Апрель 2004 г.

Российская наука и мир (по материалам зарубежной электронной прессы)

CONTENTS / ОГЛАВЛЕНИЕ


• City Labs Make Bomb Detectors
• How to Synthesize Algorithms
• Permafrost Becomes Insecure
• Putin Praises Programmers for Beating the Best in the World
• Russian Software Programmers are a Hot Export Item
• Russians engage in epilepsy fight
• Ice Maiden triggers mother of all disputes in Siberia
• Error Detector Was Discovered In Russia, Not In The USA
• Splitting Of White Light
• 2 Russians, American Get 2004 Global Energy Award

Российские ученые, в советское время работавшие над созданием оружия массового поражения, теперь разрабатывают прибор, способный предупреждать и контролировать эпилептические припадки.

Scientists who used to work on weapons of mass destruction in the former Soviet Union are cooperating with Kansas University Medical Center researchers and others to develop a device to prevent epileptic seizures.
"We are glad to use our power for human health," said Stanislav Kulikov. The device could help more than 200,000 people who suffer from intractable epilepsy, a condition that entails at least one seizure per month despite medication.
The research is part of the Russian Transition Initiatives program established in 1994 to engage former Soviet weapons scientists in civilian research projects, involving both U.S. industry and U.S. national laboratories.
Research projects are selected for their commercial potential and designed to lead to peaceful, long-term employment and income for former Soviet weapons workers, according to the National Nuclear Security Administration.
The epilepsy project focuses on a long-term relationship with the Russian scientists, said LaCurtise Smith, the project manager.
"When we get the prototype out, the Russians can make parts later," he said.
The Russian government believes in the program because of its global effect and the strong connections they are making with U.S labs, Smith said.
"We got them working on something peaceful," he said. "We're introducing them to capitalism, which is good."
The collaboration began three years ago, said Gennady Kochemasov, director of BioFil, a small, private science company in Russia. His team has been working in Russia since then, coming to the United States whenever needed to solve a major impasse.
Also involved in the program are Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies, which manages and operates the work being done in Kansas City; the Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory, managed by the University of Chicago; and Flint Hills Scientific LLC, based in Lawrence.
Dr. Ivan Osorio, director of the Comprehensive Epilepsy Center at the Med Center, is medical director of Flint Hills Scientific. He is leader of the research team that is close to completing work on a device that helps prevent epileptic seizures. It's the same system that has helped Meredith Leary in the years since she became part of Osorio's research study. Her story was told in the 2001 Journal-World series "Holding on to Hope."
Flint Hills Scientific has patented an algorithm that allows short-term prediction of epileptic seizures. Now the focus of the research at the Med Center is a device that could prevent epileptic seizures with the technology. With intractable epilepsy, electrical charges that usually control the body become imbalanced, triggering recurrent seizures. The device to help control the seizures would consist of two pieces: a remote piece and an implanted piece. The remote piece would send a signal when it detects a seizure,"cooling" the imbalanced electrical charges before they cause an epileptic seizure.
Osorio's team is trying to miniaturize a device that will integrate three separate components: A temperature sensor that can detect changes of 1/1000 of a degree; a cooling device with probes that will cool the brain; and a telemetry system that will connect the brain device to the remote system. The telemetry system works like two cell phones sending messages to each other. Osorio said there still was discussion about where the devices would be placed, but they could be anywhere in the body.
The project is 30 percent complete, said Kochemasov, leader of the Russian team.
"The more you learn, the more questions you have," he said. The questions include how to integrate all the components in such a small device, and how the telemetry system would work. Smith, the project manager, said the team hoped to have the first draft of prototype plans ready in 24 months. Most of the money for the research comes from the National Nuclear Security Administration, Smith said. Flint Hills Scientific has to match that with "in-kind"contributions, which can be labor, machinery or time.
Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention, one of the two branches that form the Russian Transition Initiatives program, has engaged more than 13,000 scientists in Russia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine at nuclear as well as biological and chemical weapons institutes. More than 25 percent of IPP's activities take place in Russia's closed nuclear cities.

Скифская мумия, найденная российскими археологами на Алтае 11 лет назад и прозванная «Алтайской принцессой», стала причиной серьезных конфликтов. Современная наука столкнулась с древними суевериями, после того как местные жители потребовали снова закопать мумию. Они уверены, что землетрясения, начавшиеся в сентябре прошлого года, - проклятие «принцессы».

