Декабрь 2008 г.

Российская наука и мир (по материалам зарубежной электронной прессы)

CONTENTS / ОГЛАВЛЕНИЕ


• RUSNANO Signs Agreements on Cooperation with Leading Russian Scientific Institutions
• Russian Companies Establish Joint Venture for Next-Generation Lighting Systems
• Russia and Finland sign nanotechnology cooperation agreement
• PolyU gears up for Sino-Russian Interplanetary Space Mission
• Japan unveils "space beer"
• Russians track wayward U.S. spy satellite
• Temperature response in the Altai lags solar forcing
• Moscou refuse de vendre son "droit à polluer"
• Under Frozen Lake in Siberia, Geoscientists Drill For Secrets of Earth's Ancient Climate
• Moscou prépare l'après-pétrole avec les nanotechnologies

Один из спутников системы ПРО США - DSP-23 - потерял управление и сошел с орбиты. Причем сообщили об этом российские ученые - странное поведение спутника отметил Владимир Агапов, ведущий ученый Института прикладной математики им. М.В.Келдыша, сотрудничающий с проектом НСОИ АФН (Научная сеть оптических инструментов для астрометрических и фотометрических наблюдений).
НСОИ является глобальной научной сетью, объединяющей 18 научных учреждений в различных странах мира, 18 обсерваторий, 25 телескопов и более 50 наблюдателей и исследователей. Сеть ведет наблюдение за геостационарной орбитой и всеми находящимися там спутниками, отработанными ступенями ракет, неработающими космическими аппаратами и прочим космическим мусором.

Even in the vacuum of outer space, it's hard to keep the sound of a secret quiet.
The U.S. Air Force apparently has a malfunctioning Defense Support Program satellite on its hands. DSP-23 is one piece of a constellation of such Earth-staring satellites designed to detect missile launchings and nuclear detonations, and gather other technical intelligence.
DSP-23 seems to be drifting out of its high-altitude slot - and might prove troublesome to other high-value satellites in that populated area.
One person who has flagged the problem to a U.S. satellite tracking expert is a Russian space analyst - a project partner of the International Scientific Optical Network, or ISON for short.
Vladimir Agapov is a senior scientist for the Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He told Space.com that ISON is a global network of scientific optical facilities for observation of high-altitude geocentric orbits. They keep an eye on what's going on in order to better understand the real population of artificial objects - mainly space debris - in that part of outer space.
Passive object
Agapov said ISON is monitoring the entire ring of objects in geostationary Earth orbit, or GEO. The network tracks all operational satellites, as well as space debris, spent rocket bodies, dead spacecraft, operational fragments and objects originating from satellite fragmentations that have appeared in geostationary orbit.
"We have continuously tracked an object we have identified as DSP F23 since January 10, 2008," Agapov said. "Identification is made on the base of initial orbital information obtained by amateur astronomers using their own measurements."
Processing of optical measurements obtained by ISON confirmed that DSP-23, after making three stationkeeping maneuvers, has not performed any follow-on movements during the course of some two months, he said.
The spacecraft has strayed from its spot in space - moving along in geostationary orbit as a passive object.
It's not clear from optical data alone just what the operational status of the satellite truly is at present, Agapov added. "You need other kind of observations, radio-monitoring data, photometry, etc., to come to more definitive conclusion," he said.
Asked about the possibility of DSP-23 smacking into others satellites in GEO, Agapov said that "it exists." Sauntering willy-nilly through space, the classified satellite could have close encounters with many operational satellites, he said.
Unknown objects
As of the beginning of 2008, the ISON network consists of 18 scientific institutions, 18 observatories and observation facilities, 25 optical instruments, and more than 50 observers and researchers in various nations.
In the big picture, Agapov noted that ISON has discovered 152 "unknown" objects that have no public orbital information as distributed by the U.S. Air Force Space Surveillance Network through its Space-Track database.
In addition, ISON has discovered and is tracking 192 previously unknown, faint debris objects in geostationary orbit, using a variety of instruments.
"Thus, our ISON effort resulted in increasing the number of known - for the public - and continuously tracked objects in GEO region by more than 35 percent, compared to published Space-Track data," Agapov concluded.

