Январь 2008 г.

Российская наука и мир (по материалам зарубежной электронной прессы)

CONTENTS / ОГЛАВЛЕНИЕ


• Two Russians and an American win 2008 Crafoord science prize
• Kremlin eyes internet control...
• Russia President Putin Honors Scientists
• Le pergélisol, bombe climatique ou pétard mouillé ?
• La rencontre des eaux mystérieuses du lac Vostok...
• Br-r-r! Where did global warming go?
• Russia's science minister sets $41 billion nanotechnology target
• Bulgaria to host Year of Russia
• Le prix Nobel Lev Landau aurait eu cent ans aujourd'hui
• Siberian Nations Abandon Their Written Languages
• Progress Spacecraft Will Sink In Pacific
• Russia signs deal to bring natural gas pipeline through Bulgaria
• Hiring of Soviet Scientists Has Strayed From Aim, Audit Says
• DNA tests finally solve the riddle of what happened to the last tsar's two children
• Elsevier to publish two journals with the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences
• Alphéraky, Sergei Nikolaevich (1850-1918)
• Russia says foreign spies seeking WMD data: RIA

Премия Крафорда - одна из престижнейших научных премий в мире. Вручается ежегодно с 1982 года Шведской академией наук за достижения в областях, не отмечаемых Нобелевской премией - математика, астрономия, науки о Земле, науки о жизни. В этом году лауреатами стали академик РАН Рашид Сюняев - "за решающий вклад в астрофизику высоких энергий и космологию", Эдвард Уиттен (Принстон, США) и Максим Концевич (Институт высших научных исследований, Франция) - "за важный вклад в математику, вдохновлённый современной теоретической физикой".

Stockholm - A mathematician, a physicist and an astronomer were Thursday named winners of the 2008 Crafoord Prize for contributions to understanding basic laws of nature and research on the early universe, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said. Russian-born mathematician Maxim Kontsevich of the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques in France, and physicist Edward Witten of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey in the US, were cited "for their important contributions to mathematics inspired by modern theoretical physics."
Kontsevich and Witten jointly shared one half of the prize worth 500,000 dollars (342,300 euros).
The other half was awarded to astronomer Rashid Sunyaev of the Space Research Institute (IKI) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, and the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany.
The academy cited Sunayev "for his decisive contributions to high-energy astrophysics and cosmology, in particular processes and dynamics around black holes and neutron stars."
Kontsevich has French and Russian citizenship, Sunyaev is a Russian national while Witten is a US national.
Swedish King Carl Gustaf was due to present the prizes on April 23.
The prize was created in 1980 by industrialist Holger Crafoord and his wife Anna-Greta, and was first awarded in 1982 for discoveries in fields not covered by the Nobel Prizes in science.
The prize is awarded for research in the fields of astronomy and mathematics, geosciences, biosciences (especially ecology), and andolyarthritis (rheumatoid arthritis).
In 1964, Crafoord founded medical company Gambro where the artificial kidney was developed.

Российские власти рассматривают проект создания интернета на кириллице, который использовал бы кириллические имена доменов и был полностью автономен от "большой" сети.

