Декабрь 2024 г.

Российская наука и мир (по материалам зарубежной электронной прессы)

CONTENTS / ОГЛАВЛЕНИЕ


• National campus network project to boost regional potential
• 1,600-year-old burials in Crimea hold gold and silver jewelry from "rich women"
• On the origins of organisms
• "Spectacular" asteroid blazes over Siberia just hours after it was detected
• Evgeny Velikhov (1935-2024)
• 120 miles of Russian forest couldn’t keep these two tigers apart
• Researchers discover five new species of the Darwin wasp
• Climate change and land use practices threaten traditional food sources in Russia's Far East
• Russian cancer vaccine: Scientists "very skeptical"
• Arctic Siberia summers were up to 10°C warmer than today during the Last Interglacial, study finds
• "Une préservation exceptionnelle" : la Russie dévoile les restes d’un bébé mammouth de 50 000 ans quasi intact
• Scientists study protective mechanisms of cells from oxidative stress
• Russia unveils its 50-qubit rubidium neutral atom prototype quantum computer

В России планируют ускорить реализацию к 2030 году федерального проекта по созданию сети современных кампусов на базе ведущих университетов для повышения инвестиционной привлекательности и научно-образовательного потенциала отдельных регионов. На начальном этапе кампусы будут построены в таких городах, как Томск, Калининград, Нижний Новгород, Екатеринбург, Челябинск, Москва, Новосибирск, Уфа и других.

Russia will speed up implementation by 2030 of a large-scale state project centred on the building of a network of 25 modern campuses using its leading universities as a basis from which to increase the investment attractiveness and scientific and educational potential of particular regions.
In addition to education and research facilities, the campuses will house dormitories, laboratories, spaces for design and modelling, co-working spaces, libraries, and areas for walks and sports. The infrastructure of each will be tailored to train specialists needed in a particular region of Russia.
Wide geographical scope
According to the Russian Lenta business newspaper, the geographical distribution of such clusters will be wide, ranging from the Russian North-West to the Far East. At the initial stage the campuses will be built in Russian cities such as Tomsk, Kaliningrad, Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk, Moscow, Novosibirsk, Ufa and others. Later, the list of cities will be further expanded.
As part of the project, more than 100,000 living units for students and teachers will be created, with more than 60,000 square metres of new educational and scientific buildings to be built. The total area of the campuses will be more than 5 million square meters. The volume of investments has not been disclosed. According to Russian Deputy Minister of Education and Science Andrey Omelchuk, the establishment of the campuses will increase the investment attractiveness and scientific and educational potential of particular regions.
"These campuses will become points of attraction for students, young scientists and businesses. In addition, in some regions, the new campus should unite several universities at once," Omelchuk said.
Anchor institutions
The idea to establish the network of campuses was first put forward in 2021, but its actual implementation has only started in recent months. It is expected that the largest regional universities will serve as anchors for the clusters, while in the case of Moscow and St Petersburg several such campuses will be built. For example, in Kaliningrad, the local Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University will be an anchor university for the project on the basis of which at least three educational complexes will emerge. They include "Biomed", "Institute of High Technologies" and "Higher School of Philosophy and Social Sciences".
On the campus of Moscow Bauman Moscow State Technical University, one of Russia’s most prestigious technical universities, the newly established cluster will consist of two research centres, a digital transformation cluster, a quantum park, an innovation hub and two dormitories. The total area of the campus facilities will be 169,000 square metres.
Finally, the SakhalinTECH campus at Sakhalin State University will consist of two facilities - a research and education centre and a student campus of three dormitories connected to each other. A total of 1,500 undergraduate and graduate students will be able to live and study there.
Unlocking regional potential
According to Alexander Bakharev, press secretary of Sakhalin State University, the project is very important for both Sakhalin State University - one of the leading universities in the Far East - and the entire Sakhalin region. Bakharev said: "The Sakhalin project is a very good example of how the construction of a campus helps to use the developments of local scientists to unlock the potential of the entire region. The project will help us focus on the development of unique areas that are crucial for Sakhalin State University. This is everything related to the study of the sea, the oil and gas industry and alternative energy, the climate agenda, social sciences and linguistics. Due to its geographical location, the region has unique scientific developments in the study of aquaculture and the use of aquatic bioresources."

В ходе раскопок в некрополе Алмалык-дере на Мангупском плато крымские археологи обнаружили золотые и серебряные женские украшения IV-VI веков, в том числе золотые серьги со вставками из полудрагоценных камней, нетипичные для данной местности. Скорее всего, их привезли издалека.

