Август 2000 г.

Российская наука и мир (по материалам зарубежной электронной прессы)

CONTENTS / ОГЛАВЛЕНИЕ


• Putin Laments Brain Drain from Russian Scientific Centers
• Russia's budget 2001 to invest in science, defence -- Klebanov
• Researchers Say Russian Permafrost Could Melt in 23rd Century
• Putin, Russian academicians to meet in Sochi
• Wooden Pyramid to Trap Metal Used for Aerospace Parts
• The Long Arm of Radiation
• Minister speaks in favour of new aviation technologies
• Russian leading arms exporters subject to state inspection
• Putin reiterates desire to implement START II, conclude START III
• Evidence Suggests Birds Did Evolve From Some Dinosaurs
• India supplies supercomputer to Russia
• Inflatable Craft to Launch from Submarine
• Soyuz Rocket Lofts Second Pair of Cluster Probes
• An Improvement in Vital Signs

Президент Владимир Путин выразил сожаление о том, что низкая заработная плата, которую получают российские ученые, приводит к "утечке мозгов" из Российских лабораторий и институтов.

Moscow, Aug 16, 2000 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday lamented the meager salaries Russian scientists receive, blaming that for the "brain drain" from Russian laboratories and institutes.
Speaking to top scientists in the southern resort city of Sochi, Putin said about 30,000 Russian scientists are now working abroad, and that many who remain in Russia are nearing retirement age, according to the Interfax news agency. "For a long time, scarce funds were allocated on paper to the development of science ... however, science did not receive them," he told the gathering of members of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He said funding has improved somewhat recently. He said scientists in Russia still earn less than the average monthly wage, according to Interfax. The average wage in Russia in 1999 was about 1,700 rubles (dlrs 60 at the time) per month.
Russian scientists fetch much higher salaries in Western Europe and the United States for their strong training in mathematics and basic science.

Находящийся в Омске с рабочим визитом премьер-министр России Игорь Клебанов заявил, что Российское правительство планировало государственный бюджет 2001 таким образом, чтобы значительные ассигнования были направлены на укрепление и развитие как фундаментальной, так и прикладной науки.

OMSK, August 1 (Itar-Tass) -- Russian Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov, now here on a working visit, on Tuesday stated that the Russian government would plan a state budget for 2001 so that considerable allocations should be made for the needs of defence and development of science, the applied science included.
According to Klebanov, a comprehensive program for the arms' development into the year 2010 was now in work. The vice-premier said that much was to be done to create an unified federal structure for the purposes of defence. Klebanov said that all those problems would be discussed on Wednesday at a conference of Siberia's regional leaders, managers of major local defence industries and research institutions.

Средняя температура на севере Европейской части России может повышаться на 4 градуса Цельсия в последующие 240 лет из-за глобального потепления. Это может привести к таянию вечной мерзлоты, сообщает агентство Интерфакс, ссылаясь на Британский Центр прогнозов и исследования климата

MOSCOW(Aug. 2) XINHUA -- The permafrost in northern Russia' s Komi republic could melt in the 23rd century, a British research center has warned.
The average temperature in the North European part of Russia may rise by 4 degrees Celsius within the next 240 years due to global warming, causing the melting to occur, the Interfax news agency reported Wednesday, quoting Britain's Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research. The prediction was cited at a news briefing by German researcher Otto Habeck Wednesday in the Russian city of Syktyvkar, Interfax said.
The observations of reindeer breeders in Komi republic and Nenets autonomous district, Arkhangelsk region corroborate the Hadley Center's data, Habeck said.
The German scientist conducted his research under the auspices of the European Union's Tundra project. The project was carried out by leading universities of Britain, Finland, Netherlands and Denmark together with the Komi Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Urals branch, Interfax said.

Российский Президент Владимир Путин встретится с членами Российской Академии Наук, чтобы обсудить развитие самых современных отраслей Российской науки, таких как ядерная физика, информационная наука, космические исследования, металлургия, химия и генетика.

SOCHI, August 16 (Itar-Tass) - Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet full members of the Russian Academy of Sciences on Wednesday to discuss the development of advanced branches of Russian science, such as nuclear physics, information science, space exploration, metallurgy, chemistry and genetics.
The meeting will be held at the Dagomys health and recreation complex in Sochi, a Black Sea resort town where the head of state is staying on a vacation. It will be attended by Russian Security Council Chief Sergei Ivanov, Vice-Premier Ilya Klebanov, the Academy of Sciences President Yuri Osipov, leader of the Fatherland-All Russia Duma faction Academician Yevgeny Primakov, the Academy of Sciences Vice-President Gennady Mesyats, Rector of the Moscow State University Viktor Sadovnichiy, President of the Kurchatov Institute scientific centre Yevgeny Velikhov, Director of the Space Research Institute Albert Galeyev, etc.

