Октябрь 2000 г.

Российская наука и мир (по материалам зарубежной электронной прессы)

CONTENTS / ОГЛАВЛЕНИЕ


• Physics Prize Lauds Info Technology
• Russian, 2 Americans share 2000 Nobel physics prize
• Nobel Winner Lobbies for Science
• Nobel Winner Meets Putin, Asks for Science Funding
• CERN Link Breathes Life Into Russian Physics
• Siberian Tigers Again Becoming Attractive Target for Poachers
• Russian scientists move to Isle of Man
• World Renowned Education Leader and Researcher Joins Edulink
• Russian Scientist Charged With Exporting Defense Equipment To China
• Russian Scientist Charged
• Boston-Moscow software link skirts Russian obstacles
• From the Kremlin to Castletown
• Russian Space Station Said Ready
• Russia launches cargo ship
• Scientist May Testify U.S. Man Was in Russia as Spy
• Tech Firms Host Russian Visitors
• Putin, researcher discuss measures to support Russia science
• Diamond Duo Sheds Light On Internal Earth Pressure
• First Crew Blasts Off to International Space Station

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) - The Nobel Prizes in physics and chemistry were awarded Tuesday to six scientists who helped bring about the Information Revolution of ever-smaller and faster personal computers, pocket calculators, cell phones, CD players, lifelike TV screens and Gameboys.
The physics prize went to Jack Kilby, who invented the first integrated circuit while at Texas Instruments in 1958, and two physicists whose work contributed to satellite and cell phone technology: Herbert Kroemer of the University of California-Santa Barbara and Zhores Alferov of the A.F. Ioffe Physico-Technico Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia.
The chemistry prize went to Alan Heeger, 64, of the University of California-Santa Barbara, Alan MacDiarmid, 73, of the University of Pennsylvania and Hideki Shirakawa, 64, of the University of Tsukuba in Japan.
The three modified plastics so they can conduct electricity; the pioneering work with "brilliant plastics" could someday lead to computers as small and light as a wristwatch.
The prizes awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences are each worth $915,000. The chemistry prize will be split three ways, while Kilby will receive half of the physics award and his co-winners will get the rest.
Recent Nobels have celebrated basic research into the behavior of subatomic particles and chemical reactions - highly arcane subjects with few real-world applications. This year's winners conducted experiments and developed products that changed everyday life in the largest cities and the most remote villages.
"These guys have controlled the properties of materials in ways that nature wouldn't do on its own," said Louis Bloomfield, author of "Why Things Work" and a University of Virginia physicist. "They made it complicated and incredibly precise. They make cities possible."
Kilby's fingernail-sized integrated circuit, a forerunner of the microchip, replaced bulky and unreliable switches in the first computing devices. The Nobel panel said his work allowed electronics to become smaller, faster,cheaper and more powerful. He also co-invented the first pocket calculator.
"It's a wonderful thing," Kilby said of his Nobel. He said he thought the microchip "would be important for electronics as we knew it then, but I didn't understand how much it would permit the field to expand."
Kilby and Robert Noyce, an industrial pioneer in the Silicon Valley, are considered the co-inventors of the integrated circuit. Kilby built the first circuit, but Noyce received the first patent for a microchip, in 1961, three years before Kilby. Noyce died in 1990. "We shared credit for the invention over the years ... I'm sorry he is not alive. I'm sure if he were, he would share in this prize," Kilby said.
Texas Instruments named its $154 million research complex after Kilby and endowed a professorship at the University of Texas in his name. Kilby, 76, started a foundation that distributes science and technology awards.
Alferov, 70, and Kroemer, a 72-year-old German-born U.S. citizen, independently proposed the heterostructure laser, made of semiconducting material as thin as a few atoms apiece. The technology has been used in mobile phones and satellite links, and used to build laser diodes, which drive the flow of information on the Internet and are found in compact disc players, bar-code readers and laser pointers.
Alferov, who celebrated with colleagues in St. Petersburg, hinted at the decline of his country's once-extraordinary scientific community amid the upheaval in post-Soviet society. "Without science, Russia will not revive. Here's to our science, to our physics," Alferov said, raising a glass of champagne.
The three chemistry prize winners were cited for discoveries that fundamentally altered how we think of plastic and how we use it.
The three developed conductive polymers that have been used to reduce static electricity and interference on photographic film and computer screens. They have been used in the development of color television screens, cellular phone displays and "smart windows" that reflect sunlight, and they are employed in operating rooms to reduce static charges that could endanger patients during surgery.
"My colleagues all over the world have said, "One of these days ...," but it's still a fantastic surprise," Heeger said. "You can take simple things like polymers that are made of plastics and from that one can make many different applications and technologies."
The three scientists created polyacetylene, a plastic that acts much like a very fine aluminum foil and can be made in a lab without mining raw materials. Lighter and more flexible, the new plastics are being used in cheaper and easier-to-manufacture versions of many electronic products, including light emitting diodes in digital displays. Sheets of conductive plastic films are being incorporated into thin, flat TV screens, low-static computer monitors and traffic signs that glow without bulbs.
On the horizon: molecular computers using plastic molecules to carry electrical current.
"The physics prizes are about the electronics of today and the chemistry prizes are about the electronics of the future," academy member Per Ahlberg said.
The Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded Monday to a Swede and two Americans for discoveries about how brain cells communicate.
The economics prize will be announced Wednesday and the literature prize Thursday. The peace prize will be announced Friday in Oslo, Norway. The prizes will be presented Dec. 10.