Archaeologists have unearthed gold and silver jewelry at an early-medieval burial ground near the city of Sevastopol in Crimea. The new finds indicate that the burial ground - the Almalyk-dere necropolis on the Mangup plateau, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) east of Sevastopol - was for elite members of a society that spread across southwestern Crimea from the late fourth century until the sixth century.
Archaeologists first excavated parts of the Mangup plateau in the 19th century, and it has been systematically investigated since the 20th century. "As usual, this burial ground brought surprises," Valery Naumenko, an archaeologist at V.I. Vernadsky Crimean Federal University, said in a translated statement. "Despite the severe robbery of these complexes, there are things that are of independent scientific interest." According to the statement, Naumenko and his colleagues are excavating the site along with archaeologists from the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The sixth-century Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea wrote that the Mangup region at that time was part of the Christian principality of Gothia, which had been established in southwestern Crimea by Goths who had refused to follow Theodoric the Great during his invasion of Italy in 488.
Elite jewelry
The new finds are from two crypts dating from between the fourth and sixth centuries, and the jewelry seems to have been worn by women, according to the statement. The stash included fibulas (brooches), gold earrings, pieces of belts and shoe buckles, and appliqué jewelry made from gold foil that would have been sewn on the collars of garments. The researchers said these artifacts were evidence of aristocratic burials at the site.
"Most likely, rich women were buried in both crypts where the items were found," Artur Nabokov, an archaeologist at the Institute of Archaeology of Crimea at the Russian Academy of Sciences, said in the statement, adding that the earrings were probably imported, while the fibulas were made in Crimea.
The earrings are especially ornate and are made from gold with inlays of red semiprecious stones, either garnet or carnelian; while one pair of the fibulas was cast in silver and then covered with gold leaf and inlays of the red stone.
One of the crypts also held a decorated "pyxis" - a container that was made from an animal horn and was used to store cosmetic powders, like blush, the statement said.
The craggy Mangup plateau is dominated by the Mangup Kale fortress, the earliest parts of which date to the sixth century, although it was still in use in the 15th century; and there is archaeological evidence of prehistoric settlements there going back 5,000 years.
The researchers on the latest expedition to the area also explored a Christian "cave monastery" from the 15th century and a Muslim burial ground that was used between the 16th and 19th centuries, after the Ottoman Turks had seized control of the area, according to the statement.

Сто лет назад, в 1924 г., в Москве вышла маленькая книжка под названием «Происхождение жизни». Ее автор, молодой биохимик Александр Опарин, выдвинул теорию о том, что жизнь на Земле возникла в бескислородной примитивной среде благодаря абиотическому синтезу и последующему накоплению органических соединений, образовавших первичный бульон.
Полный текст статьи доступен по подписке.

In 1924, a small book titled The Origin of Life began circulating in Moscow. Written by Aleksandr Oparin, a young biochemist who had joined the laboratory of Alexei Bakh at the Karpov Physicochemical Institute to work on photosynthesis, the book proposed that life had emerged in an oxygen-free primitive environment that led to the synthesis and accumulation of organic compounds that subsequently formed gel-like droplets from which the first heterotrophic organisms evolved. The volume became quite popular among student associations, workers’ clubs, and biology teachers, and the small edition quickly sold out, never to be reprinted. On its 100th anniversary, Oparin’s visionary work is worth revisiting.

Ночью 4 декабря этого года над Якутией пролетел астероид C0WEPC5. Объект диаметром 70 см был замечен системами наблюдения всего за 12 часов до входа в атмосферу Земли.

A small asteroid lit up the skies over northern Siberia Wednesday (Dec. 4) after burning up in Earth's atmosphere in a "spectacular" (yet harmless) fireball.
Astronomers spotted the space rock, measuring 28 inches (70 centimeters) in diameter, in the early hours on Wednesday local time, just hours before the space rock entered the atmosphere.
"Thanks to observations from astronomers around the world, our alert system was able to predict this impact to within +/- 10 seconds," the European Space Agency (ESA) wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
C0WEPC5, as the asteroid has been temporarily named, entered Earth's atmosphere at 1:15 a.m. local time on Dec. 4 over Russia's remote Sakha Republic, also known as Yakutia, in northeastern Siberia. Local officials were placed on alert, the Sakha emergencies ministry noted, but no damage was reported during the event.
Footage of the fireball was shared by the Sakha Republic Ministry Of Internal Affairs on Telegram. The footage was from colleagues at the Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for the Olekminsky District and city residents.
NASA's Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) spotted the space rock 12 hours before it entered our atmosphere, ESA said, making it the fourth so-called "imminent impactor" detected so far this year, and the 11th one detected overall.
The first asteroid to be detected and tracked in this way was a 13-foot-wide (4-meter-wide) space rock called 2008 TC3, which broke up above Sudan in October 2008. But the system didn't detect another one until January 2014, when California's Mount Lemmon observatory noticed meteoroid 2014 AA several hours before it streaked through our skies. However, since then, our ability to find these impactors has greatly improved and space agencies are now detecting several imminent impactors every year.
While asteroids like C0WEPC5 pose no threat to the planet, having these detection systems in place gives astronomers the opportunity to identify and deflect larger and more dangerous objects on a collision course with Earth.
As a result, both NASA and ESA have dedicated programs for spotting and tracking these near-Earth objects. Fortunately, no known asteroid poses a threat to Earth for at least the next 100 years.

