Март 2007 г.

Российская наука и мир (по материалам зарубежной электронной прессы)

CONTENTS / ОГЛАВЛЕНИЕ


• Russia Seeks More Control At Academy Of Sciences
• Porphyrins against cancer
• L'IFREMER lance la campagne Serpentine
• Heaviness of water and rate of reaction
• Russian scientists considering animal-to-human transplants
• Des bathyscaphes russes vont explorer les abysses de l'Océan arctique
• New Radioprotectors Protection From Enemies On The Outside And On The Inside
• Explosives fight fires
• EU grants put UK Photonics Research Group on stronger wavelength
• Buckyballs May Be The Secret to Hydrogen Storage
• Tech in a very cold place
• Russia Sees Ill Effects of 'General Winter's' Retreat

Уникальные препараты, позволяющие защитить организм человека от действия ионизирующих излучений, разрабатывают сотрудники ФГУП "Российский федеральный ядерный центр - ВНИИ экспериментальной физики" (г. Саров) и их коллеги, химики из Московского государственного университета им. М.В. Ломоносова и Санкт-Петербургской химико-фармацевтической академии. Исследования еще не закончены, но уже сейчас ученые выявили соединения, радиозащитные свойства которых, при меньшей токсичности, превышают все до сих пор известные.

Specialists from the All-Russian Research Institute of Experimental Physics and their colleagues, chemists from the Lomonosov Moscow State University and the St. Petersburg Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Academy are developing unique drugs that help to protect the human organism from the influence of ionizing radiation. Even now the scientists have revealed compounds, the radioprotective properties of which, under lower toxicity, exceed all those known previously. However, the research is not yet complete. The search continues for new radioprotectors, that are effective, harmless and inexpensive, and for compounds that are able to raise the efficacy of radiotherapy when treating oncological diseases. Experts from the International Science and Technology Centre have placed information on this incredibly important development on their website, in the Promising Research section.
So where is the novelty and where, even, is the uniqueness of this project? This is how the project manager, Candidate of Biology Inna Korzeneva, answers the question. "Although scientists both here and abroad conduct wide-ranging studies in the search for compounds that can protect humans and animals from ionising radiation, the results of this work have remained extremely modest. There are only single examples of known substances that could be seen as potentially suitable for practical use, and not one of them satisfies all requirements placed upon medicines.
Even the most effective of those radioprotectors that have been detected, particularly the basic radioprotector Cystamine, either do not have the required radioprotective activity, or they are too toxic. Furthermore, in the majority of cases these drugs possess a preventive (introduction before exposure) and not a treatment (introduction after irradiation) action.
We are proposing to expand the circle of compounds, where we reckon to find not only effective radioprotectors that have a preventive, therapeutic and immunomodulating effect, but radiosensitizing drugs, that is compounds that enable the intensification of the action of the ionizing radiation on the cells of malignant tumours. Here, we calculate that these new drugs will have high bioavailability, low toxicity and their synthesis will be fairly simple and fast, and that they could be made on the basis of domestic raw materials, which will ensure their relatively low cost."
It should be said that the confidence of the scientists that the project will be a success is well justified. Already today the scientists have succeeded in synthesizing compounds, the clearly expressed radioprotective properties of which considerably exceed the efficacy of Cystamine (a substance for treating acute radiation sickness), active leukostimulants and anti-tumour drugs. Research on laboratory animals has proven convincingly that the use of certain new compounds really does help to either completely remove or significantly reduce mortality among irradiated animals and increase their life span. Incidentally, the doses of the new drugs, required to manifest radioprotective activity, are no higher and in certain cases actually lower than in traditionally used drugs. Furthermore, the researchers have also synthesized new immunomodulators, antioxidants and antihypoxants, the biological effects of which are comparable with or exceed the activity of known drugs, currently used in medical practice.
The next plans of the scientists involve the targeted revelation of several of the most promising drugs and the development of rapid, effective, few-stage and low-cost methods for their synthesis, and to make up the required number of drugs for preclinical trials. In order to reduce time and effort to a minimum in the search for new compounds with pre-set properties, the authors plan to develop a system of express-selection of radioprotectors and their directed synthesis on the basis of quantum-chemical calculations of the molecular and electronic structure of compounds, that is to bring in computer modelling methods.
The authors have already received their first results; the level of qualification of the researchers working on the project is incredibly high. Therefore, there should be no doubt that with the necessary level of financing, preparations to protect people from ionizing radiation (people who, by way of their occupation face the risk of exposure, including atomic power station employees, radioactive waste reprocessing plant operatives and finally cosmonauts) will be not only developed, but also synthesized in the required quantities. The same applies to drugs for the radiotherapy of oncological diseases, which are able to effectively combat with the tumour cells, without causing considerable harm to the healthy cells. It comes down to a question of financing.
The authors are likewise confident that there will be a healthy return on investment in an economic sense. They believe that the low number of stages, the use of inexpensive and available raw material, high output, low labour intensity and so on will enable a considerable reduction in the price of the end product as compared with existing analogues, as a minimum by 100 Euros per 1 kg of end product.

