Сентябрь 2001 г.

Российская наука и мир (по материалам зарубежной электронной прессы)

CONTENTS / ОГЛАВЛЕНИЕ


• A decade of Russian science
• Putin - state to support sciences linked with national defence
• Russia to spend rbls 20 bln on research within next 5 years
• Moscow plans integration of higher education with science
• Conference on Russian school and Internet in St. Petersburg
• Irkutsk, Savoie universities set up joint ecological centre
• SAfrica, Russia sign agreements on scientific cooperation
• Moscow hosts international ecological forum
• Advantage Marketing Systems Contributes Popular Stress Product, Used after Chernobyl Disaster in Russia, to Rescue Workers in New York City, Washington, D.C
• Evidence of Ancient Hunters Found
• New Evidence of Early Humans Unearthed in Russia's North
• Group: Surveys Drive Whales Away
• Psst, Comrade, Check Out the Erotica in the State Library

В своем выступлении в Государственном университете в Нальчике Путин заявил: "Государство должно и будет поддерживать фундаментальные и прикладные науки, работающие на национальную безопасность"

NALCHIK, Sep 06, 2001 (Itar-Tass via COMTEX) -- The state must and will be supporting the fundamental sciences and some other sciences lined with national defence, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday at the State University of Kabardin Balkaria in Nalchik. Noting that relations between Russia and China are developing very well and that many people in Russia note the Chinese experience of development, also in education, Putin said all higher education in China is paid-for.
"This does not mean that we should act in the same way", Putin said. "We have our own good results and I don't think that we should switch to universal paid education", Putin said.
He believes that sciences in higher educational establishments has not been put to use for the reason that the state has not given it due attention. "Other tasks prevailed, and we also lack man", the president said.

MOSCOW, Aug 30, 2001 (Itar-Tass via COMTEX) -- Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov has approved a federal programme unlocking some rbls 20 billion of funds for priority research within the next five years, the government's information department told Itar- Tass on Thursday.
The programme will involve more than 1,000 Russian research centers which have to be selected on a competitive basis. The Cabinet believes that the program will help preserve the leading research schools of world class in the country, decrease social tensions in the science and technology sector and preserve some 50,000 jobs in 60 Russian regions. The scientists involved in the programme will work under contracts. Deeper insights, anticipated in physics, chemistry, biology and computer science will help create new technologies, according to the program designers..

Правительство Российской Федерации одобрило федеральную программу "Интеграция науки и высшего образования в России", которая охватывает период с 2002 по 2006 год

MOSCOW, Sep 10, 2001 (Itar-Tass via COMTEX) -- The government of the Russian Federation has endorsed a special-purpose federal programme "Integration of science and higher education in Russia" that embraces the period between 2002 and 2006, sources in the Government information department said on Monday.
The Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Science and Industry and the RussianAcademy of Sciences commissioned the programme at a cost of 1.7 billion roubles, of which 1.2 billion roubles will be provided from the federal budget.
The programme is designed to secure joint participation of scientists, higher educational establishments and innovative structures in the training of highly-qualified staffs and in the conduct of scientific research work. The programmes provides for the creation of a single information, experimental and instrumental base for the scientific, higher educational and innovative activity.

ST.PETERSBURG, Sep 18, 2001 (Itar-Tass via COMTEX) -- The first two-day scientific conference on the Russian school and Internet, which is to open here on Tuesday, promises to be this year's key event in education. Initiators of the function include the Russian Ministry of Education, the Internet-Education Federation, and the YUKOS Oil Company. Russian Vice-Premier Valentina Matviyenko, Minister of Education Vladimir Filippov, Leader of the Duma faction of the Union of Right-Wing Forces Boris Nemtsov, YUKOS President Mikhail Khodorkovsky, heads of education departments from nineteen regions of Russia, directors of regional centres of the Internet-Education Federation, and education experts from Russia and several European countries are expected to take part in the work of the conference. Problems of Internet-Education are to be discussed in four panels: "Reform of the Russian School; Results of the First Stage of the 'Generation.Ru' project", "Methodological and Contextual Aspects of Internet Education", "Forms and Methods of Extramural Work with Schoolchildren in Internet Education", "Establishment of the Organisational and Technological Infrastructure of Internet Secondary School Institutions".