5 декабря в возрасте 89 лет скончался академик Евгений Павлович Велихов, физик-ядерщик, вице-президент АН СССР (1978-1991) и РАН (1991-1996), общественный деятель, внесший значительный вклад в исследования в области физики плазмы и разработку термоядерных реакторов. Кроме того, он сыграл важную роль в становлении и развитии международного сотрудничества в сфере управляемого термоядерного синтеза, кульминацией которого стал запуск в середине 1980-х годов проекта Международного экспериментального термоядерного реактора (ITER).

Deep in outer space, a small celestial body bears a name familiar to the worldwide fusion community. Orbiting between Mars and Jupiter, asteroid Velikhov was named in honour of Russian physicist Evgeny Velikhov, a major figure in the history of fusion research and, as Mikhail Gorbachev’s friend and scientific advisor, one of the driving forces behind the creation of ITER. Academician Velikhov passed away on 5 December, two months short of his 90th birthday. Asteroid Velikhov will remain as a testimony of its namesake’s contribution to plasma physics and thermonuclear reactor development.
"Evgeny Velikhov was an extraordinary individual, with a brilliant mind, unwavering integrity, and visionary outlook," wrote ITER Director-General Pietro Barabaschi in his message to staff and stakeholders.
In the early 1970s, Evgeny Velikhov, who had joined Moscow’s Kurchatov Institute in 1961, took the fusion torch from Lev Artsimovitch (1909-1973), the legendary figure who initiated fusion research and developed the first tokamaks in the Soviet Union. From then on, Velikhov would work tirelessly not only to develop the understanding of plasma physics but also to establish the indispensable international collaborations that culminated in the launching of ITER in the mid-1980s.
In November 2010, Velikhov, who by then headed the ITER Council, confided: "The scientific community on both sides of the East-West divide began working on what was to become ITER as early as the mid-1970s. We knew that only a vast and ambitious international project would make the demonstration of fusion feasibility possible."
Big Science projects, however, need a strong political push to translate into reality. In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev acceded to the top position in the Soviet state. A close relation of Velikhov’s dating back to their student days at Moscow State University, the new Secretary-General soon saw the benefits, both scientific and diplomatic, of launching such a collaboration.
Similar dynamics were at work in the United States, Europe and Japan. At the Geneva Summit in November 1985, when President Reagan and Secretary Gorbachev met for the first time, an item in their agenda proposed "the widest possible development of international cooperation" in fusion research "for the benefit of all mankind." Thus ITER was born, close to 40 years ago.
Despite his many duties as Director and later President of the Kurchatov Institute, vice-president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and head of the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation, Evgeny Velikhov remained deeply involved in ITER, heading the ITER Council in 1992 at the start of the Engineering Design Activities and later in 2010-2012 when construction work began on the ITER site.
"He was until the last moment a staunch supporter of ITER," wrote Pietro Barabaschi, who met with Velikhov just two months ago in Moscow. "He asked me so many questions about how we were doing and wished all of us all the best."
With the passing of Evgeny Velikhov, and, two months earlier of Robert Aymar, two prominent leaders from the generation of ITER’s founding fathers have quietly left the scene, leaving strong memories and a legacy that will endure.

Одним из способов восстановления популяций тигров и других крупных кошачьих по всему миру может стать реинтродукция, в данном случае - возвращение в дикую природу животных, оставшихся в раннем возрасте без матери и выращенных человеком в определенных условиях. Российско-американская команда ученых описала результаты наблюдения за тринадцатью тиграми сихотэ-алиньской популяции, выросшими в специальном реабилитационном центре и выпущенными в Приамурье в 2013-2021 гг. Двенадцать из них успешно адаптировались, часть дала потомство.

