Статьи

Purpose. The research is purposed at substantiation of the design of floating marine stations with a wave energy generator. The proposed construction is of higher efficiency as compared to the known designs due to the application of roll oscillations and resonance operating mode.

Methods and Results. The resonance method of converting wave energy into electrical energy, as well as the design of an autonomous station based on the resonance conversion of the station hull roll oscillations into the electrical energy are described. The method implies adjusting the frequency of natural angular oscillations of the floating station hull to the significant wave frequency. It has been theoretically proved that the conversion of roll oscillations energy is more effective than the conversion of vertical oscillations. This is due to the fact that the amount of damping during vertical vibrations of a cylindrical body in water exceeds the amount of damping during angular oscillations of such a body. Besides, the proposed method is shown to be effective for applications in the development of measurement systems and storage devices. The design of a floating station is proposed for implementing the resonance method for converting wave energy. It is shown that adjusting the frequency of natural onboard oscillations of the station hull to the significant wave frequency can be done using the additional filled tanks. The algorithm for adjusting the hull roll oscillations to the resonance with significant wave frequency is described. The kinematic scheme for a mechanical converter of roll energy into electrical one is proposed.

Conclusions. The results of theoretical studies were validated experimentally using the device test model in a wave experimental basin. They show that the hydrodynamic efficiency of the proposed wave converter increases as the wave heights decrease.

In this study, two examples of physical experiment automation using computer vision and deep learning techniques are considered. The first of them involves the use of classical computer vision techniques to detect and track the oblique shock wave on the experimental shadowgraph images. This was achieved using Canny edge detection and Hough transform, which allowed to obtain the line equation corresponding to the oblique shock wave. By automatically calculating the angle of this wave for each frame in the video, the process of extracting quantitative information from flow visualizations was significantly accelerated. In the second example, a convolutional neural network was trained to identify four classes of objects on the shadowgraph images, namely vertical shock waves, bow shocks, plumes, and opaque particles in the flow. The custom object detection model is based on the up-todate YOLOv8 architecture. To realize this task, a dataset of 1493 labeled shadowgraph images was collected. The model showed excellent performance during the learning process, with model precision and mAP50 scores exceeding 0.9. It was successfully applied to detect objects on the shadowgraph images, demonstrating the potential of deep learning techniques for automating the processing of flow visualizations. Overall, this study highlights the significant benefits of combining classical computer vision algorithms with deep learning techniques in the automation of physical experiments. However, classical algorithms demand the writing additional code to extract the required information. The deep neural networks can perform this task automatically, provided that a well-annotated dataset is available. This approach offers a promising avenue for accelerating the analysis of flow visualizations and the extraction of quantitative information in physical experiments.

A recurrent formula for estimating an impedance of the cathode catalyst layer with fast oxygen transport in a polymer electrolyte fuel cell is derived. The catalyst layer is divided into N sub-layers and application of the charge conservation law enables to obtain the nonlinear recurrent relation Zn = f(Zn-1), where Zn is the accumulated impedance of all sub-layers up to the n-th one. Numerical solution of this relation gives the total impedance of the catalyst layer with taking into account variation of the static overpotential of the oxygen reduction reaction along the depth of this layer. The model is simple, robust and two orders of magnitude faster than the standard model based on numerical solution of the differential equation.

The study examined animal-based metaphors in Igbo with a focus on their cultural and contextual meanings and interpretations. It adopted the pragmatic methodological approach involving interviews with 20 participants drawn from various Igbo culture areas to collect animal-based metaphors as well as their meanings and interpretations. Introspection also featured in data collection as the authors are native speakers of Igbo. The study revealed that animal-based metaphors are used to describe human personality, conduct or behavior. This is essentially by the process of associating some features or attributes of the animals with human conduct and personality. The study further identified that some metaphors could be used in dual metaphorical sense, i.e., derogatory/negative, and commendatory/ positive, and these depend on the cultural connotations as well as contextual meanings and interpretations of the referents. The study concludes that animalbased metaphors in the Igbo language and culture reflect and represent the description of a person, conduct or behavior, as well as beliefs and realities among the Igbo.

Впервые приводятся сведения о нахождении вида Astragalus teskhemicus в центральной и северо-западной части Монголии, ранее считавшегося эндемиком песков Цугер-Элс на юге Республики Тыва. Установлено, что A. teskhemicus встречается в составе псаммофитных сообществ - чабрецовых и полынных.

A new feather mite species, Dolichodectes sibiricus sp. n. (Pterodectinae), is described from the Dark-sided Flycatcher, Muscicapa sibirica Gmelin, JF, captured on the southern coast of Lake Baikal, Buryatia, Russia. The new species is closest to D. allocaulus (Gaud and Mouchet 1957) and D. platynocercus (Gaud and Mouchet, 1957) from Africa and is distinguished from them in the following features. In males of D. sibiricus, the lateral enlargements of opisthosomal lobes are of a complicated form and consist of distinct angular projections bearing setae f2 and rounded ledges at level of setae h2, and the aedeagus extends to the level of setae ps3; in females, the prodorsal and hysteronotal shields lack ornamentation, the terminal appendages at their bases are 2–2.5 times thicker that setae h2, and setae e2 are situated closer to the level of setae e1 than to the posterior margin of the hysteronotal shield. Brief comments on the systematics of the genus Dolichodectes, a key to the known species, an updated checklist of the world fauna, as well as host associations are provided.

