Research on development of nanotechnology in the Republic of Kazakhstan

In the history of civilization, materials and technology that defined the face of the era have appeared more than once. It is enough to recall the “age” of bronze and iron, steam and electricity, the atomic “age” and the computer age. Nanomaterials (NM) are undoubtedly among such materials, and the 21st century opens the era of nanotechnology. Most experts in the field of science and technology policy, strategic planning and investment are confident that in the next decade nanorevolution is expected in all areas of science, production, defense, medicine, mode of life, recreation and entertainment. Its consequences will be more extensive than the consequences of the computer revolution in the last third of the 20th century, i.e., a large-scale and systematic invasion of nanostructured materials, products and methods of their production will literally come to all spheres of life. The paper analyzes the ways of nanotechnology development and the use of various nanomaterials and nanoproducts in various sectors of the world economy and environmental protection. Nanotechnology is a field of fundamental and applied science that provides theoretical justification for practical methods of research, production, and products application with an atomic structure by manipulating atoms and molecules. The aim of the work is to study the development of nanotechnology and its role in the modern economy. The article considers the ways of development of nanotechnology in Kazakhstan, as well as promising directions of their development and application in the field of mechanical engineering and industry in general.

Социальная изоляция как один из рисков пожилых: новая реальность и новые смыслы

This article is devoted to the study of the consequences of social isolation of elderly Muscovites during the spread of coronavirus infection. The author draws attention to the fact that the informal isolation of the older generation has existed for a long time, but only in the new conditions associated with the pandemic, the «home mode» of life in old age was fixed by law. Social isolation is considered as a risk to the life and health of the older generation. It is shown how unprecedented restrictive measures of the Government affec­ted the psycho-emotional and physical health of elderly people, and the tasks of the state to reduce the vulnerability, ensure the safety and resilience of the elderly were not solved.

Were the First Trace Fossils Really Burrows or Could They Have Been Made by Sediment-Displacive Chemosymbiotic Organisms?

This review asks some hard questions about what the enigmatic graphoglyptid trace fossils are, documents some of their early fossil record from the Ediacaran-Cambrian transition and explores the idea that they may not have been fossils at all. Most researchers have considered the Graphoglyptida to have had a microbial-farming mode of life similar to that proposed for the fractal Ediacaran Rangeomorpha. This begs the question “What are the Graphoglyptida if not the Rangeomorpha persevering” and if so then “What if…?”. This provocative idea has at its roots some fundamental questions about how to distinguish burrows sensu-stricto from the external molds of endobenthic sediment displacive organisms.

The role of taphonomy in cladistic analysis: A case study in Permian bivalves.

The Megadesmidae (Bivalvia, Anomalodesmata) fossil record was examined in order to assess the role of taphonomy in cladistic analysis. Megadesmids are thick-shelled, infaunal, suspension-feeding bivalves. Our data indicate that their fossil record seems biased in favor of thick-shelled, shallow-burrowing genera and/or deep­burrowing forms. Consequently, there is a relation between the mode of life (shallow versus deep) and the resolution and quality of the fossil record. Deep-burrowers (Vacunella) are often preserved in life position offering a more accurate (temporal and spatial) fossil record, adequate for paleoecological inferences, while shallow-burrower shells (Plesiocyprinella), that are more prone to post-mortem transport and temporal mixing, offer a record with poor spatial and temporal resolution. The identification of homoplasy among infauna! bivalves constitutes a major challenge for their cladistic analysis. Within Megadesmidae intrinsic (bauplan limitations) and extrinsic (better preservational potential) factors favor the occurrence and preservation of homoplasy among the deep-burrowers. The implications are: a) clustering of deep-burrowing bivalves (Vacunella, Roxoa) due to parallel homoplasies, forming "adaptive", not necessarily "evolutive" taxa, and b) lower consistency indices in their cladistic analysis.

