерации 2015 г.) в сравнении с общероссийскими трендами. Суммарные коэффициенты рождаемости отдельно по первым, вторым, третьим и т. д. детям показывают, что на Северном Кавказе в последние десять лет рождаемость третьих и последующих детей заметно выше, чем в России в целом. Высокий уровень их рождаемости является одним из вероятных следствий выплат материнского капитала. Также отличия северокавказской рождаемости от общероссийской обнаруживается, если исследовать динамику рождаемости не по годам рождения детей, а по поколениям матерей. Такое исследование, основанное на данных микропереписи населения РФ 2015 г., показало, что в большинстве регионов Северного Кавказа рождаемость вторых и последующих детей у всех поколений, родившихся между 1950 и 1990-м гг., была выше, чем в целом по России. Более того, в ряде регионов обнаруживается также не наблюдаемое в России в целом повышение рождаемости по сравнению с предыдущими поколениями у тех женщин, у которых период репродуктивной активностичастично пришелся на время действия программы материнского капитала. Таким образом, более детальный анализ данных показал, что тенденции рождаемости на Северном Кавказе с начала выплат материнского капитала заметно отличались от общероссийских, и эти различия могут объясняться более активной «реакцией» Северного Кавказа на данную меру поддержки рождаемости. Эта реакция, в свою очередь, может иметь как экономические, так и социокультурные причины. В статье также обсуждается вопрос о влиянии региональных мер поддержки рождаемости на Северном Кавказе в сопоставлении с другими субъектами РФ.

In Vladikavkaz (Republic of North Ossetia-Alania) in the period from October 04 – 08, 2021, the Scientific Council of the Russian Academy of Sciences on the Problems of Mineral Enrichment, the Federal State Budgetary Institution of Science “Institute of Problems of Integrated Development of Mineral Resources named after Academician N.V. Melnikova of the Russian Academy of Sciences” (IPCON RAS), the Federal State Budgetary Institution of Higher Education “North Caucasus Mining and Metallurgical Institute (State Technological University (SKGMI (GTU)” held an international conference “Problems of complex and environmentally safe processing of natural and man-made mineral raw materials” (Plaksin Readings – 2021). Plaksin Readings-2021 were attended by 150 representatives from 51 organizations, including 15 academic and 11 industry institutes, 9 large mining and metallurgical companies. The reports were made by scientists from Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Mongolia. Plenary reports were presented by leading scientists in the field of mineral processing: Chanturia V.A., Shadrunova I.V. (Institute of Problems of Integrated Development of Mineral Resources named after Academician N.V. Melnikova RAS, Moscow, Russian Federation); Innovative processes of deep and environmentally safe processing of technogenic raw materials in the context of new economic challenges); DmitrakYu.V. (North Caucasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (State Technological University), Vladikavkaz, Republic of North Ossetia-Alania, Russian Federation) “The main directions of scientific activity of SCGMI (GTU) in the study and solution of the problem of complex and environmentally safe processing of natural and technogenic mineral raw materials”; Kurkov A.V., Anufrieva S.I., Temnov A.V. (N.M. Fedorovsky All-Russian Research Institute of Mineral Raw Materials of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology of the Russian Federation, Moscow, Russian Federation) “Prospects for the development and implementation of integrated technologies for processing Subsurface Use waste”; Semyachkov A.I., Pochechun V.A. (Ural State Mining University, Institute of Economics of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Yekaterinburg, Russian Federation) “Methodological foundations for assessing the impact of mining complexes on the environment”; Alborov I.D., Tedeeva F.G. (North Caucasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (State Technological University), Vladikavkaz, Republic of North Ossetia-Alania, Russian Federation) “Environmental aspects of the conservation of technogenic deposits of non-ferrous metals in the North Caucasus”; Masloboev V.A., Makarov D.V., Klyuchnikova E.M. (Institute of Industrial Ecology Problems of the North, FITC KNC RAS, Apatity, Russian Federation) “Sustainable development of the mining complex of the Murmansk region: minimizing technogenic impacts on the environment”; Ustinov I.D. (NPK “Mechanobr-Technika”, St. Petersburg, Russian Federation) “Geometallurgy as the basis of complex processing of mineral raw materials”; Ozhogina E.G., Kotova O.B. (FSBI “All-Russian Research Institute of Mineral Raw Materials named after N.M. Fedorovsky”, Moscow, Russian Federation, FSBI Institute of Geology named after Academician N.P. Yushkin FIT Komi NCUrO RAS, Syktyvkar, Russian Federation) “Technological mineralogy in solving the problem of complex processing of mineral raw materials”. According to the results of the Conference, the importance of the presented results of fundamental and applied research, the high scientific level of reports was noted. The Conference participants agreed that experimental results, scientific developments, and proposed technologies are of undoubted interest and will be in demand in the real sector of the economy. The Conference decided the expediency of supporting the promotion of the initiative to form a state program for the ecological rehabilitation of the land fund and water resources of North Ossetia from the damage caused earlier by the activities of mining enterprises. To provide high-tech industries of Russia with strategic metals (resources) based on complex and environmentally safe processing of natural and manmade mineral raw materials, it is recognized necessary to concentrate the research of leading organizations in the field of mineral processing on the justification and development of innovative processes for extracting valuable components from natural and man-made raw materials.