Российские ученые сооружают деревянную пирамиду над кратером вулкана на северном побережье Японии, с тем, чтобы попытаться собрать газы, содержащие редкий металл рений, один из самых тяжелых и тугоплавких металлов.

LONDON, Aug. 23 -- Russian scientists are building a wooden pyramid over a volcanic vent on an island off the north coast of Japan to try to trap gases containing the rare metal rhenium, the New Scientist reported today. Rhenium, a hard-wearing silvery metal with a high melting point, is an essential part of aerospace components, satellites and missiles and also is used as a catalyst for producing high-octane fuels.
A Russian expedition on Iturup, a small island that is part of the Kuril chain, is building a test pyramid with a 30-foot square base over a smoke vent on the Kudriavy volcano this month, the magazine said.
The scientists hope rhenium sulphide gas will be trapped in the pyramid and then channeled to another trap filled with a mineral called zeolite, which absorbs the gas.
Pure rhenium sulphide gas can then be released by heating the zeolite, the magazine added.
The Russian rhenium-hunters, led by Alexander Kremenetsky from the Institute of Mineralogy, Geochemistry and Crystal Chemistry of Rare Earth Elements in Moscow, believe they eventually may be able to produce two tons of rhenium a year if they put a cap over Kudriavy's whole field of smoke vents.

Pricey Per Kilo

This compares to 40-45 tons produced worldwide each year, New Scientist said. About 15-17 tons are produced annually by Chile's Molymet, 6 tons by U.S. producer Cyprus-Amax and around 3 tons from Kazakhstan, with further supplies coming from stockpiles. Other scientists doubt the Russian estimates. Tobias Fischer, an assistant professor of vulcanology at the University of New Mexico who went to Iturup in 1996, and others have said Kudriavy would produce about 10 times less rhenium than the Russian estimates. Rhenium trades at about $1,325 a kilo. Most of the rhenium currently available is a byproduct of molybdenum sulphide which is in turn a byproduct of copper.

Британские и российские ученые, изучающие действие радиации, предполагают, что третье поколение мышей, подвергшихся ионизирующему излучению при атомном взрыве, имеют больше генетических изменений, чем от обычных рентгеновских лучей

THURSDAY May 4 (HealthSCOUT) -- Genetic changes caused by a single, intense blast of radiation could extend to future generations, says a new study.
British and Russian scientists studying the effects of radiation suggest that the third generation of mice exposed to acute ionizing radiation -- the kind you get from an atomic blast, not a standard series of X-rays -- were more likely than normal to have genetic mutations. Results of the study appear in today's issue of Nature.
However, what's true for mice may not be true for humans, says at least one expert. "Normally, when we think of people being exposed to radiation, we worry about whether they will come down with cancer. What they're suggesting is that maybe we also need to worry about the cancer risk of the offspring," says Steven Leadon, a professor of molecular radiobiology at the University of North Carolina.
However, Leadon cites the generations following the survivors of the atomic explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II who do not appear to have an increased risk of cancer compared with the general population.
Scientists have known for decades that animals exposed to ionizing radiation suffer mutations in their sperm and ovum, leading to mutations in their offspring. In the latest study, however, the international team of scientists took the research a step further.
They exposed male mice to fission radiation at high levels, similar to those produced during the 1986 accident at Russia's Chernobyl nuclear power plant, mated them with normal females and then mated the resulting offspring with normal females and normal males to produce a third generation.
Lead author Yuri Dubrova, a professor of genetics at the University of Leicester in England, says he was stunned to find a six-fold increase in mutations in third-generation males and a 3.5-fold increase in third-generation females.
"This is for animals that have not seen any radiation whatsoever," Dubrova says. The researchers cannot yet explain the difference between the two genders, he says.
" Most damage to the genome should go through a DNA repair system," he says." Otherwise, there's no way to survive." Since the mutations don't appear to be severe enough to cause death or serious harm, the researchers suspect that the radiation causes some sort of signal that somehow sidesteps normal DNA repair systems. This signal may be able to jump generations, Dubrova says, perhaps telling genes in the third generation to activate at the wrong time.
" Exposure to fission neutrons currently seldom happens to humans," Dubrova says. "[Radiation] exposure is normally attributed to X-rays and gamma rays." During radiation therapy to treat cancer, which involves ionizing radiation, precautions are taken to protect patients, usually by strategically covering them with lead-lined material.
Humans are more commonly exposed to chronic, low doses of radiation, though Dubrova says researchers don't know whether such exposure produces the same kinds of long-term mutations.
The British and Russian scientists are following the third generation of mice to see what happens to their offspring, and hope to have more answers in about six months, Dubrova says.