При тушении торфяных пожаров чаще всего используются два способа - окапывание горящих участков оградительными канавами или использование водяных струй с последующим перекапыванием горящего торфа. Однако при большой площади возгорания данные методы малоэффективны. Российские ученые из научно-исследовательского института полимерных материалов предлагают использовать импульсный способ пожаротушения. Метод основан на использовании взрывчатого вещества, в состав которого входят особые пламегасящие компоненты. В результате взрыва образуются микроскопические дисперсные реагенты, которые легко и быстро распространяются по всей зоне пожара. Эффективность данного способа достигается за счет подачи составов залпом за время в несколько долей секунды.

At present forest fires are a topical worldwide problem. Annually a considerable number of forest fires, including peat bog fires, lead to catastrophic, grave economic and ecological consequences. The continuous growth of a number of focal points of the burning proves the obvious inefficiency of traditional means of putting out fires.
Today's extinguishing of peat bog fires is done, mainly, by two methods: digging protective ditches in burning peat bogs down to the mineral ground or using powerful jets of water with the subsequent digging of burning peat. However, these methods are ineffective if there is a large burning area. Having analyzed the existing situation, Russian scientists from the Scientific and Research Institute of Polymeric Materials suggest using an impulse method of extinguishing to fight fires. Information support for the project comes from the International Science and Technology Center.
At the heart of the proposed method lies the use of explosive substances that consist of special flame retardant components. As a result of the explosion microscopic dispersed extinguishing reagents are formed, which spread easily and rapidly over the whole zone of the burning. The efficiency of this method is achieved by feeding the compositions simultaneously over several fractions of a second. Furthermore this method is economical, as the consumption of explosive substances is an order lower than that of powder means and water delivery for extinguishing.
The uniqueness and doubtless advantage of the technology involves an ecologically safe method of putting out fires that is proposed for the first time by way of an efficient and intensive impact on the zone of burning with an aerosol. Furthermore, an additional effect can be reached by special means and techniques of impulse delivery that enable the mixing of cold noninflammable layers of peat with those that burn. Thus, there is no need to use traditional and expensive methods for delivering water to the site of the peat bog fire. "Applying this technology," - says Valery Alexeevich Prikhod'ko, - "two main problems can be solved: first of all, it will be able to rapidly put out peat bog fires of any scale, and, secondly, after special corrections, the method could be applied for extinguishing oil-spill and forest fires".
The scientists have already obtained positive results after conducting preliminary experiments with explosives on the modeling of fire zones. The documentary experience of putting out fires in natural conditions is available. All this gives grounds to believe that the proposed development and its realization can become a promising direction in the field of extinguishing forest and other kinds of fires.

Три гранта ЕС выделены группе Photonics Research Group для исследования в области применения оптико-волоконных кабелей в машиностроении, медицине и телекоммуникациях. Группа включает специалистов Российской академии наук, университета Нового Южного Уэльса (Сидней, Австралия) и Северо-Западного университета (США).