Российский академик Жорес Алферов и два американца Герберт Кремер и Джек Килби получили Нобелевскую премию 2000 года за основополагающие работы в области информационных и коммуникационных технологий

STOCKHOLM, Oct 10 (Reuters) - Russia's Zhores Alferov and Americans Herbert Kroemer and Jack Kilby shared the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said on Tuesday.
The prize, worth nearly $1 million, goes to scientists and inventors whose work laid the foundation of modern information technology, it said.
Alferov and Kroemer share one half of the prize for work on developing semi-conductors which could be used for ultra-fast computers.
Kilby, of Texas Instruments Inc (NYSE:TXN - news), won the award for his part in the invention of the integrated circuit.
Alferov is the first Russian to win a Nobel prize since Mikhail Gorbachev won the peace prize in 1990.

На встрече с президентом России В. Путиным российский физик Жорес Алферов, используя авторитет Нобелевского лауреата, попросил увеличить финансирование российских научных учреждений.

MOSCOW , (AP) -- Russian physicist Zhores Alferov is using the prestige of the Nobel Prize he won this week to pressure the government into spending more on Russia's scientific establishment, which has been hobbled by the disappearance of Soviet-era subsidies.
Alferov, who shared this year's prize for physics for his work in satellite and cell phone technology, met Thursday with President Vladimir Putin and said he told him Russia "has preserved a powerful scientific potential, which needs strong support."
On Wednesday, Alferov railed at deputies in the lower house of parliament, where he is a deputy with the Communist faction, saying lawmakers were giving themselves too many expensive perks while science struggled for cash. He noted a plan to spend $40 million on new housing for deputies.
"This exceeds all capital investments into all of Russia's science by more than four times," Alferov said. "This house alone would allow us to build scores of new laboratories."
An impassioned Alferov has been holding forth on his cause on nationwide newscasts for the past three days. He and other Russians have portrayed the Nobel as a sign that Russian science is persevering through difficult times.
But Russia doesn't have the money to restore the Soviet-era scientific establishment that nurtured Alferov, whose groundbreaking work was done in the 1960s and 1970s.
Then, the Soviet Union lavished money on numerous scientific institutes, much of whose work focused on trying to compete with the West in military technology.
But with the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union - and the centrally planned command economy that could divert scarce resources from consumer goods to science and the military - the money dried up.
Leading researchers' wages are barely enough to cover most basic expenses. Scores of scientists have left the country, and many Russians bemoan the decline of the nation's scientific tradition.
Alferov has suggested that the draft 2001 budget be revised to raise spending on scientific labs and institutes.
So far, the government has resisted changing the budget, which would be Russia's first balanced budget in a decade.
But many lawmakers in the lower house, the State Duma, have "decided that the awarding of the Nobel Prize is a great pretext for revising the main parameters of the 2001 budget," the business daily Kommersant wrote.
Alferov said he urged Putin to ensure better funding for basic science departments at Russian universities. Russia has a strong tradition of technical and scientific education, and high school students are often several years ahead of their U.S. counterparts in math.
But sophisticated university research equipment is scarce because of cash shortages and professors' salaries are meager, prompting many to seek jobs at foreign colleges and research centers. The meeting was "very effective," Alferov said, declining to specify whether Putin made any promises.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Zhores Alferov, Russia's Nobel-prize winning physicist and a Communist politician, said Thursday he received a sympathetic hearing from President Vladimir Putin in his quest for better science funding.
Unknown outside scientific circles until the Swedish Academy awarded him the Nobel Prize for Physics Tuesday, Alferov has been quick to capitalize on his new-found status as a national hero, criticizing the government for meager spending on science.
Alferov, who shared the prize with Americans Jack Kilby and Herbert Kroemer, pioneered research into technology at the heart of mobile phones, CD players and fiber optics - all of which today's economically battered Russia imports.
