Май 2018 г.

Российская наука и мир (по материалам зарубежной электронной прессы)

CONTENTS / ОГЛАВЛЕНИЕ


• Russian scientists bring frozen frog heart back to life after successful transplant
• "Un Tchernobyl flottant" : quels sont les risques pour la centrale nucléaire mise à l'eau par la Russie ?
• Neural networks analyse text to identify gender
• Rosatom expands overseas links with new agreements
• Head of controversial agency becomes Russian minister for science and higher education
• Un casque corinthien découvert en Russie
• Jupiter-like exoplanet discovered by amateur astronomer
• Why are there so many Russians in crypto?
• 50,000-year-old Siberian bones may be the 'oldest Homo sapiens' outside Africa and Middle East
• Russian universities are 'poised to compete globally'
• Drones will search for oil reserves
• A physicist has proposed a grim explanation for why we never see aliens
• The Russian philosopher who sought immortality in the Cosmos
• Skoltech, Philips join forces to improve healthcare with deep learning

Российские ученые провели уникальный эксперимент по длительной заморозке в жизнеспособном состоянии сердца лягушки. После 45 суток хранения при температуре -196 °C сердце было пересажено другой лягушке и полностью восстановило функциональную активность.

In a world first, Russian scientists have managed to revive the cryogenically-frozen heart of a frog and restored it to its normal functions.
"After a series of experiments, we managed to successfully and safely unfreeze a frog's heart, which was frozen at minus 196 degrees Celsius and kept in that state for 45 days," the head of the design team of the advanced research Foundation (DRF) Anatoly Kovtun, told RIA Novosti.
The heart was then transplanted to another frog and it maintained full functionality, he said, adding that this method could become a game-changer for transplant patients as organs could remain viable for a much longer period.
This new approach could be the answer to problems with the long-term cryopreservation of tissues and organs for purposes of transplantation and potentially save thousands of human lives, he added.
Kovtun also said that no ice crystals formed during the freezing or thawing, preventing any damage to the cells.
The team also reported that they managed to recover full functional activity in a rat's heart after it was kept in 24 hours of hypothermic storage at plus 4 degrees.
The development could help make donated organs available for virtually everyone who needs them, and substantially increase donations as there would be a safe way to freeze and reheat organs without damaging the cells within them.
While kept chilled in a special preservation solution, typical storage times for hearts and lungs are less than six hours whereas for kidneys this period is approximately 30 hours before they are discarded. However, it is best if they are transplanted as quickly as possible after the donation surgery.

Первая в мире плавучая АЭС - платформа «Академик Ломоносов» - отправилась к Полярному кругу, в порт города Певек в Чукотском автономном округе. Экологи уже окрестили платформу «плавучим Чернобылем» и «ядерным Титаником», заметив, что погодные условия в Арктике непредсказуемы, а потенциальная выгода такого проекта не перевешивает возможные риски.