When Russian scientists released a pair of orphaned Amur tiger cubs into the wild in a remote corner of Russia’s far east in 2014, they were trying to save a species. While the tigers, sometimes called Siberian tigers and the world’s largest big cat, remain endangered, the scientists created something else: an unlikely love story.
The cubs, Boris and Svetlaya, had been rescued from the wild as unrelated 3- to 5-month-old cubs in the Sikhote-Alin mountains, the animal’s main stronghold. They grew up in captivity and were released at 18 months old. The cats were separated by more than 100 miles apart with the goal of expanding the distribution of released tigers as much as possible in the Pri-Amur region along Russia’s border with China.
The scientists tracked the cubs until, more than a year after their release, something strange happened: Boris walked over 120 miles, almost in a straight line, to where Svetlaya had made a home. Six months later, Svetlaya gave birth to a litter of cubs.
While the strategy of releasing rescued cats raised in captivity to restore populations in the wild had proved successful with the Iberian lynx in Spain, it had never been tried with big cats.
But scientists working with the Wildlife Conservation Society say in a study published last month in the Journal of Wildlife Management that the successful release of rescued cubs like Boris and Svetlaya may, for the first time, become a viable option for restoring wild tigers to their historical range.
Estimates of the number of tigers left in Russia range from 485 to 750. But researchers say that the Russia-China border area, including the Pri-Amur area where Boris and Svetlaya live, could support hundreds more of the animals.
The reunited cats were not the project’s only successful reintroductions. Two hunters had found another female, Zolushka (or "Cinderella" in Russian), in a snow drift a few years earlier. After the conservationists returned her to the wild, an unknown male tiger showed up on a camera trap near where Zolushka had been released.
In such a vast area, it was an encounter of extraordinary good fortune. "Cinderella’s prince showed up and they lived happily ever after," said Dale Miquelle, lead tiger scientist for the Wildlife Conservation Society and an author of the study. Zolushka and the male also produced a litter of cubs, the first known cubs to be born in that area since the 1970s.
In all, Russian scientists raised 13 orphaned Siberian tiger cubs in captivity, avoiding any contact between the growing cubs and their human carers so as to prepare them for life in the wild. The team gradually introduced the cubs to live prey, so that they could learn how to hunt.
Also critical to the success was the timing of the cubs’ release: during spring when prey was plentiful.
One male cub failed the test of freedom. He wandered into China and preyed on domestic animals, including 13 goats in one shed in a single night. Russian scientists recaptured the young male and sent him to a captive-breeding program at a zoo. But the remaining 12 proved that they were able to hunt wild prey and to survive as well as wild tigers that had never spent time in captivity.
As the Pri-Amur population grows, the Russian-American team hopes that it can join up with other tigers, including across the border in China. "The grand vision is that this whole area would be connected," said Luke Hunter, executive director of the Big Cats Program at the Wildlife Conservation Society. "There’s lots of habitat that could be recolonized by tigers."
With so much potential habitat across Asia - a 2023 study found that there was around 270,000 square miles of potentially suitable habitat across Asia where tigers remained absent - the implications of this success are wide-ranging.
"These results indicate that it is possible to care for young cubs in a semi-captive environment, teach them how to hunt and to release them back into the wild," said Viatcheslav V. Rozhnov, former director of the Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences and leader of the reintroduction project. "These findings provide a pathway for returning tigers to large parts of Asia where habitat still exists but where tigers have been lost."
And just as Boris and Svetlaya’s unlikely partnership has proved critical to the project’s success, the Russian and American scientists hope their efforts may be a model for international conservation cooperation.
"It’s a testimony to how really good things can happen when you start working collaboratively irrespective of nationality and politics," Dr. Miquelle said.

Исследователи из Индии, Таиланда и России описали пять новых видов ос-наездников подсемейства Microleptinae. Четыре вида были обнаружены в Индии, один - в Таиланде.

A team of researchers from the Bengaluru-based Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) and their collaborators have discovered five new species of the Darwin wasp subfamily Microleptinae (Hymenoptera:Ichneumonidae) from India and Thailand. Darwin wasps are parasitic wasps whose larvae consume their hosts from within. This marks the first documentation of this subfamily in India, ATREE said.
42 subfamilies
The family Ichneumonidae comprises 42 subfamilies, with Microleptinae being one of the smallest. It contains a single genus, Microleptes, with 14 previously known species worldwide. The subfamily is distributed across the Palaearctic, Nearctic, and Oriental regions, with most species reported from the Palaearctic. Until now, Microleptes malaisei, reported from Myanmar in 1998, was the only known species from the Oriental region.
In a recent study, Ranjith A.P. and Priyadarsanan Dharma Rajan of ATREE, alongside collaborators Buntika A. Butcher of Chulalongkorn University, Thailand, and Andrei E. Humala of the Russian Academy of Sciences, described four new species from India (Microleptes chiani, M. gowrishankari, M. sandeshkaduri, M. tehriensis) and one from Thailand (M. depressus). They also recorded the presence of the Chinese species Microleptes xinbinensis in India, describing its previously unknown female.
Named after researchers
"Out of the four new species from India, Microleptes chiani collected from Kalakad Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve (KMTR), Tamil Nadu, is named to honour our long-time associate Tamilazhagan (Sr. Technical Assistant, ATREE) who is more popular as Chian. Microleptes gowrishankari collected from Biligiri Ranganathaswamy Temple Tiger Reserve, in Karnataka, is named after Dr. P. Gowri Shankar of Kalinga Foundation, Karnataka, for his works on the study and conservation of the King Cobra," said ATREE.
Microleptes sandeshkaduri collected from the Siang valley of Arunachal Pradesh is named after Sandesh Kadur of Felis Creations for his contributions towards the documentation, and conservation of biodiversity. Microleptes tehriensis is named after its collection site, Tehri in Uttarakhand.
More taxonomic research
ATREE said that these findings highlight the rich biodiversity of the Indian subcontinent and underscore the importance of taxonomic research in understanding ecological roles and advancing biodiversity conservation.
"The discovery of new species from geographically distinct regions in India indicates a broader distribution of this subfamily across the country, pointing to the need for more comprehensive taxonomic studies," said Dr. Priyadarsanan Dharma Rajan, lead author of the paper.

