Май 2003 г.

Российская наука и мир (по материалам зарубежной электронной прессы)

CONTENTS / ОГЛАВЛЕНИЕ


• Russia Gets New R&D Leaders
• Russian scientist to get BGSU honorary degree
• Professor at UI wins Russian award
• Tech on Tap This Week
• Clashing Approaches Becloud Central Asia's Water Future
• Russia to stage climate conference, but undecided on Kyoto
• Spirit Sciences Says New Russian Product Dubbed ``KGB Pill'' Can Protect Against Alcohol-Related Health Problems
• Russian Scientists Claim GM Food Is Safe
• Russia, US agree to explore Mars together

Бывший первый заместитель министра промышленности, науки и технологий РФ Борис Алешин возглавит Министерство науки и технологий. Кроме этого президент В. Путин назначил Александра Бурутина советником по военным отраслям промышленности. А. Бурутин будет курировать вопросы ВПК и гособоронзаказа

MOSCOW, --President Vladimir Putin shook up Russia's science leadership last week, installing two military veterans to direct government R&D. Maj. Gen. Alexander Burutin, 47, a longtime staff officer, fills the new post of Putin's senior adviser on military industries. Boris Alyoshin, 48, a military avionics specialist currently serving as deputy minister of science, becomes deputy prime minister for science, technology, and innovation policy. He replaces his former boss, Ilya Klebanov. The newcomers are charged with implementing a 2-year-old plan to close half of the science ministry's 1400 defense-related research enterprises and herd the survivors into about 50 industry-related groups.
It's not clear if the appointments reflect a chilling of the Kremlin's enthusiasm for boosting civilian oversight of defense research. The Institute for the Economy in Transition in Moscow says the switch reinforces a "noticeable shift" in government science funding "from the civil sector toward the defense sector." But Mikhail Alfimov, chair of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, predicts Alyoshin will boost civilian science.

Российский химик и математик Наталья Тарасова получит почетное звание доктора наук от Государственного университета Боулинг Грин (штат Огайо) в знак признания ее вклада в развитие связей школы из штата Огайо и Российским химико-технологическим университетом им. Д.И. Менделеева в Москве

BOWLING GREEN -- A Russian chemist and mathematician will receive an honorary PhD Friday from Bowling Green State University in recognition of her work in encouraging ties between the Ohio school and a university in Moscow.
Dr. Natalia Tarasova, who heads the department of sustainable development at Mendeleyev University of Chemical Technology, will be awarded an honorary doctor of science degree during graduate college commencement exercises at 7 p.m. in Anderson Arena.
Dr. Tarasova helped arrange for four Mendeleyev alumni to enroll in BGSU’s PhD program in photochemical sciences in 1991. Since then, 21 students from Mendeleyev have completed their doctoral work at Bowling Green, and 21 Russian students are in the photochemical sciences program now

15 июня в Санкт-Петербурге профессор Ник Голоняк - младший из университета штата Иллинойс, российский ученый Геннадий Месяц и Ян Дуглас Смит из Калифорнии получат премию 900 000 долларов США - российский эквивалент Нобелевской премии