Three EU grants totalling more than EUR 1 million have been awarded to the Photonics Research Group at Aston University, UK, to research novel ways of using fibre optic cables in engineering, medicine and telecommunications.
The funding was awarded through the EU's Sixth Framework Human Resources and Mobility Programme, known as Marie Curie Actions, to experts from the Russian Academy of Science, the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia and Northwestern University, USA.
"These three grants are a strong indication that there is something very special about the work we are doing here," said Professor Sergei Turitsyn of the Photonics Research Group.
"The fact that so many people want to work with us means we are fast becoming a centre of excellence in this field," he added.
They will join the Photonics Research Group to help with three of its projects aimed at perfecting new optical technologies.
In the first of the projects, the specialists at Aston's Photonics Research Group will use ultraviolet laser radiation to create sensing devices known as fibre Bragg gratings inside plastic optical fibres. These will mean that fibres can be used to accurately measure temperature inside the human body or determine stresses and strains in aircraft wings and bridges.
The major goal of the second project will be to develop new fabrication technology for waveguide-microchip lasers. Fabrication of a compact and robust laser with monolithic cavity based on crystals doped with rare-earth or transition metal ions is the target of the project. The technology will promote miniaturisation of solid state lasers and will facilitate their integration into electronic systems.
The third project targets prototype all-optical regeneration solutions related both to optical fibre networks and optical interconnects.
Fibre Bragg gratings are created by using laser radiation to write micron-sized structures inside an optical fibre - a "light pipe" that traps photons in a small core, which is 10 times smaller than a human hair. The grating then reflects light of only one wavelength back down the fibre, the precise wavelength depending on how much the fibre is strained or heated. The use of polymer as opposed to glass cables makes this process more flexible, extensive (it takes three times more strain than glass) and safer, as, for instance, the polymer cannot shatter inside the human body.
The first gratings in the new style fibres have been produced, attracting invitations for the research group to present its results in Hong Kong, Brazil and France.
According to the European Commission, the world market for products enabled by photonics stood at €150 billion in 2006.
The internationally renowned Photonics Research Group, the second largest of its kind in the country, was formed in 1991 and has around 50 staff involved in research and development of applications-orientated telecommunications, sensors, fibre grating technology, nonlinear optics and bio-photonics.

Cегодня для хранения водорода используют различные устройства-аккумуляторы, конструкции которых постоянно совершенствуются, но ни одно из них пока не способно вместить количество водорода, достаточное для широкого промышленного применения.
Российские ученые из Института прикладной механики Уро РАН предлагают использовать для хранения водорода углеродные наноматериалы: фуллерены и кластеры из них. Их работа поддержана комплексной программой фундаментальных исследований Президиума РАН.

Hydrogen is considered to be one of the promising power sources in the future. But hydrogen has to be obtained, stored, transported. Various devices - hydrogen accumulators - are used now for hydrogen storage. Their design is being constantly improved, but so far devices have not been created that would contain hydrogen sufficient for wide commercial application. In the accumulators used nowadays, the hydrogen content does not exceed five to six percent of the weight. In the industry, hydrogen is now stored in the compressed gaseous state, in liquefied state, in the form of hydrides or metal-hydride systems, and in zeolites.
As nanotechnologies developed, the researchers proceeded to investigations of carbonic nanoelements - nanotubes, nanofibers, nanocones, which possess unique properties to absorb various gases. The hydrogen quantity in such systems depends on adsorptive properties of nanostructures, pressure and environmental temperature. Their main advantage is the ability to store hydrogen at low pressure. Although this did to come to application yet, the researchers are carrying out theoretical study. In general, they came to studying nanotubes' properties. It has turned out that they are theoretically capable to accumulate five to ten percent of hydrogen at the temperature of 77 Kelvin degrees - the boiling temperature of nitrogen.
The researchers from the Institute of Applied Mechanics, Ural Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences, believe that absorbing properties of fullerenes and other nanostructures that include fullerenes have not been fully investigated. Therefore, they set a problem: to study the influence of thermodynamic parameters - pressure and temperature - on the process of molecular hydrogen absorption by such nanosystems.
With the help of molecular dynamics methods, they performed numerical analysis of processes of hydrogen absorption by the C20, C60, C80, C180, C240, C540 fullerenes and the C46, C167, C505 carbonic clusters at various pressures and temperatures. The researchers managed not only to determine the influence of these thermodynamic parameters on the fullerenes' hydrogen absorption ability but also to discover the parameters at which hydrogen can be stably stored in these nanoobjects.
"The quantity of hydrogen absorbed at the temperature of 60 Kelvin degrees and the pressure of ten megapascals achieves the 13.61 percent, and at the temperature of liquid nitrogen boiling - 77 Kelvin degrees - and the pressure of tten megapascals it reaches 6.6 percent", say the authors of the research. Utilization of carbonic clusters the resemble fullerenes in shape is highly promising, the researchers state, as clusters' internal surface opens for absorption, which is not the case with fullerenes. 