High in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia, where Shamans still practise their ancient rites and most people are descended from Asiatic nomads, there is a whiff of revolt in the air. Local officials, urged on by the increasingly militant electorate, are collecting signatures, writing petitions and demanding audiences with regional political leaders.
Their demands are simple and have nothing to do with the inept rule, poverty, corruption and ecological disasters dogging the region. They want a 2,500-year-old mummy, found by Russian archaeologists 11 years ago and being studied in the Siberian capital of Novosibirsk, to be reinterred without delay. Egged on by powerful shamans who local people believe act as go-betweens with the heavenly spirits, they say only the mummy's reburial will put an end to a rash of earthquakes and other problems assailing the region.
The mummy in question is an archaeological jewel. When her ornately tattooed body was found entombed in ice in an ancient burial chamber, the find was acclaimed as one of the most important in Russia's recent history. The Ice Maiden, as she was dubbed, had survived almost intact in the permafrost of the southern Siberian mountains, surrounded by a burial sacrifice of six horses in gilt harnesses. Now the battle lines over her future are being drawn up. The fight pits modern Russian science against the ancient beliefs of the Altai people who lived in the region for centuries before Russian colonisers arrived 300 years ago.
It is also at the heart of strained relations between Moscow, often seen as high-handed and out of touch, and the many indigenous peoples of Russia, growing in self-confidence and demanding ever-greater autonomy even as President Vladimir Putin seeks to rein them in.
The campaign to rebury the Ice Maiden began soon after a strong earthquake hit the region last September, destroying many buildings. Aulkhan Djatkambayev, the head of the Kosh-Agach administration in the Southern Altai region, is a leading proponent of the cause.
"People say the failure to rebury the mummy has brought a string of misfortunes and I respect their opinions," he said.
"It is not only a question of earthquakes, but there is a rising incidence of suicide and sickness."
"I respect science but we are nomads not scientists and every people has the right to its own level of understanding. Only by reburying the mummy can we lay the spirits to rest and calm people's fears."
The Russian scientists studying the mummy in Novosibirsk, some 400 miles north, scorn such talk. Vyacheslav Molodin of the Russian Academy of Sciences, whose wife discovered the Ice Maiden, said that during the 1990s when funding was scarce, scientists at the research centre even gave some of their pay for expensive conservation materials.
He said: "Burying the mummy would make us a laughing stock of the world scientific community. As for the earthquakes, the Altai has always been a high-risk zone and earthquakes are nothing unusual there."
The discovery of the Ice Maiden was of great scientific importance. By studying her, archaeologists have been able to piece together much about a little-known people called the Pazyryks, fierce nomadic fighters and skilled horsemen who lived in the first millennium before Christ. Previously historians had been forced to rely almost exclusively on the writings of Herodotus, who was fascinated by these warrior-nomads who grazed their herds at the ancient historical gateway known locally as the Pastures of Heaven. Today it is the point where Russia, Mongolia, China and Kazakhstan meet. Herodotus wrote of virgin warriors, some of whom cut off a breast to make them better archers. He wrote: "No maiden may marry until she has killed a man of the enemy. Some die old women, unmarried, because they cannot fulfil the law."
The Ice Maiden, who died when she was about 25, was certainly an important member of society, though probably not a warrior or a princess, as local people claim, but a story-teller, a highly revered position in nomadic culture. She was buried in a long coffin made of larch and a table was set out with horse-meat and mutton to accompany her into the afterlife. She wore a tall wooden headdress and coriander seeds were sprinkled around her.
There were many such burial sites but most were ruined by grave-robbers during the Dark Ages. The Ice Maiden survived only because looters did not search further after finding another body buried on top of her coffin. She was preserved because her body had been stuffed with peat and bark and ice seeped into the grave. Even the most sceptical admitted that during the work to excavate her there were suspicions of strange forces at work. Jeanne Smoot, an American archaeologist at the dig, told of a sense of foreboding that plagued the team, and frequent nightmares.
When they took the mummy to Novosibirsk, their helicopter's engine failed and it crash-landed. On arrival, the body was almost ruined when it was placed in a freezer that had been used to store cheese and began to develop fungi. The Ice Maiden was saved only when she was rushed to Moscow for treatment by the embalmers who worked on Lenin's body.
In Gorno-Altaisk, the shabby, Soviet-built capital of the stunningly beautiful Altai region, talk of ill fortune shadowing the Ice Maiden comes as no surprise. At the local market, traders said that until she was laid to rest bad luck would continue. Tatyana Kazantseva, 48, said: "Our princess must be reburied immediately, everybody here agrees. Having her in a laboratory might be good for the scientists but it has brought only bad for us."
The director of the ethnographic museum, Rimma Yerkinova, said: "Personally I am torn. As the director of the museum, I feel she must be returned to us to be put on display for our people to see. But something inside me says she should be reburied. It is the belief of our people."

