Ноябрь 2001 г.

Российская наука и мир (по материалам зарубежной электронной прессы)

CONTENTS / ОГЛАВЛЕНИЕ


• Cautious Optimism, But Progress Is Slow
• Europe and United States assess international support of science in Russia and Ukraine
• Taking Scientists Out of Nuclear
• Nature: the international language
• Government Spurns Human Genome Effort
• Science Spending Slips to Third World Level
• Separating Spies from Scientists
• HIV Rise in Russia May Lead to TB Epidemic - Doctors
• Humans Descended from Cells without Nuclei or Walls
• Warning of smallpox terror risk
• Life and Times of a Soviet Super Bug Designer
• Fossils of Chipmunk-Sized Mammal Found
• Meteor clue to end of Middle East civilizations
• Spacewalkers Wire Up Station Hardware as Culbertson Earns EVA Wings

Президент Путин, прибывший в заснеженную Сибирь, заверил, что политика в отношении сибирского региона будет пересмотрена.

LONDON -- After suffering a precipitous decline in financial support over the past decade, science in Russia and the Ukraine is showing signs of recovery, experts agreed at a meeting here last week.
Scientific ranks have stabilized after a long period of brain drain, graduate student enrollment in the natural sciences is on the rise, and there's even hope that some top Russian and Ukrainian researchers will repatriate to their homelands.

Европа и Соединенные Штаты оценивают международную поддержку науки в России и на Украине

WASHINGTON, DC - October 25, 2001 -- Nobel Laureate Zhores Alferov opened a discussion on 22 October 2001 to identify priorities and set the agenda for the future of science and technology in Russia and Ukraine.
He was the keynote speaker at a conference titled "International Support of Science in Russia and Ukraine: A 10-Year Retrospective and Forward Look", hosted by the Royal Society and the U.S. Civilian Research and Development Foundation (CRDF). The conference participants payed special attention to three areas, deemed critical to the future of science and technology in Russia and Ukraine:

• Support of young researchers

• Bridging the gap between basic and applied research

• Strengthening research systems and infrastructure

• recognise excellence in science

• support leading-edge scientific research and its applications

• stimulate international interaction

• further the role of science, engineering and technology in society

• promote education and the public's understanding of science

• provide independent authoritative advice on matters relating to science, engineering and technology encourage research into the history of science

• support exceptional peer-reviewed research projects that offer scientists and engineers alternatives to emigration and help prevent the dissolution of the scientific and technological infrastructure of the countries of the FSU

• advance the transition of weapons scientists to civilian work by funding collaborative non-weapons research and development projects

• help to move applied research to the marketplace and bring economic benefits both to the countries of the FSU and the to the United States.

По инициативе Министерства энергетики США для решения проблемы создания программных продуктов как части программы ограничения распространения ядерного оружия было привлечено 17 ученых, в основном из Института им. Курчатова, - главного центра ядерных исследований в России. Это еще один шаг Соединенных Штатов по использованию специалистов России в области ядерного оружия