Иркутский университет и университет департамента Верхняя Савойя во Франции подписали соглашение о создании объединенного экологического центра

IRKUTSK, Sep 18, 2001 (Itar-Tass via COMTEX) -- The universities of Irkutsk, East Siberia, and Savoie, French Haute Savoie will cooperate in the field of environmental protection legislation. The two universities have signed an agreement to set up an interstate consultative centre - the International Mount Institute which will operate in France with a view to acquiring the world status in the field of environmental protection law. In addition to the French and Russian universities, scientists from higher schools of Europe, Asia and America will take part in the work of the new centre.
The French government has allocated one million French francs to support the new institute. The Irkutsk state university was chosen as a partner in the establishment of the new centre for a reason: prominent specialists in the sphere of environmental protection law work here, and the Irkutsk region has maintained twinned relations with the French department of Haute Savoie for a decade. The two regions exchange scientists, students, doctors and writers.

PRETORIA, Sep 15, 2001 (Itar-Tass via COMTEX) -- The Russian-South African commission on scientific and technical cooperation signed agreements on cooperation in space technologies in Pretoria on Saturday.
The Russian Aircraft and Space Agency (Rosaviacosmos) will send the distant Earth probing data to the South African Satellite Communication Centre. The South African centre has the right to disseminate space photographs of southern Africa.
The South African centre includes the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, which is the largest research organisation in Africa. The centre has a long history of rendering satellite monitoring services.
The second agreement was signed between Sovinform Sputnik and the Aerospace Information Technologies. Under the agreement, Russia will build and equip a station which will work on the distant Earth probing data. This is the first such station on the African continent.
Commenting on the results of the commission, head of the Russian delegation Gennady Tereshchenko, deputy minister of industry, science and technologies, noted that Russia and South Africa made an important step towards strengthening scientific and technical relations. The sides have made ambitious plans in such fields as vaccine development, information technologies, space communication, nuclear physics and the exchange of specialists.

MOSCOW, Sep 17, 2001 (Itar-Tass via COMTEX) -- An international ecological forum opened on Monday in Moscow to discuss ecologically safe technologies, rational use of natural resources as well as financial involvement of major corporations in ecological problems. Scientists from the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences say that ecological safety needs moves in four directions. Investments are needed to preserve the existing natural resources.
Specialists also believe it is necessary to develop cultivated natural landscapes, such as city parks. Another direction is to increase the ecological efficiency of different articles and constructions by designing, for example, energy- saving buildings, ecologically safe city transport. The forum also stressed the necessity to reduce the green- house effect, which contributes to the destruction of the ozone layer.

OKLAHOMA CITY, Sep 14, 2001 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Advantage Marketing Systems, Inc., (Amex: AMM), one of the ten largest direct sales companies in the U.S., today announced that it is donating approximately $200,000 of its Prime One stress reliever to assist rescue workers in New York City and Washington, D.C.
The suggestion to make the donation was made by Vladimir G. Sprygin, Ph.D., Principal Scientific Fellow at the Russian Academy of Sciences, who worked closely with Dr. Isreal Brekhman to develop the special natural substances called adaptogens which are a key part of Advantage Marketing's products Prime One and Brekhman's Gold.
In an e-mail correspondence to the Company, which follows, Mr. Sprygin said a key product used to effectively treat people for stress after the Chernobyl catastrophe is available in even greater strength in Prime One. This is a "miracle remedy for the people who have passed through such physical and emotional stress", Mr. Sprygin wrote. He emphasized that the adaptogens will help the rescue workers withstand the consequences of the disasters.
Dr. Brekhman spent 45 years investigating adaptogens and his discoveries were secretly used by Soviet Olympic athletes and cosmonauts to increase energy, stamina, mental acuity, performance, and to protect against stress. It is believed that the Soviet government spent upwards of $1 billion researching, developing and testing this product. Dr. Brekhman created the exclusive adaptogenic formula which is now marketed as Prime One. Users of the product report feeling less tension or anxiety, a greater ability to cope with stress, more energy, better sleep and job performance, and less sickness, among other positive attributes. Other ingredients in Prime One include acantho root, which increases stamina, Chinese magnolia vine, which combats fatigue, and Manchurian Thorn tree, noted for promoting physical and mental acuity.
"As citizens of Oklahoma City, we are extraordinarily sensitive to the impact of these tragedies in New York and Washington and we are glad that we can reach a hand out to help the brave rescue workers", said John Hail, CEO. Mr. Hail also saluted Phil Cappadora, an Advantage Marketing distributor, who is a New York fireman who is serving in the rescue effort at the World Trade Center. "We all are very proud of his efforts", Mr. Hail said.
Advantage Marketing Systems, Inc., named by Fortune Small Business magazine as one of America's 100 fastest-growing small companies, sells more than 150 natural nutritional supplements, weight management products, and natural skincare and cosmetics, including the world's number-one all-natural stress reliever, through more than 85,000 independent distributors throughout the U.S., Canada and Africa. More information about the Company is available at http://www.amsonline.com
Certain statements in this release may constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Certain, but not necessarily all, of such forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "anticipates", "believes", "expects", "may", "will", or "should" or other variations thereon, or by discussions of strategies that involve risks and uncertainties. The actual results of the Company or industry results may be materially different from any future results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements.