В последнее время резко возросло количество "научных" преступлений, особенно в том, что касается кражи приоритетов и плагиата, утверждает Международный комитет по издательской этике. Наглядный пример – история с "детектором ошибок", открытым российскими учеными во второй половине 1960-х годов.

The International Committee on Publishing Ethics states that the frequency of scientific crimes has sharply increased recently. Stealing priority status, and plagiarism being the most widespread among them. The story about error detectors - one of the principal mechanisms in the human brain - discovered by Russian scientists is a good illustration of this tendency. In the world scientific press of the last two or three years, there has been a huge number of publications devoted to studies on so-called "error detectors" in the human brain. Simply, they are a kind of unseen censor that checks the correctness of our acts. Most people are unaware of their work: one cannot observe every inhalation and exhalation and every movement of the body.
When everything goes normally, one does not notice that. For example, a driver doesn't hear the noise of a normally working engine. However, once it goes wrong, the noise becomes apparent, because it differs from the regular one. The error detector compares the current events with memorized "correct" stereotypes and if the actual and memorized parameters do not match, it gives an alarm signal.
Here is a typical example: a man goes out of his house and suddenly feels that he forgot something. He can't think what exactly, but the stop signal is lit up in his head. On return, he finds that he forgot to turn off the light or worse, an iron. The daily life of a human is principally impossible without this controlling mechanism in the brain, and confusion in its work can induce serious diseases and psychic disorders.
The first suggestion about the existence of an error checker in the human brain was put forward by British psychologist Rabbitt in his article published in the Nature in 1966. His hypothesis was based on the results of psychological tests, but not instrumental studies on this phenomenon.
However, the latter were conducted at approximately the same time in Russia in the Institute of Experimental Medicine in Leningrad (currently, St. Petersburg). The head of laboratory Natalia Bekhtereva together with Valentin Grechin (recently deceased) cured Parkinson's syndrome patients using electrodes implanted into the brain. The patients were offered certain tests, and the activity of different parts of the brain in course of performance was registered. The researchers had soon established that each error made by a patient caused the same reaction in certain areas in the brain. Specific groups of cells located both in the subcortex and cortex of the brain and responsible for error distinguishing were discovered.
"We sensed that we confronted an interesting phenomenon that could be a basic mechanism comparable with conditioned reflexes," says Bekhtereva. "But, at the same time, we could not believe that and accept as truth, it just seemed astonishing! This phenomenon was instantly called "error detection", but we did not dare to announce that term in our first publication."
The discovery was first reported by Bekhtereva and Grechin in 1968 in their article published in the Annual Review in English. The term "error detector" appeared in print a bit later, in 1971, in Natalia Bekhtereva's book "Neurophysiological Aspects of Psychic Activity of a Human" (in Russian). There, the discovered phenomenon is precisely defined: "...Most curious are the areas, where similar changes occur in case of an error in a test performance... Those areas represent a king of 'error detector', analyzer of action correctness".
In English translation, the book was issued in 1978 by Oxford University Press. Thus, information about discovering the error detector in Russia became available to western scientists. Later, Bekhtereva with co-authors published several articles in foreign magazines including her article on error detector in the International Journal of Psychophysiology (1987). In 1986, she presented her paper on error detector at the Conference of International Organization of Psychophysiology in Vienna.
At that time, foreign colleagues (and Russians too) had a certain reservation in commenting reports about that phenomenon. But now authors from the West don't hesitate to say that error detection is among the highest evolved human self-monitoring functions (K. Rubia, Academic Press, 2003) and that importance of this phenomenon attracts much attention, and researchers strive to reveal its anatomic basis (H. Garavan, Neuroimage, 2003).