Иногда новосибирский Академгородок называют Силиконовым лесом (по аналогии с Силиконовой долиной в Калифорнии) - объем продукции в сфере высоких технологий в Академгородке за минувшее десятилетие возрос в 15 раз - с 10 до 150 млн. долларов. Здесь живут и работают специалисты самого высокого класса, что и побуждает такие фирмы как "Интел" и IBM пользоваться их услугами.

(Fortune Magazine) - Time passes slowly in Novosibirsk. In front of the opera house on Red Prospect, skateboard kids skid off the plinth of the Lenin statue, chewing on Afghan nuswar, which calibrates the brain to a low buzz. Rusted auto husks and the tilting chimneys of roadside hovels appear to have slouched into poses over many decades. At the boat hotel on the Ob River, the cook does not hurry with the kasha. The capital of Siberia, Russia's thirdlargest city, Novosibirsk in winter offers few explicit charms.
But travel beyond the slot halls of downtown, past wild dogs patrolling wild weeds, past Tajik road crews in orange jump suits, and a hub of activity rises from the woodland. In this place, where capitalist opportunity has overcome post-Soviet dreariness, time moves at the pace of obtainable dollars.
This is Akademgorodok - Academy Town - where Russian high tech booms. Action in IT, pharmaceuticals, metallurgy and fossil fuels is making Novosibirsk, tucked away in a remote tract of Russia, a hive of outsourcing. Private high tech in Akademgorodok has expanded from a $10 million business a decade ago to a $150 million industry last year, with the number of firms growing at a rate of 15 percent annually.
Akademgorodok won't pass for Silicon Valley. But there is enough upside and dok was left with thousands of scientists, a bruised mission, little money, and an overwhelming anxiety.
A walk through the Novosibirsk Institute of Automation and Electrometry is all it takes to see the neglect. Electrical wires hang from the ceiling like stray hairs across a tired forehead. Paint flakes from the walls; lights in the passageways flicker from dim to dark. For an institution that once sparred with the math department of MIT, the place could use a pick-me-up.
But when Mikhail Lavrentyev, a Siberian mathematician of lofty provenance, opens the door to a research lab, he reveals what is saving Akademgorodok from sliding into irreversible institutional decrepitude: one very spherical man and another with severely crossed eyes hunched over computer terminals. These two doctoral students are writing code for Intel.
Lavrentyev's grandfather, also Mikhail, was the prime mover in creating Akademgorodok. It was while working in the closed nuclear research town of Sarov that the elder Lavrentyev came upon the idea of creating an entirely new science town. It has been his grandson's fortune to oversee Akademgorodok's repurposing. "Akademgorodok was a new idea, multidisciplinary, to give young scientists a real chance to develop ideas," Lavrentyev says. "But salaries in the '90s went south, and it became a problem for the academy. There became a clear choice when you finished your degree. Go to science, or go to business and immediately you have a reasonable salary."
So began the great hustle, as the pure scientists of Akademgorosoftly priced expertise for Intel (Charts), IBM (Charts), and Schlumberger (Charts) to make camp here in what is called the Silicon Forest. Russia's federal government has also taken note, backing the construction of a new $650 million technology business district. And in a signal of Akademgorodok's broadening reach, a local IT firm is producing a Web portal for Oprah Winfrey.
Russian science and technology present an unusual mix of critical thinking, developmental breakthrough, and professional hunger born of the proximity of actual hunger. "Inside Intel we have an expression," says Steve Chase, president of Intel Russia. "If you have something tough, give it to the Americans. If you have something difficult, give it to the Indians. If you have something impossible, give it to the Russians."
The rise and fall of Science Town
The story begins in 1958, when leaders in the Soviet scientific establishment secured Nikita Khrushchev's backing to establish a town devoted entirely to science. The idea was to collect many of the country's top scientists in a single location deep in the Siberian woods, far from prying eyes and metropolitan distractions.
By 1963 building crews had completed Akademgorodok, a scholastic and research entity 20 miles from the Novosibirsk city center. Within a few years Novosibirsk State University had opened, and its graduates plugged into one of the dozens of surrounding institutes dedicated to advanced research - a Soviet approximation of Cambridge, Mass.
In much of the world, moving to Siberia would not be regarded as especially attractive. But this is just what many of the Soviet Union's greatest scientific minds decided to do, to a large extent willingly, lured by the promise of new housing and professional advancement.