Недалеко от Северного Полярного Круга на территории России ученые обнаружили примитивные каменные орудия труда и другие предметы, сделанные древним человеком. Находки говорят о том, что почти 40,000 лет назад там была стоянка охотников - гораздо раньше, чем думали

Sep 05, 2001 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- Primitive stone tools and other artifacts discovered close to the Arctic Circle in the desolate far north of European Russia indicate a band of hunters set up camp there almost 40,000 years ago - far earlier than previously thought, researchers report. The researchers said they are not certain if the remnants were left by Neanderthals or modern humans. Either way, it would be significant.
If they were Neanderthals, they had spread much farther north than previously thought. If they were modern humans, they had traveled from southern Europe to the Arctic in an exceedingly brief period of time. Morever, survival in the harsh environment there suggests a relatively high level of social development of the sort generally associated with modern humans, researchers said.
The scientists discovered stone tools, animal bones and a mammoth tusk with grooves carved with a sharp stone. The Norwegian and Russian researchers used carbon dating to conclude the artifacts are nearly 40,000 years old. It was previously believed that humans had not reached this far north until the final stage of the last Ice Age, some 13,000 to 14,000 years ago.
The findings are reported in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. Eric Delson, a paleoanthropology professor at Lehman College in New York and a researcher at the American Museum of Natural History, said the find suggests that the ancient hunters "were culturally able to handle cold climate through a combination of clothing and dwellings and a control of fire and a variety of other things".
Neanderthals were burly creatures with a prominent brow and short, powerful limbs. They lived in Europe and western Asia for some 150,000 years or more before disappearing about 30,000 years ago.
The oldest fossil evidence for an anatomically modern human dates from 130,000 years ago in Africa. There is evidence for nearly modern humans in the Near East some time before 90,000 years ago. Modern humans spread through Eurasia 30,000 to 40,000 years ago, and bones found in central Europe have been dated at about 32,000 years. The artifacts described in the study were discovered on a bank of the Usa River at the Arctic Circle, near the Ural Mountains. This area was not covered by a permanent ice sheet, and the hunters lived there during a relatively mild period of the Ice Age, said one of the leaders of the study, John Inge Svendsen of the University of Bergen in Norway. Still, it was on average at least 18 degrees colder than it is today. Svendsen said he believes this part of Russia was a treeless steppe, or grassland, at the time, and was populated by reindeer, mammoths and other sources of meat for the ancient hunters.
The oldest previously documented site in the region is 185 miles southwest, with artifacts more closely linked to modern humans and traced back about 28,000 years.
"Although there are questions to be answered, the artifacts illustrate both the capacity of early humans to do the unexpected, and the value of archaeologists researching unlikely areas", John A.J. Gowlett, an archaeology professor at the University of Liverpool, wrote in an accompanying commentary.
But Richard Klein, a paleoanthropology professor at Stanford University, said the evidence is "pretty sparse". As a rule of thumb, he said, "the first archaeological instance of something may be an accident, the second may be a coincidence and only the third and beyond should be regarded as facts".

Stone tools, animal bones and an incised mammoth tusk found in Russia's frigid far north have provided what archaeologists say is the first evidence that modern humans or Neanderthals lived in the Arctic more than 30,000 years ago, at least 15,000 years earlier than previously thought.
Недалеко от Северного Полярного Круга на территории России ученые обнаружили примитивные каменные орудия труда и другие предметы, сделанные древним человеком. Находки говорят о том, что почти 40,000 лет назад там была стоянка охотников - гораздо раньше, чем думали

