Ноябрь 2009 г.

Российская наука и мир (по материалам зарубежной электронной прессы)

CONTENTS / ОГЛАВЛЕНИЕ


• Vitaly Ginzburg
• Science at Crossroads, Medvedev Told
• La valse des faux diplômes gangrène la Russie
• Dans l'Oural, la mine d'amiante à ciel ouvert pollue toujours la ville d'Asbest
• Major University in Russia Eases Fears on Rules
• En Sibérie le climat devient fou
• Les militaires russes enrôlent à nouveau des dauphins pour défendre leurs bases
• Data Show a Decline for Tigers in Russia
• Carbon-credit dispute threatens new climate deal

8 ноября скончался выдающийся российский физик, академик Виталий Лазаревич Гинзбург, лауреат Нобелевской премии по физике 2003 года за исследования сверхпроводников и сверхтекучести.

Vitaly Ginzburg, who died on November 8 aged 93, survived Stalin's purges by working on the Soviet atomic bomb project and in 2003 won the Nobel Prize for Physics for his theoretical work on superconductivity.
In the immediate postwar years Ginzburg's Jewish ancestry made him a prime target for state-sponsored anti-Semitism, and in 1946 he added to his charge sheet by marrying Nina Ermakova, who had spent two years in labour camps on trumped-up charges of plotting to assassinate the Soviet dictator. In 1947 the Soviet literary journal Literaturnaya Gazeta sparked off a concerted campaign with an article accusing Ginzburg of "cosmopolitanism" - among other crimes. "I can only guess what fate awaited me in this situation at that time," Ginzburg recalled. "I think that it would have cost me dear, but I was saved by the hydrogen bomb."
The Soviet H-bomb team, which began work in 1948, included the physicist Igor Tamm, head of the theory department at the Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow - and Ginzburg's boss. When Tamm first proposed recruiting Ginzburg he was turned down, but eventually the imperatives of the post-war arms race overcame doubts about Ginzburg's ideological reliability and he was appointed to work alongside the physicist (and future dissident) Andrei Sakharov.
Together Ginzburg and Sakharov hit on a technical solution which led to the successful testing of the bomb in 1953. Sakharov suggested using alternating layers of uranium and fuel while Ginzburg suggested using lithium-6 because, when hit by neutrons, it would release tritium and helium nuclei and huge amounts of energy.
By the time of the test, however, Ginzburg had been dismissed from the project during a renewed bout of anti-Semitic purges. It was only Stalin's death in 1953, he believed, that had saved him from the gulags.
In the 1950s Ginzburg turned his attention to superconductivity, a phenomenon which enables some materials to conduct electricity without any losses due to resistance. Working with Lev Landau, Ginzburg worked out a series of equations that correctly predicted a superconductor's tolerance for a magnetic field and its conductive ability, work which enabled the development by Alexei Abrikosov of techniques to achieve superconductivity despite the presence of high magnetic fields. That work paved the way for a wealth of practical applications including medical imaging and the digital circuits and microwave filters used in the base stations for mobile phones. In 2003 Ginzburg and Abrikosov (Landau had died by this time) shared the Nobel Prize for Physics with the British-born scientist Anthony Leggett, who had done separate work on superfluids.
Vitaly Lazarevich Ginzburg was born in Moscow on October 4 1916 (or September 21 1916 according to the Julian calendar used in Tsarist Russia), six months before the Tsar's deposition, and grew up amid the turmoil and privation of the post-revolutionary years. His mother, a doctor, died of typhoid in 1920 and the family's apartment was commandeered by the Bolshevik authorities, who forced Vitaly and his father, a water purification engineer, to share their four rooms with two other families. Despite the overcrowding, his main memory was of loneliness. His father, distrusting Bolshevik education, kept him away from school until he was 11. Four years later his school was abolished in a government reform.