For 30 years Novosibirsk was one of the smartest cities in the imperium, a collective of academics who put their minds to everything from nuclear physics to theoretical genetics, from the space program to the weapons aimed at the great American evil.
And then the bottom dropped out.
When the Soviet state collapsed in 1991, the scientific apparatus crumbled along with it. The salaries and status allotted to scientists vanished, as did a system geared toward nourishing young talent.
A walk through the Novosibirsk Institute of Automation and Electrometry is all it takes to see the years of neglect. Electrical wires hang from the ceiling like stray hairs across a tired forehead. Paint flakes from the walls; lights in the passageways flicker from dim to dark. For an institution that once sparred with MIT, this place could use a pick-me-up.
Revival
But when Mikhail Lavrentyev, a Siberian mathematician of lofty provenance, opens the door to a research lab, he reveals what is saving Akademgorodok from sliding into irreversible institutional decrepitude: two doctoral students hunched over computer terminals writing code for Intel.
Lavrentyev's grandfather, also Mikhail, was the prime mover in creating Akademgorodok. It was while working in the closed nuclear research town of Sarov that the elder Lavrentyev came upon the idea of creating an entirely new science town. It has been his grandson's fortune to oversee Akademgorodok's repurposing.
"Akademgorodok was a new idea, multidisciplinary, to give young scientists a real chance to develop ideas," Lavrentyev says. "But salaries in the '90s went south, and it became a problem for the academy. There became a clear choice when you finished your degree. Go to science, or go to business and immediately you have a reasonable salary."
So began the great hustle, as the pure scientists of Akademgorosoftly dok had to find a way to survive, commodifying and commercializing the high-tech expertise that once served the state. Many young scientists gravitated toward IT. Every year, Russia graduates as many scientific and technology specialists as India - 200,000 - although Russia is 80 percent smaller by population.
Russia's software exports now exceed $1.8 billion annually, and the country is the third-largest software outsourcing destination in the world, after China and India. "In these other countries, there was no technological culture like we had in Soviet times," says Dmitry Milovantsev, Russia's deputy minister of information technology and communication, hinting at the country's potential.
A company called Novosoft launched Novosibirsk's IT wave in 1992, growing to 500 employees and eventually partnering with IBM. Novosoft splintered in the Internet bubble, the effects of which registered even in Siberia, although the firm maintains a significant presence. Other companies have made considerable strides since then, most notably SW Soft, an IT infrastructure company specializing in server software.
Today, SW Soft has more than 10,000 international customers and has received funding from Insight Venture Partners and Intel Capital.
Large multinationals are also taking advantage of the changing climate. Intel opened an Akademgorodok office in 2004 and now employs 200 programmers who optimize microprocessors. IBM arrived first to the market in 2000, while Schlumberger has taken the lead in local investment, having purchased a plot of land on which it is building an R&D lab.
The low cost of rent, services, and salaries - roughly one-fifth of Western prices - appeals, but so does the manner in which the system molds its wards. "None of our programmers in Novosibirsk are programmers by education," says Intel's Chase. "They are physicists, chemists, biologists, mathematicians. They are first of all scientists. Secondly, they learn how to program, as an afterthought. This combination is extremely powerful."
A different mindset
IT offices are springing up on Akademgorodok's leafy lanes as well as in its industrial back alleys. The work has been easy to come by, and with good reason, for words such as "loans," "grants" and "investments" haven't a place in the local lexicon. "We're kind of spoiled in America," says James Smith, manager of emerging Internet technologies for IBM. "In Novosibirsk, they work from a different mindset. They need to generate capital if they're going to move forward and buy a house or build a business."
IBM now works with, among others, a Novosoft spinoff called Axmor, employing web mashup technologies - combining a spreadsheet, say, with a Google map - to create applications for clients in digital media and retail banking. Smith dispatches his marching orders from IBM's suburban campus in Raleigh. Axmor, meanwhile, finds itself in a renovated apartment complex on the edge of Akademgorodok, a pack of mongrels lurking about the entrance. Inside the office, two slender, sun-deprived code punchers are playing table-hockey.
