Search

To fight climate change, it is crucial to have a precise knowledge of greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations in the atmosphere and to monitor sources and sinks of GHGs. On global scales, satellites are an appropriate monitoring tool. For the validation of the satellite measurements and to tie them to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) trace gas scale, ground-based Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) networks are used, which provide reference data. To ensure the highest-quality validation data, the network must be scaled to the WMO trace gas scale and have a very small site-to-site bias. Currently, the Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON) is the de facto standard FTIR network for providing reference data. Ensuring a small site-to-site bias is a major challenge for the TCCON. In this work, we describe the development and application of a new method to evaluate the site-to-site bias by using a remotely controlled portable FTIR spectrometer as a travel standard (TS) for evaluating the consistency of columnar GHG measurements performed at different TCCON stations, and we describe campaign results for the TCCON sites in Tsukuba (Japan), East Trout Lake (Canada) and Wollongong (Australia). The TS is based on a characterized portable EM27/SUN FTIR spectrometer equipped with an accurate pressure sensor which is operated in an automated enclosure. The EM27/SUN is the standard instrument of the Collaborative Carbon Column Observing Network (COCCON). The COCCON is designed such that all spectrometers are referenced to a common reference unit located in Karlsruhe, Germany. To evaluate the long-term stability of the TS instrument, it is placed side-by-side with the TCCON instrument in Karlsruhe (KA) and the COCCON reference unit (the EM27/SUN spectrometer SN37, which is operated permanently next to the TCCON-KA site) between deployments to collect comparing measurements. At each of the visited TCCON sites, the TCCON spectrometers collected low-resolution (LR) (0.5 cm−1) and high-resolution (HR) (0.02 cm−1) measurements in an alternating manner. Based on the TS as a portable standard, the measurements are compared to the Karlsruhe site as a common reference. For Tsukuba and Wollongong, the agreement with the reference in Karlsruhe found for XCO2 is on the 0.1 % level for both the LR and HR measurements. For XCH4, the agreement is at the 0.2 % level, with the low-resolution measurements showing a low bias at both sites and for both gases. For XCO, the deviations are up to 7 %. The reason for this is likely to be a known issue with the CO a priori profiles used by the TCCON over source regions. In East Trout Lake (ETL), the TCCON spectrometer broke down while the TS was en route to the station. Hence, no side-by-side comparison was possible there. An important auxiliary value for FTIR retrievals is the surface pressure. Using the pressure sensor in the TS, the surface pressure measurements at each site are also compared. The surface pressure analysis reveals excellent agreement (0.027, 0.135 and 0.094 hPa) for the Tsukuba, ETL and Wollongong sites.

EM27/SUN devices are portable solar-viewing Fourier transform spectrometers (FTSs) that are being widely used to constrain measurements of greenhouse gas emissions and validate satellite trace gas measurements. On a 6-week-long campaign in the summer of 2018, four EM27/SUN devices were taken to five Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON) stations in North America, to measure side by side, to better understand their durability, the accuracy and precision of retrievals from their trace gas measurements, and to constrain site-to-site bias among TCCON sites. We developed new EM27/SUN data products using both previous and current versions of the retrieval algorithm (GGG2014 and GGG2020) and used coincident AirCore measurements to tie the gas retrievals to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) trace gas standard scales. We also derived air-mass-dependent correction factors for the EM27/SUN devices. Pairs of column-averaged dry-air mole fractions (denoted with an X) measured by the EM27/SUN devices remained consistent compared to each other during the entire campaign, with a 10 min averaged precision of 0.3 ppm (parts per million) for XCO2, 1.7 ppb (parts per billion) for XCH4, and 2.5 ppb for XCO. The maximum biases between TCCON stations were reduced in GGG2020 relative to GGG2014 from 1.3 to 0.5 ppm for XCO2 and from 5.4 to 4.3 ppb for XCH4 but increased for XCO from 2.2 to 6.1 ppb. The increased XCO biases in GGG2020 are driven by measurements at sites influenced by urban emissions (Caltech and the Armstrong Flight Research Center) where the priors overestimate surface CO. In addition, in 2020, one EM27/SUN instrument was sent to the Canadian Arctic TCCON station at Eureka, and side-by-side measurements were performed in March–July. In contrast to the other TCCON stations that showed an improvement in the biases with the newer version of GGG, the biases between Eureka's TCCON measurements and those from the EM27/SUN degraded with GGG2020, but this degradation was found to be caused by a temperature dependence in the EM27/SUN oxygen retrievals that is not apparent in the GGG2014 retrievals.