An "Old Bolshevik" family friend (who would later die "crushed by the millstones of Stalin's terror", as Ginzburg put it) helped the boy to avoid being assigned to a factory training school and got him a job as an assistant in an X-ray laboratory, where he first developed an interest in science.
In 1933 it became possible to enter Moscow University by way of a competitive examination and, with the help of a tutor, Ginzburg compressed three years of high school studies into three months, passed the exam and was admitted the following year. After graduating in Physics in 1938, he took a doctorate in 1940 and a DSc in 1942. He then joined the Lebedev Physics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, where he spent the remainder of his career.
In 1937 Ginzburg had married Olga Zamsha, a fellow student with whom he had a daughter, but the marriage ended after nine years. During the war, when Ginzburg was working on the transmission of radio waves through the ionosphere, the Lebedev Institute was moved to Gorky. It was here that he met his second wife, Nina Ermakova, who had been exiled there after her release from prison. While Ginzburg returned to Moscow after the war, she was not allowed to join him for eight years. They had no children.
After Stalin's death in 1953 Ginzburg was elected a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and began to play a more prominent role in Soviet scientific life. In 1962 he was one of three scientists who helped to bring an end to the reign of the agronomist Trofim Lysenko, Stalin's director of Soviet biology whose ideological rejection of Mendelian genetics in favour of theories of environmentally-acquired inheritance had done huge damage to Soviet biological research over several decades. Between 1971 and 1988 Ginzburg was head of the IE Tamm Theory Department at the Lebedev Institute. Yet he remained under suspicion and, despite his scientific eminence, was not allowed to travel abroad until the late 1980s.
Although Ginzburg and his wife celebrated the anniversary of Stalin's death as a "great festival", he shared the dictator's avowed atheism and, after the fall of communism, emerged as a trenchant defender of scientific rationalism in a Russia rediscovering religion.
When a Moscow newspaper reported that he had criticised the proposed introduction of religious teaching in schools as a project initiated by "church riff-raff", figures associated with the Russian People's Assembly, a pro-Orthodox think-tank, began proceedings to indict him under anti-hate laws.
But Ginzburg refused to be silenced, and in 2005 he and several other scientists signed an open letter to then-President Vladimir Putin, attacking the "increased clericalisation" of Russian society. "I am convinced that the bright future of mankind is connected with the progress of science," he told an interviewer, "and I believe it is inevitable that one day religions will drop in status to no higher than that of astrology."
He was equally concerned at the commercialisation of science. In 2007 he told The Sunday Telegraph that the plight of Russian science was in some ways worse than under Stalin: "Of course, in Stalin's times the Academy was under the control of the central committee of the Communist Party, but in those days you could come up with an idea and create; that's how we put the first Sputnik satellite into space. Now the government thinks science must bring only income and profit, which is absurd."
Ginzburg was elected a foreign member of nine academies of sciences, including the Royal Society, and in addition to the Nobel Prize his honours included the Mandelstam Prize (1947); the Lenin Prize (1966); the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1991); the Wolf Prize in Physics (1994); Unesco's Niels Bohr Medal (1998); and the American Physical Society's Nicholson Medal (1999). Vitaly Ginzburg is survived by his wife, Nina, and by the daughter of his first marriage.