L'agence d'Etat russe pour l'énergie nucléaire a lancé la première centrale nucléaire flottante de l'histoire. "L'Akademic Lomonosov", qui est déjà très critiquée par les milieux écologistes, s'installera à 350 km du cercle de l'Arctique.
Il s'agit d'une première dans l'histoire. Samedi 28 avril 2019, la Russie a lancé la première centrale nucléaire flottante, installée sur un navire de 140 mètres. L'Akademik Lomonosov, le nom de la centrale, a quitté le port de Saint-Pétersbourg sous le contrôle de plusieurs dizaines d'ingénieurs.
Conçue et élaborée par l'agence d'Etat russe pour l'énergie nucléaire, l'Akademik Lomonosov a mis le cap sur la ville de Mourmansk, située au nord-est du pays, là où ses réacteurs seront chargés en uranium. Elle se rendra ensuite à la ville de Pevek, en Sibérie orientale, où elle devrait alimenter en électricité 200 000 habitants et plusieurs plateformes pétrolières à l'horizon 2019.
Certes, il s'agit de la première expérience de ce genre dans le domaine énergétique. Mais Pierre Dewallef, professeur à l'Université de Liège et spécialiste de l'énergie nucléaire, appelle à relativiser. "Le fait d'installer une centrale nucléaire sur un navire n'est pas en soi une innovation importante. Le savoir-faire et les techniques requis pour une telle opération sont maîtrisés et connus depuis les années 1950 et 60", précise-t-il.
Un "Tchernobyl flottant" selon Greenpeace
"La Russie est en train de travailler sur une dangereuse expérience", c'est dans ces termes que l'ONG Greenpeace présente l'opération russe. Dans un communiqué de presse, L'ONG a mis sur la table nombre de questions quant à la conformité de la centrale flottante aux protocoles de sécurité obligatoires : "Tous les tubes sont-ils étanches ? Chaque soudure résistera-t-elle aux contraintes et à la pression ? L'arrêt d'urgence fonctionne-t-il ?", avant de préciser le risque majeur que porte l'opération : "Le démarrage d'un réacteur nucléaire - surtout lorsqu'il s'agit d'un prototype flottant dépourvu d'enceinte en béton - constitue toujours une phase dangereuse dans le cycle de fonctionnement d'une centrale nucléaire". L'ONG écologiste s'empresse également de rappeler les antécédents de la Russie en matière d'accidents nucléaires : "En Russie, des centrales nucléaires comparables sur des brise-glaces et des bateaux de guerre ont déjà provoqué des accidents, totalisant 29 décès".
Des enjeux géostratégiques entrent également en jeu par le lancement de la centrale nucléaire flottante si l'on croit Greenpeace. La Russie serait donc en train de tabler sur le réchauffement climatique pour qu'il fasse disparaître la glace des ports sibériens, dynamisant ainsi l'extraction de pétrole. Cela se ferait sans doute au détriment "du climat et de l'environnement".
Quelques heures après le lancement de l'Akademic Lomonosov, Greenpeace a qualifié la centrale de "Tchernobyl flottant", en référence à l'accident nucléaire de 1986 qu'a connu la ville de Tchernobyl, alors faisant partie de l'URSS. L'ONG attire notamment l'attention sur le fait que l'Akademik Lomonosov traversera l'Arctique, région caractérisée par ses conditions météorologiques souvent imprévisibles et difficiles.
Sur ce point, Pierre Dewallef invite à rester prudent. "On ne peut pas nier le fait qu'il y a toujours un risque dans ce genre d'opérations. Mais il faut rappeler peut-être qu'il existe des sous-marins nucléaires qui traversent ces zones-là. Le risque est d'une certaine manière comparable entre les deux situations", avant de conclure : "à mon avis, il existe tout de même un supplément de risque dans cette opération que je trouve injustifiée du point de vue du gain potentiel".
Par-delà la question énergétique, quels enjeux politiques ?
La région arctique est source d'une intense coopération entre les Etats circumpolaires, notamment dans le cadre du Conseil de l'Arctique, mis en place en 1996 pour discuter des grands problèmes de l'Arctique. Riche en ressources naturelles, l'Arctique est aussi parfois source de tensions territoriales entre les Etats riverains : le Canada, le Danemark, les Etats-Unis, la Norvège, et la Russie.
Dans le contexte général de ces tensions, il est important de s'arrêter sur le nom de la centrale nucléaire flottante : l'Akademic Lomonosov. Cette appellation renvoie au scientifique russe du XVIIIe siècle, qui a aussi donné son nom à une dorsale océanique de l'Arctique fortement revendiquée par la Russie et qui fait l'objet de querelles diplomatiques constantes entre la Russie, le Danemark et le Canada.
Le nom attribué à cette nouvelle centrale nucléaire serait-il une nouvelle façon d'asseoir les revendications russes sur la dorsale ? Hélène De Pooter, maître de conférences à l'Université de Franche-Comté et auteur de l'ouvrage L'emprise des États côtiers sur l'Arctique, n'est pas convaincue qu'il faille y voir plus qu'un nouvel hommage à une grande figure nationale. Reste que la question de la dorsale Lomonosov pose d'intéressantes questions juridiques.
En effet, la Convention des Nations unies sur le droit de la mer permet à chaque Etat de bénéficier d'un plateau continental. Si un Etat souhaite revendiquer un plateau continental d'une largeur supérieure à 200 milles marins, il est dans l'obligation de déposer une demande auprès de la Commission des limites du plateau continental, chargée d'examiner les demandes d'extension du plateau continental. La dorsale de Lomonosov s'inscrit en effet dans ce cas de figure.
Depuis le début des années 2000, les trois Etats revendiquant la dorsale (la Russie, le Canada et le Danemark) multiplient les rapports et les études scientifiques afin de défendre leur légitimité à rattacher la dorsale à leur territoire. "Le Danemark et la Russie ont déjà transmis leurs informations à la Commission des limites, qui est actuellement en train de les examiner. Le Canada ne l'a pas encore fait mais il y travaille", tient à préciser Hélène De Pooter.

