Российская наука и мир (дайджест)

Rivers and fish have been in steady decline in the United States for more than a century. There's not much left that hasn't been altered by dams, irrigation projects and hatcheries. In the first of two National Geographic Radio Expedition stories, NPR's Elizabeth Arnold ventured to the Russian Far East to glimpse the past. She visited the Kamchatka Peninsula, where fishermen and scientists are trying to understand and protect one of the world's last remaining strongholds of wild salmon, steelhead and trout.
Guido Rahr, president of the Wild Salmon Center, was fumbling for his fishing rod even as we landed. Boyishly red-cheeked, he's the backbone of this Russian-American venture, founded almost a decade ago, that mixes sport fishing with research. American anglers pay top dollar to fish here. Their money and what they catch goes to science.
The collapse of the Soviet Union meant the bottom fell out for the funding for research. So that was when we approached the Russians and said, `Listen, if you take us to these rivers and let us catch and release these fish, we'll support your science.' The idea is not just to show them that angling tourism could work, but to try to reinvent sport fishing in such a way that it creates local jobs, but also generates data for the scientists.
Rahr's organization is dedicated to protecting wild salmon, steelhead, char and trout. After years of heading up restoration efforts in the Pacific Northwest that were too little, too late, he's now eagerly focused on rivers he believes can still be saved.
Kirill Kuzishchin is a professor of ichthyology at Moscow State University. A small, intense man, he's unflappable as both the scientist and angler. He's eager to get some samples and get to work.
This river has nine species of salmon, and he's studying the life histories of each and how they intermingle and relate to particular environments.
Prof. KUZISHCHIN: It will be a big opening. I don't want to say that it will be a noble award, but it's rather close to it. Nobody knows it still. Many people trying to do it, but here, we have this unique chance because everything here is pristine. Fish is pristine, environment is pristine. We can monitor the processes that going on in nature. Maybe we will have success.
ARNOLD: Wild steelhead, as he puts it, are the diamond in the crown of his research. They're also notoriously difficult to catch.
Prof. KUZISHCHIN: I think people who name steelhead a steelhead is right. The head of fish is really made from steel and lead, and only few places in the mouth of the fish where you can properly set your hook.
For this week's science, 25 samples of steelhead are needed, fish that will be weighed, measured and a few dissected for genetic information. So the fishermen and scientists get busy.
This fish and others caught this week will become part of the research. Over the last two field seasons, 15 different rivers in Kamchatka have been assessed by a half-dozen Russian and American scientists. The fishing and science camps are a boost to the local economy, which has become dependent on caviar poaching, a threat to these very fish. And there are other looming threats, as this once-isolated place is now in the sights of mining, oil and natural gas interests. Rahr's hope is to encourage the Russians to protect the rivers of Kamchatka while there's still time. It's both an ambitious and delicate task, especially in someone else's country.
Kamchatka offers a chance to step back in time, a laboratory of sorts for restoration efforts elsewhere. What Americans offer is a hundred years of mistakes and a perspective on what the future could bring.

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IslamOnline & News Agencies / January 4, 2003

