Physical Sciences Division Research Articles

Frontiers of Physical Pharmaceutical Research by Young Scientists Making Breakthroughs (Symposium of Division of Physical Sciences)

Frontiers of Physical Pharmaceutical Research by Young Scientists Making Breakthroughs (Symposium of Division of Physical Sciences)

SPEECH BY THE VICE PRESIDENT OF THE RAS RAS ACADEMICIAN V.Ya. PANCHENKO

On May 22, 2023, meetings of the Division of Mathematical Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Division of Physical Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences took place, as well as a ceremonial meeting of the RAS Division of Nanotechnologies and Information Technologies (ONIT RAS), dedicated to the 40th anniversary of the ONIT, at which President of the Russian Academy of Sciences G.Ya. Krasnikov and President of the National Research Center Kurchatov Institute M.V. Koval’chuk delivered congratulations.

Volatile Organic Compound Emissions from Disinfectant Usage in the Home and Office.

Volatile Organic Compound Emissions from Disinfectant Usage in the Home and Office.

Billion-Dollar Drugs with Misallocated Rewards

Billion-Dollar Drugs with Misallocated Rewards

Electrostatic dust remediation for future exploration of the Moon

Dust accumulation is one of the critical issues that must be mitigated on in-situ lunar explorations because an in-situ probe is exposed to small dust particles, which are easily attached to it, during its operations. The Lunar Dust Science Definition Team is organized by the Jet Propulsion Lab/California Institute of Technology through NASA’s Biological and Physical Sciences Division to define key science questions and assess dust remediation techniques. Here, we assess three electrostatic remediation technology concepts: electrostatic dust shield; surface electrostatically collecting dust, later called attractive surface; and electron beam — plasma jet inducing electrostatic dust lofting from a surface. We qualitatively investigate their maturity by defining six operational factors: Time and location; Amount of dust removal; Contamination of target surfaces; Operation duration; Installation; and Safety. In addition to these techniques, we discuss a supporting system that loads dust particles onto a test article to examine dust removal efficiency. The results show that further development increases the maturity of all the technologies. While laboratory and theoretical demonstrations reported whether each technology robustly work on the Moon, which hosts a complex, heterogeneous dust environment, we find that it is still uncertain if this is the case because none has been tested in the lunar environment. Particularly, operation duration and safety are critical to be addressed further on both laboratory and spaceflight scales.

Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on allied health programs at the University of the District of Columbia Community College (UDC-CC): an analytical case study

The overall mission of community colleges encompasses several key components and principles, such as being cost-effective, accessible, serving as a pathway to four-year institutions, and preparing students for the workforce entry-level positions. However, 1,167 community colleges in the United States of America have been facing one of the worst threats to humanity in the 21st century, the coronavirus 19 (COVID-19) pandemic. COVID-19 is a communicable sickness caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus (World Health Organization, 2022).1 The viral outbreak took the entire world by surprise with paralytic consequences on health, economy, and education. Millions of people lost their lives related to the COVID-19 infection. Worldwide, individual and public lifestyle changes, such as wearing facemasks, travel bans, and quarantines became mandatory due to the fast virus outbreak. Actions were taken worldwide to contain and slow down the spread of the virus and its adverse effects. On March 13, 2020, US President Trump declared a national coronavirus emergency.2 People were mandated to stay and work from home in isolation. In the United States, specifically in the academic sector, instantaneous unscheduled closures of schools were implemented. Faculty and students were forced to stay at home and convert to remote learning. Reviewing the impact of COVID-19 on community college faculty and students, we conducted a literature search of hundreds of publications on the impact of COVID-19 and its effects on health and education, and surveyed several students, faculty, and staff in our division. We found multiple publications on the consequences of the pandemic on education, healthcare providers, university staff, and students. This article presents the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the faculty and students in the division of Nursing, Allied Health, Life, and Physical Sciences (NAHLPS) at an inner-city HBCU Community College.