Сотрудники НИЯУ «МИФИ», НИЦ «Курчатовский Институт» и Воронежского государственного университета разработали метод, обучающий компьютер распознавать пол человека по написанному им тексту с точностью до 80%.

A team of researchers from the National Research Nuclear University, the National Research Center Kurchatov Institute, and Voronezh State University in Russia have developed an algorithm that analyses a sample of text and uses a neural network to identify the gender of the writer, so far it has achieved an accuracy approaching 80%.
This is an example of Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI) or weak AI, which means the process is able to significantly outperform a human in just one specific task, an example would be a chess playing computer. The project was funded by the Russian Science Foundation and the report is published in the Procedia Computer Science journal.
Many scientific studies have demonstrated how writing style can reveal certain characteristics about the writer, including gender, physiological personality traits and level of education. Speech patterns also appear to convey useful psycho-diagnostic information and together with handwriting analysis, are routinely used by HR staff for recruitment selection, particularly for the security services. It has also been found that by analysing speech it is possible to identify certain characteristics indicating conditions such as dementia, depression and even suicidal states of mind. The determination of personality traits from samples of text also has great potential.
In the age of big data it is important to accurately identify a target demographic in order to optimise marketing resources. For this reason researchers are concentrating their efforts to extract specific information from text. Using mathematical models with values assigned to specific parameters occurring in the text it is possible to identify certain personality traits of the writer. Neural networks were employed to analyse the effectiveness of diverse text-analysis machine learning algorithms.
Results indicated that the use of a deep learning CNNs (Convolutional Neural Network) was most effective at identifying the writer's gender. The research team is also using similar techniques to identify a writer's age group from a sample of text.

На международном форуме «Атомэкспо-2018» государственная корпорация по атомной энергии «Росатом» подписала ряд соглашений о сотрудничестве и партнерстве.

Rosatom, the Russian state nuclear corporation, yesterday signed a series of agreements with overseas companies during the Atomexpo conference and exhibition being held this week in Sochi, Russia. The agreements, with Chile, China, Cuba, Finland, Hungary, Iran, Italy, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Spain and Zambia, include the engineering and medical sectors, among others.
Rosatom and Chile's Atomic Energy Commission have signed a Memorandum of Cooperation in the field of education and personnel training for Chile's nuclear energy industry, while Rusatom Automated Control Systems, a Rosatom subsidiary, and China Techenergy, a division of China General Nuclear Power Corp, signed a Memorandum of Cooperation covering projects in Russia, China and third countries.
Rosatom and Cuba's Ministry of Science, Technology, and Environment have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and Strategic Partnership on the development and use of irradiation technologies. Areas of cooperation include a project to develop a multi-purpose training centre based on a gamma-radiation facility in the Mariel Special Economic Development Zone. Rusatom Service has signed a trilateral MoU on cooperation in the field of nuclear infrastructure and personnel training with JSC VPO ZAES and DEKRA Finland Oy, and another with VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd and Saanio&Riekkola Oy. Rusatom Service provides services for the maintenance and repair of nuclear power plants that operate VVER-type reactors outside Russia.
An MoU signed between the Rusatom International Network and the Association of the Hungarian Atomic Forum concerns the Paks II nuclear power plant construction project in Hungary. It aims to strengthen Russian-Hungarian relations through the exchange of information and cooperation in sourcing local expertise for the Paks II project.
Rusatom Healthcare and Shar Parto Iranian have signed an agreement to create a network of irradiation centres in Iran. The facilities, equipped with electron accelerators and gamma ray units, will be used to provide commercial services to sterilize pharmaceutical, cosmetic and medical products, as well as food products.
Rosatom's engineering division, Atomenergomash, has signed an MoU with the Italian mechanical engineering and critical process equipment manufacturing company Belleli Energy CPE. The document covers the engineering, manufacturing and supply of critical process equipment primarily for oil and gas markets in Russia and abroad.
Science and Innovations, another Rosatom subsidiary, and the National Nuclear Centre of Kazakhstan have signed a memorandum on scientific and technical cooperation, including improving the safety of nuclear reactors, creating and improving the characteristics of reactor fuel, testing of fuel for research reactors, and the exchange of scientific and technical information.
Rosatom MENA, Rosatom's regional centre for the Middle East and North Africa, and Saudi Arabia-based Sumou Holding Company have signed an MoU covering the infrastructure security systems, construction, isotope and wind turbine sectors in Saudi Arabia.
Rusatom International Network and IDOM Consulting, Engineering, Architecture of Spain have signed an MoU on expanding their collaboration in the maintenance and modernisation of nuclear power plants, as well as the service and construction of nuclear research facilities, nuclear fuel cycle at back-end stage, decommissioning, and the supply of Rosatom equipment for nuclear and thermal power plants.
Rosatom and the Ministry of Water Resources, Irrigation and Electric Power of Sudan have signed a Memorandum on Cooperation in nuclear personnel training and an agreement on fostering positive public opinion towards nuclear energy in Sudan.
Rosatom and the Serbian government have signed a document on the principles of Russian-Serbian cooperation in the field of innovation and technological development with the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.
Rosatom and Zambia have signed a general contract for the construction of a Centre for Nuclear Science and Technology aimed at ensuring a wide application of radiation technologies in medicine, industry and agriculture.