Российско-швейцарская группа ученых (Институт водных и экологических проблем СО РАН и Институт им. П.Шеррера), проводившая в 2001 г. исследования ледника седловины горы Белуха (Алтай) для оценки загрязнения воздушной среды этого региона, представила новые результаты климатических исследований. С помощью извлеченных изо льда изотопов кислорода ученые проследили изменения температуры на Алтае за последние 750 лет. Результаты исследований опубликованы в журнале Geophysical Research Letters.

An ice core drilled at the Belukha glacier in the Siberian Altai by a Swiss-Russian research team under the leadership of the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in 2001 has now provided new findings in climate research. Oxygen isotopes in the ice were used to reconstruct the temperatures in the Altai over the past 750 years. The scientists discovered a strong link between regional temperatures and the solar activity in the period 1250-1850, concluding that the sun was an important driver of preindustrial temperature changes in the Altai. The observation that the reconstructed temperatures followed the solar forcing with a delay of 10 to 30 years is particularly interesting. The strong rise in temperature in the Altai between 1850 and 2000 can not be explained by solar activity changes, but rather by the increased concentration of the greenhouse gas CO₂ in the atmosphere. The researchers report on these findings in the online edition of the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters.
The Altai mountains lie on the border between Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and China, in a region with a particularly pronounced continental climate. In 2001, an international research team under the leadership of Margit Schwikowski (Paul Scherrer Institute) drilled a 139 m-long ice core at the Belukha glacier, near the highest mountain of the Altai. Following extensive work in the laboratory, this core has now revealed its secrets.
Ice core acting as a thermometer
The ice core was cut into 3600 samples at -20°C in the PSI's cold room, and the ¹⁶O and ¹⁸O oxygen isotope content determined with an isotope mass spectrometer. It was demonstrated that the behaviour of the stable oxygen isotope ratio has closely followed the record of the temperature measured at a nearby weather station over the past 130 years. This parameter can therefore be used as a measure for temperature in the past. The deepest sample was dated to the year 1250, which means that the ice core contains climate information covering the past 750 years.
Solar activity influences temperature
The total solar irradiance is not a constant factor. It fluctuates periodically around a value of 1365 watts per square metre. The best-known cycle has an average duration of 11 years. It has only been possible to measure solar activity directly since 1978, but the number of sun spots - a measure of solar activity - has been observed through telescopes from as far back as the year 1610. Information about the solar activity before that time can be provided by other indirect methods: analysis of the cosmogenic radio-nuclides ¹⁰Be from polar ice cores, and ¹⁴C from tree rings, which are also dependent on solar activity.
In the period between 1250 and 1850, the regional temperatures in the Altai showed a high correlation with the reconstructed solar activity. This indicates that the changes in solar activity during this time were a main driver of temperature changes.
The temperature follows the sun
Interestingly, the regional temperatures followed the solar forcing with a time lag of 10 to 30 years. The PSI researchers' study is the first in which such a delay has been observed over a period of more than 500 years. Since the influence of solar activity on climate has not yet been fully resolved, such observations provide an important contribution to its understanding. One possible mechanism discussed by various authors, which might explain this average lag of 20 years, is the indirect effect of the sun on temperature changes involving ocean-induced changes in atmospheric circulation. Ocean water warms up to a higher level in places where the solar radiation is most powerful, i.e. in the sub-tropics and the tropics. The heat energy is carried from the lower to the higher latitudes by the ocean, then released back into the atmosphere. Because of the high thermal capacity of the oceans and the variable velocities of their currents, these processes are subject to considerable delay. Changes in the North Atlantic atmospheric circulation system, which is responsible for temperature changes in the Altai, may be initiated 20 years earlier by changes of solar radiation in the tropical oceans.
Strong temperature increase in the 20th century can not be explained by the sun
"Our study distinguishes between the pre-industrial era (1250-1850) and the period covered by the past 150 years", emphasises Anja Eichler, scientist at the Paul Scherrer Institute. "While changes in the solar activity were a main driver of temperature variations in the pre-industrial period, the temperatures in the Altai have shown a much higher rate of increase than that of solar activity during the past 150 years. The strong increase in the industrial period, however, correlates with the increase in the concentration of the greenhouse gas CO₂ over this time. The results of our regional study indicate that changes in solar activity explain less than half of the increase in temperature in the Altai since 1850.
This agrees with global studies, based on reconstructed northern hemispheric temperatures", says the researcher.
This work was undertaken in a collaborative project between the Paul Scherrer Institute and the Eawag - Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, the Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, and the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Bern, together with the Institute for Water and Environmental Problems at Barnaul (Russia).
The Paul Scherrer Institute develops, builds and operates large and complex research facilities, and makes them available to the national and international scientific community. Its own work concentrates on solid-state research and material sciences, elementary particle physics, biology and medicine, energy research and environmental research. With a staff of 1300 and an annual budget of approximately CHF260 million, this is Switzerland's largest research institution.
Peer reviewed publication and references
A. Eichler, S. Olivier, K. Henderson, A. Laube, J. Beer, T. Papina, H.W. Gäggeler, and M. Schwikowski, Temperature response in the Altai region lags solar forcing, Geophysical Research Letters, doi:10.1029/2008GL035930, in press (2008).