В послании Федеральному собранию РФ президент Дмитрий Медведев представил план спасения российской науки как часть проекта модернизации экономики.

Top scientists will be watching President Dmitry Medvedev's state-of-the-nation address Thursday to hear how he intends to rescue the country's scientific community as part of his ambitious plan to modernize the economy.
Russian science is at the brink of collapse, but it represents Medvedev's only hope of ending the economy's dependence on energy resources through modernization, scientists said.
With many scientists aged over 50, the Kremlin has only a window of a few years to revive what's left of a community that won acclaim for its huge scientific advances in Soviet times, the scientists said.
"If we don't take a closer look at science, we will lose everything that is left - and there is not much left," said Dmitry Badovsky, a scientist at Moscow State University's Institute of Social Systems and a member of the Public Chamber.
But scientists are hopeful that Medvedev's state-of-the-nation speech, which will focus on modernization, will put their plight in the spotlight and lead to change. Medvedev has said his speech will be based on his September article titled "Go, Russia!" - which calls for Russia to be turned into an innovative power with "a smart economy producing unique scientific knowledge and exporting new technology."
"Questions about why we need science at all and how we can become competitive have not been discussed at the political level for a long time," Badovsky said.
Once considered a prestigious career path, science has fallen to new lows in recent years. Only 1 percent of 1,600 respondents named science as a prestigious career in a VTsIOM poll in 2006. A more recent survey, conducted by the Higher School of Economics in June, found that most students want to become executives at state gas giant Gazprom or work in the Kremlin. Of the top-30 places to work, not one of the more than 900 students surveyed named a scientific research institution.
One big reason that science is shunned is because of a lack of money, said Yelena Daineko, a state award-winning biologist.
"When the state gives money to science, it should also take control over it and not to let it disappear somewhere," said Daineko, who recently joined 400 other members of the Russian Academy of Science in signing an open letter to Medvedev deploring the current state of science.
The letter warns that Russia only has five to seven years left to train young, new scientists. "If young people are not brought into science during this period, plans to create an innovative economy can be forgotten," the letter says, adding that the average age of members of the Academy of Science is well over 50.
Daineko said attracting young talent is near impossible with the government's monthly stipend of 5,000 rubles ($170) for students. "How can a young man survive with this money? He has no choice but to work nights unloading boxcars on a train," she told The Moscow Times.
Daineko said she feels no satisfaction over the state awards that she has received for her work training future biologists because few are employed in Russia. "Why do I need those medals when many of my students are writing to me from abroad?" she said, bitterly.
During the Soviet years, the state heavily invested in science, primarily physics and math, and the resulting breakthroughs were used in the military-industrial complex. Many scientists enjoyed privileges like their own cars and elite summer houses. Most scientific laboratories were connected to the defense industry.
Nearly two decades have passed since the Soviet collapse, but the country still lives off the scientific and technological advances made from that time.
New innovations are "mostly a repeat or a modification of someone else's ideas or achievements," said Vladimir Travkin, a mathematician and former researcher with the Academy of Science of Soviet Ukraine.
Like many of his former colleagues, Travkin now works in Germany, where he said research facilities are more sophisticated than in Russia. Before moving to Germany, he spent 15 years at the University of California in Los Angeles.
Travkin said he keeps in daily contact with former colleagues from Moscow and Kiev, but he plans to continue working in Germany because he sees few prospects in modern-day Russia.
The amount of state and private money invested into science has swelled in comparison to the 1990s, when many scientific institutions suffered from a lack of state funding and scientists went to work in private businesses to make ends meet. Last year, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin promised more than 60 billion rubles ($2 billion) per year to the Russian Academy of Science, almost double the amount spent in 2007. In contrast, Harvard University's annual budget topped $3 billion in 2008.
But Putin's spending plans have been derailed by the crisis, and the Russian Academy of Science will receive only 40 billion rubles ($1.4 billion) next year, said Alexander Nekipelov, the academy's vice president. "It's a pity, but we will cut financing for fundamental scientific programs," he said.
Still, more money is not the most important thing. State appointees at the Academy of Science could misuse the funding because the aging academy members have little say over how the money is spent and few young professionals remain in the country who can be employed to carry out research, some scholars said.
"The money will be taken by those who have acquired their positions, only because their far more talented colleagues have left abroad," Konstantin Sonin, an economics professor with the New Economic School/CEFIR, wrote on his LiveJournal blog recently.
Forty scientists wrote an open letter to Medvedev last month that called for an increase in transparency in science, in addition to a boost in funding.
Science is on the brink of a collapse, "which in the near future will lead to a total breakup between the generations of scientists and the disappearance of world-level science in Russia," says the letter, which was published in Vedomosti. The signees were mostly Russians working in Europe and the United States.
Scientists who pursue a career in Russia despite the obstacles often rely on financing from private businesses, but such opportunities are limited. The biggest private donor is the Regional Public Foundation to Support Domestic Science, created in 2000 by the Russian Academy of Science and wealthy businessmen including Roman Abramovich, Oleg Deripaska and Alexander Mamut. Before the crisis, the foundation's annual budget amounted to up to $3 million, which it distributed to some 700 gifted scientists in monthly grants of $200 to $500, said foundation director Maxim Kogan.
Only 500 scientists received grants this year because of the crisis, said another foundation official, Anton Padokhin.
Many of the scientists' wealthy sponsors feel a certain obligation because they themselves were schooled in the sciences, said Yevgeny Satanovsky, a scientist and entrepreneur who heads the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies.
"There is a certain sentimental interest in supporting science because there are many businessmen who have an academic background, and they feel obliged to support former colleagues," he said.
For young people who have decided to stay in Russia instead of pursuing opportunities abroad, life as a scientist is a question of survival. "I am always trying to find ways to make money. But if you are working and writing your thesis at the same time, it is hard to achieve both goals," said Maxim, a 27-year-old researcher at Moscow State University's physics department. He asked that his last name not be published to avoid a possible conflict with his supervisors.
Maxim earns 8,000 rubles ($280) a month working at the department and makes extra money as a private part-time tutor for fellow students. His department often receives grants from various state and private foundations, but Maxim said it was very difficult for him to tap into the financial flow.
"If you merely want to buy a printer cartridge with grant money, you have to sign so many papers that it is easier to just buy it with your own money," he said.