They understand the physics behind creating weapons of mass destruction and some could cobble together blueprints for a nuclear bomb. But since the mid-1990s, thousands of scientists and engineers from former Soviet weapons facilities have been trained to produce wheelchair seats, 3-D cameras and prosthetic legs, all courtesy of the U.S. government, which is spending money in the name of nonproliferation.
The latest project from the U.S. Department of Energy's Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention program has 17 scientists - most from Moscow's Kurchatov Institute, the chief center for nuclear research in Russia - learning how to produce commercial software products. It is another step by the United States to harness Russia's nuclear weapons knowledge before it gets exported to so-called rogue states - although many throw doubt on the risk these scientists actually pose to global security.
The project is the first time the IPP, run by the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration, a branch of the DOE, has tapped Russia's growing market for offshore programming. It expects to eventually convert 500 scientists and engineers - 120 a year - now working in institutes across thecountry into gainful employees in the global IT industry.
In the first year, most of the allotted $525,000 will go to Kurchatov and Russian software firm Luxoft - divided 70/30, the DOE stated - to run a training center at the Kurchatov Institute. U.S. company CTG Inc., which also participates in training and will employ some of the scientists, is expected to fund as much or more by the end of the program. The classroom opens this week.
The Kurchatov Institute, named for Igor Kurchatov, regarded as the father of the Soviet nuclear weapons program, has worked with the DOE on nonproliferation projects since the mid-1990s. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the institute saw its payroll halved as military orders fell. Of its current 4,000 to 5,000 employees, about a third work on state-funded projects, as opposed to almost 100 percent in the 1980s, while others have to find outside work. Andrei Pimenov, a senior computer specialist who has been at Kurchatov since 1979, and one of the 17 to start training this week, is using the program as a chance for a career change.
For nine months, Pimenov, 43, will learn how to capitalize on his present skills. With two children in school, the former nuclear weapons scientist is looking for a way to earn more than $250 a month.
Others at the institute earn 1,000 rubles ($33) a month. At a Washington news conference in early October, with the Sept. 11 attacks still very much on everyone's minds, speakers billed the training as a way to reduce potential terrorism threats. "Our primary goal is to ensure that former weapons scientists and engineers remain gainfully employed in meaningful, sustainable, peaceful civilian endeavors", said Sarah Lennon, an NNSA official, in an e-mail interview. Earlier this year, the U.S. government proposed budget cuts for the DOE's nonproliferation programs in Russia, but these have not been as big as expected. As part of a larger energy bill, the House of Representatives and Senate approved last week $804 million for all NNSA's nuclear nonproliferation programs in 2002, $69 million down on 2001 funding, but $30 million more than the amount requested by the administration. The bill is expected to be signed by the White House any day now. There is a smattering of examples - some proven, some not - throughout the 1990s to support nonproliferation funding. Lennon recalled an instance in 1992 when a group of Russian scientists were stopped "on the tarmac" as they were leaving for North Korea. Yet many have questioned the success rate of such programs in warding off the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Assessing the actual risk of nuclear proliferation is difficult as it is impossible to count how many poorly paid scientists did not sell secrets to terrorist organizations, Iraq, North Korea or other states the United States has branded rogue, said Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control in Washington "I think the risk so far has not been very well defined", Milhollin said. "A scientist can give help to a rogue nuclear program without leaving home and while doing other work".
At the institute, Alexei Vertiporokh, the deputy director of Kurchatov's 3-year-old commercial arm, Technopark, said he doubted that one of theirs could sell out to North Korea.
Pimenov also views it as unlikely that a colleague could go to the other side for want of money, but he doesn't rule it out. "It could happen. But we wouldn't know about it", Pimenov said. However, Vertiporokh, who earlier studied nuclear physics, said it's not his place to gauge the risks.
"I can't speak for the DOE about whether something's dangerous or not", he said. "I studied that and don't think it's dangerous, but maybe they [the DOE] have different ways to judge". Making weapons also requires much more than just recruiting weapons knowledge - the process relies on hard materials and the capability to actually produce.
"The problem always is that getting a scientist is not enough", said independent defense analyst Pavel Felgenhauer. "He needs a Soviet industry".
Another criticism of the programs is that money has been mismanaged or misallocated. A report a few years ago by the U.S. General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, found that 37 percent of IPP program funds were going to the former Soviet Union, with the rest given to U.S. national labs. The report's recommendations have been acted upon, Lennon said.
Milhollin questioned whether the programs are worth it. "I think we're just throwing money into the shadows and hoping that it prevents something bad from happening", he said. Unsurprisingly, Russian participants in the latest project are grabbing the opportunity for free job training.
"It can cost us $8,000 to $10,000 to train one employee", said Anatoly Karachinsky, CEO of IBS group, which created Luxoft. However, Pimenov and Vertiporokh cast doubt on the DOE's projection of training 120 scientists a year, saying it was hard enough to gather 17. They estimated that only half that was feasible - partly because not all scientists and engineers are lured by better paychecks to leave their respective institutes and enter a daily work routine. "There are two categories of people - those sitting happy earning $100 a month and those who look for work", Vertiporokh said

