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
• From the Kremlin to Castletown
• Boston-Moscow software link skirts Russian obstacles
• 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

Остров Мэн станет домом для 10 самых ярких ученых России и их семей.
Все они бывшие профессора Московского Государственного университета. Ученые и их семьи после некоторого колебания были приглашены правительством Острова Мэн и всем была предоставлена работа. Программа спонсируется британским Посольством в Москве, а также британским Советом.
Они находятся здесь с секретной миссией: обратить самые последние научные достижения Российских университетов в наличные деньги.

CASTLETOWN in the Isle of Man is a wealthy, law abiding, smug place, basking in its status as a tax refuge for some of Europe's richest citizens. It is a world away from the shabby, impoverished metropolis of Moscow but nevertheless it is now home to 10 of Russia's brightest scientists and their families.
Slipped into the country by a former paratrooper and hidden on the island with the collusion of the Home Office, they are on a secret mission: to take cutting edge research from Russian universities and turn it into cash.
The scheme is the brainchild of Ian Woodcock, the ex-para; and his company, CFB, has attracted high- rofile backing. It is to be chaired by John Taylor, the former chief executive of British Nuclear Fuels, and has an advisory board that inludes Don McCrickard, ex-chief executive of TSB Group, and Martin Lindenberg from the Houston Technology Center.
CFB sets up companies to market applications of technology freely available from Russian universities. It has already had one success and has four other companies which will float within the next year. CFB itself is due to float on Aim this year with a value of about $20m. It has a further three other companies in gestation. The whole thing started almost by accident. After leaving the army in the early 90s, Woodcock found himself in Moscow trying to work up a scheme to export Russian timber. "I started a company to commercialise Russian technology about eight years ago," he says, "I just bumped into some people who gave me the idea while I was trying to export timber. "At about that time the Israelis began recruiting Russians by the bucketload and now they form the backbone of their high tech industries. So we started trawling around and found a group called Tetra, what you might call a technology transfer centre. They are all ex-Moscow State University professors and they would source technology and write a report on its applications in an industry."
Woodcock's first project was the commercialisation of a technology for producing sterile conditions in hospitals. The company, Sterilox Technologies, was snapped up by American investors, making Woodcock enough money to make a move to the Isle of Man a tax priority. The company is soon to float on Nasdaq with a value of $100m. That was a fantastic business education for me," he says, "I made lots of mistakes but learnt a huge amount. After that we decided to focus on two or three technologies and build companies around them. We refuse to pay for technology and the first step is to negotiate the access rights and patent them to a corporation, to take the personalities out of it." CFB puts in seed corn capital and builds a company around the science. It then brings in third party funding to carry the fledgling company up to a listing on Aim. Woodcock currently has four companies at that stage. Keronite, which makes surface treatments for electrical alloys, has raised $2.5m from investors such as Jupiter Asset Management; Isle Hardie makes super hard coatings for steel and is backed by Oxford Venture Capital Trust; Intellikraft uses piezo crystals in electronics and is another investment by Oxford Venture Capital Trust; while Search Works, an internet idea, has raised $2m through a private placing via Beeson Gregory. All are due to float next year. The scientists and their families were, after some initial mistrust, welcomed by the government of the Isle of Man and have all been given work permits. The scheme is sponsored by the British Embassy in Moscow as well as the British Council, and CFB has been asked to give presentations in Russia to demonstrate what is possible. "The families are all here," Woodcock says. "Most of the wives are scientists as well and the kids go to local schools. One lad got all As and Bs in his GCSEs this summer after being in the country for just a year."