The paper describes a new species, Trouessartia cyane sp. n., collected from the Siberian Blue Robin Larvivora cyane (Pallas) (type host) and the Rufous-tailed Robin L. sibilans Swinhoe in Primorsky Krai (the Russian Far East). The description is supplemented with barcoding data (mitochondrial cytochrome C oxidase subunit I gene).

Trouessartia cyane is closest to T. larvivorae Mironov, 2021 and T. rubecula Jablonska, 1968, differing mainly in measurable characteristics. In particular, in males of T. cyane, the length of terminal lamellae is 20–23 (vs. 25–30 in T. larvivorae and 30–35 in T. rubecula); in females, the length of idiosoma is 515–545 (vs. 555–590 in T. larvivorae and 570–625 in T. rubecula), the distance between setae se is 85–90 (vs. 100–120), the width of opisthosoma at the level of setae h2 is 87–97 (vs. 105–115), setae h1 are thin spiculiform (vs. lanceolate).

Genetic distances within T. cyane, as well as between the new species and four closely related Trouessartia species from four muscicapids distributed in northern Eurasia, have been analyzed using Kimura’s two-parameter (K2P) model. Intraspecific genetic distances within T. cyane varied between 0.006 and 0.01; interspecific distances between the new species and morphologically
close species ranged from 0.154 (T. rubecula) to 0.185 (T. calliope).

Phoretic deutonymphs of Winterschmidtia tawantinsuyuca sp. n. (Acari: Winterschmidtiidae) are described from Peru. This is the fourth species of the genus recorded in the Neotropical realm. Similar to the three other Peruvian species, the new species is phoretic on bark beetles, but this is the first finding of Winterschmidtia on the beetles of the genus Xyleborus (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Scolytinae). The new species differs from all others in the ornamentation on of its prodorsal shield.

We describe unusual heteromorphic deutonymph of Mycetinopus striatipedis gen. and sp. n. (Acari: Acaridae) phoretic on the handsome fungus beetle Mycetina marginalis (Coleoptera, Endomychidae) in the Eastern Palearctic. These deutonymphs have a unique combination of character states that make them very distinct in the family Acaridae: an unpaired pigmented spot
on the anterior propodosoma is present; supracoxal setae scx filiform and bifurcate; genu I with two solenidia; tibia-tarsi I–II are distinctly elongated and striated; vertical setae ve are present, and tarsal setae aa are lacking. Our work emphasizes the importance of continued exploration and documentation of the biodiversity of astigmatid mites associated with invertebrate hosts.

The Indian government has recently transformed its indirect taxation system with the adoption of Goods and Service Tax (GST) in India. However, this taxation reform has a direct impact on the compliance behavior of the taxpayer as explicated by low GST revenue of the country. Since GST is a new taxation law in India, it become pertinent to explore the compliance behavior of GST taxpayers to proffer valuable suggestions and feedback to the concerned authorities for devising appropriate policies and strategies to comprehend and control the non-compliance behavior of the GST taxpayers. Therefore, the present study analyzed the compliance behavior
of GST taxpayers by synthesizing the theory of planned behavior by collecting the data from 503 GST taxpayers using snowball random sampling with the application of exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. The collected data was analyzed using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis to confirm the theory of planned behavior to comprehend the compliance behavior of the GST taxpayers. The findings of the study assert that the theory of planned behavior explain the 60.1% variance of the total compliance behavior of the GST taxpayers. Moreover, the findings posit that the attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control have a positive impact on the compliance behavior of the GST taxpayers. The proposed instrumental scale may be applied in future research studies to comprehend the compliance behavior of GST taxpayers at national and international level and therefore, this study may have major implications for the government, academicians and policy makers for
improving the compliance behavior of the GST taxpayers.

A survey of the state of the world and Russian market for selenium and tellurium is made on the basis of published studies.

The following goals were set within the scientific work: to create a method, an
algorithm and a program for compression of raster (pixel) graphic information using special
mathematical methods, or affine transformations. The main task was to provide a high degree of image compression with a minimum deterioration of image quality. An original method for replacing a large number of pixel blocks in the source image by a relatively small number of the most suitable specially created domain blocks was developed. Affine transformation consists in moving any domain block from a set to any part of the image, while ensuring maximum similarity of source and domain blocks.

To implement the method, an algorithm and a program in the modern and popular Python language have been developed. We have considered the example of image transformation in grayscale of 256x256 pixels using domain blocks created from 4x4 pixel image areas. The result is an image visually indistinguishable from the original image, which requires only 0.3125 of the original information to describe. Calculations were also performed with a smaller number of domain blocks.

The developed method and program proved a high degree of compression of bitmap images with preservation of their quality. It is possible to further improve the described algorithm and the program presented on the author’s site by simultaneous application of different types of affine transformations.

It is shown that the same method can be used not only for image processing, but also for the detection of similarity (fractal properties) in any flow of information.