Comparative Analysis of the Propagation Conditions of Millimeter Radio Waves at Radio Astronomy Polygons in Russia and Uzbekistan

Astronomy Reports - The feasibility of expanding the evaluation parameters was discussed when selecting the “Karadag” test site for the installation of millimeter-wave antennas based on...     

Radioactive waste disposal in seas adjacent to the territory of the Russian Federation

The former USSR illegally dumped into the ocean liquid and solid radioactive wastes (RW) originating from nuclear-powered vessels and ships. The Russian President created a special Commission to analyse both the scale and consequences of this activity. According to documentary data and expert estimates at the Commission's disposal, the maximum activity of RW that entered the seas adjacent to Russian territory could have been as much as 2,500 kCi at the time of disposal. The greatest radio-ecological hazard comes from reactors from nuclear submarines and core plates of the nuclear icebreaker 'Lenin', which had spent nuclear fuel in place and which were dumped in shallow water in the Kara Sea near Novaya Zemlya. Editor's note: This article extracts material from a Commission which published a report produced in Russia in 1993. Numerous sources in many Ministries and other government agencies, noted in the text, formed the basis for the final draft. The authors of the draft report were A. Yablokov, V. Karasev, V. Rumyantsev, M. Kokeev, O. Petrov, V. Lystsov, A. Yemelyanenkov and P. Rubtsov. After approving the draft report, the Commission submitted the report to the President of the Russian Federation in February 1993. By Presidential decision, this report (after several technical corrections) was open to the public: it is known variously as 'the Yablokov Commission report, or more simply the 'Yablokov Report', the 'White Book' or 'Yablokov White Paper'. During April-May 1993, 500 copies were distributed among governmental agencies inside Russia, and abroad through a net of Russian Embassies. This article was later sent to Dr Mike Champ as part of the ongoing collections of papers on the Arctic published in this journal (edited by Champ et al.: 1997 'Contaminants in the Arctic', Marine Pollution Bulletin 35, pp. 203-385 and in Marine Pollution Bulletin 2000, vol. 40, pp. 801-868, and continued with the present collection).     

Dependence of the spins of supermassive black holes in quasars on their cosmological redshifts

Data on the dependences of the masses and bolometric luminosities of Active Galactic Nuclei on their cosmological redshifts are used to determine the redshift dependences of their X-ray luminosities and the kinetic powers of their relativistic jets. These results are used, in turn, to obtain the redshift dependence of the spins of the central supermassive black holes.     

EPR and magnetism of the nanostructured natural carbonaceous material shungite

The X-band EPR and magnetic susceptibility in the temperature range 4.2–300 K study of the shungite-I, natural nanostructured material from the deposit of Shunga are reported. Obtained results allow us to assign the EPR signal to conduction electrons, estimate their number, N _P, and evaluate the Pauli paramagnetism contribution to shungite susceptibility. A small occupation (~5%) of the localized nonbonding π states in the zigzag edges of the open-ended graphene-like layers and/or on σ (sp ^2+x ) orbitals in the curved parts of the shungite globules has been also revealed. The observed temperature dependence of the EPR linewidth can be explained by the earlier considered interaction of conduction π electrons with local phonon modes associated with the vibration of peripheral carbon atoms of the open zigzag-type edges and with peripheral carbon atoms cross-linking different nanostructures. The relaxation time T ₂ and diffusion time T _D are found to have comparable values (2.84 × 10⁻⁸ and 1.73 × 10⁻⁸ s at 5.2 K, respectively), and similar dependence on temperature. The magnetic measurements have revealed the suppression of orbital diamagnetism due to small amount of large enough fragments of the graphene layers.