What To Do

Previous HealthSCOUT articles report on the incidence of cancer among residents near the Three Mile Island nuclear plant and how caffeine might protect you from gamma radiation -- if you can stomach about 70 cups of coffee.
For more on ionizing radiation, visit the Environmental Protection Agency online for an explanation of this type of radiation and its health effects. Or, see information provided by the Canadian Environmental Advisory Council.

MOSCOW, August 8 (Itar-Tass) - Several vertically integrated holdings will be set up to develop new aviation technologies, Alexander Dondukov, Russian Minister for Industry, Science and Technology, said in the Ekho Moskvy radio broadcast on Tuesday.
Dondukov said that no breakthroughs had taken place in world aviation technologies so far, and that the Russian army would only modernize its equipment in the next ten years. The minister also voiced support for Russia's space programmes.

Главное Управление при президенте России приступило к инспекции Российского Министерства промышленности и науки а также пяти компаний, занимающихся экспортом российского оружия. Инспекция призвана проверить выполнение Федерального закона "О военном и техническом сотрудничестве России с иностранными государствами" и указы президента о повышении эффективности торговых связей с иностранными государствами.

MOSCOW,August 4 (Itar-Tass) -- Russian President's Main Control Directorate has started on regular inspections at the Russian Ministry of Industry and Science and five companies engaged in Russian weapons' exports. The inspection is called to verify the implementation of the federal law "On the Military and Technological Cooperation of Russia with Foreign States," and presidential decrees and executional orders aiming at enhancing the efficiency of the trade ties with foreign states, sources at the Russian military and industrial complex told Tass on Friday.
The arms exporters subject to inspection are Promexport, MiG aircraft construction corporation, concern Antei, machine- building research-and-production amalgamation (NPO Mashinostrojenija), the Instrument-making design bureau in Tula. A report on the results of the inspection is expected to be delivered on October 20.

"Российское руководство последовательно поддерживает укрепление режима нераспространения ядерного оружия, и предпринимает шаги для продолжения процесса ядерного разоружения" - сказал Владимир Путин в приветственном письме Британской Пагуошской Конференции по Науке и Мировым Делам

MOSCOW, Aug 03, 2000 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- President Vladimir Putin on Thursday reiterated promises to fulfill the START II arms reduction treaty, and pushed for concluding a START III treaty that would further cut Russian and U.S. nuclear weapons.
START II, which would slash both countries' nuclear arsenals to between 3,000 and 3,500 warheads each, was ratified by Russian parliament this spring, after years of delay by the Communist opposition. Moscow and Washington are also considering START III, which would set ceilings of 2,000 to 2,500 warheads each.
"The Russian leadership has consistently supported the strengthening of the regime of nonproliferation of nuclear weapons, and is taking steps to continue the process of nuclear disarmament," Putin said in a letter of greeting to Britain's Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs.
"Having ratified START II, Russia intends to work on ensuring its implementation and full observation, as well as the speediest conclusion of START III treaty," Putin's message said.
Still, Russia has threatened to scrap all arms agreements if the United States proceeds with proposals to deploy a new missile defense system. Such a system would likely require Washington to back out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which Moscow considers a cornerstone of global stability.
Putin was in his lakeside Valdai resort residence in northern Russia on Thursday. He hosted a meeting with regional officials on the economic and social development of Russia's northwest.