Исследовательская группа ученых из Японии, России и Китая провела опрос в 18 сельских поселениях коренных народов в Республике Саха на предмет использования ими продуктов питания, добытых в дикой природе (дичь, рыба, растения, грибы, ягоды, орехи), и оценила потенциальное влияние будущих изменений климата и землепользования на доступность этих продуктов.

Climate change and land-use practices could significantly alter the make-up and availability of wild traditional foods in the vast Russian Far East, a region that is home to many Indigenous Peoples who depend on those native foods.
Native plants, animals and fungi obtained from nature in these regions are vital to the health and livelihood of people in remote and rural areas, but traditional food systems are under increasing threat from climate- and land-use change. However, little is known about the actual contribution of wild traditional foods towards supporting rural households or how future changes in the environment may compromise these dependencies.
Now, an international team led by Associate Professor Jorge García Molinos of the Arctic Research Center at Hokkaido University have surveyed rural Indigenous settlements in the Republic of Sakha about their use of wild traditional foods and evaluated the potential impact of future climate and land use change on those food systems. Their findings have been published in PNAS Nexus.
The survey covered 400 households in 18 rural settlements across Sakha. It collected data on demographics, dietary habits, and income-generating activities, such as hunting, fishing and gathering of traditional wild food species.
Analyzing the data revealed that dependence on wild food sources varied over the region, with significantly lower intake in settlements in the more developed and accessible central and western areas but a comparatively much higher intake in communities of the remote and isolated northern Arctic region.
In the Arctic settlements, the dietary focus was on wild fish and mammals, but rural households in the southern and western areas consumed preferentially wild plant-based foods, such as berries and nuts.
There was a similar pattern in terms of economic dependence on wild food sources. Wild foods - mostly mammals - made up about 11% of total household income in one northern settlement, but only around 3% - mostly from berries - in a central settlement.
The researchers then used species distribution models to project future changes in the availability of 51 wild food species under different climate- and land-use change scenarios. This involved mapping projected changes at regional and local scales; the latter considered within a 100-kilometer radius of the study settlements, representing the areas in which those wild foods would likely be harvested.
The modeling predicted a general decrease in the number of species by 2050 in southern areas of the Republic of Sakha and mild increases in the northern areas as species contract and expand their ranges in response to environmental changes. Locally, these broad regional changes mean that the number and type of food species available to individual settlements will likely change in the future.
For example, some species, such as moose, are projected to expand their range into the northernmost Arctic regions, thus likely providing new food and economic opportunities for settlements in that area.
On the other hand, some species in central and southern areas, such as blackcurrant, wild onion and lingonberry, are projected to experience a sharp decrease in habitat suitability, likely becoming unavailable to some of the settlements in these regions, particularly under the most extreme emission scenario.
"Although our models project these local losses may be compensated by the establishment of other new species experiencing improvements in habitat conditions, anticipating how such trade-offs in availability of local wild food species will impact these rural communities in the future is an important open question that requires further research," García Molinos says.

Министерство здравоохранения России объявило об изобретении вакцины против рака, которая якобы будет бесплатно доступна всем пациентам с начала 2025 года. Ученые настроены скептически, поскольку данные клинических испытаний до сих пор не опубликованы.

A new vaccine against cancer has been announced by the Russian Ministry of Health that it says will be available to patients from early 2025 - but scientists remain skeptical.
Professor Kingston Mills, a prominent immunologist at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, told Newsweek: "Until we see data from a clinical trial, there has to be skepticism about this. There's nothing in scientific journals that I can see about it. That's where you usually would start reading, as a scientist, about a breakthrough. I don't see any paper about this, so I have nothing to go on in terms of what the science is." That's not to say that Russian scientists have not developed a vaccine against some sort of cancer; Mills said: "The idea of a cancer vaccine is real."
Dr. David Jenkinson, head of childhood cancer at medical research charity Life Arc, told Newsweek: "There are a number of vaccines that are already used to prevent cancers by targeting viruses that can sometimes cause cancer, such as HPV vaccination to prevent cervical cancer."
The Russian Ministry of Health's announcement, first publicized on December 15 by Russian state-owned news agency TASS, said that the vaccine was against "cancer," but Mills said this wording raised questions.
"I think what doesn't make sense is a vaccine for cancer - as we all know there are multiple cancers," said Mills. "So, is this a universal vaccine for all cancers? I'd be very skeptical of that. I think it couldn't be.
"I don't think even the Russians would claim that they have a vaccine to treat all cancers. What is the cancer? What is the antigen? Where is the clinical trial data? These are all unanswered questions, and we haven't seen any of this data to make a proper assessment of it."
The alleged Russian breakthrough is said to be an mRNA vaccine used as a personalized treatment against cancer, helping the body's immune system to recognize cancerous cells as invasive.
This sort of treatment - mRNA vaccines used as a treatment against certain cancers - is currently the subject of hundreds of clinical trials all over the world, the scientists said, revolutionized by research pursuing COVID vaccines during the pandemic.
Jenkinson said: "mRNA vaccines work by making cells in the body produce a foreign protein. These proteins are recognized by the immune system and it produces an immune response that kills any cells that produce these foreign proteins. As a personalized vaccine, it is likely that the tumor from the individual is analyzed first to see what proteins are mutated and mRNA is made to these. As such, the treatment is likely to be different for each individual."

