Январь 2002 г.

Российская наука и мир (по материалам зарубежной электронной прессы)

CONTENTS / ОГЛАВЛЕНИЕ


• Putin Promises to Fund Science and Culture
• Kudrin leaves for Tomsk to discuss development of Siberia
• Kremlin witnesses Putin presenting, receiving awards
• Number of students steadily growing in Russia
• Scientists plumb chips with miniature pipes
• Advanced technologies to revive Russian industry - Alferov
• Russia Attach Importance to TCM
• Russian Laser Pioineer Prokhorov Dies
• Barents Sea - the world's cleanest
• American Biogenetic Sciences Secures Vaccine Agreements With Russian Federation Entities
• Unique plant-protection substances produced in Novosibirsk
• Russian firm starts production of telecoms satellites
• Professor Sir Dimitri Obolensky
• Cuban-Russian boy termed a "genius"
• Myanmar gets a Russian nuclear reactor
• Russian Scientist, U.S. Poles Apart over Rescue
• Book on Siberian-Pole history published in Irkutsk
• Russia-USA flight to Mars so far unprofitable - expert
• Russia devises optoelectronic-controlled AA msl system

Российский президент В. Путин пообещал найти дополнительные средства для поддержки науки, образования, культуры и медицины - областей, которые пострадали из-за сокращения финансирования в последнее десятилетие

Moscow, Russia, Jan 23, 2002 (RosBusinessConsulting via COMTEX) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin promised Tuesday to find extra funds to support science, education, culture and medicine - all areas that have suffered from cuts in state spending over the past decade.
However, the president noted it was too early to speak of any breakthrough in funding. "But we are again beginning to understand that knowledge and qualifications are very expensive", Putin said at a Kremlin award ceremony. Putin presented awards to 41 scientists, artists and other prominent public figures including former chess world champion Anatoly Karpov, humorist. Putin has pledged to increase social spending that is targeted to the neediest Russians, and to boost basic scientific research, the Russia Journal reported.

Заместитель премьер-министра, министр финансов России Алексей Кудрин прибыл в Томск с рабочим визитом. Он примет участие в в конференции, на которой будут обсуждаться вопросы развития Сибири

MOSCOW , Jan 24, 2002 (Itar-Tass via COMTEX) -- Russia's Deputy Prime Minister, Finance Minister Alexey Kudrin has left for Tomsk on a working trip. He will participate in a working conference that will discuss the development of Siberia. The conference will be attended by the presidential representative in the Siberian Federal District Leonid Drachevsky, Tomsk Region's governor Viktor Kress and Deputy President of the Russian Academy of Sciences Nikolai Dobretsov. Kudrin will also hold the first session of the government commission preparing ceremonies to mark the 400th anniversary of Tomsk due in 2004 and inspect historical and cultural sites to undergo reconstruction and restoration. On Saturday evening Kudrin will leave Tomsk for Yakutsk, where he will attend the inauguration of the newly-elected president of Yakutia, Vyacheslav Shtyrov.

В Москве состоялось награждение более сорока российских деятелей науки и культуры, среди которых Валерий Шумаков - директор института Трансплантологии и исскуственных органов, академик Вениамин Ефремов - главный конструктор концерна "Антей"

