Июнь 2001 г.

Российская наука и мир (по материалам зарубежной электронной прессы)

CONTENTS / ОГЛАВЛЕНИЕ


• Russian science in disarray
• Science revival movement holds founding congress in Moscow
• Soros may pull out of Russia because of clampdown on academics
• Russia commercial secrets and copyright to be protected
• Scientists Shrug Off Academy Crackdown
• Moscow University Days to be held in Beijing
• Moscow State University Celebration Held in Beijing University
• 300 companies to take part in High Technology Week in St Pete
• APEC Science and Technology Industrial Parks Network Meeting Held
• Russo-Korean Biotechnology Congress opens in South Korea
• Conference on strategic community through education in Moscow
• International thermonuclear experimental reactor designed
• Caspian countries should save sturgeons together --opinion
• Sino-Russian Technology Cooperation Center Established

THE number of Russian scientists has dropped by a staggering 60 per cent in the decade since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the country's science program is in crisis, a leading expert has warned.
The number of researchers working in Russian science institutes had fallen from 2million in 1990 to 800,000, the head of the United Institute of Terrestrial Physics told the first meeting of the Revival of Russian Science movement.
Vladimir Strakhov highlighted other statistics that revealed the Russian science establishment was not only undergoing a crisis but in danger of collapse due to lack of funds.
He told fellow scientists that the hardware used in most technical laboratories had not been replaced for eight to 10 years, while the average age of other equipment was 15 years.
As a result, Russia had fallen from its lofty pedestal as a Cold War science superpower to the bottom rung of states with the least scientific potential - alongside Hungary, Spain, Poland and New Zealand.
State-run academies were failing to attract a younger generation of researchers, with the result that the average age of professors was about 70 and that of doctors of science higher than 60.
Even the so-called "candidates of science" - who occupy the next level down in Russia's hierarchical university system - were aged about 55 on average. Low pay in the academic world was to blame for Russia's scientific crisis - wages of researchers had dropped by 80 per cent during the post-Soviet decade, he said.
Average spending on a scientific researcher in Russia is 25 times smaller than other industrialised states, and Strakhov's warning comes at a bleak time for Russian science amid reports that the Government is seeking to impose new restrictions on the intellectual community.
Scientists warned of a return to Soviet-era restrictions in Russia under President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB spy, after documents requiring them to report all foreign contacts became law this week.

В Москве прошел учредительный съезд межрегионального общественного движения "За возрождение российской науки"

MOSCOW, Jun 02, 2001 (Itar-Tass via COMTEX) -- The founding congress of the inter-regional public movement "For the Revival of Russian Science" was held in Moscow on Saturday.
Its charter says that the movement was "created on public initiative for joint activities to promote the perception of science by society and the state as a factor necessary for the sustainable development of sovereign Russia in the world civilisation".
The movement will seek to form "some sort of a science lobby" that will put constant pressure on the executive and legislative branches at different levels for the purpose of protecting the interest of Russian science by all constitutional means, the programme of the movement says.
Movement chairman, Academician Vladimir Strakhov called for "bringing about a radical change in the attitude towards science both among authorities (the federal and local executive and legislative branches) and among financial and industrial capital".
"The needs of science and education (which are critical to the development of the Russian economy) have to be given top state priority", he said. "The fate of Russia as a strong and civilised state largely determined by the fate of Russian science and education", Strakhov quoted the movement's Manifesto as saying.
The congress was attended by 163 delegates and 50 guests form 22 regions, including Moscow, Moscow region, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod and Chelyabinsk.

Дж. Сорос заявил, что ограничение свободы научных контактов с зарубежными учеными, вынудит его прекратить инвестиции и филантропическую деятельность в России

MOSCOW, Jun 05, 2001 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- Financier George Soros said Tuesday that an apparent clampdown on academic freedom by the Russian Academy of Sciences could compel him to reconsider both his investments and his philanthropic activities in Russia. In instructions made public last week by a Russian parliament member, the influential academy ordered its hundreds of affiliated institutes to maintain "constant control" over the foreign contacts of their employees, including trips abroad and activities of foreign academics in Russia.
Human rights advocates slammed the move as an attempt to revive the Iron Curtain. Soros said at a news conference in Moscow that the instructions were "basically a return to the Soviet system".
Soros, who has contributed millions of dollars to education and science in the former Soviet Union, said the academy's order upset him as a philanthropist and as an investor.
"I feel it very personally also because, as you know I've spent really well over dlrs 100 million in supporting Russian science and I would certainly not have been either willing or able to do it if such an order had been in existence", he said.
If Russia reverts to the closed practices of the Soviet Union, Soros said he would probably stop investing in the country. In Russia today, he said, "there are two tendencies, one is an economic reform and the other a political retreat. Beyond a certain point these two tendencies cannot be reconciled and I think this ruling (by the academy) already goes over the border of what can be tolerated".
Soros said he hopes the Russian scientific community will protest the order. Soros also pushed a plan to improve shareholders' rights in the natural gas monopoly Gazprom. The state-connected company has a two-tier share structure, under which foreigners can only buy shares traded abroad, at a much higher rate than domestic shares.
Soros, who owns Gazprom shares, said he asked Russian officials to allow foreigners to purchase shares on the domestic market. "There has been a change of management at Gazprom and it's an opportunity now to improve transparency there", Soros said. Last week, the Gazprom board voted unanimously to replace long-serving chief executive Rem Vyakhirev with Alexei Miller, a loyalist of President Vladimir Putin.