Second Human Clone to Be Born in Netherlands: Clonaid

THE HAGUE, January 4 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A second human clone will be born this weekend in the Netherlands, a member of the Raelian cult said Saturday, January 4, as a top Russian scientist charged that efforts to clone humans will produce a "monster 99 percent of the time".
"The second baby clone will be born this weekend in the Netherlands," Bart Overvliet, president of the Dutch chapter of the Raelians, who believe that the human race was founded by extra-terrestrials, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Overvliet refused to give any further details on the place, date and conditions of the expected birth, saying only that the baby would be a girl cloned from the woman who was due to bear her, who was "a lesbian of Dutch nationality."
His statement confirmed a Belgian television report a day earlier, in which another senior Raelian cult member, Brigitte Boisselier, said a baby girl would be born to a lesbian couple "in a country not far from here."
The announcement came only days after the group claimed to have created the first-ever carbon copy of a human.
Boiselier is a former French chemist who heads Clonaid, a Raelian-owned company based in Las Vegas that announced on December 27 that a baby, also a clone of the woman who bore her, had been born the previous day at a hospital outside the United States.
Clonaid has refused to provide proof of its assertions. Its announcement attracted worldwide publicity and has left the scientific community skeptical.
99% Monster
Meanwhile, the head of Russia's Molecular Genetics Institute, Vyacheslav Tarantul, responding to the announcement of the first birth of a human clone, warned Saturday that nearly all cloning efforts have led to horrific biological deformations. "It is theoretically possible to clone a human being, but who will take responsibility if a monster is born? This risk exists in 99 percent of the cases," ITAR-TASS reported him as saying.
"During cloning experiments on animals, we have found anomalies in most cases - cancer, in particular," Tarantul added.
Tarantul denounced the lack of any concrete evidence provided to back the Raelian's history-making claims. "It only takes three or four days to make a comparative DNA analysis of the mother and child in order to see whether this is the case of the first clone, or a publicity stunt," he said.
Waiting for Evidence to Sue
Cloning is banned in the Netherlands under a law that went into effect September 1, with violators facing up to one year in prison.
The Dutch justice minister has said that before taking any legal action, he will want to verify that a baby is indeed a clone and that it was born on Dutch soil.
Islam & Cloning
The permissibility of the experiment in Islam sparked different viewpoints from prominent Muslim scholars.
Al-Azhar, the highest religious reference in the Sunni world, issued a fatwa ruling that human cloning is Haram (prohibited) and must be stopped.
On the same line, prominent Muslim scholar Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi asserted that "viewed from the Islamic general objectives, rulings, and texts, human cloning is completely prohibited."
However, Lebanon's top Shiite scholar Ayatollah Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah endorsed a different viewpoint, allowing human cloning if its positive aspects overweight negative ones.
He stressed, however, that it is prohibited to use the organs of a cloned baby as "spare parts" in organs transplant operation.
In an interview with Tehran Radio on Tuesday, December 31, Fadlallah argued that cloning does not contradict with the question of creation or turns man into a creator.
"Those who recently carried out the cloning operation were guided by the divine law in pollination and delivery," he said.
"They did not get the elements of their experiment from nowhere and therefore cloning is not about a new law of creation but rather being guided by the divine law," added the Shiite scholar.
"Cloning is a great scientific event which indicates man's genius in discovering the laws and systems created by Allah and his attempt to capitalize on them in his practical and scientific experiments," he said.
Raelians Hit Back at Critics
For her part, the maverick French scientist leading the Raelian cult's drive to clone babies has defended her attempts to create carbon copies of humans.
Brigitte Boisselier, in remarks published in Saturday's edition of Belgian newspaper La Libre Belgique, defended the controversial experiment and even lashed out at critics.
The president of Clonaid also told La Libre Belgique that she hoped soon to provide public proof establishing the first baby, born last month, as a clone, but said it was up to the parents of "Eve".
Raelian leader Claude Vorilhon, meanwhile, said he asked Boisselier to stop DNA tests on Eve, insisting he would refuse to heed a Florida court's order to appear on January 22 with other principals in the matter of the cloned birth. Last week, Boisselier announced that her Las Vegas-based organisation Clonaid had overseen the birth on December 26 of a girl cloned from a 31-year-old U.S. citizen at a hospital outside the United States.
That announcement has yet to be confirmed independently and left the scientific community skeptical.
Boisselier is a senior member of the Raelians, who believe the human race was started by aliens who landed on Earth 25,000 years ago and cloned the first person.
Speaking during a visit to Brussels Friday, the former chemist told the Belgian newspaper that the Florida hearing to determine if Eve should be placed under court protection was "monstrous".
Boisselier denied that cloning babies was equally objectionable. "As soon as people see the face of the child and understand that it is merely a twin, brought forward, of another child, I'm convinced that their doubts will disappear and their view of this event will settle down," she said.
Five out of 10 clone embryos implanted by Clonaid into mothers-to-be were due to be born, Boisselier reiterated, while denying that cloning presented heightened risks of genetic problems and serious illnesses.
The risk was "the same for every child born on the same day at the same time", she said. "That has nothing to do with the method of conception."
Boisselier acknowledged scientific skepticism about the purported birth of the first clone, which she announced at a press conference without furnishing any proof.
"I'm also impatiently waiting for the proof," she told La Libre Belgique.
"But it is the parents who are keeping back access and as long as there is a doubt that the baby could be taken away from them, I'll have to stay patient for a while longer."
Vorilhon told CNN Friday that in light of the court order in Florida, he had asked Boisselier to halt DNA tests on Eve. The tests, to be organized by a U.S. journalist Michael Guillen, should have been carried out Tuesday and the results released early next week.