The growing cold war with Russia has a new front besides oil fields and undersea territorial claims: the internet. Russia's government is pushing for greater control over the Russian-language part of the net - and its aim seems to be to create a web that operates in Cyrillic, completely independent from the wider web.
The problem for Russia is that its top-level domain - with the ASCII suffix .ru - translates into Cyrillic as .py, the domain name of Paraguay. That could pose security problems for Russian users. Kim Davies, who controls the domain names at the international domain naming agency Icann told the Guardian: "Russia has a second top level domain name of .ru in Ascii code, but is pushing for .rf in Cyrillic."
Wolfgang Kleinwachter, special adviser to the chairman of the Internet Governance Forum, says: "The proposal for "Russian internet" would look at how they can communicate better inside the country. The internationalised domain name gives them an opportunity to do things which are now being tested in China, where they are currently using Chinese characters for three top-level domains: .net, .com and .cn."
A tale of two servers
The key is whether Russian international domain names would use their own root servers - which decide where to route your internet requests - independent of the existing internet root servers which are mainly based in the US.
Kleinwachter thinks that the worst-case scenario would mean everyone would have to register a domain name using the .rf top level domain in Cyrillic. "Then [Russia] would have their own root and it's much easier to control the top-level domain than hundreds of thousands of secondary level domains."
That would, arguably, mean Russians are safe from Paraguayan phishing - but it would also give the Russian government more control of the net and leave Russian citizens isolated from the international community. Davies explains that Russian Cyrillic keyboards make it difficult for Russian users to search for domain names using the roman letters of Ascii code. Without a bridge to coordinate it with Ascii code, a Russian-language internet would be cut off from the global net.
China's citizens could similarly become isolated from international opinion. "The Chinese have the option now to keep the domain .cn in Ascii code or to cut it." Kleinwachter says. "If they cut it then they have an opportunity to build something like a bridge which would link the Chinese internet to the Ascii internet. The Russians, like the Chinese, discussed this option. My impression is that the Russian Foreign Ministry is much more open to such an option than [China's] Ministry of Economic Development and Trade. Another way would be to give every citizen a fixed IP address, which would go with you wherever you approach the internet."
Setting up a new root server would not be expensive, Davies says, but would cause "technical issues". Guillaume Lovet, head of the threat response team at security company Fortinet, explains: "If it's about re-implementing internet protocols, it would be like installing new, additional firmware on our home router, and new drivers on each network-enabled computer at home. If it's about rebuilding everything from scratch, it is comparable to throwing everything in the bin."
International isolation
Davies says the key downside would be how much the Russians stand to lose out on the global operability of the web unless bridges are built with the Ascii-dominated global internet. "Russians estimate that 90% of the communication will be within Russia and just 10% will go outside," says Kleinwachter. But it's that 10% which would feel the real difference.
Kleinwachter says the speculation is that people will need a password authorised by government agencies to use the global internet. The Kremlin therefore would be able to control what communication the individual is having with the rest of the world. The government says that would help it monitor cybercrime.
Lovet is more sceptical. "Russia has a very strong academic tradition of technical universities, which form very sharp and competent computer scientists. At the same time, the average income per head is extremely low. This combination creates an explosive cocktail. Any attempt to confine Russian hackers inside some kind of Russian cyberspace is bound to fail."
Other security experts go even further. "This will put a wall between cybercriminals and their victims," says Jose Nazario, from Arbor, who works to protect governments and corporations from cyber attacks emanating from Russia. "It makes it very difficult to track Russian cybercrime. Security experts are just starting to get a picture of their methods, and this will slow us down dramatically. It is also an escalation of tension between Putin's Russia and the west."

Участники экспедиции на Северный полюс, прошедшей в июле-августе 2007 года (погружение на дно Ледовитого океана), получили государственные награды. Вице-спикеру Государственной Думы Артуру Чилингарову, заведующему лабораторией глубоководных обитаемых аппаратов Института океанологии РАН Анатолию Сагалевичу и командиру подводного аппарата Евгению Черняеву присвоено звание "Герой России". Еще один участник экспедиции, депутат Владимир Груздев, награжден орденом "За заслуги перед Отечеством" III степени.