In the winter of 2014, the Millennium Scientific Initiative Nucleus on Protoplanetary Disks and the Anilla Cultural Museum of Contemporary Art in Santiago, Chile, organized an interdisciplinary initiative-Art, Astronomy, Technology and Society (AATS)-that sought to engage the general public in the sciences through creative projects and collaborations.1 The project launched a creative incubator to develop small-scale creative projects in collaboration with local astronomers and held an Astronomy Day consisting of a series of lectures and workshops that connected the driving questions of astronomical investigation to contemporary artistic production. The initiative culminated with an exciting exhibition that married data visualization and contemporary art installation. The collaboration yielded new media visualizations of different celestial phenomena in mixed media that made the cosmic sensuously graspable. Whether a manipulable computer program of exoplanetary formation or a fiberoptic light sculpture programmed to the captured sound waves of radio telescopes, the artistic practices on display attempted to reduce scale, convert dates, and emplace the artist-spectator, suggesting that to comprehend the cosmic one must first apprehend the microcosmic. Astronomy as visual culture foregrounds how comprehension necessitates apprehension and opens onto a series of questions about the forensic value of images and the political and epistemological stakes of their use in memory debates in postdictatorship Chile. I explore these questions by turning to Patricio Guzman's 2011 Nostalgia de la luz (Nostalgia for the Light) in order to articulate astronomy to both history and cinema and to suggest a different framework for thinking the image within the historiographical practices in the region.The opening AATS lecture series yielded a dialogue between astrophysicists and artists in which the former attempted to make the abstract concrete and the latter attempted to make the concrete abstract.2 The installation work by Marcelo Arce, Astronomical Unit, overlaid sound wave patterns recorded by radio telescopes to shift the hues illuminated in an amorphous fiberoptic mass.3 The installation's suggestive title is borrowed from astronomy, defined by Arce's astrophysicist interlocutor Hector Canovas as a unit of length roughly the distance from Earth to the sun. In his remarks, Canovas establishes two scalar factors: the astronomical unit as a unit of distance and the cosmic epoch as a unit of time. The astronomical unit is a metric for astronomical measurements, originally defined through telemetric readings of photon reflections off celestial objects.4 More important for our purposes, the astronomical unit is a scalar factor for astronomical imaging. Canovas's images all bear a linear scale. The only means to make the image legible is to provide a scalar factor that systemizes the coordinates of the image, and the only way to make the image intelligible is to use terrestrial intervals as a reference. And yet, the astronomical unit still exceeds our grasp, so Canovas provides yet another scalar conversion, both spatial and temporal. He first explains that the distance from Earth to the moon can be scaled to the distance from Valparaiso to Vina del Mar, the distance from Earth to the Sun to the distance from Valparaiso to Quito, and finally the distance from Earth to another planet to over twenty thousand circumnavigations of the world. The cosmic epoch functions as a unit of time determined by the relative intensities of photons received. Canovas again reduces this temporal scale through reference to our terrestrial clock time: light travels mere seconds in the first case, four days in the second case, and over one million years in the final trajectory. He makes the human body and its units of length and time the yardstick through which to make these epochs comprehensible.Arce's installation was part of the final exhibition, which was conceived and curated under the signposts of totality, myth, concealment, and discovery in order to interpellate the spectator. …

On January 9, 2025, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine declared the Russian conquest of Circassia in the nineteenth century as a genocide. Ukraine thus became the second country after Georgia in 2011 to recognizer the Circassian genocide. The Russian Empire’s complete conquest of Circassia in 1864, as part of a greater strategy to subdue the Caucasus, led to the massive killing, starvation, and deportation of Circassians, who to this day are scattered throughout the Western countries, the Middle East, and Russia. The Circassian movement is divided in its ultimate goals but seeks to gain greater cultural, linguistic and political rights with Russia, to secure repatriation of the diaspora, and to merge all North Caucasus republics with a substantial Circassian population into one, or to even gain independence from or a greater sense of autonomy within the Russian Federation. As part of a grander strategy to limit Russian influence in the region and to avenge the losses of separatist territories in 2008, the Georgian government recognized the conquest of Circassia as a genocide on May 20, 2011, as part of a greater strategy for Tbilisi to gain greater influence and leverage with the peoples of the North Caucasus, especially the Circassians. This strategy also included the weaponization of conferences, the creation of cross-cultural and education programs, the dissemination of Georgian-sponsored media in the North Caucasus, open travel of North Caucasians into Georgia, and greater political and economic cooperation between Georgia and the North Caucasus. Although the current ruling establishment has stepped back from many of these initiatives, Tbilisi’s past rapprochement with Circassians and other North Caucasus groups has led to the strengthening of Circassian activism and encouraged Ukraine since the start of the current war with Russia to embrace the mantle of Pan-Caucasus causes. Through recognizing the Circassian genocide and supporting other separatist movements and organizations in the North Caucasus, Kyiv has emerged as a replacement of Tbilisi to support stateless peoples within the Russian sphere.