But Alferov has a vision of Russian science returning to its Soviet glory days.
"We still have a powerful scientific potential, which needs very powerful funding," Alferov said after what he called an "effective" meeting in the Kremlin with Putin.
Putin warmly embraced a beaming Alferov before sitting down to an hour-long conversation with the 70-year-old scientist.
"With Vladimir Vladimirovich's help, there will be a new impulse from politics in science and cutting-edge technologies," Alferov said afterwards in televised comments.
"He (Putin) has no axe to grind, and he let it be known that he had no intention of pleasing individual interests, but the interests of Russian science," he said.
A day earlier Alferov, who belongs to the Communist faction in the State Duma lower house of parliament, had rebuked the government in a barnstorming speech for planning to spend less than two percent of its small budget on science in 2001.
"How can it be, and I hope the deputies support me, that the draft budget foresees allocating 1.1 billion roubles ($39.5 million) to build a special block of flats for deputies? That's four times higher than all capital investments in Russian science."
Russian scientists have suffered a steep decline in status since the breakup of the Soviet Union nearly a decade ago.Once lavishly funded research institutes have closed their doors or radically scaled back their work.
Just days before science returned to Russian front pages as a success story, scientists and teachers marked International Teachers' Day last week by protesting about their poor pay and conditions outside the State Duma.
One educator held up a banner saying "This is how they value us" and giving the monthly wage of a professor as $60, a senior lecturer as $49, and a laboratory assistant - eight dollars.
"In our country it is hard and difficult for us because research spending is constantly shrinking," Alferov told Reuters shortly after winning the Nobel Tuesday. "It is because they think capitalists and bankers will give something to develop the country - and they will never give anything."

GENEVA -- Without fanfare, 600 Russian scientists here at CERN, the European particle physics laboratory, are playing key roles in building the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a machine that will explore fundamental questions such as why particles have mass, as well as search for exotic new particles whose existence would confirm supersymmetry, a popular theory that aims to unify the four forces of nature. In fact, even though Russia is not one of CERN's 20 member states, most top high-energy physicists in Russia are working on the LHC. Some say their work could prove the salvation of high-energy physics back home.

Sunday Morning News

Scientists estimate about 400 Siberian tigers still survive in the wild, almost all of them here in the Sikhote Alin mountain range in Russia's far east. Among the world's tigers, the Siberian is the largest and the only tiger adapted to living in northern temperate forests.
Siberian tigers have survived mainly because of the sheer size of their habitat, large blocks of unfragmented forests like this with a low density of human population. Seventy years ago, because of hunting pressure, Siberian tigers were nearly extent. But under decades of Soviet wildlife management, they recovered.
Communism was wonderful for tigers. It provided them with a very high level of protection.
That protection fell apart when the Soviet Union collapsed. With open borders and slack enforcement of wildlife laws, Russian poachers began supplying a growing demand in Asian markets for tiger skins and for tiger body parts used in traditional medicines. In just a few years, more than a third of Russia's tigers were wiped out.
Authorities here have used intensified patrols and roadblocks to curb the killings. But the direct of this reserve says they're now dealing with highly organized and professional hunters. And without better-equipped anti-poaching brigades and more severe penalties, he warns poaching will continue.
The tigers are dangerous to local people and their livestock, but conservationists believe the best way to save the tigers is to gain support for them in towns and villages here.
Meanwhile, Russian and American researchers in the Siberian tiger project continue their field work, fitting radio collars on captured tigers. They've learned Siberian tigers need so much territory that existing parks and protected reserves are far too small for them. So they've developed a plan that would safeguard all existing tiger habitat, even outside parks and reserves where tigers and people would have to continue to co-exist. They say it's the only way Siberian tigers can survive.