MOSCOW, Jan 22, 2002 (Itar-Tass via COMTEX) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday presented awards and was awarded himself with an order in a series of ceremonial presentations.
He addressed the distinguished personalities and had a conversation with the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Alexiy II after receiving a high church award. For the first time, Putin presented the Russian state's highest distinction, the Order of Apostle Andrew the First- Called, to Valery Shumakov, the head of the Institute of Transplantology and artificial organs. Speaking in the ceremony, Putin said the Order "is a unique distinction which, in accordance with the established historical tradition, was conferred on the worthiest personalities of the Russian state". The president described Shumakov as "a surprising personality, a scientist whose name known to the world and an uncommonly talented surgeon." Shumakov was the first Russian surgeon to perform successfully a hear transplant operation, and his name is associated with the formation os an entire school in medicine, the development of new medical technologies, the emergence of an entire constellation of specialists. "It is all of special importance since quite often his method is the only way to save a human life", said Putin.
The president presented state awards to 40 other Russians, such as Academician Veniamin Yefremov, the chief designer of the concern "Antei", outstanding chess player Anatoly Karpov, writer Konstantin Vanshenkin, Chief of the Moscow metropolitan (underground) railway Dmitry Gayev, Director of the Serbsky State Research Centre for Social and Forensic Medicine Tatiana Dmitriyeva, Chairman of the Sberbank Board Andrei Kazmin, actor Mikhail Boyarsky (who wore his black hat thought the ceremony), First deputy prosecutor of Grozny Taus Murdalov, actor and composer Oleg Gazmanov, Mosfilm film director Svetlana Druzhinina and satiric writer Mikhail Zhvanetsky.
Putin noted that the state awards were being presented to these personalities not only in recognitions of their services to the country but also a result of their efforts to add to Russia's glory.
According to Putin, the state awards were only one of the indices of the public efficiency of the work of every Russian person. This index is to the good of the entire state.
Putin said that each of the distinguished award winners was "a sort of a booster, a person on the shoulders of whose talent the entire country is carried forward and targets are set for the whole of Russia."
Putin apologized for his uncommon simile, saying that he had visited the Khrunichev space centre on the eve of the award presentation ceremony and was still thinking about space issues.
Putin spent about two minutes trying to persuade Zhvanetsky to address the audience. The writer eventually said one phrase, "My ties with the state today can be characterized as following: don't intrude on my solitude and do not leave me alone." During the ceremony, the president received two gifts - a CD recording of Yuri Kazakov bayan-playing performance and three video-cassettes which Svetlana Druzhinina asked him to give his daughters as a new year present. Yuri Kazakov who also received a state award is an honorary member of the International Union of Musicians, the video cassettes were of the Druzhinina-directed film "Mysteries of Palace Coups. 18th century."
In his address to the award-winning personalities Putin touched upon a number of issues of priority importance to the Russian state at present. He said medical assistance "must be available to each and every person, we need an efficient system of health services, in which total availability is combined with quality." The formation of a civilised market of paid medical services must be accompanied by the development of unique medical research and science centres, Putin said. He cited the example of the Research Institute of Transplantology and Artificial Organs. He admitted that "a difficult situation" persists in the healthcare system but it should not prevent the development of research. 'We have in our country many rare technologies and also rare, "piecework"" specialists. Their experience is in demand and our task is to create conditions for its dissemination all over Russia", Putin said.
He went on to say that "despite all difficulties" the state mobilizes and will continue to mobilize additional resources to finance science, research, education, culture and medicine."
He said the social indices in the budget for 2002 "have exceeded the inflation indicators, substantively in some cases." He adduced the example of the educational sphere - the budget expenditure for this sphere will be 60 percent higher than in 2001. The presdient recognised that "it is too early to speak about a qualitative turn-around in the state's attitude to the humanitarian sphere", but "we are beginning to understand anew that knowledge and qualifications are very costly things". In his view, it has always been and must an honour and distinction to be an educated person in Russia. The president noted that one should learn to value not only collective attainments but also know the real value of intellectual efforts and efficient personalities." "Know it and treat them in a way that is different from what often happened recently", said he. Later on Tuesday, in another ceremony that took place in the Kremlin's Patriarchal Chambers, the head of the Russian Orthodox church, Patriarch Alexiy of Moscow and All Russia presented a prize "For the outstanding activity aiming to consolidate the unity of Orthodox Christian peoples." The prize crowns the president's contribution to "the cause of improving relations between the church and the state, enhancing the role played by Orthodoxy in society, consolidating the spiritual and cultural unity of the countries and peoples of the Orthodox Christian world." The award was instituted by the international endowment for the unity of Orthodox Christian nations. The president received the award with appreciation and thanked for the high assessment of his activity. Alexiy II gave Putin an icon of the Mother of God, a diploma and a badge that come with the prize. The presentation of the award was followed by Vladimir Putin's conversation with the head of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Patriarchal Chambers, where Putin also met other Church prize winners, including the Most Holy Patriarch Pavle of Serbia, Chairman of the National Assembly of Armenia Armen Khachatrian, Prime Minister of Lebanon Isam Fares and the European Interparliamentary Assembly of Orthodoxy.

