Анастасия Литвинова

Russian metallurgical companies invest in their modernization on average 200 billion rubles annually. How could a scientist in the 19th century manage to successfully introduce foreign innovations into the industry with a minimum budget?

Exports of Russian coal to Asia-Pacific region will increase 2.5 times: from 100 million tons in 2018 to 252 million tons in 2035. This forecast was recently given by the head of the Ministry of Energy Alexander Novak. However, the growth of production is unthinkable without constant work to improve safety in the quarries and mines.

By experts’ estimates, up to 35% of the total volume of oil is produced in the sea. And although the first project for the construction of oil platforms was proposed by a colleague of Robert Nobel back in 1896, the document merely lay on the shelf for more than 50 years.

What can be common between the Soviet scientist who founded the whole paleontological science of tafonomy and the legendary director George Lucas? Why do some critics accuse the American of plagiarism?

Rock salt deposits in the Bakhmut basin, huge reserves of coal in the Donetsk basin, the presence of a serious iron ore deposit in the center of European Russia. What helped the Russian scientist to foresee these and many other geological finds in Russia?

In 1912, an unexpected find was handed over to paleontologist Anatoly Ryabinin: a fossil bone that supposedly belonged to a dinosaur. This caused an ample resonance: no remains of the vertebrates of the Mesozoic era had ever been be found on the territory of Russia before the 20th century.

Vladimir Obruchev wrote his famous novel at the age of 61. Vladimir Vysotsky, Marina Vlady, Oleg Dal, Vladislav Dvorzhetsky fought for the right to shoot in its film adaptation, and only in the first year after release, more than 41 million people watched the film. The most amazing thing is that the author of the book was first of all not a fiction writer, but a world-famous geologist!

Geologist Larisa Popugayeva was not even 30 years old when she discovered the first kimberlite pipe in the USSR. This event gave rise to industrial diamond mining in the country, but the discoverer was stigmatized.

In 1908, a catastrophe occurred at the Rykovsky coal mines, which to this day remains the largest accident at coal mining enterprises in Russia. The manager of the mine did not deny his accountability for the deaths of 274 people. Why then was he punished only symbolically?

Next to nothing is known about the scientist who at the beginning of the 20th century founded geological exploration and petroleum geology in Russia. What is the reason for such a negligible attention of descendants in relation to the traveler and discoverer, whose research formed the basis for constructing a geological map of Russia? Was it his Polish origin or change of citizenship after the October Revolution?

When it comes to this country, then, along with its ancient history and the biblical Mount Ararat, first of all comes to mind the world-famous cognac and the love of the nation for chess. However, first of all, Armenia has an exceptionally strong higher school.

An average price on gas recorded in the first half of the year at the Henry Hub, a distribution hub on the natural gas pipeline system in the US, amounted to $1.81 per million British thermal units. To put it differently, that is less than $65 per thousand cubic metres. Neither the situation is any better for gas sellers in Europe. For instance, the Title Transfer Facility (TTF) - Europe’s most popular trading point for natural gas in the Netherlands - offers a price of $55. In Asian countries, prices on natural gas are traditionally higher, but even there, due to coronavirus, they have not risen above $100 for a rather long time.

As the concentration of a valuable component in ores is declining, the complexity of developing fossil fuel deposits is increasing, and competition is growing, oil & gas and mining companies face the challenge of raising production profitability.

Subglacial Lake Vostok found in the centre of Antarctica is a unique object that is of high interest to scientists from all over the world. It is the only place on Earth capable of providing reliable paleoclimate data.

On Thursday, July 9, the University of Mining and Technology (CUMT), located in Xuzhou, received the status of a peer university of the International Competence Center for Mining Engineering Education under the auspices of UNESCO. The signing ceremony was held online. The ceremony was attended by Vladimir Litvinenko, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Competence Center, Song Xuefeng, President of the China University of Mining and Technology, and Kirill Molodtsov, Assistant to the Head of the Administration of the RF President.

The Celestial Empire promptly coped with the second wave of the epidemic and is returning to its previous way of life. How much has it changed? Has unemployment risen? And has the pandemic affected the level of cooperation between scientists from Russia and China? These and other questions Forpost.ru addressed to Xiaowei Feng, a researcher at the State Laboratory of Coal Resources and Safe Mining of the University of Mining and Technology, located in Xuzhou City.