Recovery of Paleodictyon patterns after simulated mining activity on Pacific nodule fields

Since the late 1980s, various experiments have been conducted in polymetallic nodule fields of the Pacific Ocean to assess the potential environmental impacts of future mining, specifically in two areas: the Peru Basin and the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone (CCZ). Two expeditions, SO242/2 in 2015 (Peru Basin) and SO268/1 + 2 in 2019 (CCZ), deployed a towed camera system to collect imagery from both areas. These expeditions aimed to assess recovery of fauna in the short (few weeks) and long term (several years) following physical seafloor disturbance actions designed to mimic potential mining, by ploughs, dredges and epibenthic sleds. Within the collected image data, several strikingly hexagonal hole patterns were observed and identified as Paleodictyon nodosum, and an irregular form of Paleodictyon traces, both on undisturbed and disturbed areas of seafloor. Recent forms occur abundantly in various deep-sea regions, but their origin, and how they represent the mode of life of the forming organism, remains unknown. In this study, the imaged occurrences of Paleodictyon traces on disturbed seafloor sheds light on the lifecycle of the forming organism, demonstrating that they can recolonize disturbed habitat and produce the trace network in a few weeks. Nevertheless, the density of these patterns on disturbed substrates was lower than observed on undisturbed substrates in both nodule regions. We therefore hypothesize that, along with other benthic deep-sea fauna, these structures and the forming organism are impacted by physical seafloor disturbance, and even 26 years after disturbance, densities on disturbed sediments have not recovered to undisturbed levels.

Decision Making Power of Homemakers in a Rural Muslim Community of West Bengal: An Empirical Study

Decision-making power is a vital key for assessing the empowerment of a person. Empowerment increases self-efficacy by which one can control one’s mode of life for survival in a better way. It is an established fact that women are the most disempowered section in our society and the rural Muslim women are relatively more oppressed than others as there is the predominance of social-cultural and economic inequality among this minority community. As a result, these women have very limited opportunities to participate in the decision-making process related to their family matters and societal affairs linked with their own lives. Considering this scenario, the present study attempts to examine and analyse the decision-making power of homemakers in rural Muslim communities at micro level, taking Santoshpur village of Murshidabad district, West Bengal, as a case study. The methodology designed for the present study integrates both quantitative and qualitative methods based on field surveys. For this, fifty respondents have been selected using stratified purposive random sampling technique, and data have been acquired through face-to-face interviews through a semi-structured questionnaire. Then, the Cumulative Empowerment Index (CEI) is constructed based on selected eight key indicators to measure respondents' decision-making ability and liberty. Multiple Correlations are also computed, indicating that education and economic dependencies are the most critical determinants influencing women's empowerment and decision-making processes. The study also reveals that the existing rigid cultural system is mainly responsible for the suppression of women’s identity as well as their thoughts. But there remains hope for the next-generation girl children as different schemes are being taken up by the Government of West Bengal to promote and popularise women’s education at different levels.

Glacier-fed stream biofilms harbour diverse resistomes and biosynthetic gene clusters

Background: Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a universal phenomenon whose origins lay in natural ecological interactions such as competition within niches, within and between micro- to higher-order organisms. However, the ecological and evolutionary processes shaping AMR need to be better understood in view of better antimicrobial stewardship. Resolving antibiotic biosynthetic pathways, including biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs), and corresponding antimicrobial resistance genes (ARGs) may therefore help in understanding the inherent mechanisms. However, to study these phenomena, it is crucial to examine the origins of AMR in pristine environments with limited anthropogenic influences. In this context, epilithic biofilms residing in glacier-fed streams (GFSs) are an excellent model system to study diverse, intra- and inter-domain, ecological crosstalk. Results: We assessed the resistomes of epilithic biofilms from GFSs across the Southern Alps (New Zealand) and the Caucasus (Russia) and observed that both bacteria and eukaryotes encoded twenty-nine distinct AMR categories. Of these, beta-lactam, aminoglycoside, and multidrug resistance were both abundant and taxonomically distributed in most of the bacterial and eukaryotic phyla. AMR-encoding phyla included Bacteroidota and Proteobacteria among the bacteria, alongside Ochrophyta (algae) among the eukaryotes. Additionally, BGCs involved in the production of antibacterial compounds were identified across all phyla in the epilithic biofilms. Furthermore, we found that several bacterial genera (Flavobacterium, Polaromonas, etc.) including representatives of the superphylum Patescibacteria encode both ARGs and BGCs within close proximity of each other, thereby demonstrating their capacity to simultaneously influence and compete within the microbial community. Conclusions: Our findings highlight the presence and abundance of AMR in epilithic biofilms within GFSs. Additionally, we identify their role in the complex intra- and inter-domain competition and the underlying mechanisms influencing microbial survival in GFS epilithic biofilms. We demonstrate that eukaryotes may serve as AMR reservoirs owing to their potential for encoding ARGs. We also find that the taxonomic affiliation of the AMR and the BGCs are congruent. Importantly, our findings allow for understanding how naturally occurring BGCs and AMR contribute to the epilithic biofilms mode of life in GFSs. Importantly, these observations may be generalizable and potentially extended to other environments which may be more or less impacted by human activity.