A University of Illinois professor who invented the first practical light-emitting diode has won the Russian equivalent of the Nobel Prize.
UI electrical and computer engineering and physics Professor Nick Holonyak Jr., who also played a key role in the development of semiconductor lasers used in everything from CD players to fiber-optic communications, will receive the Global Energy Prize from Russian President Vladimir Putin at a ceremony to be held in St. Petersburg, Russia, on June 15.
The prize carries a $900,000 award, which Holonyak will share with two other winners selected this year, Russian scientist Gennady Mesiats and Ian Douglas Smith of California-based Titan Corporation's Pulse Sciences Division.
Holonyak was aware that the Russians were looking for candidates for the award. He received a packet inviting him to make a nomination "months and months ago." "I knew that they were forming the thing," he said this week.
But he didn't know that his was one of the names in the hopper until he received a call last week notifying him he had won.
The call came from Holonyak's scientific colleague and friend Zhores Alferov, the 2000 Nobel Prize winner in physics who's on the committee overseeing the Global Energy Prize.
According to a press release, the committee considered 400 scientists from around the world for the award, established last year to rival the Nobel and the Japanese Inamori Foundation Kyoto Prize, which honors lifetime achievements in areas that aren't traditionally covered by Nobel Prizes.
The Global Energy Prize announcement cited Holonyak's invention of thyristors, a device for regulating electric current, which is widely used in light dimmer switches, among many other applications.
It also cited the UI professor's invention of the first semi-conducting light-emitting diodes in a visible part of the spectrum, a component in the displays on everything from microwave ovens to aircraft controls today, brighter versions of which are likely to become the low-power replacement for the light bulb in the future.
Russian prize committee member Vladimyr Fortov called Holonyak's work "key inventions, paving the way to new ways of efficient energy-saving technologies."
The prize criteria are loosely tied to any kind of energy-related development, with preference given to work that promotes ecologically clean energy production, boosts energy-conserving mechanisms or makes a breakthrough in research into renewable energy.
"Partially, the rationale is that energy is a critical issue on the whole planet," Holonyak said.
The other winners, Mesiats and Smith, are known for development of methods to move electricity from place to place without loss.
The son of Slavic immigrants to the coal mining region of Southern Illinois, Holonyak earned all three of his degrees at the UI. He was the first graduate student of the late John Bardeen, a two-time Nobel winner in physics, who coaxed him back to the university to teach in 1963.
The Global Energy Prize adds to Holonyak's long list of awards, which includes the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Medal of Honor presented last year and the U.S. National Medal of Science in 1990.

A special luncheon event, 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m., Alaska High-Tech Business Council meeting area, 805 W. Fireweed Lane (just west of Arctic Boulevard). The program is a special roundtable on "Opportunity in High Tech Cooperation Between U.S. and Russian Businesses," with Dr. Serguei Simonov of Novosibirsk, Russia. Simonov is a senior researcher in software and the application of high-performance computing for complex problem-solving at the Siberian Division of the Russian Academy of Science. His current project is genome analysis. He is also a partner in Virtual Pro Inc., a San Francisco-based software marketing company. He visited Alaska to attend the Rotary District 5010 annual conference and currently serves on the District 5010 leadership team as the assistant district governor overseeing 11 Rotary clubs in Western Siberia.