Pavel Toponogov, Axmor's director, has turned a $30,000 investment into $1 million in revenue in just a few years. The bulk of work comes from outside Russia, much of it generated through Internet advertising. That is the way Harpo Productions, Oprah Winfrey's media company, hired Axmor to build a web portal. "We didn't really know who Oprah was," says Andrey Kanonirov, Axmor's IBM project manager, "but we know who she is now."
In Russia, outside of Moscow and St. Petersburg, hunting for computer service and parts is a game marked by retail incompetence and technical incompatibility, a product of last decade's models and the last regime's disregard for the wishes of the customer class. Not so in Novosibirsk. Walk into Technocity in Akademgorodok and not only will you encounter the kind of service that betrays the sales force's acquaintance with capitalist fundamentals, but you had also better hope that your own hardware is up to speed. With Bluetooth rigs jammed into their ears, the attendants will let you know that their merchandise moves so quickly that all they have is the newest of the new, about which they are highly conversant. As this sinks in, walk out the door and deposit a few rubles in the hand of a terrified pensioner whom society has cast aside.
There's a lot of that in this town, the up-to-date encased in the same old sausage skin, the ultramodern colliding with the outmoded. Developers at Broker Consulting Services design a Panasonic home-theater system in a building that once served as casing for a giant computer, in the days when mainframes were of such size. Laser Crystal Solutions, which grows crystals under a lucrative contract with a California photonics firm, operates out of a darkened warehouse. One of the top exporters in Akademgorodok, the Novosibirsk Institute of Nuclear Physics, houses an electronpositron collider that its 65-year-old director used during his school days. In a drafty hangar that was until recently inhabited by drunks and rodents, Screen Photo Electronic Instruments produces night vision devices for a San Francisco company. "It's so cold here," says Vladimir Aksyonov, the general director, wrapped in a white lab coat, "there's nothing to do but work."
Even with less than ideal facilities, Akademgorodok presents a singular picture of Russia. A sense of purpose is difficult to ignore. "What you feel out there is pride," says Intel's Chase. "That's what their history is all about."
Before the railroad came to Novosibirsk in 1893, travelers endured a ten-month journey to reach the area by horse cart from Moscow. Now, Dmitry Verkhovod interrupts a meeting to sign for an overnight package from Ozon, Russia's equivalent of Amazon.com. "Look at this," he says, tossing the package from hand to hand. "Even out here in Siberia, I can receive DVDs, books, music."
Verkhovod, deputy president of the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, is the man in charge of plans for Novosibirsk's one-million-square-foot business center, designed to alter the way Akademgorodok tech is turned into profit. "The history of Novosibirsk is a series of jumps like this," Verkhovod says, spreading architectural drawings across his desk.
First the rails came, the town sprouting up after engineers chose this barren spot for the Trans-Siberian Railroad to cross the Ob River. Then, during World War II, the state evacuated factories from western Russia to the safe harbor of Novosibirsk. Akademgorodok was the next major development. "This will be another jump," Verkhovod says. "Right now we don't have a way to commercialize our developments. The Novosibirsk Akademgorodok is a huge brand, and it has to be marketed."
Novosibirsk's tech center will be one of four in Russia, part of a plan President Vladimir Putin announced in Akademgorodok in 2005, on the heels of a trip to tech-savvy India. The complex will receive $100 million in state funding for infrastructure, with private firms kicking in the rest and receiving tax breaks in return.
High tech is the sort of thing the Kremlin would like to develop, understanding that natural resources can't last forever and brain resources need tapping. "We simply mustn't waste this chance," Putin declared. But Russia is still learning on the fly. The Ministry for Information Technology and Communications was established only in 2004. Deputy minister Milovantsev stresses patience. "It's not like building a house, where you put people in it and they're happy," he says. "Our goals are more distant."
Lenin once commented disapprovingly about the disposition of the Siberian peasant: wealthy, satisfied, and uninterested in revolution. But there are revolutions of grapeshot, and those that employ more subtle means. In the tech revolution, Novosibirsk has shown itself to be more than game.
"My grandfather was a fighter," Lavrentyev says, emerging from his institute, braced against a cutting wind, wearing only a sport coat. Attached to his lapel is a small pin, a cameo of his grandfather. "I think he would appreciate worldwide high-tech brands like Intel and Schlumberger here. At the same time, I think he would want business to pay for using our brains." 