Chronology, time averaging, and oxygen isotope composition of harvested marine mollusk assemblages from Ifri Oudadane, northeast Morocco

The archaeological site of Ifri Oudadane, NE Morocco, contains well-preserved marine mollusk concentrations throughout the Epipaleolithic (hunting-gathering) and Neolithic (food production) cultural phases, useful to test hypotheses driving such transition. However, the chronology and stratigraphy of harvested shells is complex due to the confluence of human activity and natural deposition processes. This work first quantifies the age and degree of time averaging of archaeological shells and then estimates sea-surface temperatures (SSTs) from the oxygen isotopes of selected specimens. Thirty-four radiocarbon-dated shells exhibited significant time averaging between 310 to 1170 yr that could not be explained by analytical error alone. This finding illustrates the need for individually dating shells in future paleoclimate investigations aiming for high temporal resolution. Nine isotopically analyzed shells dated to the Neolithic phase, between 5700 and 7600 cal yr BP, indicate that assuming constant oxygen isotopes of seawater, SSTs remained consistently warm, between 20°C and 22°C, that is, 2°C–4°C warmer than today. Results point to warmer conditions during the Neolithic, supporting the hypothesis that the rise of a food production mode of life in NE Morocco could have in part been triggered by warming conditions following the colder 8.2 event.

Late Ediacaran life on land: desiccated microbial mats and large biofilm streamers

The Ediacaran period witnessed transformational change across the Earth–life system, but life on land during this interval is poorly understood. Non-marine/transitional Ediacaran sediments preserve a variety of probable microbially induced sedimentary structures and fossil matgrounds, and the ecology, biogeochemistry and sedimentological impacts of the organisms responsible are now ripe for investigation. Here, we report well-preserved fossils from emergent siliciclastic depositional environments in the Ediacaran of Newfoundland, Canada. These include exquisite, mouldically preserved microbial mats with desiccation cracks and flip-overs, abundant Arumberia -type fossils and, most notably, assemblages of centimetre-to-metre-scale, subparallel, branching, overlapping, gently curving ribbon-like features preserved by aluminosilicate and phosphate minerals, with associated filamentous microfossils. We present morphological, petrographic and taphonomic evidence that the ribbons are best interpreted as fossilized current-induced biofilm streamers, the earliest record of an important mode of life (macroscopic streamer formation) for terrestrial microbial ecosystems today. Their presence shows that late Ediacaran terrestrial environments could produce substantial biomass, and supports recent interpretations of Arumberia as a current-influenced microbial mat fossil, which we here suggest existed on a ‘streamer–arumberiamorph spectrum’. Finally, the absence of classic Ediacaran macrobiota from these rocks despite evidently favourable conditions for soft tissue preservation upholds the consensus that those organisms were exclusively marine.

Rethinking Conceptual Sufism: A Synthesis of Islamic Spirituality, Asceticism, and Mysticism

Far from being a school or a sect, Sufism is an ideology, a mode of life, a set of principles, and a ‘faith in practice.’ Sufism has been addressed and presented by scholars countless times. It has been primarily defined as either Islamic mysticism or as the spiritual dimension of Islam. Yet, as much as mysticism is ineffable as much as the published research is full of tangled definitions that only scholars can comprehend. The traditional approach to the study of Sufism makes the topic burdensome and mentally unattainable to the learned public. This article explains Sufism without using complex terminology or intense presentations of mystical states and stations. It is a scholarly attempt that is ultimately designed to provide a straightforward definition of Sufism. It presents Sufism in a three-fold manner, as a synthesis of three Islamic principles: Islamic spirituality, asceticism, and mysticism. Each of the three dimensions is explained in an Islamic context to demonstrate the validity of the Sufi trends as being purely Islamic. Spirituality, asceticism, and mysticism are all discussed within the frame of Tradition, that is, the Quran and the Sunna of the Prophet Muhammad.