В совместной российско-американской компании Openpages Inc. работает 140 российских программистов и инженеров, которые производят программное обеспечение, позволяющее автоматически создавать Web - страницы в Интернете

BOSTON, Oct. 7 (Reuters)-- The Russian economy now dances to the tune of surging oil prices, but Boston technology executive Scott Killoh says programmers banging out software code could be the drum beat of the country's future economic expansion. In downtown Moscow on Tverskaya Street, Killoh's company, Openpages Inc., employs 140 Russian programmers and engineers turning out software code at "light speeds." Their blocks of code are shipped via the Internet to a computer server in the United States. Openpages engineers in suburban Boston then download the data for building and revising the company's latest software content management product.
"We don't have any problems with customs," Killoh joked on Saturday at a U.S.-Russian investment symposium in Boston. Indeed, the company's Boston-Moscow connection already has gained the approval of blue-chip investors such as Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Matrix Partners who have invested more than $50 million in Openpages. Russian expertise at producing software code for the Internet economy, however, has largely been overlooked by American firms, said Killoh, chairman and founder of Westford, Mass.-based Openpages. While countries such as Ireland and India have become magnets for U.S. technology companies strapped for high-tech workers, Russia's reputation for corruption, its crumbling infrastructure and complicated tax code has overshadowed Russia's intellectual capital, Killoh said. Russian Trade and Economy Minister German Gref agreed his country should study the success stories of India and Ireland.
Openpages is growing at an annual rate of 400 percent selling software to leading U.S. media companies such as Knight Ridder Inc (NYSE:KRI - news), Gannett Co. Inc.(NYSE:GCI - news) and Tribune Co (NYSE:TRB - news) that allows them to build Web pages automatically, Killoh said. He expects Openpages to generate about $15 million in revenue in 2000 and go public by midyear 2001. Openpages' Russian employees come at one-fifth the cost of their peers in Boston, a hot bed of high-technology firms.
"If you're in Boston, there's a negative unemployment rate for technology talent," Killoh said. "We would not have had success without our Russian talent." Killoh, 35, relies on Russian Yuri Kirkel, 28, to find programmers and software engineers for the Moscow operation. The two met in Boston not long after Kirkel ended a two-week stint delivering pizzas.
Kirkel honed his programming skills at a biochemistry institute in Russia, where he earned about $15 a month. Now, he recruits scientists from the prestigious Moscow State University. These workers can earn as much as $30,000 a year, not including stock options. "Some are pure scientists who discuss quantum physics in the lunchroom for fun," Killoh said. In contrast, 20 percent of Russia's population lives on less than $2 a day, said Johannes Linn, vice president of the World Bank for Europe and Central Asia.

Высшие должностные лица Российского космического агенства дали добро на запуск в этом месяце первой команды на Международную космическую станцию. Первыми на станцию полетят американский астронавт Билл Шеферд и два россиянина - космонавт Юрий Гидзенко и бортинженер Сергей Крикалев

MOSCOW (AP) -Top Russian space officials gave the go-ahead for launching the first resident crew, including the American commander, to the International Space Station this month, a major Russian space contractor said Wednesday.The Russian engineers play a key role in the station's operation because a majority of the hardware in orbit now - and the rocket and transport capsule to carry the crew - are made in Russia. Most of the financing flows from the United States.The Russian Council of Chief Technology Designers decided on Tuesday that all systems on the station and ground support were ready for the Oct. 30 launch, said a press statement from Energia, a major contractor for the project. A NASA official briefed the meeting about U.S components on the station, the statement said. U.S. astronaut Bill Shepherd and two Russians - cosmonaut Yuri Gidzenko and flight engineer Sergei Krikalyov - will be the first to live on the station. Previous visits were short stopovers for construction, with a U.S. Space Shuttle docked to the station at all times.
The trio will remain on the station until a replacement crew arrives in February. The council also approved a mid-November launch date for a Progress cargo ship carrying fuel and water for the station, the Energia statement said.

