Vol 86, No 2 (2016)

Solar energy is one of the most promising industries of renewable power engineering. In Russia, the large-scale development of solar engineering is related to the launch of the production of thin-film solar modules based on amorphous silicon at Hevel LLC in February 2015. This company is qualified to create a full-fledged high-tech solar energy industry as an alternative to traditional power sources. Its activity is aimed at improving the efficiency, reducing the production cost, and expanding the scope of application of solar modules. In order to support and develop this industry, the Research and Development Center for Thin-Film Technologies started to operate under the Ioffe Physicotechnical Institute in 2012, its main goal being to improve the key parameters of solar modules based on amorphous silicon in the interests of Hevel LLC.

Why does Russia need capital exports amid the current investment recession within the country? RAS Corresponding Member A.V. Kuznetsov gave a substantiated answer in his presentation at a meeting of the RAS Presidium. Resting on the results of his survey conducted at the RAS Institute of World Economy and International Relations, the presenter highlighted the main problems of foreign investments by Russian multinational companies that arose or aggravated after the change of power in Ukraine and the beginning of the “war of sanctions” with the West. He paid special attention to the competition of Russian companies with West European and East Asian multinationals, suggesting a typology of Russian companies that invest abroad and formulating the main objectives for government regulation of this activity.

The age structure of a population is an important factor of progressive economic growth. Population ageing is associated with the demographic characteristics of the population; when we evaluate population ageing, we evaluate population processes and indicators that are typically interconnected and interrelated. Two main factors contribute to the ageing of a population, namely, declines in mortality and fertility. Our study aims at describing population ageing in the Russian Federation by the last census of 2010. The purpose of the present paper is also to highlight selected indicators of population ageing in 83 federal subjects of Russia, showing a significant spatial differentiation of population ageing, depending on gender and urban–rural habitation.

Frozen graves of representatives of the Pazyryk culture, one of the most interesting Scythian cultures (the 6th–3rd centuries BC), undisturbed by ancient robbers, were found and investigated on the Ukok Plateau, one of the highest regions of the Altai Mountains with registered archaeological artifacts. It is an unprecedented occurrence in the more than century-old history of the study of this culture: all the known burial places had been robbed. The frozen graves contained numerous almost pristine items of the accompanying inventory, primarily made of organic materials, which do not survive under other conditions. In two cases, mummified bodies, male and female, were found. All these materials have been studied for more than 20 years by representatives of different sciences, which has ensured significant progress in studying not only the Pazyryk culture but also the epoch as a whole.

Some important events in the agrarian history of Russia in the 20th century are analyzed from the standpoint of modern peasant studies. The author relies on materials of regular (1992–2000) sessions of the theoretical seminar “Contemporary Concepts of Agrarian Development.” That seminar was led by outstanding scientists—the Russian agrarian historian V.P. Danilov and the British historical sociologist in Russian peasant and postpeasant society T. Shanin. In the opinion of V.V. Babashkin, the methodology that was elaborated at these roundtable sessions ought to occupy its rightful place in Russian historical and sociological studies.

Our opinion on the properties of the Earth’s climate system does not coincide with that generally accepted. Statistical analysis shows that, if we put aside the most substantial natural perturbing factors, the long-term global temperature dynamics appears as a step function of time. This dynamics is fundamentally different from the climate system’s continuous response to external anthropogenic effects, which is demonstrated in the models of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The variants illustrated by a simple model (the system, affected either inadvertently or externally, changes from one quasi-stationary state to another) seem to be more suitable.