В России ежегодно продается около 500 тысяч фальшивых дипломов, причем примерно 100 тысяч выдают сами образовательные учреждения: диплом с подписью ректора, официальной печатью и занесением в регистрационные записи вуза стоит от 20 до 50 тыс. долларов, пишет Tribune de Genève.

CORRUPTION | Le système d'éducation russe est corrompu jusqu'à la moelle. Une situation qui met en péril l'avenir de ce pays où une attestation spécialisée s'achète pour quelques centaines de francs.
Dans un passage souterrain entre deux stations de métro, une dame tient une petite affiche en vieux carton où il est inscrit "Diplômes". La scène n'a rien d'étonnant en Russie, où quelque 500 000 faux diplômes seraient vendus chaque année.
Sur Internet, les vendeurs ne font montre d'aucune gêne éthique. "Acheter un diplôme est plus avantageux, puisqu'en étudiant quelques années, on n'obtient pas toujours la formation nécessaire pour obtenir un bon emploi. En plus d'économiser du temps, vous dépenserez moins d'argent", peut-on lire sur l'un des nombreux sites à offrir ce genre de service. En quelques jours, et pour une somme qui varie de 350 à 1000 dollars, le client devient ingénieur nucléaire, médecin ou comptable.
Parmi ces fausses attestations, quelque 100000 seraient annuellement émises par les institutions d'éducation elles-mêmes. Un diplôme avec la signature du recteur, les sceaux officiels et une inscription dans les dossiers de l'université se monnaie entre 20 000 et 50 000 dollars.
De la crèche à l'université
Sergueï Komkov, directeur du Département de la lutte contre la corruption du centre Sécurité complexe de la patrie, est persuadé que la multiplication des faux diplômes n'est que la pointe visible d'un problème qui gangrène tout le système d'éducation russe. "La corruption commence à la crèche et se termine à l'université."
A Moscou, la liste d'attente pour une place en jardin d'enfants compte 16 000 noms. Mais il suffit de fournir une "aide" de 1050 à 3500 francs à un fonds privé proche des fonctionnaires municipaux pour que le problème s'arrange rapidement, explique M. Komkov.
Tout s'achète, tout se vend
A l'école primaire, "l'alimentation des enfants, c'est le Klondike" des firmes privées et des fonctionnaires, poursuit-il. La Municipalité de Moscou, par exemple, octroie une somme colossale pour les repas des enfants. Ils sont censés être offerts gratuitement. "En réalité, très peu ont droit à la gratuité. Et nos enfants sont nourris avec des aliments avariés récupérés dans les réserves d'Etat et revendus aux firmes par la Ville de Moscou!" Environ 30% de ces sommes allouées finiraient dans les poches des fonctionnaires.
Depuis son entrée en fonction en début d'année, Sergueï Komkov et sa douzaine de subordonnés on fait les comptes: chaque année, 5,5 milliards de dollars seraient détournés ou versés en pots-de-vin dans le système d'éducation russe. Enrayer la corruption est une tâche colossale, reconnaît M. Komkov. Surtout en Russie, où elle n'a fait qu'augmenter depuis le début de la décennie. Mais Sergueï Komkov promet de la "détruire de l'intérieur". "Les étudiants sortent du système à moitié compétents. Vous imaginez quel malheur ça représente pour le pays!"