MOSCOW (AP) - President Vladimir Putin on Thursday granted "hero" awards to scientists backing Russia's claim to a mountain range under the Arctic Ocean that is believed to contain huge oil and gas reserves.
The scientists planted a Russian flag under the North Pole ice in August as part of an Arctic expedition that heated up the controversy over an area that a U.S. study suggests may contain as much as 25 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas.
Russia is one of several countries that have laid claims to the area.
Putin signed a decree awarding three members of the expedition the title of Hero of the Russian Federation. They are Anatoly Sagalevich, Yevgeny Chernyayev and lawmaker Artur Chilingarov. A fourth expedition member, lawmaker Vladimir Gruzdev, was granted the Order for Service to the Fatherland, the Kremlin said.
Russia's Natural Resources Ministry has said preliminary results on soil core samples gathered by the expedition show that the 1,240-mile Lomonosov Ridge under the Arctic is part of Russia's shelf. It said more geological tests would be conducted, as well.
After the Russian expedition, Canada vowed to increase its icebreaker fleet and build two new military facilities in the Arctic, while Denmark sent a team of scientists to seek evidence that the ridge was attached to its territory of Greenland. The U.S. government also sent an icebreaker for a research expedition.
The issue has become more urgent with growing evidence that global warming is shrinking polar ice - opening up resource development and new shipping lanes.
The 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea gives the Arctic countries 10 years after they ratify the treaty to prove their claims under the largely uncharted polar ice pack. All but the United States have ratified the treaty.
Chilingarov, a renowned polar scientist, was named a Hero of the Soviet Union in the 1980s after leading an expedition aboard a research vessel that was trapped for a time in Antarctic sea ice.

Зона вечной мерзлоты часто именуется "климатической миной замедленного действия" - согласно распространенному мнению, выделяющийся при таянии метан способен серьезно изменить климат.
Исследования, проведенные несколькими российскими институтами, показывают, что, хотя выделение метана растет, это едва ли окажет существенное влияние на климат.

Le pergélisol russe inquiète. Certains estiment qu'il pourrait constituer à terme une véritable bombe à retardement capable de transformer un jour la planète en une fournaise capable de détruire toute vie terrestre. D'autres, en revanche, imaginent un scénario bien moins effrayant.
Ces craintes trouvent leur justification dans les millions de tonnes de méthane emprisonnées dans la merzlota, nom donné au pergélisol (permafrost en anglais) qui constitue une bonne partie du territoire russe. L'accélération du dégel pourrait brusquement augmenter la concentration de ce gaz dans l'atmosphère dans des proportions considérables.
Le méthane est en effet un des principaux gaz à effet de serre, et son impact sur le réchauffement climatique est estimé à 25 fois celui du gaz carbonique. Mais l'atmosphère en contenant 210 fois moins, son impact ne représente que 12 % de celui du CO₂.
Durant le XXème siècle, l'industrialisation a provoqué un accroissement du taux de méthane atmosphérique de 50 % et rien n'indique la fin de ce mécanisme, bien au contraire. Un autre processus, celui du réchauffement global, est alors intervenu, faisant craindre l'apparition d'un effet boule de neige dans lequel les deux phénomènes s'amplifieraient mutuellement. Si le méthane enfermé dans le pergélisol se libère en grande quantité à cause du réchauffement climatique, il augmenterait ce dernier. Ce qui, en retour, entraînerait encore une accélération de la fonte du pergélisol de l'Arctique… Bref, un phénomène auto-entretenu que rien n'arrêterait plus, si ce n'est l'épuisement final des sources de méthane. Mais l'effet de serre ferait alors de la Terre une Vénus juste un peu moins chaude.
Méthane des terres gelées et méthane de l'océan
Deux sources principales de méthane envoient ce gaz dans l'atmosphère. Premier d'entre eux, le pergélisol est principalement constitué de matière organique gelée, restant inactive pendant des millénaires. Leur dégel provoque une rapide prolifération de bactéries qui consomment cette mine alimentaire et produisent du méthane en quantité.
Le second mécanisme est océanique. Il met en jeu les dépôts de gaz accumulés, essentiellement, dans la zone maritime du plateau continental. Il s'agit d'hydrates de gaz, appelés clathrates, mélange de méthane et d'eau, dont l'aspect ressemble à de la glace ou à de la neige humide. Leur réchauffement sépare ces deux éléments, libérant le méthane qui passe ainsi librement dans l'atmosphère.
Mais bien que de fortes concentrations de méthane aient été enregistrées dans la mer de Laptev par les chercheurs de l'Institut océanologique du Pacifique (Vladivostok), cette théorie ne fait pas l'unanimité car une étude effectuée à l'institut de géologie de Moscou démontre que les amas d'hydrates de méthane ne réagissent que très lentement à un réchauffement climatique, soit avec un retard de 20 à 40.000 ans.
D'ailleurs, les dégagements actuels, qui viennent d'être mesurés directement par une équipe américaine, semblent très faibles, le méthane émis se diluant dans l'océan.
De plus, la zone de stabilité des hydrates de méthane dépend aussi de la pression. Plus elle est élevée, plus les hydrates de gaz sont stables (sous 500 atmosphères, pression régnant à 5.000 mètres, les clathrates restent stables jusqu'à 5 °C au-dessus de zéro). Si le réchauffement global fait grimper le niveau de la mer, la pression plus élevée au fond rendra les hydrates de méthane plus stables.
Une autre étude, effectuée à l'Institut d'hydrologie de Saint-Pétersbourg, démontre que le dégagement du méthane contenu dans la merzlota ne s'accroîtra que de 20 à 30 % maximum, entraînant un réchauffement de seulement 0,01 °C, une valeur insignifiante comparée au résultat de l'industrialisation…
Ces arguments, confortés par le fait que l'accroissement de la concentration du méthane atmosphérique n'ait pratiquement plus été observé après l'an 2000, tendraient à démontrer que la théorie de la "bombe climatique" de la merzlota russe serait dénuée de fondements. Ce qui ne doit pas nous inciter à cesser les observations…