Грузовой корабль, запущенный с космодрома Байконур 17 октября доставит топливо на станцию Мир, которая медленно снижается и отклоняется от орбиты

MOSCOWAP) -(October 17, 2000 11:04 a.m. EDT www.nandotimes.com) - Russia launched a supply ship Tuesday to bring fuel to boost the Mir space station, which has been slowing down and slipping from orbit, space officials said. The station has been falling steadily since its last crew returned to Earth in June after a 73-day flight. The descent has been cause by increased solar flare activity this year, which has expanded the atmosphere and created friction between Mir and thin gasses high above the Earth. The fuel will be used to lift the approximately 130 metric ton station to a higher orbit. Without fuel, the Mir would eventually sink into the thicker layers of the atmosphere and burn up.
The Progress M-43 blasted off at 1:27 Moscow time Tuesday from Russia's Baikonur launch pad in Kazakstan, said a statement from RKK Energia, the company that built and operates Mir. It will rendezvous with the unmanned station in four days. To free up the Progress parking spot on a Mir hatch, space controllers detached a used cargo ship and sent it burning up into the atmosphere on Sunday. The new Progress is also carrying oxygen and water. The expense of Progress launches and other maintenance has led some Russian politicians to call for the station to be ditched. U.S. space officials have also urged the government to devote its scarce space funds to the new International Space Station.
MirCorp, a private company based in Amsterdam that has leased time on Mir, said it had funded the Progress launch. The firm announced last week that it intends to turn to stock markets to raise $117 million to keep the station in orbit.

Российский ученый Анатолий Бабкин может свидетельствовать, что американский бизнесмен Эдмонд Поуп находился в России с целью шпионажа.

MOSCOW - Edmond Pope, the American businessman Russia has charged with spying, goes on trial here Wednesday, and his lawyers say an obscure Russian scientist will denounce him as a spy.
Pope, a former U.S. naval intelligence officer who brokers Russian technology in the West, was arrested April 3 and accused of paying $30,000 to acquire underwater missile technology. He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.Pope's lead attorney, Pavel Astakhov, said Russian scientist Anatoly Babkin is emerging as the prosecution's central witness. Babkin was arrested and accused of supplying Pope information, but in a taped, two-hour statement, he denounced Pope as a spy. The Federal Security Service, or FSB, the main successor agency of the KGB, made the tape available to the defense in preparation for the trial. Babkin, Astakhov said, is prepared to tell the court that he thought Pope was a spy. FSB officials have declined repeated requests for interviews and have offered infrequent public statements about the case through the Russian news media.The case is the first major espionage case under Russian President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent. Pope's imprisonment has impaired already fragile U.S.-Russian relations. Some analysts believe Russia's resurgent security forces are using the case to press for a tougher stance toward the West. But the case could also chill Putin's efforts to increase foreign investment in Russia. Pope has remained in the maximum-security Lefortovo Prison since his arrest and has grown "very depressed," said Astakhov. He is convinced he will not receive a fair trial, Astakhov said.President Clinton and other U.S. officials say Pope is innocent and should be released. Pope, 54, who suffers a rare form of bone cancer, has unsuccessfully sought to be released into the custody of a physician pending trial. Moscow judges have ruled that the charges are too serious to warrant his release. The trial, expected to be closed to the news media, could last for weeks, Astakhov said, but there has been speculation that Putin may press for a swift conclusion to prevent it from having any lasting effect on U.S. - Russian relations. Putin says the case against Pope must be completed but has hinted that he may free Pope for medical reasons after the trial. Pope, who was a former senior official at the Applied Research Laboratory at Pennsylvania State University before he founded two private technology companies, was on his 27th trip to Russia when he was arrested.

Молодые руководители российских фирм, предоставляющих услуги Интернет и телекоммуникаций, посетили ряд американских фирм.