Россия - один из крупнейших мировых производителей асбеста. Однако в большинстве европейских стран это вещество запрещено по причине своей канцерогенности.

C'est une énorme mine à ciel ouvert dans l'Oural, où une noria d'excavateurs et de camions bennes charrient sans relâche des pierres grisâtres qui donneront l'amiante. Ce minéral fibreux, connu pour sa résistance à la chaleur mais aussi pour ses effets cancérigènes, est interdit dans la plupart des pays européens. La Russie reste un des plus gros producteurs au monde. Pour la petite ville d'Asbest, située à 1 753 kilomètres de Moscou, l'amiante est une source de prospérité séculaire.
Jour et nuit, 2 000 conducteurs d'engins se relaient au fond de cette gigantesque carrière battue par les vents - 12 kilomètres de long, 3 kilomètres de large, 350 mètres de profondeur - pour en extraire l'amiante blanc, appelé ici "lin de roche". Asbest, 71 000 habitants, produit 25 % de l'amiante chrysotile mondial. Sa carrière et son combinat, sortis de terre en 1885, emploient 8 500 personnes.
"Notre combinat fabrique chaque année 11 000 kilomètres de canalisations en amiante-ciment, soit l'équivalent en longueur de la Fédération de Russie...", vante Vladimir Kotchelaev, l'adjoint du directeur du combinat Ouralasbest. La moitié de la production est écoulée sous forme de canalisations, d'isolants, de matériaux de construction vers une cinquantaine de pays, d'Asie du Sud-Est surtout.
En raison de l'interdiction de l'amiante, la production du combinat a diminué de moitié par rapport à ce qu'elle était en 1980. Avec la crise, l'inquiétude a refait surface. La demande en matériaux de construction baisse. Et il faut désormais compter avec la concurrence établie par la Chine et par le Kazakhstan, qui sont producteurs eux aussi. Entre Asbest et le "lin de roche", c'est une histoire ancienne. Tout a commencé au XVIIIe siècle, quand le maître de forge Nikita Demidov a ébloui Pierre le Grand en jetant au feu la nappe en amiante du festin impérial, retirée des flammes plus blanche que jamais. Un produit aussi miraculeux ne peut pas être nocif. Celui qui parviendra à convaincre les habitants d'Asbest que l'amiante est cancérigène n'est pas encore né.
Andreï Kholjakov, 46 ans, ingénieur et responsable syndical au combinat en est sûr : "La campagne antiamiante est orchestrée par des sociétés occidentales qui veulent nous voler nos marchés." "Regardez-moi bien ! Ai-je l'air d'un tuberculeux ?", interroge cet homme replet en pinçant bien fort ses joues rougies par le froid. De plus, "une étude scientifique récente dit que votre vin français est bien plus cancérigène que notre amiante", ajoute-t-il.
Asbest, avec ses rues tracées au cordeau, "est un peu comme New York", explique M. Kholjakov. Le centre-ville est plutôt coquet, avec son Palais des pionniers néoclassique, ses allées bordées de sorbiers chargés de fruits rouges. De père en fils, un tiers de la population active travaille au combinat.
Jénia, 25 ans, est employé à la carrière pour 16 000 roubles mensuels (372 euros). "Un sale boulot. En hiver, la poussière soulevée par le vent est telle qu'on ne voit pas à un mètre devant soi. Les contrôleurs nous affirment que le travail est sans danger...", explique le jeune homme.
La santé n'est pas sa préoccupation première. Plus que tout, il craint de perdre son travail. Lui et sa jeune femme voudraient fonder une famille, mais les 16 000 roubles de salaire suffisent à peine aux besoins du couple. "Chaque kopeck (un centième de rouble) est compté !", déplore ce grand costaud au visage poupin. Avec la crise, le combinat a mis à pied 1 000 personnes en 2008, une autre vague est attendue pour la fin de 2009.
Alexandra Vassilievna, 65 ans, a perdu son emploi à l'atelier d'enrichissement au printemps 2008. C'était un deuxième départ à la retraite. Retraitée du combinat à 55 ans, elle avait réintégré son lieu de travail quelques mois plus tard, cumulant pension et salaire. Maintenant, c'est définitif, elle a décroché. Sans doute elle ne pourra plus autant aider son fils, sa belle-fille et leurs trois enfants, "qui ont des fins de mois difficiles" avec un revenu mensuel de 23 000 roubles (534 euros) vite entamé à cause de l'inflation (10 % par an) sur les produits de première nécessité.
Elle compte sur la promesse du premier ministre, Vladimir Poutine, d'augmenter les retraites. La sienne devrait passer de 6 000 roubles (139 euros) mensuels à 8 000 roubles. Pas de doute, "si Poutine l'a dit, ça se fera". Cette grande femme alerte n'a aucune inquiétude pour sa santé. "Notre amiante est bonne. Nous vivons, nous respirons, tout va bien. La campagne antiamiante est un complot de l'Occident contre la Russie", assure-t-elle.
Tandis qu'elle prépare le thé dans la cuisine, sa sœur Tamara, qui vit d'ordinaire à Samara, au sud de la Russie, prend la parole : "Il ne faut pas la croire. Ils sont tous malades, l'eau du robinet est infecte, remplie d'amiante !" D'ailleurs, le mari d'Alexandra est malade - "l'asbestose", chuchote-t-elle. Alexandra proteste : "Son asbestose, il ne l'a pas attrapée au combinat, il n'y a jamais travaillé !"
Fibrose pulmonaire due à l'inhalation de fibres d'amiante, l'asbestose n'est pas la seule des maladies causées par le "lin de roche", il y aussi les cancers, les bronchites, l'asthme. Dans le cas de l'asbestose, le temps de latence est de vingt ans en moyenne.
Sergueï Kachanski dirige l'institut d'Etat des maladies professionnelles à Ekaterinbourg, la grande métropole moderne de l'Oural, à 86 kilomètres d'Asbest. Il reconnaît un ou deux cas d'asbestose par ans chez les actifs, 20 à 30 cas parmi les retraités. Pour le reste, tout va bien. L'amiante, dit-il, "n'est pas dangereux", tant que les mesures de protection au travail (filtres, masques, examens de santé) sont respectées.
Il parle en connaisseur. Son institut est membre de l'Association des producteurs d'amiante, soit 46 entreprises en Russie et dans l'ex-URSS, unanimes à dénoncer la campagne antiamiante, ce "business du mensonge".