Российское Министерство образования и науки разделено на два ведомства: Министерство просвещения, отвечающее за начальное и среднее образование (в том числе профессиональное), и Министерство науки и высшего образования. Возглавит последнее Михаил Котюков, бывший глава упраздненного Федерального агентства научных организаций (ФАНО). Функции ФАНО также переходят к Миннауки.

In a major restructuring, the Russian government has decided to split its Ministry of Education and Science here into two new departments: the Ministry of Education, responsible for primary and secondary education, and a new, separate Ministry for Science and Higher Education.
Heading the latter will be Mikhail Kotyukov, a former head of the controversial Federal Agency for Scientific Organizations (FASO), which until now managed property and real estate of research institutions within the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), and effectively had control over the academy. Relations between the scientific community and FASO - which will be eliminated and become part of the new ministry - have at times been tense.
The current minister of education and science, Olga Vasilyeva, will head the new education ministry. A historian who joined the government in 2016, Vasilyeva has gained notoriety as an admirer of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev submitted a list of new ministers today to recently re-elected President Vladimir Putin, who approved and signed it. The new structure was proposed and approved earlier this week.
Kotyukov, who has a background in finance, has headed FASO since its creation in the fall of 2013. The agency was established as part of a broad and controversial reform of RAS and given control over academy property, a move widely seen as a power grab by the Russian government. "It's not that there are bad guys sitting [in FASO] who dream of choking the life out of science in Russia," Lev Zeleny, vice president of RAS and head of the RAS Institute for Space Research here, told Science in 2016. "They do what the law entitles them to do. It is this mean law that is the main cause of today's troubles of the Russian science, the law that draws a line between RAS's management center and its competence center, that makes this whole structure unviable and only plays one off against the other."
In 2016, about 150 RAS members and professors wrote an open letter asking Putin to tackle the problems created by the 2013 reforms, which they said had harmed Russian science. But FASO's role hasn't changed. Although some academicians have suggested that the agency should be incorporated in RAS, it will now be absorbed into the new science ministry. At the same time, Medvedev said this week, a newly created federal agency will supervise all educational institutions, including schools and universities.
Physicist Alexei Khokhlov, RAS academician and vice-rector of Lomonosov Moscow State University, says he welcomes the split in the department, which will allow research and education to "develop independently." Khokhlov supports the separation of universities from secondary education, because "universities make science." "This is particularly important now that Putin is focusing on the country's innovative development," he says. In a decree issued after his 7 May inauguration, Putin ordered the creation of 15 world-class centers for research and education.