Inside the gymnasium of Libertyville's Butterfield Elementary School, veteran Russian scientist Elena Kuzevanova and a restless crowd of fourth- and fifth-graders struggle to communicate. In fluent but thickly accented English, Kuzevanova speaks in metrics; the kids use phrases like "really, really big". But they connect on the Russian word "nerpa", a word many students already know. And why wouldn't they?
Pronounced nee-YARE-puh, the students shout it out in unison as Kuzevanova flashes a slide of a family of pooch-faced seals - nerpas - that would warm any heart in the coldest Siberian winter. It's the international language of nature, and on Wednesday, Kuzevanova and the students spoke it fluently as part of a new program. The aim is to link schoolchildren, teachers and scientists from the shores of Lake Michigan to their counterparts on the shores of what could be called Lake Michigan's sister lake: Siberia's fabled Lake Baikal, the home of the nerpa, the world's only freshwater seals.
The program - a partnership between Lake County's Waukegan Harbor Citizens Advisory Group and Kuzevanova's Baikal EcoNet - is about a year old.
It has brought Kuzevanova to Lake County twice this year, has scientists hounding each other for data on abyssal amphipod life forms and kids - including students from Abbott Middle School in Waukegan - asking things like "Do the people there go swimming?" But all the questions fit into the desire of Butterfield student Hannah Diamond: "I want to know what the similarities and differences are between the people and the lakes".
Indeed, comparing the two lakes is a lesson in contrasts and similarities.
Nestled between two mountain ranges in southeastern Siberia, Baikal covers about the same area as Lake Michigan.
But as the deepest lake in world - up to a mile deep - Baikal holds 20 percent of the planet's freshwater, the same amount as all the Great Lakes combined.
Largely undeveloped, Baikal is considered the cleanest lake in world by many scientists. The southern end of Lake Michigan has some of the world's most polluted "hot spots", but has been getting cleaner over the last decade.
For Lake County environmentalist Suzie Schreiber, who is hosting Kuzevanova this month, Baikal represents what Lake Michigan once was and maybe could be again.
"In Lake Michigan, we've come full circle from when it was pre-settlement through industrialization to clean-up," said Schreiber, who heads the Citizens Advisory Group. "On Lake Baikal, they're still pre-settlement, but they have people who want all the quality of life that we have and that could lead to the problems we've had."
For Kuzevanova, the exchange program offers her fodder for how to bring "green" thoughts into the minds of Russians. By examining the mistakes of developing Lake Michigan's shores and the successes in restoring them, Russians can plan for an anticipated boom in tourism, recreation and industry around Baikal, said Kuzevanova, who serves as an environmental specialist for the Russian Academy of Sciences.
"During the Cold War, we didn't have the opportunity to see what was going on throughout the world", she said, adding virtually no laws protecting the environment existed before the last decade. "It's just amazing how many environmental education groups you have here - kids, students, citizens - it's very good. We need that."

Министерство науки России планирует урезать финансирование национальной программы изучения генома человека

MOSCOW, -- As most nations rush to mine the riches of the human genome, Russia is moving to eviscerate its 12-year-old National Human Genome Program (NHGP). Science has learned that the science ministry plans to strip the NHGP of its special funding status and fold the money into a general pot for basic research. Beyond imposing a 50% cut in direct spending on genome research, the move will affect millions of dollars in other research activities that the genome program helped to manage.

На круглом столе, посвященном проблемам российской науки, первый заместитель министра науки и технологий Андрей Фонотов сказал, что в настоящее время в России на науку тратится столько же денег, сколько в слаборазвитых странах

MOSCOW, (Itar-Tass) -- Russia has slipped to the level of India and Pakistan in its spending on science, according to the first deputy minister for science and technology Andrei Fonotov at a roundtable on the problems of Russian science. Noting that the funds allocated for science are among the smallest in the draft budget for next year, the deputy minister said that "we cannot expect to overcome our crisis as long as this ratio persists. There will be no way out of the crisis both in science and in the society as a whole. "This is due to the country's current policy, which is quite unusual considering the ratio of its population to the number of people with a higher education or with a scientific degree," he stressed.

Something does not make sense in the treason case against Krasnoyarsk physicist Valentin Danilov. He has spent nine months in prison because of a contract he signed on behalf of his university to provide satellite technology to China - the Russian government's biggest customer for sophisticated military hardware. While Danilov was wasting away in a prison cell for signing a $366,000 deal, Russia in July signed a $2 billion deal to sell warplanes to China, and President Vladimir Putin signed a cooperation treaty with Chinese President Jiang Zemin calling for closer military technical cooperation between the two countries.
Although prominent scientists say the technology Danilov is accused of revealing has been openly available for nearly 10 years, the FSB says it could help China save time and money in developing spacecraft that could potentially threaten Russia's security.
And what about those warplanes? They could never be used against China's northern neighbor? Remember those border clashes of the 1960s and '70s? It's also not clear why Danilov was singled out when, according to his lawyer, the Chinese contract was approved and signed by officials at Krasnoyarsk Technical University. But the main problem - the problem that has muddled other treason cases in recent years - is that the rules are not clear. The criteria for defining classified information are often murky. A 1993 law lists the categories of state secrets, but various government ministries and agencies issue their own, secret lists with new categories, and researchers have no way of knowing for sure what they can reveal and what they cannot. Environmentalist Alexander Nikitin, who was cleared of espionage charges after a long battle, challenged a Defense Ministry decree on state secrets and recently won the case in the Supreme Court.
But this is little consolation to Danilov and other researchers since Russian law is not based on precedent.
Russia's scientists deserve better. With minuscule state salaries and their institutes no longer getting the generous subsidies of the Soviet era, scientists have been forced to look for commercial opportunities. Their other alternatives are to abandon their research, or their country, in search of a job that pays a living wage. Those who work to keep their research institutes viable should not be punished unfairly for doing so.
At the same time, Russia should be allowed to protect its legitimate state secrets and to punish those who reveal them. But in order for treason trials to be taken seriously, and not be seen as another FSB witchhunt, scientists and the public must be told what is classified information and what is not.