Россия приняла решение не продавать свои квоты на выброс парниковых газов. Об этом было объявлено на XIV Конференции рамочной конвенции ООН по изменению климата и четвертой встрече сторон Киотского протокола, которые прошли в Познани 1-12 декабря.

Les pays ayant dépassé leur quota d'émissions de gaz à effet de serre peuvent faire une croix sur la vaste réserve de crédits russes. "Ils doivent être conservés pour une période ultérieure", a indiqué Viktor Blinov, chef adjoint de la délégation russe en charge des négociations sur le changement de climat, qui se tenaient la semaine dernière à Poznan sous l'égide des Nations unies. Cette rencontre devait donner une suite au traité de Kyoto, qui donne aux 37 États signataires des objectifs de réduction d'émissions pour les années 2008 à 2012 et autorise les pays qui émettent en deçà de leurs quotas à revendre leurs crédits aux autres.
Une aubaine pour Moscou, qui a réussi le tour de force d'obtenir en échange de sa signature du traité de Kyoto une quantité de quotas équivalente à ses émissions de 1990. Or, à l'époque, l'industrie lourde soviétique vieillissante rejetait dans l'atmosphère des quantités gigantesques de gaz polluants. La sévère crise économique des années 1990 a par la suite laminé son industrie, dégageant une immense marge.
Résultat, Moscou a accumulé une manne potentielle de crédits, pour un montant évalué à 4 milliards de tonnes de CO₂, soit une valeur de 46 à 56 milliards d'euros.
Solide surplus budgétaire
Même la rapide croissance économique des dernières années n'a ramené la Russie qu'à 70 % de ses émissions de 1990. Un résultat nullement dû à des efforts de protection de l'environnement : la Russie se classe en 51e position sur 57 États produisant 90 % des émissions de CO₂ selon un rapport des ONG Germanwatch et Climate Action Network publié lors des négociations de Poznan ! Entre 1992 et 2003, les émissions annuelles de dioxyde de carbone par habitant en Russie atteignaient 11 tonnes, légèrement supérieures aux taux allemand ou britannique. La Russie porte donc la même responsabilité que ces pays dans le changement climatique. En retirant du marché ses crédits d'émission de CO₂, la Russie rétrécit un marché évalué à 100 milliards de dollars pour 2008. Les dernières transactions ont vu l'Espagne et la Belgique acheter au total pour 8 millions de tonnes de dioxyde de carbone à la Hongrie. Les montants des transactions n'ont pas été rendus publics, mais la tonne de CO₂ s'échange autour de 14 euros. Sans les crédits russes, le coût élevé des émissions nocives devrait se maintenir, ce qui est dans l'intérêt russe. Premier producteur mondial de gaz, le pays ne veut pas voir les producteurs d'électricité se tourner vers le charbon au détriment du carburant bleu, moitié moins polluant. Les calculs du Kremlin ne sont guère motivés par des préoccupations écologiques. Le gouvernement n'a jamais considéré la lutte contre le réchauffement climatique comme une priorité. Une large partie de l'élite politique et scientifique russe estime même que le phénomène aura un impact positif sur le pays, une hypothèse d'ailleurs partagée par la CIA qui étaie le scénario dans son rapport "Global Trends 2025" publié fin novembre.
Les finances publiques russes affichent, grâce à la manne pétrolière, un solide surplus budgétaire qui autorise Moscou à se passer de la manne représentée par la vente des crédits CO₂. Les revenus générés ne peuvent être librement utilisés puisque le protocole de Kyoto contraint les pays vendeurs à investir les sommes dans des dispositifs de réduction d'émissions de gaz à effet de serre. Le Kremlin préfère donc garder sous le coude ses crédits afin d'aborder les négociations sur le traité qui succédera à Kyoto en meilleure position.