Training, Support, and Connection for Student Library Employees in a Tiered Reference Service Model

Student employees at circulation desks are the first points of contact for many library users with research questions, but they are challenged to respond or refer when librarians are unavailable. In an attempt to cultivate student employees’ reference skills, confidence, and connection to the library’s values and mission, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Division of the UC Berkeley Library developed an outcomes-based training program consisting of an interactive session and a dynamic online reference manual. Student employees completed pre-training and post-training assessments of their reference skills and self-efficacy. Qualitative feedback was analyzed to identify ongoing challenges and intangible benefits for student employees engaged in reference work. Challenges observed include user expectations, infrequent questions, and the complex information landscape; benefits observed include community building and student growth. Implications of these challenges and benefits for student training programs are discussed.

Performance of Wind Power Plant in West Kalimantan, Indonesia

The aim of this paper is threefold. First, to calculate the correction factors based on existing meteorological station positions and its extension according to the basic map of West Kalimantan. Second, to reanalysis, the wind speeds from satellite measurements of national oceanic, and atmospheric administration (NOAA) and physical sciences division (PSD) in West Kalimantan by calculating its resultant and applying correction factor to create a map of wind power potential in West Kalimantan. Last, to apply the highest corrected wind speeds using HOMER simulation to know the wind energy potential. Conclusions have extracted the characteristics of wind speed variability over West Kalimantan, and HOMER simulation results of the highest wind speed.

75 лет Атомной отрасли. Вклад Академии наук (Научная сессия Общего собрания Отделения физических наук Российской академии наук, 7 декабря 2020 г.)

75 years of the nuclear industry. Contribution of the Academy of Sciences (Scientific session of the General Meeting of Members of the Physical Sciences Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences, December 7, 2020),

Earth embosomed by the Sun: heliophysics and space weather : (Scientific session of the Physical Sciences Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 5 June 2019)

Earth embosomed by the Sun: heliophysics and space weather : (Scientific session of the Physical Sciences Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 5 June 2019)

Priority Results in Physics Obtained in 2019 (From the Annual Report of the Academician Secretary of the Physical Sciences Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences)

This work contains some scientific results obtained in physics in 2019 in scientific organizations previously owned by the Federal Agency for Scientific Organizations (FASO) of Russia and under the scientific and methodological guidance of the Physical Sciences Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), and is based on the annual report of the Academician Secretary of the RAS Physical Sciences Division. The results correspond to the Program of Fundamental Research of the State Academies of Sciences for 2013–2020. This program sets out the direction of broad scientific inquiry and fundamental and application-oriented research creating new contours of tomorrow’s engineering and technology in the interests of organizational and scientific support for achieving strategic national priorities. The directions of fundamental scientific research within the framework of the Program were formed on the basis of the priority areas of research and plans of the State Academies of Sciences. This report provides summary information on the work of scientific organizations in various areas of physics, illustrated by examples of individual achievements in the form of annotations.

X-ray optics: how and what is to be seen: (Scientific session of the Physical Sciences Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 22 May 2019)

X-ray optics: how and what is to be seen: (Scientific session of the Physical Sciences Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 22 May 2019)

Assessing Surface Heat Flux Products with In Situ Observations over the Australian Sector of the Southern Ocean