Экспедиция Института археологии РАН при раскопках некрополя V века до н. э. на Таманском полуострове обнаружила греческий бронзовый шлем коринфского типа. Это первая и пока единственная подобная находка на территории Северного Причерноморья.

Une vaste nécropole située dans la péninsule de Taman, au nord de la mer Noire, a livré les vestiges d'un casque grec antique.
L'homme était étendu, avec près de lui déposé, souvenir de batailles, son beau casque de bronze… C'est en effet un casque dit corinthien qui a été exhumé d'une sépulture du V^e siècle avant notre ère, au sud-ouest de la Russie, a rapporté l'agence RIA Novosti. Mis au jour dans la péninsule de Taman ; il est le seul exemplaire d'un tel casque trouvé au nord de la mer Noire.
Corrodé par 2500 ans de séjour dans le sol, et donc fortement fragmenté, sa découverte n'en demeure pas moins spectaculaire. Fabriqué à partir d'une tôle de bronze, la calotte des casques corinthiens se prolongeait d'une seule pièce par un nasal, des couvre-joues (paragnathides) très saillants et un couvre-nuque. A l'intérieur, un rembourrage en tissu ou en cuir protégeait le crâne du guerrier. Souvent leur sommet était surmonté d'un cimier (lophos) à panache de crin. Hautement protecteurs car totalement enveloppant, ces casques représentaient une pièce essentielle de l'équipement des hoplites grecs, les célèbres fantassins des phalanges.
A la mort des combattants, il pouvait être enterré auprès d'eux. Selon Roman Mimohod, directeur de l'expédition de l'Institut d'archéologie de l'Académie des sciences de Russie (IA RAS), « le casque de la péninsule de Taman appartiendrait au groupe corinthien de type Hermione et remonterait au premier quart du V^e siècle avant notre ère ». Apparu en Grèce aux environs du VI^e siècle avant notre ère, ces éléments d'armure constituent un des symboles de la Grèce antique. La déesse Athena ou encore Péricles, en sont fréquemment coiffés.
Les archéologues de l'académie des sciences de Russie travaillent depuis deux ans dans une nécropole de 600 tumuli où seraient inhumés de nombreux guerriers grecs du royaume du Bosphore (lire encadré). Plusieurs colonies grecques étaient en effet présentes dans cette région. Leur établissement s'étend de la fin du VII^e siècle av. J-C jusqu'au deuxième quart du IV^e siècle av. J.C. « Ces implantations étaient en contact très étroit avec les habitants Scythes de la steppe », déclare l'historien Iaroslav Lebedynsky, spécialiste de ces anciennes cultures eurasiatiques.
Même si Strabon rappelle qu'à l'origine les Grecs avaient repoussé les Scythes pour installer leurs colonies. A partir du VI^e siècle av. J.C, les Grecs ont fondé de grandes villes sur la côte septentrionale de la mer Noire, du côté du Pont-Euxin. Les principales étaient Olbia, à l'embouchure du Dniepr ; Panticapée (« Le chemin du poisson »), l'actuelle Kertch, à l'extrême ouest de la Crimée, et Chersonèse (Sébastopol) ; sur la rive russe, on trouvait Phanagorie (Taman), également le nom donné à la presqu'île sur laquelle a été découvert le casque corinthien.
Le royaume du Bosphore
Créé en 480 av. J.-C. autour du détroit de Kertch et de la péninsule de Taman, à l'ouest du Bosphore, ce royaume qui avait Panticapée pour capitale a duré près de… mille ans, les dernières traces écrites remontant au V^e siècle de notre ère. Un lieu de synthèse entre la culture grecque et les cultures nomades successives de la steppe, qu'il s'agisse des Scythes ou des Sarmates. Entre le VI^e siècle et le III^e siècle avant notre ère, Grecs et Scythes ont entretenu des rapports culturels autant que commerciaux extrêmement étroits.

Обнаруженная астрономом-любителем в рамках проекта Kourovka Planet Search (KPS) экзопланета оказалась по своим характеристикам похожа на Юпитер. Международный проект на базе Коуровской астрономической обсерватории Уральского федерального университета объединяет в сеть несколько десятков профессиональных и любительских телескопов по всему миру, его цель - поиск планет за пределами Солнечной системы.