Дебаты по поводу происхождения птиц от динозавров разгорелись особенно жарко в июне, когда группа российских и американских исследователей предположила, что ископаемые останки небольшой летающей рептилии под названием Лонгисквама, относящейся к архозаврам, самого обширного подкласса пресмыкающихся, в который входят летающие ящеры, произошли 225 миллионов лет назад. Это период, когда появились первые динозавры, но 75 миллионов лет до того, как появились первые птицы. Результаты исследований, проведенных учеными в Вашингтонском университете и их японскими коллегами, опубликованы в журнале Nature от 10 августа

The popular notion that birds evolved from dinosaurs has come under assault recently with the discovery of fossil evidence of a feathered reptile that pre-dates birds.
Now a researcher at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture at the University of Washington and a Japanese colleague have found similarities in bone structure suggesting that birds did, in fact, evolve from a group of dinosaurs.
The research is published in today's issue of the journal Nature. The study shows that in a group of dinosaurs called coelurosaurs, the organization of bone canaliculi – submicron-sized channels that connect bone cells and blood vessels within the bone -- form in a randomly branching network.
The canaliculi take circuitous, meandering routes as they make connections between the bone cells and nutrient sources. That same pattern today is found only among birds. However, in a group of dinosaurs called ornithischians, which includes horned creatures such as Triceratops, the canalicular organization follows a much more regular pattern with very direct and parallel routes, a structure similar to that in modern mammals.
The work also sheds light on another controversy -- whether dinosaurs had high metabolic rates as modern birds do. The researchers found evidence that bundles of collagen fibers -- which bind bone minerals together in much the same way that rebar binds concrete -- have an irregular structure in both birds and coelurosaurs. The layers are thicker in some places and much thinner in others, and often they disappear completely before reforming. In modern vertebrates, this type of structure only occurs in bone that forms very rapidly, as it does in birds.
In mammals, such bone formation happens only at young ages or in healing bone breaks, times when bone growth rates are highest. Otherwise, among vertebrates other than birds, collagen bundles show a much more uniform pattern, with little thickness variation from one part of a layer to another because the layers are growing more slowly.
"Right now, the thing that is closest to what we see in the bones of birds is in the bones of coelurosaurs," said John Rensberger, a UW geological sciences professor and curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Burke museum. Rensberger and Mahito Watabe of the Hayashibara Museum of Natural Sciences in Okayama, Japan, made their comparisons using fossilized dinosaur bones collected from the Gobi Desert in China and from the Hell Creek geological formation in Montana.
The researchers sampled about 550 cross sections of bone, ground to a few microns thick and viewed through a microscope. Most of the cross sections were prepared by 35 students in a series of undergraduate research courses, who took 10 or more samples from each major bone collected from each species. The students, selected from among the top students in a course on dinosaurs that Rensberger teaches, spent some 3,000 hours on the work over three years.
The sheer volume of samples allowed the researchers to understand the variability among species, making it easier to draw conclusions from comparisons between species, Rensberger said. That was particularly important in making the observations of the differences in canaliculi and fiber bundles, since the information describing those structures in most vertebrates, and especially dinosaurs, has been limited. Observations of some of the differences in modern species were recorded in a scientific paper published in German in 1906 and another published in Italian in 1947. But the references were very general, Rensberger said, because the scientists didn't have the breadth of data about variability in those bone structures. "There aren't any textbooks that show this," he said.
The debate over bird evolution grew more heated in June when a team of Russian and U.S. researchers suggested a fossil of a small flying reptile with feathers, called Longisquama, came from 225 million years ago. That's about the time dinosaurs first appeared, but 75 million years before the first birds. Longisquama was an archosaur, part of a group of reptiles from which dinosaurs, birds and crocodiles (birds' closest living relatives) are descended.
"It doesn't necessarily prove that birds had to derive from dinosaurs," Rensberger said of the new research. "But, at least from the data we've seen, that appears to be a logical conclusion."

Индия выполнила свой контракт по поставке в Россию суперкомпьютера для научных исследований, связанных главным образом с моделированием погодных явлений. Этот сверхбыстрый компьютер, выполняющий до 100 миллионов операций в секунду, предназначен для Российско-индийского вычислительного центра, открытого недавно в Москве при институте автоматизации проектирования Российской академии наук

NEW DELHI, August 14 (Itar-Tass) -- India has fulfilled a commercial contract to supply to Russia Param-10000 supercomputer for scientific and applied research connected, specifically, with modelling weather phenomena, Tass was told on Monday by Ram Arora, executive director of centre for designing computer systems at the Indian government.
The latest supercomputer capable of performing up to 100 billion transactions per second is meant for the Russo-Indian computer research centre that opened recently in Moscow at the institute of automation of designing of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Param-10000 cost the Russian side a third or a quarter of its actual price. Half of the cost of the project for the supply of the computer has been repaid by Russian scientists' contribution to the creation of high-tech products for the Indian centre for designing computer systems.