Климатические изменения - проблемы не только экологии, но и здравоохранения. В некоторых регионах России теплая зима способствовала вспышке заболеваний, вызванных так называемым хантавирусом. Одно из них, известное как геморрагическая лихорадка с почечным синдромом (ГЛПС), - серьезное (иногда со смертельным исходом) заболевание. В обычные холодные зимы возбудители ГЛПС погибали при длительно держащейся ниже нуля температуре. Другие случаи хантавирусов были отмечены в США, Китае, Корее, Северной и Западной Европе, Аргентине, Чили, Бразилии, Панаме и Канаде.

Experts have long feared that Earth's warming climate would cause tropical diseases such as malaria to spread into more temperate zones, but a dramatic example of an apparently climate-related disease outbreak cropped up this winter in a cold place - Russia.
More than 3,000 cases of infections caused by hantaviruses have been reported so far in Russian cities and towns, including many that are within a few hundred miles of Moscow, such as Voronezh and Lipetsk. The viruses can cause a serious, and sometimes deadly, disease known as hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome, or HFRS.
During Russia's more typically frigid winters, scientists believe, HFRS-causing viruses die off in the consistently below-zero temperatures. But this winter has been anything but cold. On Dec. 7 Moscow hit a record 46 degrees Fahrenheit. HFRS was last on a rampage in Russia in 1997, coinciding with another very warm winter. By mid-spring that year, the number of cases reached more than 20,000.
The viruses are transmitted to humans when infected mice set up housekeeping in the nooks and crannies of homes, barns, sheds and other buildings. If droppings left by the mice are disturbed, the viruses waft up and out of the excretions like a miasma, infecting people who breathe the air.
Biologists estimate that the current population of rodents in Russia is 10 times as high as in previous years, and that one in three mice is infected with an HFRS-causing virus. Most researchers attribute the spike to the unusually warm weather, although some think a natural cycle in mouse populations may play a role.
"Global warming has tipped a balance," said Irina Gavrilovskaya, a scientist and physician at the State University of New York at Stony Brook who has conducted research on HFRS at the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences in Moscow. "Because of the lack of snow cover on Russian fields, the country has had an explosion in numbers of virus-carrying mice."
With the coming of spring, Lyudmila Kirillova, the regional epidemiologist in Lipetsk, is predicting a new outbreak as the little snow that fell this winter melts and hibernating - and virus-carrying - mice awaken.
Over the past decade, unusually warm winters and large populations of mice have also been responsible for outbreaks in New Mexico and nearby states of a related illness, hantavirus pulmonary syndrome. As of last year, some 10 states had reported 30 or more cases of the syndrome since 1993, when the virus was identified.
More than 20 other hantaviruses threaten people in China, Korea, Northern and Western Europe, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Panama, and Canada. Some of those outbreaks have also been linked to climate change - higher temperatures or altered patterns of rainfall - and its effect on rodents.
"Climate change is about more than a warming Earth," said David Blockstein, senior scientist at the National Council for Science and the Environment, a scientific advocacy group in Washington. "Climate change is turning environmental issues into public health issues."