Международная экспедиция ученых (Германия, Россия, Австрия, США) начинает новую серию исследований уникального чукотского озера Эльгыгытгын в рамках междисциплинарного международного проекта. Озеро представляет собой заполненный водой кратер, образовавшийся около 3,6 миллионов лет назад - по одной из версий, в результате падения метеорита. Район озера никогда не подвергался оледенению, поэтому его донные отложения представляют огромный интерес в качестве "архива" палеоклиматической и биологической информации.

In the next few days, a convoy of bulldozers and trucks will set out from a remote airport in Siberia, heading for a frozen lake 62 miles north of the Arctic Circle, but the trip isn't a holiday visit to the North Pole. Instead, the trucks will deliver core-drilling equipment for a study of sediment and meteorite-impact rocks that should provide the longest time-continuous climate record ever collected in the Arctic.
Once in place next month, the drilling will allow an international team of geoscientists led by Julie Brigham-Grette of the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Martin Melles of the University of Cologne, Germany, to burrow back in time, retrieving core samples more than 3 million years old and answering questions about Earth's ancient past.
Almost impossibly remote, Lake El'gygytgyn (pronounced el'geegitgin), 11 miles in diameter, was formed 3.6 million years ago when a monster meteor, more than a half-mile across, slammed into the Earth between the Arctic Ocean and the Bering Sea. Because this part of the Arctic was never covered by ice sheets or glaciers, it has received a steady drift of sediment - as much as a quarter mile (1,312 feet or 400 meters) deep - since impact. Thus, it offers a continuous depositional record unlike any other in the world, say Brigham-Grette and colleagues, beneath the crater lake that's just over 560 feet deep, equal to the height of the Washington Monument.
This week's convoy will take 25 days to crawl through the frozen dark, building a 224-mile ice road as they go, over which the heavy drilling equipment can be moved from the remote airstrip at Pevek, in the north of Russia's Chukotka Autonomous Region. "Lake El'gygytgyn is logistically among the most difficult places on Earth to carry out a scientific drilling program," Brigham-Grette acknowledges. But by all accounts, the rewards should be worth all the effort.
In preparation for this day, scientists from institutes in Germany, Russia and Austria as well as UMass Amherst have been flying in by helicopter for focused tests over the past 10 years, drilling pilot cores and taking other samples and measurements. The site has passed every test. For example, the lake bed has been undisturbed by earthquakes, other underground shifting or drying for thousands of years. Pilot cores of 16.7 meters long (54 feet) have already provided a snapshot of climate from 300,000 years ago.
El'gygytgyn thus offers a truly unprecedented and ideal opportunity, Brigham-Grette notes, for piecing together a clearer picture of the hemisphere's prehistoric climate and the dynamic processes of global climate change since the meteor's impact. Notably, the researchers hope they can learn more about the unexplained shift from a warm forest ecology to permafrost, some 2 million to 3 million years ago. Comparing cores from under Lake El'gygytgyn to those from lower latitudes will help the climate scientists with a high-resolution tool to study climatic change across northeast Asia "at millennial timescales," Brigham-Grette says. In addition to climate data, cores may offer the researchers an opportunity to study the 3.6-million-year-old "impact breccia," that is, how Earth's bedrock responded to the meteor's impact.
Some sampling began in November at the science camp drilling site on the lakeshore, where researchers will study the climate history of the permafrost (frozen ground) that surrounds the lake. The other two drill sites will be in the deepest part of the lake. Waiting until Arctic winter to transport and install the equipment, the team can use the frozen lake surface to support drills specially designed to withstand the extreme weather conditions. The scientists plan to start drilling overlapping cores at these frigid locations in February using the windswept lake ice as a drilling platform. Sampling will continue until May 2009, as part of the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP).
To ensure the safety of both scientists and drill-team members on the isolated lake in potentially life-threatening conditions, Brigham-Grette and colleagues have scrutinized how the ice shifts, cracks, and responds to heavy wind and circulation forces before settling on rig placement. Workers and scientists will live in a protected personnel carrier that will also transport cores from the rig on the lake ice to the science camp on the shore.
Sediment cores will be processed for shipment and stored at the lake in a temperature-controlled container until they can be flown to St. Petersburg and later trucked to the University of Cologne, Germany, for study by the international team. An "archive half" of each core will also be stored at the University of Minnesota.
The international collaboration is funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research, the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven, and GeoForschungsZentrum, Potsdam. In addition to UMass Amherst, investigators from the Russian Academy of Sciences' Far East Geological Institute, Vladivostok, the Northeast Interdisciplinary Scientific Research Institute, Magadan, and Roshydromet's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, St. Petersburg, are taking part.