Проанализировав термокарстовые отложения с побережья пролива Дмитрия Лаптева, команда ученых из Германии, России, Норвегии, Дании, Канады и Великобритании пришла к выводу, что средняя летняя температура в Арктической Сибири в период последнего межледниковья (115-130 тысяч лет назад) была на 10 градусов выше, чем сейчас и достигала отметки +15°C.

Interglacials are, as the name suggests, warm periods between planetary glaciations when the expanse of ice on Earth shrinks. Currently, we are in an 11,000 year-long interglacial period known as the Holocene. Prior to this, the Last Interglacial occurred between 115,000 and 130,000 years ago.
During this time, Earth experienced summers that were almost completely ice-free and there was significant vegetation growth in polar regions, changing the ecosystems for life to flourish. Scientists can look to this Last Interglacial as a potential analog for future global warming.
Indeed, new research, currently under review for publication in the Climate of the Past journal, has turned to the geological record of the Arctic to understand how terrestrial environments responded to the warmer world. Here, warming was amplified compared to the rest of the northern hemisphere due to ice albedo feedbacks, whereby solar insolation melted ice sheets, reducing the amount of radiation reflected back out to space and causing further warming, creating a positive feedback loop.
Dr. Lutz Schirrmeister, of the Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research in Germany, and colleagues have turned to particular landscapes generated in areas experiencing permafrost, where the ground has remained frozen for at least two years.
Thermokarst topography is unique to such regions, characterized by hollows and hummocks that form when ice-rich permafrost thaws and the surface slumps due to a lack of ice in the pore spaces between sediments. Nowadays, these depressions also fill with water, producing thermokarst lakes.
Dr. Schirrmeister and the team investigated coastal sections along the Dmitry Laptev Strait, Siberia, via sediment cores drilled during fieldwork between 1999 and 2014, which preserve alternating layers of peaty plant matter with clays and silts. These distinctive layers represent the changing landscape through time between shallower boggy terrain where plants could grow, to deeper lake deposits. Today, the study area is a mixture of drier tundra with substantial plant growth, grasses and wetlands underlain by 400-600m of permafrost.
From these cores, the scientists used a combination of sediment analysis with fossil remains of plants (pollen, leaves and stems), insects (beetles and midges), crustaceans (ostracods) and animals (water fleas and mollusks) to reconstruct the paleoenvironment.
Combined with modeling, this data highlights that steppe or tundra-steppe (grassland and low-growing shrubs) environments prevailed in the area at the beginning of the Last Interglacial, but that birch and larch forests proliferated during the middle of the event, with the treeline being 270km north of its current position during the peak.
The researchers ultimately identified up to 10°C more summer warming in northern Siberia during the Last Interglacial compared to summers today, with fossilized plant material suggesting that mean temperatures of the warmest month could have reached +15°C, while fossil beetles indicate the coldest temperature may have been -38°C. Today, the respective mean temperatures are approximately +3°C and -34°C.
Having said this, in June 2020, the town of Verkhoyansk in Russia measured the highest temperature ever recorded above the Arctic Circle at +38°C, while the lowest temperature recorded is -69°C in Greenland. While these were anomalous, the continued changing climate highlights the need to look to the past to inform the future, when such conditions could become more common.
Dr. Schirrmeister notes that while the Last Interglacial warming mostly impacted summer temperatures, future climate change is expected to more broadly impact winter months due to anthropogenic activity. Nevertheless, ice sheet retreat, loss of sea ice and melting permafrost are all observed in the Arctic today, highlighting the importance of continued research into the sensitivity of Earth to rising temperatures during the Last Interglacial.

В Северо-Восточном Федеральном университете представили научному сообществу редкую находку - останки мамонтенка возрастом около 50 тысяч лет почти в идеальном состоянии. Найденная летом этого года в местности Батагайка Верхоянского района Якутии маленькая самка получила имя Яна и стала седьмым найденным мамонтенком в мире.