JOHN TAYLOR, the former chief executive of British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) who was criticised and resigned after quality control data was falsified, has become chairman of a company that imports Russian scientists and develops commercial applications of their technical know-how.
CFB has 10 Russian scientists in a hideaway on the Isle of Man and is to float on London's Aim with a value of around ?20m towards the end of November or in early December.
Mr Taylor, who was further criticised when it emerged that he had received a $300,000 golden handshake after resigning from BNFL in February this year, will be joined at CFB by former Liverpool FC finance director David Chestnutt, who secured the $22m sale of a stake in the club to Granada.
CFB is currently incubating seven companies that will exploit cutting edge Russian university research into materials technology.

Всемирно известный ученый в области образования и обучения с помощью Интернета Борис Беренфельд стал членом комиссии по контролю за качеством учебных программ компании Edulink, Inc.
До работы в США Б. Беренфельд занимал ряд высоких постов в различных научных учреждениях бывшего Советского Союза. С 1986 по 1990 год он был членом Российской академии наук. По его инициативе были организованы учебные занятия для американских и советских студентов и преподавателей на основе телекоммуникационных технологий. Он является автором многих учебников и научных работ в области телекоммуникации и образования

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif., Oct. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Edulink, Inc., doing business as MY-IQUE, (OTC Bulletin Board: MYIQ - news), a leading Internet educational content and technology company, announced today that Boris Berenfeld, Ph.D., a world-recognized education researcher and leader in the field of Internet-based learning, has joined Edulink as a member of the Curriculum Quality Control Committee.
In his new role, Dr. Berenfeld will join other noted Committee members who are reviewing interdisciplinary, cross age 7th and 8th grade curriculum developed by theEdulink core curriculum development Team for use in its soon-to-be-released Smart Schoolhouse(TM), an online, Internet-based learning environment. Dr. Berenfeld will concentrate on reviewing the science content for standards alignment, as well as work with designs for the three dimensional,virtual educational applications that will be part of the learning site.
According to Dr. Ron Rescigno, president of Edulink, the addition of Dr. Berenfeld to the Curriculum Committee brings unmatched experience and a global perspective. "I've had the pleasure of working with Dr. Berenfeld over the years, and I am delighted to add him to our team of respected advisors. Dr. Berenfeld is positioned on the forefront of research on interactive and Internet-based learning. His background and knowledge will ensure that we will meet our goal of creating a rich and full standards- and inquiry-based curriculum that will be highly interactive and compelling to students, teachers, administrators and parents," Rescigno said. Dr. Berenfeld's experience encompasses more than 20 years in the field of interdisciplinary education design and applications of technologies. Most recently, he has been serving as Director, International Center of The Concord Consortium, where he is responsible for research, development and implementation of a new generation of international collaborative Internet-based learning courses.
Over the years, Dr. Berenfeld has served in capacities as a principal investigator, project director, senior scientist, principal investigator, chief scientific and technology advisor for such agencies and organizations as UNESCO; World Bank, European Commission, GLOBE, Inter-Agency Science and Environmental Education Initiative; TERC and The College Board, among others. He has directed projects funded by The National Science Foundation, IBM, Apple Computer, NASA, The MacArthur Foundation, American Museum of Natural History, and the National Geographic Society.
Prior to his work in the United States, Dr. Berenfeld held numerous positions in the top scientific agencies of the former Soviet Union. Elected a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, from 1986 to 1990, he spearheaded the creation of the first telecommunications-based education initiative for students and teachers between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union.
Dr. Berenfeld was awarded his master's of science degree in 1970, and his Ph.D. in 1974 from the University of Moscow. He has authored numerous books and papers in the field of telecommunications and the learning environment, and has served as a speaker and has chaired more than 25 national and international conferences. He is a member of the Editorial Board of Technology Horizon in Education (T.H.E.) Journal and is an associate editor of Information, Communication & Educational (Eci), International Journal.