Among the latest to tour the information-technology nerve center are 11 Russian telecommunications executives hosted by nine Northern Virginia Rotary Clubs. Their visit, from Sept. 28 to Oct. 22, is sponsored by the Productivity Enhancement Program of the San Francisco-based Center for Citizen Initiatives, a nonprofit group funded by the State Department that is dedicated to aiding Russia's transition to a market economy and training its entrepreneurs in U.S. business practices.The Russians, mostly young directors of small telecommunications and Internet service firms, are visiting such companies as America Online, UUNet, SpaceNet, Oracle, Verizon, iDirect, Entex and Siemens. Other stops on the program include the Northern Virginia Technology Council, the Fairfax County Government Center, the Pentagon and NASA. Hosting the Russians in area homes and arranging their program are the Rotary Clubs of Arlington, Alexandria, Annandale, Baileys Crossroads, Crystal City/Pentagon, Falls Church, McLean, Mount Vernon and Rosslyn/Fort Myer. In addition to absorbing information on the way business is done at area high-tech firms, the Russians are being exposed to various leisure and social activities, including a typical American cookout, bowling, shopping and sightseeing."The visit is aimed at taking people out of their environment in Russia and maybe opening them to new ideas about how to do things," said Stephen Klemp, a member of the Arlington Rotary Club, the primary organizer of the Russians' program here.At a meeting last week at iDirect, a high-tech start-up company in Reston, the Russians peppered the new firm's president, George Gonzalez, with questions about its business--it offers high-speed Internet access internationally using satellites--and about its plans to expand into Russia.Although Northern Virginia is gaining renown as what entrepreneurs such as Gonzalez call "the U.S. Internet backbone," the area's high-tech role still appears to be something of a mystery abroad."I didn't know it was a second Silicon Valley and that so many high-tech companies are concentrated in Virginia," said Sergey Tripalin, the 33-year-old director of Informatika, a computer and software company in Rostov-on-Don.Aleksandr Verenikin, 27, the CEO of Informa, an Internet "media agency" in the same city, said he had heard of Northern Virginia's central role as an Internet nerve center. "I'm still not able to figure out why it is that way," he said. While here, he hopes to make contacts for "future partnerships" and to find investors for Russia's growing e-commerce market, he said. Meanwhile, he is using a digital camera to shoot about 100 photos a day, some of which are e-mailed back to his company and posted on its Web site as part of a "virtual tour" of the Washington area.Diana Scherbina, 24, a lawyer and deputy general director of PrimTelefon, a cellular phone company in Vladivostok, was interested in seeing sample contracts and learning more about regulations governing the industry here. She said she is already familiar with some U.S. business practices because of her company's joint-venture partnership with an American firm. But even so, "coming here is like coming to another planet," she said. "Our lifestyles and environment are very different."For Tripalin, however, some of the similarities outweigh the differences. "What really impressed me is that some Americans are more Russian than we are," he said. The couple he is staying with--John Bohm, a retired Army colonel, and his wife, Janet, a music teacher--are well traveled and interested in Russia. Janet Bohm plays the balalaika, a traditional Russian stringed instrument, and belongs to the Washington Balalaika Society, the largest of 13 such orchestras in the United States. She has taken Tripalin to two rehearsals and planned to invite the entire group to another one this week at a church in Arlington."I haven't heard so much traditional Russian music in my entire life," Tripalin said."He showed interest, so I pulled him in hook, line and sinker," Janet Bohm said.With the Russian economy gradually stabilizing since the fall of communism, Russian and American businessmen are finding they have more in common, especially when it comes to the Internet, Tripalin said. This was illustrated for him when he exchanged business cards the other day with an American at the Washington Rotary Club."We both have e-mail on the same site--hotmail.com--which means we're neighbors," Tripalin said. "There are no borders anymore."

Нобелевский лауреат Жорес Алферов встретился с президентом В. Путиным. На встрече были обсуждены меры, необходимые для поддержки российской науки.

MOSCOW,October 12 (Itar-Tass) -- Russia's Nobel prize winner in physics Academician Zhores Alfyorov met with President Vladimir Putin on Thursday, to discuss measures to support domestic science.
The country has preserved a powerful scientific potential which needed powerful support, Alfyorov told reporters after the meeting, which, in his view, had been very effective.
The scientist said he had foremost discussed "the problems to support and develop domestic science, and its strategic directions that are important for Russia."
In his view, this is fundamental research in new information technologies and solid state physics.
He noted that he had fulfilled the objectives of the meeting -- which he had planned for himself -- by 500 percent.
"Congratulating him, the president noted that he was happy for Russian science and our home city," according to Alfyorov.