Несмотря на экономические и социальные трудности количество студентов в России постоянно увеличивается

MOSCOW, Jan 25, 2002 (Itar-Tass via COMTEX) -- The number of students is growing in Russia on the average by 300,000 a year. Itar-Tass was told at the State Statistical Board of the Russian Federation that the number of students had almost doubled over the past six years. Only about 2,644,000 people got higher education diplomas in Russia in 1995, while in 2001 their number already reached 4,741,000. It is worth noting that the number of students, studying at non-governmental educational establishments, has also increased from 110,000 six years ago to 470,000 last year. It is believed at the State Statistical Board that growing interest in education, noticed among young people, could be explained by the fact that "only professionals, educated people, can expect to get high-paid jobs today". Itar-Tass was told at the Russian Ministry of Education that, in spite of numerous social and economic difficulties of past years, the education system in Russia was not only saved, but is developing at a rapid pace. A spokesman for the ministry said that "thanks to the state's leading role in education, our country now ranks among the leading nations of the world as regards the number of educated people and the quality standards of education".

Ученые встраивают чипы для обнаружения примесей и патогенных микробов

Researchers studying microfluidics build tiny apparatuses for analyzing chemicals, experimenting and detecting pathogens FLUID IN PIPES one-fiftieth of an inch wide flows toward, top left, and through, other photos, a y-shaped intersection on a microfluidic chip. Such chips are being used to test chemical compounds and could soon be used in hand-held detectors for anthrax, smallpox and other biological weapons.