Российские ученые намерены осуществить в 2008-2009 годах проникновение в водный слой реликтового озера Восток в Антарктиде, которое является уникальной водной экосистемой.

La Russie déjà lancée dans "la course aux pôles" entend marquer d'un grand coup l'année 2008 en organisant une expédition sur l'Antarctique à la rencontre des eaux mystérieuses du lac Vostok.
Le lac Vostok est toujours resté invisible aux consciences humaines et cela depuis la nuit des temps. Recouvert par une couche de glace de près de 4 000 mètres d'épaisseur, le lac n'a semble-t-il plus apprécié la lumière du jour depuis au moins un million d'années.
Ce n'est que récemment, en 1993, que l'on a découvert cet immense réservoir d'eau sous glacier d'une superficie d'environ 8 700 km carrés (Corse : 8 680 km carrés), grâce au satellite d'observation terrestre européen (ERS1).
Depuis des centaines de milliers d'années, le lac Vostok vit donc en vase clos, coupé du monde et de la surface par une épaisse chape de glace. Il y règne des conditions extrêmes de température et de pression logées au creux d'une obscurité inssoutenable.
Son âge dépassant le millier d'années, nombre de chercheurs estiment qu'il pourrait nous en dire long sur l'histoire de l'évolution du climat. Cependant, ce qui intéresse aujourd'hui ces hommes de science sont les eaux. Les eaux du Vostok et surtout ce qu'elles renferment de vies, que certains n'hésitent pas à qualifier "d'extraterrestres" tant le lac semble loin du milieu commun de la surface.
Des campagnes ont déjà été entreprises mais sans succès. En 1998, ce sont des chercheurs français en collaboration avec les Russes qui se sont attaqués au forage des glaces de surface du lac atteignant une profondeur de près de 3 600 mètres, les laissant ainsi à 120 mètres au-dessus de la surface liquide.
À l'époque on avait mis en lumière la présence de bactéries alors retrouvées à cette profondeur logées au sein de glaces lacustres. Il s'est avéré après examens que ces bactéries étaient en fait similaires à certaines espèces vivant actuellement à des températures de plus de 50 °C, alors qu'à ces profondeurs, il règne une température moyenne de -265 °C.
La forte teneur en oxygène que contiennent les eaux du lac (900 à 1 400 mg/l) et qui équivaut à environ 50 fois le taux d'oxygène dans l'air que nous respirons participe également de l'incompatibilité de l'existence de telles bactéries. Il semble donc que les premières d'entre elles alors découvertes ne soient en réalité que le fruit d'une contamination.
Cette année (2007-2008) une équipe russe a repris les travaux de forage, atteignant cette fois-ci le seuil des 90 mètres au-dessus de la surface lacustre. Les écologistes mettent à nouveau en garde les Russes mais également la communauté scientifique mondiale sur le risque de contamination du lac par forage ainsi que sur le risque plus large de voir un potentiel écosystème préservé de la surface, détruit par les agissements d'une poignée d'hommes.
Les Russes garantissent pourtant prendre toutes les précautions nécessaires afin que leur prochain forage qui devrait s'établir à 20 mètres au-dessus du niveau du lac ne vienne perturber le milieu.
Une petite sonde thermique a d'ores et déjà été mise en place.
Autostérilisée par sa température, elle devrait pénétrer la glace sur quelques mètres puis rejoindre le milieu liquide.
Ce projet risque fort cependant de se voir contrarié par un chercheur américain, Chris McKay, du Centre de recherche géophysique basé aux Etats-Unis. Dans un article récemment publié, il met en garde sur les risques que pourraient induire une telle opération de forage du lac Vostok.
Selon lui, le lac renferme une forte concentration de gaz qui risquerait de générer une violente "éruption" si la "liaison", même infime, venait à se faire entre les eaux du lac et la surface.
Il semble en effet, selon ses propres mots, que la concentration en nitrogène et en oxygène des eaux soit très importante (2,5 l/kg), équivalente à plus grande échelle à la pression contenue dans une canette de Coca fermée, a-t-il déclaré.
Quoi qu'il en soit, le lac Vostok voit désormais se précipiter les fantasmes les plus fous autour de ses eaux qui renfermeraient peut-être des créatures jusqu'alors inconnues de tous.

