Vol 87, No 3 (2017)

On February 9, 2016, the meeting of the RAS Presidium heard and discussed a paper by RAS Corresponding Member N.A. Makhutov on priority basic interdisciplinary research and applied developments in coupled resource substantiation and strength and safety of unique objects using generalized regularities of deformation and fracture processes. It is shown that the solution to the above objectives in relation to unique facilities used in traditional, atomic, and thermonuclear power engineering; the rocket and space complex; aviation; high-speed and heavy haul rail transport; as part of petrochemical equipment; and in shelf developments is associated with the necessity, in addition to traditional approaches, to consider the possibility of initiation and development of accidental and emergency situations. Therefore, modern calculations use simultaneously traditional (strength, service life, wear resistance, cold resistance, and seismic resistance) and new criteria (survivability, safety, and immunity using risk criteria). Through this, new fields of limit states associated with extreme external impacts and internal factors are analyzed.

Research results of interannual variations in iciness anomalies in the Sea of Okhotsk from 1979 to 2015 are presented. This temporal interval is called the warming period, or the warm period in the modern literature. Variations in the ice regime for hierarchical regions of the first level with spatial scales larger than 400 000 km² are analyzed for the first time. A comparative analysis of repeatability of various winter types, as well as periods with positive and negative trends in iciness variations, is made for each ice-covered region chosen and for the entire Sea of Okhotsk. It is shown that ice formation processes and the ice regime in individual regions of the sea have significant differences, which should be considered in developing prognostic models, as well as in field work.

Unification of knowledge and scientific disciplines is the leading trend in forming the current idea of living and nonliving things, as well as their evolution, which is considered as the formation of a hierarchical system, where subsequent forms are determined by previous ones. This approach to the understanding of evolution implies the unity of matter based on the commonality of conceptual laws of physics and chemistry for living and nonliving things. This universalistic understanding of matter and its development, in the opinion of the author, opens the possibility of a fundamental generalization of evolutionary processes, which makes it possible to identify common properties of seemingly unrelated phenomena, processes, and behavioral features of complex systems and offers hope for obtaining a cohesive explanation of evolution.

Throughout human history, the human population has grown with blow-up; however, in recent decades population growth has slowed, tending toward stabilization of the size of the population (demographic transition). The notion of life-saving technologies is introduced in this work; their development is treated as the driver of history; the principle of the technological imperative is formulated, according to which the number of living people is correlated with the level of technological development. A model of global demographic growth is built on this basis, and the growth limits are determined. The demographic transition is explained as the effect of approximation to these limits. A corresponding phenomenological model is proposed, which agrees well with the data.

Having appeared on the planet, Homo sapiens became a geological force and began to act out of tune with the laws of nature. As a result, an antagonistic contradiction appeared between the technosphere, which was created by man, and the biosphere, which evolved according to its laws, and both are unable to coexist harmoniously. V.I. Vernadsky saw a way out of this situation in transferring scientific thought to the planetary, noospheric, level, which would ensure the triumph of Reason. This transfer cannot occur by itself; it requires the joint efforts of all mankind. M.V. Koval’chuk sees the perspective of overcoming the systems crisis in converging sciences and technologies; forming a new noosphere, in which the development of the technosphere will continue the evolution of the biosphere; and replacing traditional technologies with additive or naturelike ones. This requires restructuring of the entire basis of contemporary civilization: science, education, culture, production, technologies, and thinking. What hinders the development of this inspiring road to the shining summits of the new civilization? In the author’s opinion, first comes misunderstanding of the deep mechanisms of global civilization; namely, science does not recognize the evolution of inert matter and the leading role of water in the development of geological and biological processes.

The results of studies on channels of influence of major manifestations of solar–geomagnetic activity, such as solar flares and magnetic storms, on weather, the climate, and humans are presented. The accompanying energy fluxes are completely absorbed by the Earth’s ionosphere, causing emissive radiation in the microwave (UHF, SHF, and EHF) range. It is shown that this microwave radiation can control the origination of optically thin cloudiness by creating a condensation–cluster haze in the troposphere. A similar approach is proposed for the mechanism of forming water associates in the human organism. Processes from atomic physics and the physics of atomic collisions are used, implying that the effect of cluster formation is determined by the fact that the orbital angular momentum of Rydberg electrons (participating in the neutralization of the associates' charge) grows in the microwave field. Quantitative estimations of the effects of clusterization during a global magnetic storm agree well with the available experiments.

We are in the habit of living in a deterministic world, in which knowledge of the state of the system at a point in time allows us to describe the future unambiguously. Ilya Prigogine and his students were able to shake this idea, which had been formulated long ago by Isaac Newton. They were able to show that everything is much more complicated, that instability generates ambiguity, and that the future state of a system can at best be described only probabilistically.