Уникальное соединение алмаза с коэситом - более плотной разновидностью кварца - позволяет ученым определять давление, при котором в глубине нашей планеты образуются горные породы или минералы. Эта необычная комбинация полезных ископаемых сохраняет высокое давление, вокруг горной породы внутри Земли, производя "фоссилизированное давление". Результаты исследований ученых Геофизической лаборатории института Карнеги в Вашингтоне и Российской Академии наук опубликованы в журнале Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A unique combination of diamond with coesite - a dense variety of quartz - is providing scientists with a new means for determining the pressure at which a rock or mineral forms deep within our planet.
This intriguing combination of minerals retains the high pressures surrounding the rock once present inside the Earth, yielding a "fossilized pressure."
Investigators from the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington and the Russian Academy of Sciences report their research in today's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Although these dense minerals, diamond and coesite, must be formed under high pressure, thus implying a deep origin, the actual pressure would normally have been released long since the specimens reached the Earth's surface.
A diamond-coesite sample from Venezuela, however, is a rare find that actually contains the pressure present at early epochs in the history of our planet.
The combination of the two materials is excellent for the preservation and determination of fossilized pressure because the extremely strong, non-yielding diamond container prevents the highly compressed, chemically simple coesite from expanding and releasing the pressure.
The maximum pressure is therefore preserved, and the scientists can analyze the sample without the chemical variability that is associated with other inclusions such as garnet or olivine.
In their analysis, the scientists used two techniques -- micro-Raman and micro-x-ray diffraction. They focused lasers and x-rays to micrometer-sized beams (less than a tenth of the diameter of a human hair) to probe the 60-micrometer microscopic inclusion of the mineral lodged within the two-millimeter diamond crystal.
The results from both techniques agreed well, yielding a pressure at the site of the inclusion of 3.62 gigapascals -- enough pressure to squeeze charcoal into diamond.
According to Dave Mao, "the preserved pressure depends upon the difference between the compressibility and expansivity of the host diamond to the inclusion. From the fossilized pressure, we can retrace the exact pressure and temperature at which the diamond-containing rock was formed and the journey that it went through to reach the Earth's surface. This enlightens our understanding of Earth's interior at depths exceeding 120-150 kilometers."
The Carnegie Institution of Washington has been a pioneering force in basic scientific research since 1902. It is a private, nonprofit organization with five research departments in the U.S.: Terrestrial Magnetism, Plant Biology, Observatories, Embryology, and the Geophysical Laboratory. The Geophysical Lab is located in Washington, D.C.