A team of Russian and Norwegian archaeologists, describing the discovery in today's issue of the journal Nature, said the camp site, at Mamontovaya Kurya, on the Usa River at the Arctic Circle, was the "oldest documented evidence for human presence at this high latitude".
Digging in the bed of an old river channel close to the Ural Mountains, Dr. Pavel Pavlov of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Dr. John Inge Svendsen of the University of Bergen, Norway, uncovered 123 mammal bones, including horse, reindeer and wolf.
"The most important find", they said, was a four-foot mammoth tusk with grooves made by chopping with a sharp stone edge, "unequivocally the work of humans".
The tusk was carbon-dated at about 36,600 years old. Plant remains found among the artifacts were dated at 30,000 to 31,000 years. Other archaeologists said the analysis appeared to be sound. But they cautioned that it was difficult, when dealing with riverbed deposits, to be sure that artifacts had not become jumbled out of their true place, and thus time, in the geologic layers. They questioned whether the discoverers could reliably conclude that the stone tools were in fact contemporary with the bones.
Citing these concerns, Dr. Erik Trinkaus, a paleoanthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis, said: "The authors may be right, or they may not be. I just can't judge it".
But in a commentary accompanying the article, Dr. John A. J. Gowlett of the University of Liverpool in England wrote, "Although there are questions to be answered, the artifacts illustrate both the capacity of early humans to do the unexpected, and the value of archaeologists' researching in unlikely areas".
The discoverers said they could not determine from the few stone artifacts whether the site was occupied by Neanderthals, hominids who by then had a long history as hunters in Europe and western Asia, or some of the first anatomically modern humans to reach Europe.
In any case, other archaeologists said, the findings could be significant. If these toolmakers were Neanderthals, the findings suggested that these human relatives, who became extinct after 30,000 years ago, were more capable and adaptable than they are generally given credit for. Living in the Arctic climate presumably required higher levels of technology and social organization.
"We've already been learning that Neanderthals were very adaptable people", said Dr. Fred H. Smith, a paleoanthropologist at Northern Illinois University who specializes in Neanderthal studies. "I think that we have underestimated what the Paleolithic people were capable of".
If they were modern humans, then the surprise is that they had penetrated so far north in such a short time. There has been no firm evidence for modern humans in Europe before about 35,000 years ago. It had enerally been thought that the northernmost part of Eurasia was not occupied by humans until the final stage of the last ice age, some 13,000 to 14,000 years ago, when the world's climate began to moderate. Dr. Gowlett said the new findings indicated that the Arctic region of European Russia was extremely cold but relatively dry and ice-free more than 30,000 years ago.
"The results should also rekindle debate about the effects of the climate on the movements of early human populations", Dr. Gowlett wrote.

Сейсмические исследования на нефть на острове Сахалин подвергают опасности китов и вынуждают их покидать привычные места обитания

MOSCOW, ( AP) -- Seismic surveys for oil off Sakhalin Island in the Russian Far East are pushing endangered whales from their feeding grounds, an environmental group charged Friday, calling on Russia to stop the tests. The World Wildlife Fund said its study - carried out between June and August by Russian and American scientists - was presented to the Natural Resources Ministry last week. It charges that seismic surveys by oil giant Exxon have forced Western Pacific gray whales to feed in areas where there is less or lower-quality food.
The group called for a halt on the surveys starting Saturday to give the whales enough time to feed before winter.
"The sooner the seismic work is finished, the more time whales will have to feed again normally and rebuild their fat reserves before they start their southward migration", Vasily Spiridonov, coordinator of WWF Russia's marine program, said in a statement.
The whales' population is believed to be less than 100, and they feed annually from June to November off the northeastern coast of Sakhalin, about 62 miles northeast of Japan's Hokkaido Island.
The scientists found that the whales shifted location at the same time as the start of an Exxon survey, the group said. WWF urged Russia to review the process of granting prospecting rights amid claims that Exxon took unfair advantage of loopholes in Russian environmental legislation.
The group also called on Russia to designate a whale reserve in the area and prohibit seismic activities in feeding waters.

Kept a secret for decades, no one really knows what is among the approximately 11,000 items in the erotica collection at the Russian State Library in Moscow

Коллекция приблизительно из 11,000 книг, открыток, печатных изданий, брошюр и рисунков эротического содержания со всего мира, которая хранится в Российской государственной библиотеке в Москве, могла бы стать доступной для читателей, если бы нашлись средства для ее обработки