A Russian military submarine could be the launch pad for an upcoming attempt to test an inflatable spacecraft initially conceived for missions to Mars. A Moscow-based company called Lavochkin is preparing a Russian Naval sub for the $700,000 experiment known as Inflatable Reentry and Descend Technology, or IRDT.
The spacecraft took its maiden spaceflight in February as a piggyback payload on a Russian Soyuz-Fregat rocket. In the next test, set for May 2001, a ballistic missile would blast off from the navy sub carrying the spacecraft to a suborbital trajectory for a landing in Australia.
Lavochkin developed the IRDT technology in cooperation with Munich-based DaimlerChrysler Aerospace AG, which is now part of the European aerospace giant Astrium. The companies hope to use the technology as a cheap and simple way of returning cargo from space, including commercial payloads from the International Space Station.
The European Space Agency co-funded the original IRDT mission, together with the European Commission and DaimlerChrysler Aerospace. The International Science and Technology Center, a Moscow-based intergovernmental organization dedicated to keeping Russian rocket technology in Russia, awarded the contract to build the spacecraft to Lavochkin.
Konstantin Pichkhadze, who manages the IRDT project at Lavochkin, told SPACE.com on Wednesday that the company is seriously considering using a Russian sub as a launch pad for a converted submarine-based missile known as Volna.
Earlier plans called for the Volna launch with the IRDT from a land-based naval missile range, however, the use of a submarine would allow more flexibility in the choice of the landing site. In the past, Russian subs have launched several suborbital and orbital missions.

Mixed results from the previous test

In the February launch, two IRDT devices landed in southern Russia within an area used by the Russian military to recover its payloads. Bad weather and deep snow, however, hampered Lavochkin's recovery efforts for days. The smaller IRDT device was eventually found, damaged. The search for the second reentry shield, which was supposed to return the Fregat upper stage, was delayed until spring.
When the search resumed, a few multiple pressurized tanks were found near the landing zone, but they provided too little information to discern the spacecraft's fate.
"There is no logical explanation of what happened [on landing]," Pichkhadze said. Some surmised that local residents simply took the larger IRDT apart and stole its remains but left the tanks. Despite promises of a reward for the recovered pieces of the Fregat or IRDT, nobody came forward. A landing in a flat, deserted part of Australia could make it easier to recover the spacecraft. The Woomera launch site, located in the sparsely populated region of the continent, has been long used for rocket experiments in the past, including space launches.
The next IRDT test also will feature several upgrades aimed at preventing depressurization of the spacecraft -- basically a heat shield -- which had occurred at least in the small IRDT device flown in February.
The shield, along with a satellite mock-up it would carry, will weigh around 308 pounds (140 kilograms) and inflate to around 26 feet (8 meters) during landing. Preliminary analysis shows that Volna is capable of putting the experiment into orbit, but financial reasons prompted Lavochkin to drop this option and stick with the suborbital flight.
In the past, Russian subs have been used to launch suborbital research missions and satellites. Visit SPACE.com for more space-related news, information, entertainment and multimedia, including videos, launch coverage and interactive experiences. Check out cool space images at our photo galleries. Play great SPACE.com games like Astronorama at www.space.com/games

PARIS -- A second pair of European Cluster science satellites dubbed Rumba and Tango are on their way into orbit this morning riding atop a Starsem Soyuz rocket launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakstan.
Liftoff came at 7:13 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (1113 GMT) as the workhorse Soyuz booster roared to life and rose from the desert on a pillar of fire and smoke. It will now take about 90 minutes for the rocket to deliver its cargo into a proper orbit and successfully conclude the launch phase of the mission for the European Space Agency.
The first pair of Cluster probes, known as Salsa and Samba, were dispatched into space 24 days ago on the same type of Soyuz rocket operated by Starsem, a French-Russian consortium that markets the Soyuz launch vehicle. If all goes well, by August 15 the four spacecraft will be in similar orbits and form a unique space quartet. This mini-armada will then spend the next two years exploring the interaction between the charged particles swept along in the solar wind and Earth's magnetic shield, also known as the magnetosphere.

Last week a hefty Russian module with living and working quarters for astronauts docked with the pieces of the international space station already in orbit, a critical step in creating a full-time orbiting laboratory. Meanwhile, NASA bureaucrats put the finishing touches on a realignment of the agency's struggling biology effort that should bolster fundamental research and allow scientists to make better use of the facility, scheduled to be completed in 2005. The two events raise the hopes of U.S. academic space life scientists that their discipline is at last on the ascent at NASA.

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