However, Russian scientists are not honoured for their discovery. They are not even mentioned by their foreign colleagues. For example, researchers from Universities of Yale and Stanford in the introduction to their article published last year in the Biological Psychology magazine state that error detector was discovered about ten years ago by two laboratories and cite two names: W. Gehring (1993) and M. Falkenstein (1991). They are cited by almost all authors recently, and some refer also to Rabbitt. And offering the term is ascribed to different people. Only one author mentions one of recent works by Bekhtereva with co-authors.
It can be suggested that none of the scientists working on that problem for the last 10-15 years and, especially, the last 2-3 years has been aware of the results obtained in Leningrad in 1970s-1980s, despite those are published in the West. And they are apparently not embarrassed by that.
Here are several lines from the letter sent by Don Taker, a researcher from the University of Oregon, to Natalia Bekhtereva: "Thank you for very helpful list of citations on error detection in you laboratory. I am sorry we did not cite these papers... I was aware of your work..., however I did not get Stan Dehaene who prepared this commentary for Psychological Science to include these very appropriate citations. I certainly will review your work and include the appropriate citations".
Is there any higher institute, to which one can appeal in case of such a problem, an analogue of court? Yes, the International Committee on Publishing Ethics deals with such situations, but its capabilities are quite limited. Within the past year, the Committee resolved only 29 claims, whereas their actual number is estimated at tens of thousands. In this sense, there is a total anarchy in science today. The editor of magazine Psychological Science directly said to Natalia Bekhtereva: "I am not in a position to guess authors about whether they knew your work and, if so, why they may have chosen not to include it in their citations".
In fact, each researcher is free to cite whoever he wants. Yet, western researchers, especially, Americans are better protected, since they belong to the society that governs the world science. A rather narrow circle of people "monopolizes" a certain theme; they keep close contacts and cite one another, and give positive comments on each others articles and reports, but are unwilling to let someone else to join in.
In such a situation, Russian scientists (and to a certain degree European scientists too; particularly, I have discussed this problem with Finnish and Swedish physiologists) are virtually powerless. And that does not depend on the field of research. For example, a well known molecular biologist Alexander Spirin told me the following: "My colleague Anatoly Gudkov made an important discovery and published his article in a respectable foreign magazine. Two years later, Californian scientists published similar work based on the same experiment and offered the same conclusions, but they did not mention the earlier Russian work. Later, the American article was cited in 90% of scientific publications.
Such an inadequacy is caused not only by a lack of protection of our scientists. Best Russian scientists do offer ground-breaking ideas and create "jobs" for others, but afterwards they don't hesitate to change the subject of research and tackle a new problem. In case if Bekhtereva had made studying of error detector her life's work, she would probably publish much more articles and finally become recognized worldwide."
"In 1979, Finnish researcher Risto Naatanen discovered one of the error detector features currently known as 'mismatch negativity", - tells us Natalia Bekhtereva. - Subsequently, developing that theme became the main project of his laboratory, and Risto was a success. Our team was concerned about the brain functioning on the whole, and error detector was only one of many findings in that line of work."
Now, after nearly 40 years since discovering the phenomenon, it has again become the subject of scientific interest of Natalia Bekhtereva, but in another aspect. She is eager to understand its role in creative processes: whether it helps us by protecting from triviality, or makes obstacles to original thoughts. One can wonder how many laboratories will be involved in that research 40 years later.
The priority status in science is determined by the date of publication in international scientific editions. Therefore, the scientific achievements of Natalia Bekhtereva can and should be recognized. Otherwise, all discussions about ethics in science must be terminated once and forever.