After shrinking electronics into microelectronics and machines into micromachines, scientists have become microplumbers, too.
By carving mazes of pipes the width of a human hair into silicon, glass and plastic, they have developed devices that shuttle minuscule amounts of liquid, mix them together, run chemical experiments or analyze bits of DNA floating within.
They are essentially condensing entire chemistry laboratories, including the expertise of the technicians, onto small chips, with the promise of the usual benefits of miniaturization: faster, cheaper, better.
The technology, known as microfluidics, could lead to easy-to-use hand-held devices to scan the air and detect anthrax and other deadly pathogens in minutes, rather than the hours or days that laboratory tests currently take.
Real applications
"The field is about to break wide open in a major way", said Stephen R. Quake, a professor of applied physics at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "We'll see the first real applications."
The first commercial products are on the market, designed to sort snippets of DNA or screen thousands of potential drug compounds quickly and automatically.
More fanciful microfluidic contraptions include tiny jaws built at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M., that can snare individual blood cells out of the bloodstream for testing.
For some time, biologists have been using hair-width pipes to perform one of the repetitive chores of molecular biology: separating clumps of molecules like proteins or pieces of DNA.
Tiny amounts within tiny glass tubes separate much more quickly than they do with traditional methods. In the late 1980s, J. Michael Ramsey, a scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, who is a pioneer of microfluidics, imagined that more sophisticated devices could be made by bending the tiny tubes.
"I thought we could make them more compact by making essentially serpentine patterns", he said in a recent interview.
Microplumbers
For several years, he could not persuade anyone to pay for his research. "My first suggestions of these ideas to the scientific community were really rebuffed", he said. "People either said they wouldn't work or they would have no value." Skeptics said, for example, that the fluid in the outer part of a curved pipe would fall behind the fluid flowing along the inner edge - just as a racehorse on the outside has farther to gallop than one on the inside track - and that this effect would blur the test results. But Ramsey and others found that the winding pipe problem was not hard to overcome. In practice, the narrow channels proved so narrow that the difference between the inner and outer edges of pipe was minimal.
And the inner part of the turn could be coated with a water-attracting chemical, slowing it down enough for the rest of the liquid to catch up. Making the turns less sharp further reduced the complication.
Eventually other scientists became microplumbers, too.
"It's pretty exciting", Ramsey said. "There is some satisfaction of telling all the naysayers 'I told you so."
Building on techniques learned in the manufacture of computer chips, researchers construct their network of tiny pipes in a variety of ways.
One is to simply scratch or etch grooves onto the surface of a flat piece of silicon, glass or plastic and then glue another piece on top to seal the grooves into closed channels. Other techniques involve building up, then whittling away.
Building tiny pipes
For his devices, Harold G. Craighead, a professor of applied and engineering physics at Cornell University, starts with a flat silicon oxide wafer. He then lays filaments of polycarbonate, the clear plastic used for eyeglass lenses and compact discs, where he wants his pipes to be. The filaments are then coated with another layer of silicon oxide and heated. The polycarbonate vanishes into vapor. "And that leaves a tube", Craighead said. Quake, at Caltech, uses a technique somewhat akin to shaping desserts out of fanciful gelatin molds. He makes his microfluidic devices out of malleable silicone rubber. First he makes a mold out of silicon; a long, straight trough in the silicon serves as a mold for half of a tube, for example. A ridge running down the center of the trough defines the channel through which the liquid will flow.
"Once you get the mold, you pour liquid rubber onto the mold, let it cure and peel it off", Quake said. "You get this rubbery thing."
That piece of rubber is then bonded to a second piece -- in essence, making a miniature garden hose.
With the pipes built, the next step is getting water and other fluids, droplets as slight as a hundred millionth of an ounce, to flow through them. One method relies on something as simple as sucking soda through a straw: air pressure.
A second, more common method takes advantage of broken chemical bonds on the inside surface of the pipes that provide an excess of negatively charged electrons. The negative charges draw a sheath of positively charged ions in the liquid next to them. Applying an electric field pushes the sheath of charge. That sheath then drags along the liquid inside it.
This technique does not work in all cases, however. Not all liquids contain enough ions, and ions flow at different rates, depending on their mass and charge.
Minuscule valves
Microfluidic chips by HandyLab Inc. of Ann Arbor, Mich., a spinoff from University of Michigan research, also use bursts of hot air to propel liquids. A one-second burst from a microheater, like a tiny toaster coil, heats an air bubble in a channel, causing it to expand and push the liquid ahead of it. "It doesn't matter what kind of fluid you're preparing", said Kalyan Handique, HandyLab's chief technology officer.
Quake uses crisscrossed silicone tubes to pump the fluid along and to stop it entirely. A valve consists of pairs of crisscrossed tubes. The tube on the bottom carries the fluid. When the tube on top is inflated with air, the bottom tube is crimped shut. Three air-filled tubes create a pump. By rhythmically opening and closing one after another, the valves push the liquid along.
"A little bit like squeezing toothpaste", Quake said. "It's the same way your throat or your colon works."
Others have designed other types of valves, including "virtual valves", in which adjustments in pressure - rather than a physical gate opening and closing - direct the flow of liquids at a right-angle junction of two pipes.
"That has proved to be a powerful idea", said Michael R. Knapp, vice president for science and technology at Caliper Technologies, a microfluidics company in Mountain View. Without any moving parts, "it never really wears out", he said.
Experimental uses
David J. Beebe, a professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Wisconsin, has made valves that mimic the ones in veins: flaps that allow flow in only one direction. To build structures within channels, he flows a light-sensitive liquid polymer into the channel. Shining ultraviolet light onto the polymer solidifies it.
"Much like building a ship in a bottle, but a whole lot easier", he said.
Using different polymers, he can build valves that automatically open or close in response to different properties in the liquid - for example, closing the valve if the liquid becomes too acidic.
That eliminates the need for a separate sensor or any external mechanism to open or close the valve. "It's a much more elegant approach", Beebe said.
The scientists can further control the flow of liquids by coating some surfaces with hydrophobic substances, essentially oily substances that repel water, while coating others with a water-attracting layer.
"What we have is sort of the foundation layer of plumbing", Quake said. "The next layer is your basic microbiology tools. We've got a lot of pieces of the second layer in place. With a few more pieces, we're going to build virtually anything you want on a chip." Some companies have already put the pieces together into products. Caliper sells a robotic machine that can perform tens of thousands of experiments a day, testing, for example, which potential drug compounds bind to a particular protein.
Each experiment uses much smaller amounts of expensive chemicals than traditional methods.
"There's a lot of savings there", Knapp said. Because the experiments are performed within a closed chip, the results are also much more consistent and reproducible, he said.
Among the microfluidic devices expected in the near future is a hand-held detector for anthrax, smallpox and other biological weapons.
HandyLab, which is working on that detector, also hopes to produce tools that will quickly diagnose tuberculosis, meningitis and West Nile fever by finding telltale fragments of DNA.
"Some of these are very difficult to grow, but if you take the DNA out, you can detect them very quickly", Handique of HandyLab said