Президиум Российской Академии Наук собирается издать рекомендации о том, как защитить коммерческие тайны и интеллектуальную собственность в процессе международного сотрудничества. Решение было принято на заседании президиума

MOSCOW, Jun 13, 2001 (Itar-Tass via COMTEX) -- The presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences will issue these days written recommendations to academic institutes about how to protect commercial secrets and intellectual property in the process of international cooperation. The decision to this effect was passed at the presidium meeting on Wednesday.
"Any ban on international cooperation is out of the question. There can be no development of science without international cooperation. We only want to end chaos in this area", Tass was told chief scientific secretary of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Academician Nikolai Plate.
Vice-president of the Academy, jurist Vladimir Kudryavtsev, believes that academic institutes have not yet adjusted to market conditions and quite often lack skills to conclude an agreement on cooperation and lose sight of the need to protect copyright.
"We have dozens of examples when scientists trustingly provide complete information about the results of their work to their foreign colleagues and the latter pass these results for their own discoveries", Kudryavtsev said. Correct formulation of patents also poses a problem, he said. For instance, laureate of the Nobel Prize Zhores Alferov, the result of whose work is used in computer operation the world over which enabled many to gain billions, does not receive any royalties.
In order to remedy the situation, the presidium of the Academy plans, specifically, to create the register of all international contacts of its organisations. As many as 355 institutes of the Academy now have dozens of contracts each, but there is no complete list in the Academy of all these contacts so far. Scientists will also be obliged to give accounts to their colleagues of the results of their visits abroad. "We will be protecting our intellectual property and state and commercial secrets", Plate said.
About a fortnight ago the Academy's president Yuri Osipov signed a decree on introducing order in international contracts which, Plate said, "caused an unjustifiable uproar in the media". Therefore, the Academy's Presidium decided to address the problem again and to set out the essence of its new regulations in greater detail, Plate said.

Several prominent scientists voiced skepticism Wednesday that a recent directive by the Russian Academy of Sciences aimed at preventing espionage by controlling scientists' interaction with foreigners would clamp down on their activities.
The directive, a copy of which was obtained by The Moscow Times, orders the heads of institutes and research labs to maintain control over overseas trips by scientists who have access to state secrets and to tighten control over "researchers filling out reports about their trips abroad" and "over foreign academics in Russia". The order, signed by academy administrator Nikolai Plate, does not mention any punishment for those who ignore the instructions.
When first made public last week, the directive raised fears among human rights activists that institutes were adopting Soviet-era practices of secrecy. The Federal Security Service has accused a number of scientists and academicians of divulging state secrets to foreigners. Members of the academy, many of whom are poorly paid, earn extra money by assisting foreign researchers.
Andrei Mirzabekov, director of the Moscow-based Engelhard Institute of Molecular Biology, who holds the title of academic, the highest scholarly title in Russia, said Wednesday that he had seen the directive and that few scientists would care to obey it. "I have seen it but have not paid much attention to it", he said. "I have kept on working the way I always did. That's what I have to do in order to survive".
Mirzabekov said foreign grants have allowed scientists to work in Russia or abroad under exchange programs despite a chronic lack of state funds. He said he doubted that the directive could restrict such arrangements.
Olga Ladyzhenskaya, a professor at the St. Petersburg-based Steklov's Mathematics Institute, said her institute has not received the directive. "We have not seen the document ourselves. All I heard about it were rumors and anecdotes", Ladyzhenskaya said by telephone from St. Petersburg. "It sounds very unpleasant, but I need to look into it before I decide", she said.
Perhaps the most outspoken critic of the directive has been financier George Soros, who has contributed millions of dollars to education and science in Russia. Soros told a news conference Tuesday that the order was "basically a return to the Soviet system". "I feel it very personally as well because, as you know, I've spent really well over $100 million in supporting Russian science, and I would certainly not have been either willing or able to do it if such an order had been in existence", Soros said. "I think this ruling already goes over the border of what can be tolerated", he said, adding that he may stop supporting Russian science if the directive is enforced.
Gennady Mesyats, deputy head of the Russian Academy of Sciences, defended the order in an interview published in the Izvestia newspaper last Friday, saying recently there has been no control over Russian researchers' foreign contacts. "The leak of perspective scientific research has become catastrophic", Mesyats said.
Reached Wednesday, academy officials called the directive an internal matter. "It is a universally customary practice to report to your boss about the results of a business trip", said academy spokesman Igor Milovidov.

BEIJING, Jun 04, 2001 (Itar-Tass via COMTEX) -- The Beijing University is preparing to hold the Days of Moscow State University from the fifth to the seventh of June.
Such Days are quite a unique function. They are being held in China for the first time "to help strengthen contacts between the two largest higher schools of the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China", Assistant Dean of the Journalism Department of Moscow University Yevgeny Zaitsev has noted here.
Rector of Moscow State University and Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Viktor Sadovnichy is to arrive in China on Tuesday. He will open on the same day an exhibition of more than three hundred titles of different publications: study aids, books and monographies, devoted to the scientific achievements of Moscow State University.
Leading University professors are to deliver lectures at Beijing University on problems of economy, psychology, and history. Sadovnichy is to tell Chinese students about the main directions of space exploration, Dean of the Journalism Department Yasen Zaursky - about the current situation within the Russian mass media. A folklore company of the Moscow University Cultural Centre will render some Soviet songs, which are most popular with the senior generation of Chinese.
More than six hundred foreign students are now studying at Moscow State University and fifty per cent of them are from China. The Moscow University attaches priority importance to the promotion of contacts with Beijing University, where its Information Centre has been functioning successfully for more than a year now.

Продолжение дайджеста за ИЮНЬ 2001 года (часть 2)

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