An amateur astronomer have discovered a new 'hot Jupiter' - an exoplanet that orbits a star similar to our Sun with a period of 40 hours.
The planet was first spotted by the Kourovka Planet Search (KPS) project in Russia. The mass and size of the exoplanet known as KPS-1b are close to the characteristics of Jupiter, but it is located very close to its parent star. Due to such proximity to the star, the temperature of the atmosphere KPS-1b is much higher than that of Jupiter.
Software for analysing data and searching exoplanet candidates was developed at Ural Federal University in Russia. Subsequent observations of exoplanets candidates were conducted in a number of observatories around the world including the Special Astrophysical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Spectral observations, which allowed calculating the mass of the exoplanet, were conducted at Haute-Provence Observatory (France). According to the researchers, the current discovery is unique due to the fact that signs of exoplanet existence were found in the data gathered by an amateur astronomer using readily available and relatively affordable equipment. The discovery was made in collaboration with astronomers from Belgium, the US, England, France, the Netherlands, Turkey, Portugal, Lithuania, Italy and Canada.
The search for new exoplanets, as well as detailed studies of already known extrasolar planets, allow scientists to come closer to understanding how our solar system was formed and evolved.

Ни одна страна в мире, при всем ее желании, не может считаться центром крипторазработок - биткойн был создан как виртуальная валюта, не привязанная ни к какому государству. Тем не менее, больше всего в этой сфере российских программистов, а почти половина проектов на рынке первоначальных предложений монет (ICO) имеет российское происхождение. Каковы причины?