MOSCOW. In the official Soviet world all families were happy families and there was no interest in or place for sex outside the nuptial bedroom. "Sex didn't exist in the Soviet Union," said Marina Chestnykh, recalling the upside-down logic that prevailed for much of the Soviet era as she led the way into a cage like storage area of the Russian State Library here.
Ms. Chestnykh oversees an erotica collection assembled by the Communist government, which for decades kept its existence such a tight secret that no one knows exactly what is among the approximately 11,000 books, postcards, prints, brochures, drawings and other objects from around the world that are jammed into the library's rambling storage stacks.
There is still no comprehensive record of the collection's contents or provenance because the trove was never methodically assembled. It accrued over decades thanks to customs officers, the secret police, the Soviet government's censorship bureau, and ideologically obedient library patrons who turned in material that even hinted at sex, whether erotic, pornographic, suggestive or even scientific in tone.
So far, the collection has yielded previously unknown drawings by Russian avant-garde artists; rare editions of risque poems by literary giants like Pushkin and Lermontov; erotic prose published illicitly in the Soviet Union of the 1920's; and items from Europe, Asia and the United States, some dating to the 1700's and many of which Ms. Chestnykh says are "absolutely unique in this world".
One of her favorites is a Chinese scroll that unfurls to reveal a tumble of sinuous figures having a very good time. Other items include a set of miniature British porcelain reliefs, packed in a handy traveling case, that illustrate the art of love, and a packet of ABC flashcards that tutor the same discipline along with the alphabet. There are also medical texts, illustrated books and magazines, proceedings of scientific conferences and other objects that hardly rate as erotica today but that were deemed too racy for good Soviet citizens.
Part of the collection was put together by Nikolai Skorodumov, a deputy director of the library at Moscow State University. Before his death in 1947, he collected thousands of pieces of erotica from around the world thanks to his close connections to university and party officials, who provided him with letters saying his purchases, were needed for professional reasons. After he died, the N.K.V.D. a precursor of the K.G.B., the Soviet secret police brought it to what is now the Russian State Library, where it was hidden for years.
For much of the last century it was seen only by scientists and scholars who could prove that they needed it for research and Communist Party officials who wanted a peek. Ms. Chestnykh, who is 38, said that government officials liked to visit, and examining one thing after another, they would pronounce the works "a nightmare, an absolute nightmare". Every so often, someone would leave with a postcard or two in his pocket. "It was theft, of course", Ms. Chestnykh said. "But how could a librarian stop them? They were party officials". The erotica collection is no longer off limits, but it has never been publicized. Few people know about it, said Ms. Chestnykh, who, as director of the department cares for many of the library's 42 million items and is now responsible for the collection. If the library could get money to pay for the research and restoration of the collection, Ms. Chestnykh said she wanted to exhibit it and place it online as part of an effort to make available to the public the previously closed holdings in the State Library, formerly the Lenin State Library.
The library, still known here by its nickname, Leninka, and still reached via the Lenin State Library metro stop, is a treasure house of books and ephemera from around the world, one of the largest libraries after the Library of Congress in Washington.
Founded in 1862 as the first free public library in Russia, it has become a repository of Russian history and culture, reflecting all the terror and glory that entails. Along with the illuminated manuscripts and rare maps, the early editions by 19th-century writers and the reference books that were always proudly available to anyone, are items like those in the erotica collection, once secret caches of forbidden history assembled and controlled by the Communists.
"Our department is absolutely new, but like everything else here it has a history", said Nadezhda Ryzhak, chief of the department of Russian emigre literature at the Russian State Library. With 700,000 journals, books, newspapers and other documents, many published after 1917 by Russians living abroad, the collection of emigre work is extremely comprehensive, attesting to the paranoia of the government that collected it, Ms. Ryzhak said. That collection, along with the erotica collection, was originally part of the closed special-sections division started by the Soviet censorship bureau, Glavlit, in the 1920's as a depository for works deemed unacceptable. Slowly opened to the public after 1988, under the more lenient constraints of Mikhail S. Gorbachev's perestroika, the special-sections division contained mostly foreign-language publications in addition to the Russian emigre and erotica collection.
Among those foreign-language documents once off limits, and still bearing the stamp affixed by the censors, are Bernard Malamud novels, Tom Stoppard plays and somewhat dog-eared copies of John le Carre thrillers that now coexist on shelves near nonfiction texts like "Red Star Over Tibet", a dictionary of ballet and copies of The New York Times, The Times Literary Supplement of London and Vogue.
"All these books brought to the Soviet Union could survive only here, in the library", said Ms. Ryzhak, who began working in special sections in 1976. "Anywhere else they would have been burned immediately. We were able to save them, and they are part of our Russian history that we can now have back".
The library still holds secrets, though, among them the fate of books taken from the Romanov family after 1917. They were brought to Leninka, and Stalin later insisted that they be destroyed. But Ms. Chestnykh said the director of the library, Vladimir Nevsky, could not bear to lose the fine old texts and tried to keep them. For his efforts, he was shot in 1937, but his staff hid volumes throughout the library, shoving them pell-mell into the stacks. "We are still finding them", Ms. Chestnykh said, adding that many of the nearly 1,000 books are cataloged among various collections. "But nobody knows where they all are. Sometimes a reader will bring us a book and point out that the exlibris is the czar's. It is all part of a tragic history".

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