3-5 декабря в Москве прошел Первый Международный Форум по нанотехнологиям. Организатором Форума выступила Российская корпорация нанотехнологий (РОСНАНО).

Le salut économique de l'immense Russie viendra-t-il de l'infiniment petit ? Entraînée à grande vitesse dans la crise, la Russie prépare l'économie de l'après-pétrole en misant sur la haute technologie. Moscou accueillait la semaine dernière sa première conférence internationale dédiée aux nanotechnologies, qui a rassemblé 3 000 chercheurs et investisseurs venus de 35 pays.
Les nanotechnologies désignent la science qui explore la matière à l'échelle du nanomètre (un milliardième de mètre). En plein essor, mais encore au stade de la recherche fondamentale, elle débouche tout juste sur des applications en médecine, dans l'énergie, l'environnement ou les nouveaux matériaux. Rusnano, l'organisme d'État créé voilà un an, maître d'œuvre de la conférence, ambitionne d'en faire "le Davos mondial des nanotechnologies".
Le Kremlin s'est donné des moyens de ses ambitions en dotant Rusnano de 4,64 Md$ et d'un programme d'investissement de 8,55 Md$ d'ici à 2015. Et en nommant à sa direction une personnalité connue pour ses talents d'organisateur : Anatoli Tchoubaïs. Père des privatisations de l'ère Eltsine, il fut à ce titre l'homme politique le plus impopulaire de Russie avant de mener à bien, sous Poutine, le démantèlement du monopole de l'électricité. Rusnano va financer des projets d'industrialisation de "nanoproduits" en apportant une dotation en capital et des prêts à des taux préférentiels. Tout projet sera monté en partenariat avec le privé.
Un éclairage "vert"
Les experts de Rusnano ont entrepris la sélection de 750 projets reçus. Le premier à voir le jour a une histoire exemplaire. D'ici à 2013, une usine à Ekaterinbourg dans l'Oural produira 120 millions de diodes électroluminescentes (LED, en anglais) d'un nouveau type, un dispositif d'éclairage sept fois moins gourmand en énergie que les ampoules traditionnelles. La technologie basée sur des semi-conducteurs au gallium a été mise au point par Vladislav Bougrov et Maxime Odnobioudov, deux chercheurs russes exilés en Finlande et en Allemagne où ils avaient fondé leur entreprise, OptoGAN.
Le milliardaire Mikhaïl Prokhorov détiendra 50 % plus une action de l'entreprise. Ce géant de 2 mètres s'est illustré en France il y a deux ans lors d'une garde à vue à Courchevel en galante compagnie (aucune charge n'a été retenue contre lui). Il est le président d'Onexim, actionnaire entre autres de Polyus Gold ou du numéro un mondial de l'aluminium Rusal. Rusnano apporte 17 % du capital (environ 9,20 M€) et un prêt de 41,50 M€. Malgré la crise, "nous n'avons pas de problème de financement, nous avons des difficultés à trouver de bons projets", assure Prokhorov qui voit "les crises comme des opportunités de libérer du capital intellectuel".
Mais pour un Prokhorov tourné vers les nouvelles technologies, "combien d'investisseurs sont-ils prêts à prendre des risques" en Russie, s'interroge Benjamin Soffer, chargé du transfert de technologie au Technion de Haïfa, le "MIT" israélien, venu au Forum de Rusnano. Il sera difficile, estime-t-il, de faire revenir en Russie les milliers de chercheurs exilés, en Israël notamment. Mais que Moscou ait réussi à mettre sur pied cette première conférence, "c'est déjà fantastique", salue l'expert israélien.

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