No country can claim to be at the center of the crypto world, though many would like to. Bitcoin, after all, was designed to be a stateless digital currency. Ethereum's deepest thinkers are a roving band of Airbnb-surfing programmers scattered around the world.
But even if there's no central hub for crypto development, Russian programmers have an outsize presence in the world of virtual assets. In particular, they are deeply involved in markets for initial coin offerings (ICOs), which allow firms to raise money in exchange for digital tokens. Some optimists in the industry think ICOs could one day challenge venture capital as a means for startups to raise money, but in the meantime they are more like crowdfunding campaigns on steroids, with few rules and a distinct lack of regulatory oversight.
Around the world, Russian accents are commonplace at ICO pitch competitions, where the people behind projects seeking financing try to entice investors. But their influence isn't immediately obvious in the numbers: The US, Singapore, Switzerland, and UK are leaders when it comes to ICO money raised. The same is true when measured by the locations where projects are registered.
But when you look at where the CEO or founder of ICO-seeking projects is based, Moscow came out on top last year, according to venture capital firm Atomico.
Tech professionals point out that Russia is rich in programming, mathematics, and cryptography talent, in part a legacy of the Soviet era when science and physics education was prioritized. The USSR still ranks second, behind China, in International Mathematical Olympiad wins, even though it sent its last team in 1991.
After the Soviet Union collapsed, there were masses of scientists but few science jobs available. Technology startups were a way out for some people, according to a BBC report. Computers weren't widely available until relatively recently, and a person able to control and operate digital systems became something of a hero. At the same time, tech firms require little capital to get started and, amid ongoing sanctions, it remains an easier way to sell products or services abroad.
Intellectual capital
Crypto innovation is coming out of Russia because it has some of the best intellectual capital in the world, said Oliver Hughes, chairman of Tinkoff Bank, a digital lender based in Moscow. Even Sberbank, Russia's biggest bank, behaves like a fintech firm, he said. Sberbank reportedly has more than 11,000 developers, which is more than all the employees at Snap, Square, and Twitter combined.
The sheer number of software engineers is part of the story behind the proliferation of crypto in Russia, but it doesn't explain everything. Germany, the UK, and France each have more professional developers than Russia, according to Atomico. The Netherlands has many more developers on a per-capita basis.
Funding is likely part of the reason. Russia has technologists, but access to venture capital is limited. ICOs, meanwhile, have been a way to raise piles of cash quickly. Blockchain companies raked in more than $4 billion via ICOs last year, more than four times what was raised via venture capital, according to technology advisory and investment firm GP Bullhound.
ICOs are a convenient way to raise money without going through banks, said Olga Smirnova, chief operating officer at DigRate, which provides ratings for ICOs. She said there are hundreds of conferences in Russia about token offerings; she recalled once going to the wrong event because there were two separate ICO conferences in the same building, on the same day.
And then there's the weak economy (paywall) and anemic income growth, which may be driving some Russians into crypto, whether to work on projects or speculate on tokens.
A complicated relationship
Egor Lavrov, chief creative officer for Paragon Coin, a cannabis industry project, visited Moscow recently and said everyone was talking about ICOs and bitcoin. He said even his Wheely driver (an Uber competitor) asked him whether he should invest in ripple, a particularly volatile crypto asset: "They hear stories about people getting rich."
Paragon, meanwhile, is the target of a potential US class action lawsuit, which says it may have sold unregistered securities when it raised $70 million from investors in an ICO. Paragon said in a statement that it is "dedicated to staying compliant with all applicable laws, and endeavored to do so throughout the entire ICO process." Lavrov, who was born in Moscow but has lived much of his life in the US, said Paragon has 15 employees in Ukraine.
The Russian government has a complicated relationship with crypto. Last year, a Russian spy reportedly boasted that blockchain will "belong" to the Russian Federation.
Blockchain is the ledger of transactions behind bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Rather than relying on some central entity or database, computers on the blockchain network each have their own copy of the ledger and check and update transactions to maintain its fidelity. Transactions can only be made by users who have cryptographic keys. Away from cryptocurrencies, it has promise in everything from making anonymous payments to streamlining back-office financial operations. Blockchain technology's biggest boosters see it as a way to make traditional banking obsolete.
ICOs are an offshoot that uses similar technology - projects can issue cryptographically secured tokens in exchange for money to fund an endeavor. But many of these enterprises are fraudulent, and the risk of manipulation in the trading of tokens is high.
There are fears that the Kremlin is trying to influence the blockchain and cryptography standards in a way that allows the state to undermine it - perhaps resembling the way the US is suspected to have installed its own cryptographic backdoors. The media reports quoting Russian spies holding forth on blockchain are odd, however, given that spies aren't supposed to brag about state plans.
Russian president Vladimir Putin has said the country needs to accelerate its digital economic strategy, and he briefly met in June with Vitalik Buterin, the Canadian-Russian creator of ethereum, which provides the distributed computing for many ICOs. Putin's government has also considered developing its own cryptocurrency (paywall), reportedly in hopes that it could help skirt tightening international sanctions.
But a few months after Putin's meeting with Buterin, the government cracked down hard on crypto, at least for the private sector. Putin criticized bitcoin, saying it's used by criminals, and the central bank began deliberations over blocking websites that deal in digital assets. Sergey Shvetsov, first deputy chairman of Russia's central bank, said these currencies have "signs of a financial pyramid." Officials may have softened their approach somewhat since, though regulations are still pending.
Reason to be wary
For Russia's financial authorities, there's good reason to be wary. Millions of citizens had their savings shredded by a massive Ponzi scheme after the USSR collapsed, when most Russians had no idea what a legitimate investment ought to look like. Half of the $300 million raised by ICOs in Russia in 2017 went into pyramid schemes, according to Russian newspaper Izvestia, citing the Russian Association of Cryptocurrency and Blockchain.
While crypto is a global mania, Russia comes to it with legions of enthusiastic technology experts and, like the rest of the world, more than a whiff of fraud and criminality. It's mixed with a broader public that was financially naive and poorly protected by regulators amid economic hardship in the past. Although every government is trying to figure out ways to protect investors, weed out the scammers, and still encourage innovation, this challenge is particularly acute in Russia.

Останки древнего человека возрастом 50 тыс. лет, обнаруженные в Тункинской долине в Бурятии в 2016 г. могут принадлежать представителю Homo sapiens. Если это подтвердится, ученые смогут ответить на вопрос, кто жил в Сибири 50 тыс. лет назад: люди современного типа, неандертальцы или вовсе неизвестный еще науке вид.