Objective: Identification of the quantitative characteristics of changes in the arterial wall according to ultrasound, CT and MRI; development of the roadmap for the use of radiology diagnostic methods.Material and methods: 548 studies of 483 patients with atherosclerosis were analyzed (15 ultrasound studies, 483 – CTA and 50 – MRI). In the comparison group (n = 17) in patients without atherosclerosis, an analysis of MRI data of the aortic wall was performed. According to CTA, signs of atherosclerotic degeneration were assessed. According to the MRI data, indicators of aortic distensibility, Young’s modulus of the aortic wall (MPa), systolic distension of the aorta (ml), aortic wall enhancement index during contrast enhancement were calculated.Results: During the performance of ultrasound in all cases (n = 15), the analysis of the elastic properties of the aortic wall is difficult due to the artifact from calcification. Adverse CT signs of the occurrence of intraoperative vascular complications: the presence of an intraluminal thrombus, an uneven internal aortic contour of more than half of the circumference with an aortic wall thickness of more than 5 mm. According to MRI data in patients with atherosclerosis, aortic distensibility was reduced to 14.42 ± 2.95%, Young’s modulus for the aortic wall was 0.77 ± 0.26 MPa, the index of contrast enhancement of the aortic wall was 1.73 ± 0.5, the volume of systolic aortic distension was 11.48 ± 1.84 ml. In patients with vascular events in the perioperative period, systolic aortic dilatation was 9.2 ml.Conclusion: The signs which are expedient to consider when making a decision on surgical treatment have been identified. Significant limitations were identified in the assessment of elasticity by ultrasound. The wider use of MRI in atherosclerotic lesions looks promising.

Purpose of the study. The rapid and widespread dissemination of digital technologies in society necessitates the fastest and most effective digital transformation of education. The processes of digitalization of education face difficulties associated with unreasonable updates of the means and methods of electronic and distance learning in traditional methodological systems, the unpreparedness of teaching staff for professional activities in the new realities, laboriousness and large material and intellectual costs. In this regard, innovative approaches are of interest to achieve greater efficiency in the digital transformation of the educational process. The work is devoted to the substantiation of a mental approach that develops and complements the principles of modern didactics in the digital transformation of education, and provides an update of the means and methods of teaching using mental technologies.Methodology and methods. The mental approach is built on the foundation of mental schemes that define reality and a person from the position of his mentality, formed as a result of his individual and collective life experience. In the digital era, the approach determines the mechanisms for achieving new goals of education, such as the formation and development in a person of computa- tional, structural, intuitive, algorithmic thinking. The basis of the mental approach is made up of mental learning technologies that use various subject mental structures, concept and mind maps, suggesting a qualitative and meaningful change and correction of individual knowledge mental schemes. Considering learning with the help of mental schemes and mental models, the principles of mental didactics are formulated.Results. The contours of the mental approach in education, which allows the organization of the educational process on the basis of the means and methods of teaching, based on the foundation of mental schemes of thinking, are outlined. It provides a real opportunity to implement the principles of person-centered learning, for example, through the “transparent” box model, mental learning primitives, inverted resources and transforming resources, as well as mental technologies. The method of algorithmic primitives for the development of structural thinking is described. New approaches to the presenta- tion of electronic educational resources in an inverted form and in a transformer format have been substantiated.Conclusions. The importance of the mental approach manifests itself in several directions: the application of the “transparent box” model in teaching and control of knowledge; the use of teaching primitives to design structural-mental schemes for learning problem solving; crea- tion of personalized educational resources in the format of transformers and inverted textbooks that best match the mentality of the digital generation; the possibility of implementing person-centered learning. The approach allows the formation and development of mental didactics to ensure the effectiveness of the digital transformation of education, facilitates the achievement of the cognitive goals of subject learning and can effectively meet the modern requirements of the digital society for education.

The paper is devoted to the consideration of the problem of finding approaches to assessing the level of formation of teachers’ readiness for research activities, as one of the important components of their professional practice. Recognition of the significance of the phenomenon under consideration in the educational sphere and the realization that the system of pedagogical support for research activities of future teachers in pedagogical higher educational institutions, and teachers in the system of raising their qualifications to some extent outdated, require their substantial renewal. In this connection, the problems of searching for approaches to the study of ways of forming teachers’ readiness for research activities become relevant, which makes it necessary to build a model of such readiness itself. The aim of the paper is to analyze the state and develop a model of readiness for research activities of students of a pedagogical higher educational institution and teachers of educational institutions. The main research methods are theoretical analysis of scientific and psychological-pedagogical literature devoted to the problem of research, testing of teachers of general educational institutions, bachelors and masters studying at a pedagogical university, methods of mathematical processing of statistical data. Means of researching the problem posed is criterion-based questionnaire-test tools, which allow to identify correlation dependencies between the indicators of the components of readiness for research activities and the levels of its formation. The study was conducted on the basis of the Krasnoyarsk State Pedagogical University named after VP. Astafyev with the participation of bachelors, master and teachers of educational institutions. The analysis of the state of the problem of research activities in the training of future teachers in a pedagogical university and teachers of educational institutions based on questionnaire and test diagnosed tools revealed correlations between the indicators of the four components in the structure of students’ readiness for research (motivational, cognitive, activity, reflexive) and levels this readiness (student, practitioner, theorist, research leader). The obtained dependencies and research data allowed to form a model of readiness for research activities of students of a pedagogical university and teachers of educational institutions, describing the degree of formation of each component at each level. The article materials may be useful for the organization of computer diagnostics of the readiness in question. Such diagnostics will not only allow automated identification of the level of readiness for research activities, but also give recommendations on the development of a particular characteristic, show how close the respondent is to the next level and what he needs to do to do this.