HFRS is caused by one of four hantaviruses - Hantaan virus, Puumala, Dobrava and Seoul. In Russia, Hantaan and Puumala are the culprits. Hantaan, from which the term hantavirus is derived, is named for the Hantaan River near the border between North and South Korea. The first hantavirus was identified there in 1978.
Symptoms of infection usually develop one to two weeks after exposure but in rare cases may take up to eight weeks. Headaches, fever, chills and nausea, or a rash or redness around the eyes are early signs. "If left untreated, HFRS quickly leads to hemorrhage of small blood vessels throughout the body and to kidney failure," Gavrilovskaya said.
"The risk this year is high," said nephrologist Martin Zeier of the University of Heidelberg in Germany, who specializes in HFRS. "Russia hasn't had a winter this warm since the mid-1990s. Infected mice are having a field day, running around the streets when they should be hibernating under a blanket of snow. Many more people are being exposed to the virus."
Zeier is seeing the same trend in other Northern European countries. "HFRS is a growing problem in historically "cold places", such as Scandinavia", he said.
The trend concerns Alla Bernshtein of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences. "There is a definite change in plant life in areas where HFRS outbreaks have occurred," Bernshtein said. "The climate is warming. With it, tree and flower types of warmer regions are moving north. Unfortunately, those plants provide additional shelter and food resources for the mice that are carriers of the virus."
If climate change continues at its current pace, "we might easily see HFRS cases again reach the tens of thousands," Zeier said.
Zeier has treated HFRS in numerous farmers and loggers living in small huts where infected mice had camped out. When the rodents' human roommates moved in, they inhaled dust from mouse droppings and contracted the virus. "All but one of the patients lived," said Zeier, "because they were treated in time." Ribavirin, the sole treatment for HFRS, is effective only if given early on.
Most victims survive, said Pierre Rollin, a scientist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "although they might be very sick for a while. Complete recovery can take weeks or months. Some types of HFRS infection have higher mortality rates, however."
The death rate can be as high as 15 percent, said Karl Johnson, a retired virologist from the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque. Johnson was one of three scientists who identified the Hantaan virus. "Ever since we found out exactly what it was," he said, "we've been hoping for a way to prevent the disease."
Almost 40 years later, researchers are getting close.
"We're working on a vaccine that would protect people against all four of the viruses that cause HFRS," said Connie Schmaljohn, chief scientist at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md. "We soon should have FDA approval to test the vaccine in humans."
"Hantaviruses like HFRS are a vastly underestimated health risk," Schmaljohn said.
For now, Zeier said, there's not much that people in affected areas can do but try to keep rodents out of their homes by setting traps, and using latex gloves and bleach when removing dead mice or mouse droppings. "Above all," he said, "forget the dusting and sweeping."
In Russia, said Zeier, "it all has come down to having the best mousetrap."

Начало дайджеста за МАРТ 2007 года (часть 1)

предыдущий месяц

1998-2007

следующий месяц