C точки зрения профессора Института океанологии РАН, доктора физико-математических наук Олега Сорохтина, потепление климата, вызывающее столько беспокойства, в скором времени сменится похолоданием.

THE STARK headline appeared just over a year ago. "2007 to be warmest on record," BBC News reported on Jan. 4, 2007. Citing experts in the British government's Meteorological Office, the story announced that "the world is likely to experience the warmest year on record in 2007," surpassing the all-time high reached in 1998.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the planetary hot flash: Much of the planet grew bitterly cold.
In South America, for example, the start of winter last year was one of the coldest ever observed. According to Eugenio Hackbart, chief meteorologist of the MetSul Weather Center in Brazil, "a brutal cold wave brought record low temperatures, widespread frost, snow, and major energy disruption." In Buenos Aires, it snowed for the first time in 89 years, while in Peru the cold was so intense that hundreds of people died and the government declared a state of emergency in 14 of the country's 24 provinces. In August, Chile's agriculture minister lamented "the toughest winter we have seen in the past 50 years," which caused losses of at least $200 million in destroyed crops and livestock.
Latin Americans weren't the only ones shivering.
University of Oklahoma geophysicist David Deming, a specialist in temperature and heat flow, notes in the Washington Times that "unexpected bitter cold swept the entire Southern Hemisphere in 2007." Johannesburg experienced its first significant snowfall in a quarter-century. Australia had its coldest ever June. New Zealand's vineyards lost much of their 2007 harvest when spring temperatures dropped to record lows.
Closer to home, 44.5 inches of snow fell in New Hampshire last month, breaking the previous record of 43 inches, set in 1876. And the Canadian government is forecasting the coldest winter in 15 years.
Now all of these may be short-lived weather anomalies, mere blips in the path of the global climatic warming that Al Gore and a host of alarmists proclaim the deadliest threat we face. But what if the frigid conditions that have caused so much distress in recent months signal an impending era of global cooling?
"Stock up on fur coats and felt boots!" advises Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences and senior scientist at Moscow's Shirshov Institute of Oceanography. "The latest data ... say that earth has passed the peak of its warmer period, and a fairly cold spell will set in quite soon, by 2012."
Sorokhtin dismisses the conventional global warming theory that greenhouse gases, especially human-emitted carbon dioxide, is causing the earth to grow hotter. Like a number of other scientists, he points to solar activity - sunspots and solar flares, which wax and wane over time - as having the greatest effect on climate.
"Carbon dioxide is not to blame for global climate change," Sorokhtin writes in an essay for Novosti. "Solar activity is many times more powerful than the energy produced by the whole of humankind." In a recent paper for the Danish National Space Center, physicists Henrik Svensmark and Eigil Friis-Christensen concur: "The sun ... appears to be the main forcing agent in global climate change," they write.
Given the number of worldwide cold events, it is no surprise that 2007 didn't turn out to be the warmest ever. In fact, 2007's global temperature was essentially the same as that in 2006 - and 2005, and 2004, and every year back to 2001. The record set in 1998 has not been surpassed. For nearly a decade now, there has been no global warming. Even though atmospheric carbon dioxide continues to accumulate - it's up about 4 percent since 1998 - the global mean temperature has remained flat. That raises some obvious questions about the theory that CO₂ is the cause of climate change.
Yet so relentlessly has the alarmist scenario been hyped, and so disdainfully have dissenting views been dismissed, that millions of people assume Gore must be right when he insists: "The debate in the scientific community is over."
But it isn't. Just last month, more than 100 scientists signed a strongly worded open letter pointing out that climate change is a well-known natural phenomenon, and that adapting to it is far more sensible than attempting to prevent it. Because slashing carbon dioxide emissions means retarding economic development, they warned, "the current UN approach of CO₂ reduction is likely to increase human suffering from future climate change rather than to decrease it."
Climate science isn't a religion, and those who dispute its leading theory are not heretics. Much remains to be learned about how and why climate changes, and there is neither virtue nor wisdom in an emotional rush to counter global warming - especially if what's coming is a global Big Chill.