Farewell to the Caucasus: Regional ethnic clan politics and the growing instability of the ruling elite after the 2012 presidential elections in Russia

Introduction. Mountainous territories in Russia are an important element of the development potential, especially this direction is relevant in the field of tourist and recreational services. Many subjects of the Russian Federation have a certain area that falls on mountainous areas. Domestic and international practice has convincingly shown that they can contribute to the growth of socio-economic indicators of the region due to successful integration into the economic system. At the same time, there are a number of objective restrictions on the development of active types of tourism associated with increased risks of some of them, such as the North Caucasus. The article discusses the main types of active recreation in the highlands, problems and prospects of the tourism industry development in the North Caucasus Federal District. The conclusion is made about the sustainable development of this type of tourism in the North Caucasus. The purpose of the study is to analyze the problems and conditions of effective development of the mountainous territories of the North Caucasus. Materials and methods. The information base of the research was the scientific and methodological developments of domestic authors on the problem under study, national and regional concepts, strategies and programs for the development of tourism in the Russian Federation until 2035. The research methodology is the scientific analysis and systematization of the data obtained. In the course of the research, general scientific methods and approaches were applied: abstraction, analysis and synthesis, logical method; systematic approach. Results and discussion. According to most experts, the effective and sustainable development of the tourism industry in the mountainous territories of the North Caucasus Federal District requires, first of all, the formation of appropriate legal acts concerning mountainous territories at the federal level. Effective development measures should be developed for the mountainous territories of the North Caucasus to attract tourists and form a positive image of the region as a ski resort. Conclusion. The measures taken contribute to the flow of large investments into the region, which, in turn, will help the development of a highly developed tourist and recreational complex in the North Caucasus.

The religion and the socio-political and cultural life of the peoples in the North Caucasus has always remained one of the central issues in the comprehensive study of this region. The team of Russian and Polish researchers, led by Professor Bodio Tadeusz of the Warsaw University, has made an extensive, three-part analysis in the author's series “Power-Elite-Leadership”. The first part analyzes the religious and political situation in the North Caucasus. Special attention is paid to the policy of the Russian Federation in the field of religious relations; the activities of the religious associations in the regions; and the opposition of Sufism and Wahabism. In the second part, the researchers focus on the specifics of confessional elites and the security problems. In particular, the authors draw the attention to the processes of formation of Muslim elites in the region; the specificity of the spread of Islam in the North Caucasus; as well as the measures used by the federal and regional authorities to counteract the radicalization of Islam. The research is recommended to the authors dealing with the issues of the North Caucasus and the Russian Federation as a whole.

Using literature data on approximately 400 compact radio sources detected with the Very Large Array and located in the direction of the Galactic center within 2° of the compact source Sgr A*, 69 sources whose angular sizes are determined by scattering on electron density inhomogeneities were distinguished. Fifty-five of these are extragalactic, two are supercompact HII regions, ten are sources of maser emission, and two are variable Galactic sources. The excess of the apparent angular sizes of maser sources within 2° of the Galactic center above the mean size of objects of this class in other parts of the Galaxy found in many studies cannot be explained purely by the effect of scattering of their radio emission on interstellar plasma inhomogeneities. The angular sizes of these objects are increased due to scattering only within Galactic longitudes of about 0.4° and Galactic latitudes less than 0.1°. The turbulent medium responsible for scattering of radio emission of compact sources in the immediate vicinity of the Galactic center is strongly concentrated toward the compact source Sgr A* at the Galactic center. No extragalactic sources are observed within 0.4° in longitude and 0.2° in latitude of the Galactic center, because of their low brightness due to the superstrong scattering in this region. Data on scatter broadening can be used to study the distribution of turbulent plasma near the Galactic center.

A synthesis map obtained with the Cambridge Half-mile telescope shows that the galactic radio source G127.1 + 0.5 has a shell structure; in conjunction with other data we conclude that it is probably an old supernova remnant. Near the centre of the shell the map shows a compact radio source whose angular size, measured at 15 GHz with the 5-km Cambridge telescope, is less than 0.15 arcsec, and whose spectrum is very flat. We suggest that the compact source may be the stellar remnant of the supernova.