По оценкам ученых, в России 16 миллионов человек, или каждый шестой, уже инфицированы туберкулезом

LONDON , (Reuters) -- A rapid rise in the number of people infected with HIV in Russia could lead to a tuberculosis epidemic there, scientists warned on Friday. An estimated 16 million people, or one in six, in Russia are already infected with tuberculosis, a highly infectious airborne bacterial infection that affects the lungs.
A 33-fold increase in HIV infections since 1997 could propel the number even higher, Russian and American researchers said in a report in the Lancet medical journal.
"If the spread of HIV is not prevented, co-infection will accelerate the resurgence of tuberculosis", said Dr. Boris Kazionny of the Orel oblast Central Dispensary in Orel, southwest of Moscow. "Furthermore, the potential for massive tuberculosis spread in HIV individuals in settings such as prisons - in which rates of tuberculosis and multi-drug resistant tuberculosis are highest - is especially alarming," he added. People infected with HIV, whose immune systems are weakened, are 30 times more likely to develop tuberculosis, which is one of the main opportunistic infections that kills AIDS sufferers. Despite effective treatment tuberculosis, which destroys the lungs and is spread by coughing and sneezing, kills more than a million people worldwide each year.
Multi-drug resistant strains of TB have developed because people have failed to used recommended treatments properly.
Kazionny and his colleagues in Russia, along with Dr. Charles Wells of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, said the epidemic is still at an early stage and preventive measures could limit its spread.
They called for better HIV screening and surveillance, as well as education campaigns to prevent the sexually transmitted infection.
The researchers also said the DOTS (Directly Observed Treatment, Short-course) treatment strategy for tuberculosis should be implemented throughout Russia. Multi-drug resistant TB must also be monitored and treated quickly. "Russia might be able to avoid a true public health disaster by pursuing these prevention and containment measures; however, the time to act is now before the opportunity is lost", Kazionny added.

Исследования компонентов электрической системы передачи сигналов мозга дали ответ на основной вопрос эволюции человека, подтверждая научное представление о том, что мы, двуногие существа, умеющие пользоваться компьютером, происходим от прокариотов - организмов, клетки которого не имеют оформленного ядра

Research on components of the brain's electrical signaling system has answered a basic question about our human evolution, confirming scientific belief that we two-legged, computer-using creatures are descended from prokaryotes - cellular organisms so primitive and simple that they exist without nuclei or cell walls.
The study, led by Zhe Lu, MD, PhD, an Associate Professor in the Department of Physiology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine were recently published in the journal Nature.
The research by Lu and his colleagues focused on the structure and function of molecules called potassium channels, which are essential to how the brain works. When potassium channels open and close, they control the flow of potassium ions across cell membranes. The current contributes to the electrical signals in nerve, muscle and endocrine cells. Scientists who study the brain's electrical signals have relied on a blue-print developed from functional studies of eukaryotic (neuronal) potassium channels and structural studies of prokaryotic (bacterial) potassium channels, based on the assumption that the two channels are essentially the same. However this assumption has recently been challenged. Lu and his collaborators devised a project in which the pore of a prokaryote's potassium channel (the interior core of the channel) was substituted for the pore of a potassium channel in a euokaryote. The scientists found that the eukarotic channel continued to function essentially as it had previous to the substitution.
"This has very profound implications for evolution", Lu said. "It appears the potassium channels in advanced brains and hearts of mammals have evolved from something like this bacterial channel. So what we learn from the more easily studied bacterial channels can be directly applied to our understanding of potassium channels in human brains".
In the study, Lu worked with Penn colleagues Angela Klem, research specialist, and Yajamana Ramu, PhD. The work was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

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