К 2015 году доля продукции российской наноиндустрии в различных отраслях может достичь 3% мирового рынка высоких технологий, а объем продаж - 41 мрд. долларов.

(Nanowerk News) Russia's annual nanotechnology production must reach at least 1 trillion rubles ($41 billion) by 2015, Russia's science and education minister said on Thursday.
Following a government session on nanotechnology development in Russia, Andrei Fursenko said the figure was attainable, if ambitious, and could be achieved if the industry received the necessary legal backing for its development, including a development program to run until 2015, as well as further financial support by the government.
The nanotechnology development program forecasts that Russia's annual output in the sector will reach 900 billion rubles by 2015, and the share of Russian nanotechnology produce in different sectors should be no less than 3% of the world hi-tech market.
Fursenko said his ministry was working with a consumer rights regulator on research into the health safety of products and materials related to nanotechnology production.
He also said the issue of proprietary rights in the sector had been resolved in principle, and established in the Civil Code, but that a number of laws still had to be adopted.
Fursenko said that the rights to the results of nanotechnology research in most cases should belong to research and development entities even if budget funds have been used.

17 января открывается Год России в Болгарии. Между двумя странами запланировано сотрудничество в научной, экономической, промышленной и культурной сферах.

The Year of Russia in Bulgaria will be conducted in the context of a new interpretation of the past and the opportunities presented to young people, Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev told a visiting Russian MP on Monday.
Valery Draganov, Member of the Russian State Duma (the lower house of Parliament), who co-chairs the Bulgarian-Russian Public Forum (BRPF), is on a visit to Bulgaria. The meeting between Stanishev and Draganov took place ahead of Russian President Vladimir Putin's Jan. 17-18 visit to Bulgaria.
Stanishev and Draganov discussed major bilateral agreements which will be signed during Putin's visit. These agreements concern, among other matters, the setting up of an international implementing company for the Bourgas-Alexandroupolis oil pipeline project, the building of the Belene Nuclear Power Plant, and bilateral cultural exchange.
They also considered a project to build a Varna-Caucasus ferry line, for which the two sides are prepared to sign an agreement. The two also discussed plans to set up a Russian university in Bulgaria or a regional Russian university for the Balkans. They agreed on the establishment of a Russian Book Center and a Russian-Bulgarian Public Academy of Science and Culture in Bulgaria.
Stanishev promised full support for the BRPF's initiatives. He said Russian books and publications are much in demand in Bulgaria.

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