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Science Blog / January 02, 2003

People from distant lands have strikingly similar genetic traits, study reveals

Scientists have long recognized that, despite physical differences, all human populations are genetically similar to one another. But a new study in the journal Science concludes that populations from different parts of the world share even more genetic similarities than had previously been assumed.
At the same time, researchers found that tiny differences in DNA can provide enough information to identify the geographic ancestry of individual men and women.
The results of the Dec. 20 Science study the largest of its kind to date have implications for understanding ancient human migrations and for resolving the ongoing debate about the use of ancestry information in medical research, said Marcus W. Feldman, the Burnet C. and Mildred Finley Wohlford Professor in Stanford's School of Humanities and Sciences. Feldman led the international study, which included scientists from the United States, France and Russia.
"Different populations experience different rates of various diseases," Feldman explained. "To determine if someone is genetically susceptible to a particular disease, doctors will sometimes ask a patient, 'What is your ancestry?' But recent studies have raised the question of whether self-reported ancestry is a useful diagnostic tool, or whether it should be abandoned in favor of genetic testing."
The authors concluded that a patient interview can, in fact, provide a useful, less invasive alternative for assessing individual disease risks.
DNA "microsatellites"
In their study, Feldman and his colleagues analyzed DNA samples obtained from 1,056 people from 52 populations in five major geographic regions of the world: Africa, Eurasia (Europe, the Middle East, Central and South Asia), East Asia, Oceania and the Americas.
To identify specific populations, the research team looked for "microsatellites" short segments of human DNA that occur in specific patterns, which are passed down from generation to generation. In the study, researchers analyzed 377 microsatellites that population biologists routinely used as genetic markers.
"Each microsatellite had between four and 32 distinct types,"Feldman said. "Most were found in people from several continents, suggesting that only a tiny fraction of genetic traits are distinctive to specific populations. This means that visible differences between human groups such as skin color and skull shape result from differences in a very small proportion of genetic traits."
Another way to view this, he noted, is to remember that DNA is virtually identical in all human beings. Compare any two people, you'll find a DNA sequence that is about 99.9 percent identical.
"In the less than one percent of the genome where genetic differences among individuals exist, it might seem intuitive that two people from different regions are likely to have more differences than are two people from the same region," Feldman noted. "But this is not the case. About 94 percent of genetic differences are among individuals of the same populations." The conclusion, he said, is that people from different lands have more genetic similarities than scientists previously thought.
Genetic predictors
Although populations are genetically quite similar, Feldman and his co-workers wanted to see if they could predict where an individual's ancestors came from through DNA analysis alone. To accomplish this, the research team first removed the labels from all 1,056 DNA samples used in the study.
"We took the labels off of all the individuals so we didn't know where they came from," Feldman explained. "Then we asked the question, 'Can we look at the DNA and detect where groups of individuals form clusters that are genetically related to one another?'"
The answer should be yes, Feldman predicted, because, while most genetic types are widely distributed geographically, the frequencies of these types vary around the world.
In the study, lead author Noah A. Rosenberg of the University of Southern California and co-author Jonathan K. Pritchard of the University of Chicago applied a powerful statistical technique that uses many independent genes to detect the geographic patterns of ancestry in samples from any species. When applied to people, the technique proved remarkably successful. The research team accurately pinpointed the ancestral continent of virtually every individual from Africa, East Asia, Oceania and the Americas.
People from Eurasia which includes Europe, the Middle East and Central /South Asia were among the most difficult to assign ancestries, Feldman noted. "A complex history of migrations, conquests and trade over the past few thousand years is likely to be the cause for this difficulty," he said. An exception were the Basques of Spain a geographically and linguistically isolated population that was genetically distinguishable from other European groups.
The Science paper also supports recent genetic studies of human migration, confirming migratory patterns between Europe and West Asia, Europe and Central America and other continents as well. "By sampling genotypes from people from all parts of the world, geneticists have reconstructed the major features of our history: our ancient African origin, migrations out of Africa, movements and settlements throughout Eurasia and Oceania, and [the] peopling of the Americas," wrote Mary-Claire King and Arno Motulsky, both of the University of Washington, in an editorial accompanying the Science paper.
Medical implications
DNA analysis confirmed what most of study's 1,056 participants had said about their ancestry a finding that lends credence to the argument that an individual's own family history can be a useful way of determining his or her genetic predisposition to disease.
"Some members of the medical community argue that doctors simply shouldn't ask patients about their ancestry because it has no genetic meaning," Feldman noted, "but our study finds that self-reported ancestry and genetic ancestry are largely coincident, so patient interviews can be very useful. On the one hand, grouping patients by genetic similarities will benefit future studies that will scan the entire human genome for potential genetic causes of disease. On the other hand, self-reported ancestry makes it easier to get information on environmental factors, cultural differences and behaviors which may be important risk factors for certain diseases."
Other co-authors of the Science study are James L. Weber of the Marshfield Medical Research Foundation in Wisconsin, Howard M. Cann of the Center for the Study of Human Polymorphisms in Paris, Kenneth K. Kidd of the Yale University School of Medicine and Lev Zhivotovsky of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. The research was supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences.