Given the large uncertainties in surface heat fluxes over the Southern Ocean, an assessment of fluxes obtained by European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts interim reanalysis (ERA-Interim) product, the Australian Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) routine observations, and the Objectively Analyzed Air–Sea Heat Fluxes (OAFlux) project hybrid dataset is performed. The surface fluxes are calculated using the COARE 3.5 bulk algorithm with in situ data obtained from the NOAA Physical Sciences Division flux system during the Clouds, Aerosols, Precipitation, Radiation, and Atmospheric Composition over the Southern Ocean (CAPRICORN) experiment on board the R/V Investigator during a voyage (March–April 2016) in the Australian sector of the Southern Ocean (43°–53°S). ERA-Interim and OAFlux data are further compared with the Southern Ocean Flux Station (SOFS) air–sea flux moored surface float deployed for a year (March 2015–April 2016) at ~46.7°S, 142°E. The results indicate that ERA-Interim (3 hourly at 0.25°) and OAFlux (daily at 1°) estimate sensible heat flux H s accurately to within ±5 W m−2 and latent heat flux H l to within ±10 W m−2. ERA-Interim gives a positive bias in H s at low latitudes (<47°S) and in H l at high latitudes (>47°S), and OAFlux displays consistently positive bias in H l at all latitudes. No systematic bias with respect to wind or rain conditions was observed. Although some differences in the bulk flux algorithms are noted, these biases can be largely attributed to the uncertainties in the observations used to derive the flux products.

Земля в объятиях Солнца: гелиофизика и космическая погода Научная сессия Отделения физических наук Российской академии наук, 5 июня 2019 г.)

Земля в объятиях Солнца: гелиофизика и космическая погода Научная сессия Отделения физических наук Российской академии наук, 5 июня 2019 г.)

Рентгеновская оптика: как и что увидим (Научная сессия Отделения физических наук Российской академии наук, 22 мая 2019 г.)

Рентгеновская оптика: как и что увидим (Научная сессия Отделения физических наук Российской академии наук, 22 мая 2019 г.)

Раздвигая горизонт событий: многоканальная астрономия (Научная сессия Отделения физических наук РАН, 3 апреля 2019 года)

Раздвигая горизонт событий: многоканальная астрономия (Научная сессия Отделения физических наук РАН, 3 апреля 2019 года)

Comparing GEFS, ECMWF, and Postprocessing Methods for Ensemble Precipitation Forecasts over Brazil

AbstractThis study compares the performance of Global Ensemble Forecast System (GEFS) and European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) precipitation ensemble forecasts in Brazil and evaluates different analog-based methods and a logistic regression method for postprocessing the GEFS forecasts. The numerical weather prediction (NWP) forecasts were evaluated against the Physical Science Division South America Daily Gridded Precipitation dataset using both deterministic and probabilistic forecasting evaluation metrics. The results show that the ensemble precipitation forecasts performed commonly well in the east and poorly in the northwest of Brazil, independent of the models and the postprocessing methods. While the raw ECMWF forecasts performed better than the raw GEFS forecasts, analog-based GEFS forecasts were more skillful and reliable than both raw ECMWF and GEFS forecasts. The choice of a specific postprocessing strategy had less impact on the performance than the postprocessing itself. Nonetheless, forecasts produced with different analog-based postprocessing strategies were significantly different and were more skillful and as reliable and sharp as forecasts produced with the logistic regression method. The approach considering the logarithm of current and past reforecasts as the measure of closeness between analogs was identified as the best strategy. The results also indicate that the postprocessing using analog methods with long-term reforecast archive improved raw GEFS precipitation forecasting skill more than using logistic regression with short-term reforecast archive. In particular, the postprocessing dramatically improves the GEFS precipitation forecasts when the forecasting skill is low or below zero.

50th anniversary of the Institute of Spectroscopy of the Russian Academy of Sciences: (Scientific session of the Physical Sciences Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 20 June 2018)

50th anniversary of the Institute of Spectroscopy of the Russian Academy of Sciences: (Scientific session of the Physical Sciences Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 20 June 2018)

60th anniversary of the Vereshchagin Institute for High Pressure Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences: (Scientific session of the Physical Sciences Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 25 April 2018)

60th anniversary of the Vereshchagin Institute for High Pressure Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences: (Scientific session of the Physical Sciences Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 25 April 2018)

Theory of condensed matter (in memory of Yurii Vasil’evich Kopaev) (Scientific session of the Physical Sciences Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 13 December 2017)

Theory of condensed matter (in memory of Yurii Vasil’evich Kopaev) (Scientific session of the Physical Sciences Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 13 December 2017)