About Edulink

Владимир Щуров, руководитель лаборатории Института океанологии во Владивостоке, был арестован год назад, когда он собирался пересечь китайскую границу с устройствами для прослушивания под водой, принадлежащими институту. Щурову, который находится под домашним арестом, грозит 30 лет тюрьмы, если он будет признан виновным

MOSCOW, Oct 6, 2000 -- (Agence France Presse) A scientist in Russia's far east has been charged with "violating state secrets" after allegedly exporting hi-tech defense equipment to China, the daily Kommersant reported Thursday citing the Federal Security Service (FSB, formerly KGB).
Vladimir Shchurov, laboratory chief at the Vladivostok Institute of Oceanology, was arrested a year ago as he was about to cross the Chinese border with underwater listening devices belonging to the institute.
Shchurov, who is under house arrest, faces up to 30 years in jail if convicted, the newspaper said.
He denies the listening equipment was destined for military use, according to the newspaper, and maintains the institute signed a contract in July 1999 to supply China's Harbin university with the devices.
The FSB had given the contract the all-clear, he says. Several Russian citizens have been charged in recent years with passing state secrets to foreign governments.
A former Russian navy officer was sentenced to five years in November 1999 for leaking secrets relating to the Baltic fleet to Sweden.
Last November, a Russian researcher at Moscow's USA-Canada Institute was charged with high treason and accused of passing documents about nuclear security to a US researcher.
Valentin Moiseyev, former assistant director of the Russian foreign ministry's Central Asia department, was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment last December for transmitting "top-secret" information to South Korea.
The verdict was later quashed by Russia's Supreme Court. Last July, former Russian diplomat Platon Obukhov was sentenced to 11 years in a hard labor camp for spying for Britain.
Conversely, retired US naval intelligence officer Edmund Pope is due to go on trial later this month on espionage charges, after the FSB arrested him in April for allegedly gathering Russian weapons secrets.

Владимир Щуров, ученый из института океанологии Российской академии наук на Дальнем Востоке России, обвиняется в незаконном экспорте двух приборов для прослушивания океанских шумов, которые он разработал. ФСБ сообщает, что оборудование, арестованное на границе с Китаем на пути в Технический Университет в Харбине в прошлом году, может быть использовано для военных целей, например, для обнаружения субмарин

VLADIVOSTOK, Russia (AP) - A Russian scientist on Friday accused intelligence agents of stifling scientific research by charging him with illegally exporting acoustic equipment.
Vladimir Shchurov, a scientist at the Academy of Sciences' Pacific Oceanographic Institute in Russia's Far East, was charged Tuesday with illegally exporting two pieces of equipment he had designed to pick up ocean noises. He denies the charges.
The Federal Security Service claims the equipment, picked up on the border with China en route to Harbin Engineering University last year, could be used for military purposes such as detecting submarines. But Shchurov dismissed the idea.
"I don't make weapons," he said. "It's ridiculous to say that the results of my work could be used for something like that." He added: "What we were doing was only basic research. This looks like a ban on the scientific profession." Shchurov was the third scientist at the institute who has faced prosecution on security-related charges in the past three years. There have also been several high-profile cases in which researchers or businessmen trading in technology have been jailed across Russia.
Russian researchers are often eager to cooperate with foreign colleagues, partly because the work adds to their meager salaries. Shchurov, who makes $29 a month, said the deal he had with Harbin was worth $80,000. Scientists and human rights groups say the Federal Security Service hasn't shed the Soviet-era mentality of its predecessor, the KGB, and is quick to chase down researchers if it suspects their work could be harmful to Russia in the wrong hands.
"It's a familiar story," said Diederik Lohman of Human Rights Watch. "They're highly sensitive whenever it comes to any kind of sophisticated equipment."
The cases include that of U.S. businessman Edmond Pope, jailed April 3 and charged, along with his Russian contact, with spying. The FSB alleges he was trying to buy plans for a high-speed torpedo, while his supporters say the technology he was purchasing had been advertised commercially.
Another case is that of former navy Capt. Alexander Nikitin, charged with divulging state secrets after co-authoring a report on environmental dangers posed by Russia's northern submarine fleet. He said the information he used had been published before, but spent 11 months in jail while the investigation took place. He was later acquitted.
Shchurov said the FSB was once again mistaken. He said the FSB, along with customs officials, had approved the sale of the goods.
Russian scientists say the practice of hunting down scientists, even if the legal grounds are shaky, is unlikely to stop unless the FSB is held responsible.
"No one has ever said to the FSB, 'Look you have made mistakes, someone has to be responsible for that," said Viktor Kremenyuk, deputy director of the Institute for USA and Canada in Moscow. "Which means they can go ahead and try again and again."

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