Возрождение российской промышленности на основе высоких технологий остается основной задачей в России. Не решив эту задачу, по мнению академика, лауреата Нобелевской премии Ж. Алферова, Россия не сможет создать социально-ориентированную рыночную экономику

ST. PETERSBURG, Jan 23, 2002 (Itar-Tass via COMTEX) -- The revival of industries on the basis of breakthrough research-intense technologies remains a key task in Russia. Without achieving this it will be futile to hope for building a socially-oriented market economy, the Deputy President of the Russian Academy of Sciences Zhores Alferov said Tuesday. Alferov, a winner of the Nobel prize for physics, was speaking at a meeting of the working group for science and high technologies under the office of the presidential representative in the Northwestern Federal District.
Russia's financial position as it is, the budget will be unable to maintain fundamental research, let alone develop it, Alferov said. He believes that the government must focus financial resources on fundamentally new areas of research where breakthroughs are likely and that promise revolutionary results of world importance. The working group made a decision to meet again in the near future to discuss fundamental research areas to be selected for priority financing in Russia's Northwestern district.

Российская медицинская наука придает важное значение традиционной китайской медицине

CHINA, Jan 17, 2002 (AsiaPort via COMTEX) -- Russian medical science and technology is very developed, and many Russian scientists are interested in TCM. As early as in 1931, Soviet Union has setup the plant research center to study the vegetable drug. In 1950s, Moscow has sent a group of students to China to learn acupuncture. Russian scholars have applied acupuncture to treat a wide range diseases, which including liver cancer pain symptom disease, obstertrical clinic pain disorder, bronchus asthma and dyspnea, angina, myocardial infarction, gastric ulcer and duodenum ulcer, intestinal function disturbance, nephrolith, prostatitis, tinnitus, rhinitis, arthritis, rheumatalgia, toothache and so on.
Russia has established the acupuncture MD degree. Russian Acupuncture Association is an important member of World Acupuncture Union. Russian Acupuncture Association has close and frequent contacts with Chinese academic field. China also established the TCM training and treatment center in Russia. Russian had great confidence on TCM. TCM were widely used in Russia and accepted already be the public.
From China News of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Page 4, Tuesday, January 15, 2002

Умер выдающийся российский ученый Александр Прохоров, лауреат Нобелевской премии, один из создателей лазера - изобретения, без которого немыслимо представить большинство современных технологий