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Interfax / JAN 18, 2003

Russian scientists hope to soon find evidence of life on Mars

Российские ученые надеются вскоре найти свидетельства существования жизни на Марсе

MOSCOW, Jan 18 (Interfax) - Russian scientists exploring the surface of Mars have not ruled out the possibility of finding forms of life there.
"Research showed that about 50% of the Martian bed is covered by frozen water at high longitudes. This is yet more proof that life existed there at some point. Exploration will reveal if not life forms, then evidence of their existence in the past," Igor Mitrofanov, head of the Space Exploration Lab of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told Interfax.
Ice indicates that Mars used to have a warm, humid climate, comfortable for living organisms, Mitrofanov noted.
"Water is the most favorable environment for the emergence of life. Mars and the Earth were similar in their earlier periods, but Mars lost its atmosphere in a catastrophe. Therefore, conditions for the emergence of life were the same on Mars as on the Earth," he said.
"A sensation might break out early next year as a result of the current experiment on finding evidence of single-celled organisms," he said.
Russian scientists are studying Mars with the help of the Hend tool installed on the Odyssey satellite of the United States.
Two U.S. Mars exploration ships will be launched this year, he said. The landing spots have already been chosen, he said. The landing is scheduled for early 2004 because it takes about six months to reach Mars.
"Evidence of life on Mars will indirectly prove the hypothesis that the Earth was colonized from outer space," he said.

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Journal of Aerospace and Defense Industry News / Jan. 21, 2003

NASA begins new year with international Arctic ozone study

Более 350 ученых из разных стран, в том числе и России, начали работы по изучению озона и других газов атмосферы в Арктике