Сотрудники Санкт-Петербургского государственного университета в начале октября выступили с протестами против требования руководства о предоставлении текстов, предназначенных для публикации за границей, для проверки на предмет нарушения прав интеллектуальной собственности или угрозы национальной безопасности.
В ответ руководство университета объявило, что работы ученых, занимающихся гуманитарными и социальными науками, досмотру подвергаться не будут.

MOSCOW - The authorities at St. Petersburg State University issued a statement last week announcing that researchers in the humanities and social sciences would not be required to submit to an export-control screening before publishing their work overseas, easing fears that new procedures would constrain academic freedom.
Professors at the prestigious Russian university raised objections in early October, when an internal university document was posted on a popular Internet forum. The document called for faculty members to provide copies of texts to be published abroad so that they could be reviewed for violations of intellectual property law or danger to national security.
Some professors responded with alarm, warning that bureaucratic barriers could hamper their efforts to publish and travel abroad, and fearing the requirement was a step toward greater academic censorship.
A statement released by the university on Friday explained that the export-control procedures applied only to research involving "dual-use technology," nonmilitary techniques that could have military applications. Russia's export-control law, passed in 1999, was intended to stem the flow of strategic research out of the country during the chaotic decade after the fall of Communism.
Olga V. Moskaleva, head of the university's scientific research department, said in the statement that the order "will not in any sense create some ban or limitation on international travel, participation in international conferences or cooperative work with foreign scholars."
The statement said "intense interest of the media" in the order "apparently stems from insufficient information about the real state of affairs."

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