MOSCOW, (Reuters) -- Russian Nobel laureate Alexander Prokhorov, an inventor of laser technology and a leading light in the Soviet Union's space defense program, died Tuesday at the age of 85, the Academy of Sciences said.
Prokhorov won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1964, along with fellow countryman Nikolai Basov and U.S. scientist Charles Townes for laying the groundwork for the invention of the laser.
The research institute that he headed was also a key contributor to the Soviet program to counter U.S. President Ronald Reagan plans for a "Star Wars" defense system - so called because it would destroy ballistic missiles in space.
Born in Australia in 1916, Prokhorov came to the Soviet Union in 1923. During World War Two he joined the Red Army, despite eligibility for exemption because of his academic research, and was twice wounded.
A leading member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Prokhorov was twice made a Hero of Socialist Labor - the Soviet state's highest civilian accolade.
Prokhorov will be buried in Moscow's Novodyevichy cemetery, resting place of many of the Soviet Union's greatest scientists, writers and composers.

MURMANSK, Jan 18, 2002 (Itar-Tass via COMTEX) -- In spite of the intensive tapping of its biological resources, the Barnets Sea Still ranks among the cleanest in the Arctic region. This conclusion was drawn by scientists of the Russian Polar Fishing and Oceanography Research Institute, who summed up the results of their last year's studies. The institute's scientists had looked into the life of practically all the species of Barents fishes and animals. In the course of their scientific expeditions, they examined the influence on them of fifty most widespread chemical compounds, known to pollute the marine environment. Their conclusion is definite: pollution of the Barents Sea ecology systems is so insignificant that it can deservedly claim to be one of the cleanest seas of the world.

Американская компания American Biogenetic Sciences, Inc заключила соглашения с Российской Ассоциацией, в которую входят свыше 30 научных институтов, предприятий и организаций, которые будут производить и распространять вакцины против сибирской язвы и оспы, произведенные в России

COPIAGUE, N.Y., Jan. 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- American Biogenetic Sciences, Inc. (ABS or Company) (Nasdaq: MABA) announced today that it has executed two new ten-year agreements with Russian entities, granting ABS exclusive rights to distribute in specified markets certain vaccines to be manufactured in Russia.
ANTHRAX VACCINE:
ABS has entered into a ten-year agreement, dated January 14, 2002, with a Russian Association (Association) which represents over thirty manufacturers, enterprises, and scientific research institutes located in the Russian Federation. The Association has the exclusive right to sell and distribute worldwide an anthrax vaccine produced by a Russian manufacturer. Under the agreement between ABS and the Association, ABS has been granted the exclusive right to act as a distributor for the anthrax vaccine in the territory consisting of the United States, Canada, Mexico, countries of Central and South America and China. The anthrax vaccine is presently being marketed outside of the ABS territory by the Association. The agreement between ABS and the Association also grants ABS the first priority right to purchase a broad range of other immunobiological preparations including other human vaccines (biological products). The volumes, terms of delivery, price, and specifications related to the biological products will be negotiated separately with the Association. Under the agreement, ABS plans to make certain biological products available to pharmaceutical companies, government agencies and regulatory authorities for testing and evaluation.
SMALLPOX VACCINE:
ABS has also entered into a separate ten-year agreement, dated January 15, 2002, with a Russian Federation manufacturer (Manufacturer) which grants ABS rights to act as the Manufacturer's exclusive worldwide distributor (with the right to assign sub-distributors and agents) for smallpox vaccine for human use outside of the Commonwealth of Independent States (the Russian Federation and eleven other independent countries formerly part of the Soviet Union). This manufacturer has been operating for over 100 years, and was a supplier of smallpox vaccine used by the World Health Organization during the global eradication of smallpox in the 1970s. Under the agreement with the Manufacturer, ABS plans to market the smallpox vaccine by first making it available for testing and evaluation by pharmaceutical companies, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other government agencies and regulatory authorities outside of the Commonwealth of Independent States. The terms of the sale of and specifications related to the smallpox vaccine will be negotiated with the Manufacturer.

Продолжение дайджеста за ЯНВАРЬ 2002 года (часть 2)

предыдущий месяц

1998-2002

следующий месяц