Une découverte fascinante. La Russie a présenté lundi les restes remarquablement bien préservés d’un petit mammouth vieux de 50 000 ans, retrouvé cet été dans le Grand Nord, dernière découverte scientifique d’importance en date dans cette région reculée du pays.
Cette femelle a été baptisée « Iana », d’après la rivière dans le bassin duquel elle a été retrouvée, en Iakoutie, un territoire peu peuplé de l’Extrême-Orient russe. La créature a été récupérée par les scientifiques dans le cratère de Batagaika (Russie), une immense dépression de plus de 80 m de profondeur qui s’élargit en raison du changement climatique.
Sa carcasse a été présentée à la communauté scientifique lundi à l’université fédérale du Nord-Est à Iakoutsk, la capitale régionale, a annoncé l’institution dans un communiqué. « Nous avons tous été surpris par la préservation exceptionnelle de ce mammouth. Il n’y a aucune perte au niveau de la tête, du tronc, des oreilles, de la bouche, sans dommages ni déformations visibles », a expliqué son recteur, Anatoli Nikolaïev, cité dans le communiqué.
Le fait que sa tête et son tronc aient survécu est particulièrement inhabituel. « En règle générale, la partie qui décongèle en premier, en particulier le tronc, est souvent mangée par les prédateurs modernes ou les oiseaux », a déclaré Maxim Cherpasov, chef du laboratoire du musée du mammouth de Iakoutsk. « Ici, par exemple, même si les membres antérieurs ont déjà été mangés, la tête est remarquablement bien conservée », a-t-il ajouté.
Le mammouth le mieux préservé au monde
Iana, qui pourrait être le spécimen de mammouth le mieux préservé au monde selon l’université, pèse 180 kilogrammes pour 120 cm de hauteur et moins de deux mètres de longueur.
« Cette découverte unique fournira des informations sur l’ontogenèse des mammouths, leurs caractéristiques adaptatives, les conditions paléoécologiques de leur habitat et d’autres aspects », s’est-elle félicitée. Des études sont prévues pour déterminer notamment l’âge exact de Iana, qui est estimé à « un an ou un peu plus ».
Sa carcasse, vieille de 50 000 ans, a été découverte cet été sur le territoire de la station de recherche de Batagaïka, où ont déjà été retrouvés d’autres restes d’animaux préhistoriques. Avant Iana, seules six carcasses de mammouths ont été découvertes dans le monde : cinq en Russie et une au Canada, selon l’université.
En Iakoutie, région isolée grande comme cinq fois la France et bordée par l’océan Arctique, le permafrost agit comme un gigantesque congélateur conservant les animaux préhistoriques, en particulier les mammouths. Ces dernières années, la station Batagaïka a trouvé des restes de cheval et de bison préhistoriques ou encore la momie d’un lemming.

Российские и ирландские ученые открыли новый способ защиты клеток от стресса, вызванного окислительными повреждениями, с помощью синтетических молекул циклических винилсульфонов. Они способны стабилизировать белок NRF2, который является ключевым элементом антиоксидантной защиты клеток. В дальнейшем эти соединения могут быть использованы для разработки препаратов, направленных на борьбу с воспалительными и дегенеративными заболеваниями.

A group of researchers from Kazan Federal University in collaboration with scientists from Trinity College Dublin, St. Petersburg State University and the Institute of Experimental Medicine (St. Petersburg) have discovered new approaches to combating cellular stress caused by oxidative damage.
Co-authors from KFU are Head of the Industrial Biopharmaceutics Laboratory of the Institute of Fundamental Medicine and Biology, Lead Researcher Emil Bulatov and Junior Researcher of the Biomedical Technologies Laboratory Raniya Khadiullina.
The central topic of the study was the NRF2 protein, a key element of antioxidant protection of cells. Normally, its activity is strictly controlled by degradation through the ubiquitination system, but under conditions of oxidative stress, the protein is activated, stimulating protective genes such as HMOX1 and NQO1. Scientists have demonstrated that cyclic vinyl sulfones, synthetic molecules first described by Russian chemists in the 1990s, can effectively stabilize NRF2 by blocking its degradation. One of the compounds studied, LCB1353, demonstrated the ability to protect cells from ferroptosis, a specific type of cell death caused by the accumulation of reactive oxygen species.
"Our study has shown for the first time that these compounds can be used to develop drugs aimed at combating inflammatory and degenerative diseases, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and acute inflammation," Bulatov noted.
In addition to studying the biological effects, the team synthesized and studied in detail the mechanism of action of vinyl sulfones. It turned out that the compounds selectively modify key regions of the KEAP1 protein, which is responsible for suppressing NRF2, thus ensuring the activation of antioxidant pathways. These data open up prospects for the creation of safe and highly effective compounds for pharmaceutical use.

МГУ и Росатом представили первый в России прототип 50-кубитного квантового компьютера на основе нейтральных атомов рубидия - впрочем, без подробностей. В связи с отсутствием на данный момент рецензируемых публикаций, публичных демонстраций и независимых внешних проверок неизбежно возникают вопросы о степени готовности и производительности этого прототипа.