BAIKONUR, Kazakstan -- A Russian rocket carrying the first residents of the international space station blasted off on Tuesday on a mission that NASA hopes willlead to the permanent occupancy of space.
NASA astronaut Bill Shepherd, the space station's first commander, became only the second American to be launched aboard a Russian rocket. He was strapped into the snug Soyuz capsule along with cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev. Their 17-story Soyuz rocket soared into an afternoon desert sky from the same launch pad where the Space Age began 43 years ago this month. The significance was not lost on the crowd gathered at the Baikonur Cosmodrome for Tuesday's launch, or on the three men riding the rocket.
Space officials monitoring the launch at Mission Control outside Moscow cheered as the rocket's third stage fell away, putting the men into orbit.
The space station was zooming over Africa when Shepherd and his crew took off on their extremely belated journey.They will reach their new home on Thursday and settle in for a four-month stay.
Before the launch, Shepherd, Gidzenko and Krikalev smiled and looked relaxed as masked technicians checked their white and blue spacesuits inside the cosmonaut wardrobe room.
Dozens of U.S. and Russian space officials and journalists watched from behind a glass wall, erected to keep germs away from the spacemen.
"Give us a fast ship," said Shepherd, a Navy captain.
"May you have a fair wind and a following sea, Shep," replied his boss, George Abbey, director of the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
At the appointed moment, Shepherd and his crew marched into the cold morning, hunched in their uncomfortable spacesuits, and stood at attention before top officials. Gidzenko, a military officer, saluted. Then the three men boarded a bus to the Soyuz rocket.
Before climbing in, Shepherd turned and shouted: "Let's go do it!" Shepherd blew kisses to his wife and gave a thumbs-up to his colleagues before heading to the launch pad."Take care and have fun," Beth Stringham-Shepherd told her husband in an emotionally sendoff.
On Monday, Shepherd made a pitch for a name for the international space station, although not proposing a specific name. He also found himself defending his appointment as skipper and expressed his keen desire to get started on a mission that's been in the works -- and on hold -- for years.
"I'm anxious to get started, get into space and start operations," said Shepherd, sporting a fresh crewcut that ought to last quite a while in orbit. He borrowed a line from the world's first spaceman, Yuri Gagarin. "Gagarin said it all - Poyekhali." That means: "Let's Go."
As for a name for the space station, Shepherd turned to the nautical history he loves. "For thousands of years, humans have been going to sea on ships," said Shepherd, 51.
"People have designed and built these vessels,launched them with a good feeling that a name will bring good fortune to the crew and success to their voyage. We're waiting for some decision from our managers as to whether we will follow this tradition or not."
Gidzenko and Krikalev sat next to their space station skipper on Monday as the Russian space program's top commission formally approved their launch on a mission that NASA considers every bit as important as the Apollo moon landings.
"It's definitely the beginning of a new era in human space flight," said Michael Baker, a NASA manager who took part in the proceedings. "From now on, I think that all of our endeavors in space, human endeavors, will be joint. It's a worldwide effort." Sixteen countries are participating in the $60 billion-plus project, widely considered to be thelargest technological enterprise ever undertaken on a global scale.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is particularly thrilled. The space agency sent about 100 employees to the Russian space program's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Central Asia to witness the launch.
It is America's first space station since the 1970s Skylab and, unlike that early orbiting outpost, holds the promise of people living continuously in space,beginning with Tuesday's launch. It's also the culmination of the space station proposed by President Reagan in 1984.
"This mission, and this program, is the keystone for the future of human exploration in space. What more do you want to say?" Shepherd said.
The space station, parts of which have been in orbit for two years, is far from perfect, Shepherd noted. But he added: "It needs to be the model for how human beings work in space, to enable going back to the moon and other expeditions farther than Earth."
Shepherd and his crew have been training for NASA's so-called Expedition One mission for nearly five years.The three men will turn on all the life-support systems once they arrive at the 240-mile high outpost on Thursday and start tackling all the maintenance and repair work.
They're well aware that everything they do will set the pace, and mood, for years to come. NASA hopes to finish building the space station in 2006 and to operate it as a first-class laboratory until at least 2016 and hopefully long beyond.
The things "that are being done on our flight will continue for many, many years," said Krikalev. "So it's lot of responsibility on our crew."
Krikalev and Gidzenko, both veterans of Russia's Mir space station, have considerably more space experience than Shepherd even though they're a decadeyounger. NASA was adamant, however, that the first space station commander be American and that that astronaut be Shepherd.
Shepherd, an astronaut since 1984, flew on three space shuttle flights before moving into space station management in 1993, the same year Russia joined the international space station project.
His longest, and most recent, space mission lasted 10 days back in 1992. This mission, by comparison, will last a minimum 115 days. Space shuttle Discovery is supposed to drop off a replacement crew and bring Shepherd and company back at the end of February.
Krikalev, one of the world's most experienced spaceman, isn't complaining about an American being in charge. Neither is Gidzenko, a fill-in for a veteran Russian cosmonaut who refused to work for an American with no space station experience.
Shepherd was diplomatic when asked about any disgruntlement. "A good leader sometimes has to be a good follower," Shepherd said. "We're a team in orbit. Everybody understands that."

Начало дайджеста за ОКТЯБРЬ 2000 года (часть 1)

предыдущий месяц

1998-2000

следующий месяц