Central Asian republics emerged from a recent conference in Ukraine with plans to harness European and international support for redistributing and pricing water. While Russian politicians are advancing a Soviet-style water diversion scheme for the region, former Soviet states are tentatively exploring ways to draw water more efficiently.
At the fifth annual Pan-European Ministerial Conference in Ukraine from May 21 to 23, the five Central Asian nations formally invited international agencies and lenders to craft and enforce policies for protecting water sources. While the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe presses that agenda, bilateral talks may also gather strength. In early May, a Kyrgyzstani newspaper reported that Kyrgyzstan’s embassy in Dushanbe, Tajikistan had approached the host government about creating a joint working group for financing new hydropower engineering efforts. This official endorsement of water management contrasts with past practice. As the Central Asian countries’ "Invitation to Partnership" notes, "the resource-based approach that evolved during the arms race still dominates water management thinking in Central Asian countries." But some potent agencies still champion discredited methods.
At a conference in Moscow in early April, all speeches explored the 32-year-old idea of diverting part of the Ob River in Siberia’s flow via a new canal to Central Asian republics. Diversion of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers in the Soviet era led the Aral Sea to shrink. Central Asian republics notoriously waste water: the Kiev conference document claims that per capita consumption in the five countries averages twice that of developed nations. Supplies from the lower Amu Darya, which runs through Uzbekistan, have operated for years at less than half of an artificially low consumption limit. Levels will decrease more starkly "against the background of population growth…increased uptake from Afghanistan and accelerated processes of desertification and climate change," the Kiev document says.
Nonetheless, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, an influential politician who has campaigned for a new diversion project involving the Ob, opened an April 9 conference in Moscow with a promise: "This idea will be realized." The Kiev document’s priorities include saving Lake Balkhash in Kazakhstan from shrinking, transferring 15 percent of the region’s energy use to renewable sources by expanding hydroelectric power, and increasing the zone of protected rivers and deltas by 40 percent, and reducing water waste in irrigation farming by 20 percent in seven years. Luzhkov’s priorities involve restoring the diversion idea, which Soviet planners developed in 1971 and 1986. "We are talking about water as a good, of which Russia has plenty" to sell, he said. Central Asian countries have not openly rejected the idea.
Luzhkov made an economic case for the diversion project, which he estimated would cost at least $34 billion, and pay for itself in five years’ worth of water fees. The Ob floods in spring, and its floodwaters do not have a clear economic use. The mayor argued that water-related failures in Central Asian republics could cause a huge wave of migration to Russia, and that constructing a canal from Siberia to Central Asia would create an economic bridge across the nations. Some participants in the corridors said they thought the project would serve to generate big orders for Moscow businesses and advance Luzhkov’s political standing. "Our opinion was not very interesting to Moscow organizers. It seemed that organizers were solving their internal problems via this conference," a participant from Central Asia told EurasiaNet.
While the Aral Sea’s history makes a case against ambitious diversion projects, Russian officials do not disown Luzhkov’s idea. First Deputy Natural Resources Minister Nikolay Tarasov, who heads the State Water Board, called for further study amid generally positive comments at the conference. Yuri Izrael, chief of the Global Climate and Ecology Institute at the Russian Academy of Sciences, made more cautious comments about the need for further research.
Others have flatly rejected it on scientific grounds. Scientist Viktor Danilov-Danilyan, former head of the State Environmental Protection Committee, disputed Luzhkov’s claim that water was a renewable resource, since it can run out when "people destroy ecological systems that promote its reproduction." Examples of such destruction include overuse of glacial runoff and stormwater by consumers. Diversion of the Aral Sea also caused a sharp increase in deposits to soil, which has harmed air quality. Danilov-Danilyan warned that diverting five to seven percent of the Ob River could have other disastrous effects.
At the Moscow conference, geopolitics seemed to influence speakers’ attitudes toward the diversion project. Russian Institute of CIS Countries Director Konstantin Zatulin said that Russia could safeguard its regional influence by emerging as a water source for Central Asia. "Water is the central problem in Central Asia", Zatulin underlined. He cited the fact that 30 representatives from Central Asian republics came to the conference as evidence of their support for a large-scale Russian project. Zatulin also insisted that "Russia has to activate in this region, if it thinks about its own future" and could use the ability to provide water as a counterweight to the United States’ promise of military collaboration.
Western allies are taking some steps to address the regional water crisis. The United Kingdom has also invested in Central Asian states’ water reform. On April 7, according to Kyrgyzstan’s Kabar news agency, Britain granted $50,000 for a commission to study management of border rivers between Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. Such commissions will face steep hurdles inside their countries and beyond. Andrey Grozin, a colleague of Zatulin’s, supported this idea at the level of strategy. "The United States can’t give water to Uzbekistan and Tashkent can’t solve the water problem on its own," he told EurasiaNet.
If Central Asian republics try to develop cooperative conservation techniques, they will face delicate politics. An official Interstate Commission for Water Management exists, but exercises little power. Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, which have ample water resources, have never profited from selling water to low-lying states. In the mid-1990s, military exercises sometimes simulated battles over dams. Some observers at the Moscow conference speculated that military conflict between Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan could ensue if Turkmenistani President Saparmurat Niyazov manages to build a huge artificial lake in his country’s desert.

Продолжение дайджеста за МАЙ 2003 года (часть 2)

предыдущий месяц

1998-2003

следующий месяц