Russia unveiled its 50-qubit quantum computer prototype based on rubidium neutral atom in late December, achieving a milestone in the country’s quantum computing roadmap and delivering on a promise made earlier in the year to develop a 50-qubit device before 2025, according to a statement reported in TASS, which was based on information from Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU) and the Russian Quantum Center (RQC).
*Editor’s Note: For clarity, RQC has one quantum computer and one prototype - two different platforms - with 50 qubits. In September, the center demonstrated its first quantum computer - ionic, based on ytterbium ions. On Dec. 25, the team unveiled it second prototype based on rubidium neutral atoms.
The development, a collaborative effort by the aforementioned MSU and RQC, uses neutral rubidium atoms as its platform, a technology that is being explored worldwide as device that can be used for large-scale applications, according to the teams.
"Scientists at the Lomonosov Moscow State University and the Russian Quantum Center have created Russia’s first prototype of a neutral single rubidium atoms-powered 50-qubit quantum computer as part of the Quantum Computing Roadmap coordinated by the Rosatom State Corporation," the MSU statement read.
The prototype aligns with Russia’s 2020 initiative to achieve advanced quantum computing capabilities by 2024. The government-backed Quantum Computing Roadmap aims to accelerate discovering in fields such as drug discovery, logistics optimization and materials science, according to TASS, Russia’s state news agency.
Neutral Atoms and Optical Tweezers
The 50-qubit device relies on single neutral rubidium atoms, which are held in place and manipulated using "optical tweezers," or highly focused laser beams, reports TASS. The system, housed on an optical table, features a laser array for cooling and controlling atomic states, along with ultra-high vacuum chambers to isolate the atoms.
"At the moment the MSU Center for Quantum Technologies is capable of creating quantum registers of 50 atoms arranged in an ordered array and perform operations on single qubits. Neutral atoms in optical tweezers are a good system in terms of scaling prospects. We more or less understand how to get from systems of tens of qubits to hundreds and even thousands of qubits," the scientists said, according to the MSU news service and reported by TASS.
The unveiling comes less than a year after Russia demonstrated a 20-qubit quantum computer, also developed under the roadmap. That device represented a leap forward from a 16-qubit ion-based system showcased to Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2023, according to The Quantum Insider.
At the time, the 16-qubit system was the country’s most advanced quantum computer, capable of running a molecule simulation algorithm via a cloud platform. Russia is one of a number of countries that are pushing to compete with global leaders in quantum computing. Russia’s quantum efforts are supported by an investment of $790 million announced in 2021.
Ruslan Yunusov, an advisor to Rosatom, the state corporation coordinating the roadmap, previously described the broader ambition: scaling from current prototypes to systems exceeding 100 qubits. Yunusov noted a separate 25-qubit prototype built on what he termed a "nuclear platform," hinting at diverse technological approaches under development. Rosatom is a Russian state corporation based in Moscow that specializes in high technology innovation, including a focus on nuclear energy and nuclear non-energy goods.
"We have developed a 20-qubit quantum computer as part of the roadmap on quantum computations. We implemented it on an ion platform. We also have a 25-qubit computer on a nuclear platform. We have plans [for computers] from 50 to 100 qubits. We be [sic] able to make a 50 [qubit computer] by the end of this year," Yunusov told TASS in an interview earlier in 2024, as reported by TQI.
The Need For Transparency
While the announcement may be considered as a milestone in Russia’s quantum computing program, the lack of peer-reviewed publications or public demonstrations raises questions about the prototype’s readiness and performance. More details will be needed before the world’s scientific community can properly assess the reported advance.
Critical metrics such as error rates, coherence times and gate fidelities have not been disclosed, at least publicly in the MAU statement, which makes it difficult to assess the system’s competitiveness on a global scale. The absence of independent verification or external validation also leaves room for skepticism, particularly given the history of ambitious claims in the quantum computing field.
While the development aligns with Russia’s strategic roadmap, some observers may view the announcement as a signaling effort within the geopolitical race for technological supremacy rather than an immediate breakthrough.
Public demonstrations or more detailed technical findings would be needed to bolster confidence in the prototype’s practical implications.
Historical Context and Strategic Implications
Russia’s quantum efforts date back to 2015, initially tied to the development of a quantum clock for GLONASS, the nation’s global navigation system. That early work laid the foundation for its current projects, which now encompass platforms based on neutral atoms, ions, superconductors, and photons.
The geopolitical stakes are high. Quantum computing is viewed as a strategic priority by many nations due to its transformative potential in cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and critical infrastructure. Russia’s focus on quantum technologies is part of a broader effort to bolster its technological independence and global competitiveness.
Challenges and Next Steps
Despite these achievements, the road to practical quantum computing remains a challenge. Scaling beyond 50 qubits requires overcoming significant hurdles in error correction and system stability. While neutral atoms offer scalability, controlling interactions among hundreds or thousands of qubits demands precision engineering and advanced algorithms.
More and more, quantum experts look beyond just qubit number and trust more in performance measures - such as fidelity and error correction statistics - to verify claims of progress in quantum computing.
That being said, the announcement of the prototype does position Russia among a select group of nations demonstrating 50-qubit quantum systems. Whether these prototypes can transition to real-world applications will depend on continued investments and breakthroughs in quantum software and infrastructure.

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