Human capital development: development of professional competencies through soft skills

The goal of the article is to analyze the development of the professional competency of leadership through the development of soft skills in the students of Russian engineering universities on the example of the Moscow Polytechnic University. The most demanded and dynamic part of the labor market is currently represented by engineering specialists. However, successful professional and career growth, as well as the effective development of human capital as the main resource of the innovative development of modern society, requires a combination of engineering (hard skills) and humanitarian (soft skills) abilities in a specialist. The development of many socially significant processes in modern society demonstrates aggravated contradictions and the development of new realization trends many of which are associated with changes in the parameters of these processes which, in turn, is determined by the mass implementation of innovative digital technologies and globalization processes. Globalization as a process ensuring the accessibility and openness of information has a significant impact on the transformation of national values within a country in favor of the emergence of global social, moral, and legal values and social behavior norms in the field of political and state power, as well as the economy. Leadership as a social phenomenon bearing the main load of managing all socially significant processes is also changing. Leadership as a social phenomenon is subject to constant scientific study and analysis. For this purpose, the GLOBE (Global Leadership and Organization Behavior Effectiveness) International Research Program was created. The GLOBE program coordinates the study of leadership in more than 60 countries which also supports the relevance of researching the phenomenon of leadership. In the professional activity, leadership manifests through the “leadership qualities” competency.

Clouds around the World: How a Simple Citizen Science Data Challenge Became a Worldwide Success

Citizen science is often recognized for its potential to directly engage the public in science, and is uniquely positioned to support and extend participants’ learning in science. In March 2018, the Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) Program, NASA’s largest and longest-lasting citizen science program about Earth, organized a month-long event that asked people around the world to contribute daily cloud observations and photographs of the sky (15 March–15 April 2018). What was considered a simple engagement activity turned into an unprecedented worldwide event that garnered major public interest and media recognition, collecting over 55,000 observations from 99 different countries, in more than 15,000 locations, on every continent including Antarctica. The event was called the “Spring Cloud Challenge” and was created to 1) engage the general public in the scientific process and promote the use of the GLOBE Observer app, 2) collect ground-based visual observations of varying cloud types during boreal spring, and 3) increase the number and locations of ground-based visual cloud observations collocated with cloud-observing satellites. The event resulted in roughly 3 times more observations than during the historic and highly publicized 2017 North American total solar eclipse. The dataset also includes observations over the Drake Passage in Antarctica and reports from intense Saharan dust events. This article describes how the challenge was crafted, outreach to volunteer scientists around the world, details of the data collected, and impact of the data.

Using Google Earth for Field trips and map making

The 2004 launch of Google Earth marked a sea change in how spatial data could be viewed and shared. This free software is an interactive, virtual globe program permitting users to actively manipulate a virtual sphere representing Earth that is overlaid with satellite or high-resolution aerial imagery of continental regions and ocean islands (Figure 1). Numerous books have also been produced on its use, for example Brown (2006) and Crowder (2007). The paper by Butler (2006) argues that online tools, led by Google Earth, are changing the way we interact with spatial data. As of May 2011 the publishers Elsevier announced that Google Maps, basically an online and more simplified version of Google Earth, functionality is now available in its journals. This new feature enriches online articles on SciVerse, ScienceDirect with interactive maps, adapting to the requirements of each scientific discipline to visualize and interact with the author’s spatial data. The maps use Google KML (geographic annotation) file format and are created by the authors.

Multidisciplinary GLOBE environmental learning program

GLOBE is a hands-on environmental science and education program in which students, teachers, and researchers from around the world study the environment on local and global level. The aim of GLOBE program is to raise environmental awareness everywhere in the world, contribute to the dissemination of scientific knowledge on Earth and improve the standard of science and mathematics education. GLOBE is suitable for levels of education from primary to secondary school.