NASA researchers, and more than 350 scientists from the United States, European Union, Canada, Iceland, Japan, Norway, Poland, Russia and Switzerland, are working together this winter to measure ozone and other atmospheric gases.
The scientists will use aircraft, large and small balloons, ground-based instruments and satellites.
The Arctic campaign runs from Jan. 8 through Feb. 6, 2003. Flights of large balloons will augment the aircraft campaign, extending the measurement period to late March 2003.
This second SAGE III Ozone Loss and Validation Experiment campaign will be conducted in close collaboration with the European Commission. It is sponsored by the VINTERSOL (Validation of International Satellites & Study of Ozone Loss) campaign. (SAGE III stands for the third Stratospheric Aerosol & Gas Experiment.) SOLVE takes place in Kiruna, Sweden, the site of the first winter (1999-2000) international effort (SOLVE I).
NASA's SAGE III satellite instrument is being used to quantitatively assess ozone loss in the higher latitudes. SAGE III was launched onboard a Russian Meteor-3M spacecraft on December 10, 2001. The validation of the SAGE III observations is a principal goal of SOLVE II. SOLVE II is sponsored by NASA's Earth Science Enterprise, dedicated to better understanding and protecting our home planet.
"The primary goals of the joint SOLVE II-VINTERSOL campaign are to further understanding of ozone loss processes in the Arctic, and provide coincident observations between the airborne and SAGE III measurements. This comparison will enable the satellite scientists to critically and quantitatively assess the in-space performance of their instruments to measure profiles of ozone, aerosols, and water vapor over the Earth," said Michael Kurylo, SOLVE II co-Program Scientist at NASA Headquarters, Washington.
Ozone studies are important, because the ozone layer prevents the sun's harmful ultraviolet radiation from reaching the Earth's surface. Ultraviolet radiation is a primary cause of skin cancer. Without protective upper-level ozone, there would be no life on Earth.
During the campaign of 1999-2000, record ozone losses of 70 percent were observed at altitudes around 11 miles, and a great deal was learned about the processes leading to the rapid ozone loss in the Arctic. The SOLVE II campaign will add to that body of knowledge.
During the coming winter, scientists in SOLVE II-VINTERSOL will work toward verifying the accuracy of measurements from current Earth observing satellites. The in situ and remote sensing measurements taken aboard these aircraft will provide a unique data set for comparison with the SAGE III instruments and other satellite instruments. Teams from the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (France's National Center for Space Studies) and NASA will launch research balloons carrying payloads weighing up to several hundred pounds from Kiruna. A network of over 30 stations of ground-based instruments will take atmospheric readings over a wide area to show how the chemical composition of Arctic stratosphere evolves through the whole winter.
VINTERSOL is a pan-European campaign involving researchers supported by the European Commission and national research agencies.

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Guardian / Thursday January 30, 2003 7:00 PM

Spy Trials Against Russian Scholars

MOSCOW, (AP) - Russian security services are damaging the country's scientific potential with a series of high-profile spy cases against Russian researchers, scientists and human rights advocates said Thursday.
"We're returning to a time when science was considered a dangerous profession," said Valentin Danilov, a Russian scientist accused of selling state secrets to a Chinese company.
Danilov's case is one of several recent espionage trials against Russian researchers that have alarmed the scientific community and raised fears about a resurgence of Soviet-era KGB tactics.
Human rights advocates say the Federal Security Service, the main successor agency to the KGB, remains suspicious of scientific contacts with foreigners and has grown bolder in its prosecution of scholars under President Vladimir Putin, himself a former spy who headed the FSB from 1998-99.
"There has been no reform at all in the FSB," Lyudmila Alexeyeva, chairwoman of the Moscow Helsinki Group, a respected human rights group, said at a news conference. "The same people are working there with the same mentality"
Danilov's legal troubles are a case in point, activists said.
A professor at Krasnoyarsk Technical University in Siberia, Danilov was arrested in February 2001 on charges of selling secret space technology to China and spent 19 months in prison before a judge released him pending trial last September. In December, a court sent the case back to prosecutors, citing procedural violations.
Prosecutors, who also accuse Danilov of misappropriating university funds, have appealed the December decision to the Russian Supreme Court. A ruling is expected Feb. 5.
Danilov and several other researchers accused of espionage insist the information they transferred is no longer classified and came from open sources, including published scientific journals.
"For the FSB, it's not important whether a crime was committed," said Anna Stavitskaya, a lawyer representing Igor Sutyagin, a scholar at Moscow's USA and Canada Institute arrested for passing secrets to the United States. "If they have a person, they'll find a charge."
Sutyagin has been in detention for more than three years, and is awaiting trial for passing secret military data to a British company allegedly set up as a cover for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. He denies the charges.
Scientists said the FSB crackdown on suspect contacts with foreigners has sparked fear among young Russian researchers and discouraged them from working at state universities and institutes.
It also has sped up the ``brain drain'' of scientific talent from Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union, as scholars seek better paying jobs in the West, they said.
"This FSB practice of pursuing scholars is anti-government," said Vitaly Ginzburg, a member of the Russian Academy of Science's Public Committee for Protection of Scholars. "It's the best way to make people flee the country."
Many activists saw a glimmer of hope in recent comments by Putin, who criticized what he called "obsessive spy mania" in the country and "excessive bureaucratization" in protecting national security.
Alexeyeva said it would take more time for the Russian government to get over its suspicion of scientific exchanges of information.
"Every closed society suffers from spy mania," she said. "Russia has only been an open society for the last 10 years - for the first time in its all its history."