Московским ученым удалось сделать сложное и дорогое простым и дешевым. Речь идет о приборе для обнаружения дефектов поверхностей. Обычно в таких устройствах используется лазер, они довольно сложны в обращении и не позволяют определить тип дефекта. В новом приборе, названном "цифровым интерферометром с некогерентным источником" лазер заменен белой лампой.

Moscow scientists have managed to do simply and inexpensively something which normally proves complicated and expensive. The concept thought out and then implemented is a device which allows you to check the quality of ground and polished surfaces with unprecedented precision and rapidity and to detect every single defect of such surfaces. The effort has been funded by both the Russian Foundation for Basic Research and the Foundation for Promotion of Small-Size Enterprises in Research and Technical Areas.
The source of light for contemporary devices for the check of the quality of grinded surfaces are lasers, which are not cheap, but the correct interpretation of measurement results could be produced only by a specialist with extensive experience and intuition. The fact is that the interference acquired in this case does not allow to identify the type of defect – be it convexity or concavity. Now the situation can drastically change. The laser turns out to be successfully replaced by a common white light bulb, and intuition will not be needed at all. Therefore, the device will provide distinct results at the output, and there will be no need to guess what defects exist on the mirror surface. The new device is called "digital interferometer with incoherent source". The device was invented and manufactured by the specialists of the Moscow Physical & Engineering Institute (State University), Moscow State Engineering University STANKIN and Research-and-Production Association "Energomekhanika" with financial support of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research and the Foundation for promotion of small-size enterprises in research and technical areas. The project was headed by Nikolai Vlasov, Professor, Doctor of Technical Sciences.
"The device action is based on interference of common white light (and this is reflected in its name). The essence of the work is as follows, says Professor Vlasov. The beam of light from one source is split into two absolutely identical beams. They are called the reference one and the object one. One of them is directed at the mirror which is initially of high-quality. The other is directed at the object under consideration, the distances to the object being equal. That is also the mirror, the surface quality of which should also be checked for concavities and convexities, and measured them, if any. If the " heights" or "hollows" are too extensive and exceed the allowable value – the mirror is culled, if the defects are nonexistent or insignificant – the mirror is permitted for work."
However, the question arises how the defects can be measured? So, both beams are reflected, each from its mirror. Then they are joined with the help of a semitransparent mirror to see what would turn out. Each of the beams has passed its way, the difference between the ways being the deflection of the object surface height from flat surface: if the beam hits a concavity, the length of its way increases, if it hits a convexity – its way decreases by the height of the convexity. If the difference is divisible by the length of the light length, it intensifies – this phenomenon is called interference. If not – one beam extinguishes the other. The so-called fringe pattern is obtained – i.e. light and dark bands. Their number equals the number of times the light wave-length "goes into" the difference of ways. As the light source is normally the laser beam of a certain wave-length, this distance can be easily calculated. Nevertheless – and this is very important – the position of the bands would not help to determine whether the way passed by the beam reflected from the objects was longer or shorter. That is, if the mirror is convex or, on the contrary, concave. For this purpose, the operates has to rely upon his/her experience and intuition. For example, when polishing the mirror, the pressure is higher at the middle of it – that means that the "relief drop" can be expected in that area. The sides of the mirror experience lower pressure - that means that convexities can be found there. That cannot be expressed in numbers.
That particular task can be fulfilled by a new device. If the lengths of the ways gone by light are absolutely identical, then regardless of the its wave-length, interference occurs upon overlapping of identical beams – since the difference of lengths turns out to equal zero. The interferogram shows bright contrast band surrounded by the so-called black fringe – it is called the zero order band. That means that the only thing to be done is to make the two ways of two beams equal. To this end, it is sufficient to slightly shift the "correct" flat sample mirror at a certain distance in the known direction – either closer or farther away. That is performed by a special mechanism.
So, the method is as follows: the light goes in two beams, the fringe pattern is recorded – i.e. it is photographed, digitized and the zero order interference band is input in the computer memory. Then the mirror is relocated by one step and the procedure is repeated. The mirror is shifted to and fro. Several step-by-step images are acquired – i.e. a series of interference bands is obtained, processed and summed up. As a result, the answer if obtained in numbers whether the way length of the beam reflected from the sample mirror is longer or shorter that that of its twin reflected from the mirror that is the object of investigation. Therefore, the mirror quality has been checked. This method is very simple and precise.
"Certainly, our method is not deprived of drawbacks, says Nikolai Vlasov. For example, it cannot compete with the laser one if a nonstationary object needs to be investigated – we require some time. However, our method has no equal for an enormous number of common measurements and polishing quality control."

Лауреатами Международной премии "Глобальная энергия"2004 года стали российские ученые Федор Митенков, Александр Шейндлин и американец Леонард Кох. Лауреатов премии объявил в понедельник председатель международного комитета премии "Глобальная энергия" Жорес Алферов.

Russian scientists Fedor Mitenkov and Aleksander Sheindlin and American Leonard Koch received the Global Energy Award for 2004, the RIA-Novosti news agency has reported. Russian academician Zhores Alfyorov, Nobel laureate in physics announced the winners of the Global Energy Award on Monday. The three laureates will share the $900,000 prize.
The Global Energy International Prize is a new scientific award for outstanding theoretical, experimental and applied research, development, inventions and discoveries in the field of energy development and power generation.
The Global Energy International Prize, instituted in 2002, is an annual award which was first presented in 2003.
The idea of an International Energy Prize was put forward by a group of prominent Russian scientists headed by Zhores Alferov and has received the enthusiastic support of the scientific community and major Russian energy companies. The initiative was approved and endorsed by the Russian president.

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