Bones unearthed in eastern Siberia could be the oldest modern humans outside Africa and the Middle East. The discovery would change thinking about the arrival of man in Siberia. Some of the recovered bones - dated to about 50,000 years ago - are still undergoing tests to identify them, while others have been dated to about 30,000 years ago, and identified as Homo sapiens.
The finds of 'lion-hunting ancient man' were discovered during the construction of a new road near Lake Baikal in the Russian republic of Buryatia, Siberia and have been undergoing tests at Germany's Max Planck Institute. The discovery was made in the Tunkinskaya Valley by Irkutsk scientists in 2016.
If the older bones are verified as being Homo sapiens, it will alter scientific thinking about the arrival of man in Siberia and these will be the oldest bones found in Northern Eurasia. However, further tests are needed to confirm whether the older bones are also Homo sapiens or another human species, such as Neanderthal.
The younger bones were found alongside tools and animal bones indicating these ancients were proficient hunters of cave lions, bison, horses and deer.
Dr Evgeniy Rogovskoi, senior researcher at the Institute of Archeology and Ethnography at the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said: "The bones were found in 2016 during rescue archaeological works near the Buryatian village of Tunka. Work on constructing a new road was about to start, so archaeologists rushed here to see if they could take any material from the site…The bones were found within half a meter of the surface. We have introduced them to the scientific community only now, two years after the find, because we have been waiting for test results on them. There were two set of bones, one was dated as 27,000 to 30,000 years old, the other as 50,000 years old."
The younger bones have been confirmed as 'modern-type' humans - Homo sapiens. The older ones are still undergoing tests to establish whether they are Homo sapiens, or Neanderthal or another pre-human group.
The researchers say that if they are prehistoric Home sapiens remains, these will be the oldest found in northern Eurasia.
"More ancient bones were found (here), but these were not Homo sapiens," said Dr Rogovskoi.
A large arsenal of bone knives was also found at the site, indicating the owners must have been practiced hunters. Some of the sharp tools found at the site used semi-precious topaz and rock crystal. An amulet was made of a cave lion tooth.
Dr Mikhail Shunkov, the institute's director, said: "It is hard to over-estimate the importance of the find. During the last several decades, the way experts see development of human evolution in southern Siberia has been changing quite drastically. The most important question now is when Homo Sapiens appeared in Siberia, and the Tunka valley finds will allow scientists to shed light on it."
Older Homo sapiens remains have been found in Morocco dating back 300,000 years, it was announced last year.
And in a cave in Israel, a jawbone is believed to be of Homo sapiens origin. It has been dated to almost 200,000 years old, twice the age of any previous discovery outside Africa where our species is believed to have originated.

22-24 мая в Москве прошел II ежегодный саммит QS Worldwide - одно из важнейших международных мероприятий, ориентированных на повышение конкурентоспособности вузов. Организаторами выступили Российской университет дружбы народов и британская консалтинговая компания QS (Quacquarelli Symonds), ежегодно составляющая рейтинг лучших университетов мира. По мнению экспертов компании QS, российские университеты готовы к тому, чтобы выйти на мировой образовательный рынок.

Russian universities are poised to emerge from decades of relative obscurity and become a new force in international higher education, experts in international ranking say at a QS global summit in Moscow on achieving university excellence.
Increasing research publication in English, government support for greater academic freedom and international links and the emergence of an influential lobby group - Russia's 5-100 - are opening up the "hidden gems" of Russian higher education, Nunzio Quacquarelli, CEO and founder of London-based international ranking firm QS, says.
"There are all sorts of pockets of excellence that are not always known internationally - and the tendency of Russian academics not to publish in English has been a factor holding back the international development of Russian higher education," he told University World News.
"Now the Russian government wants Russian universities to be globally recognised - and I would say that this internationalisation process is almost inevitable."
Speaking at the QS Worldwide Second Annual Strategic Summit for the Advancement of University Excellence, hosted by Moscow's Peoples' Friendship University of Russia (RUDN), Quacquarelli added that a sharp increase in the use of English by Russian academics and university staff was driving an increase in publication of Russian research in international journals. That process would feed into international rankings and increase the visibility of Russian higher education.
"I suspect there will also be an increase in the interest of international students in high-quality higher education opportunities at low costs," he said, adding that, "Russia has hidden gems in higher education… Under communism and later, knowledge was developed and maintained as a domestic good not to be shared - nuclear engineering, metals, alloys, oil and gas… Russia has some of the leading research in the world and its academy of sciences has always been a centre of excellence."
Mandy Mok, CEO of QS Branding and Conferences, QS Asia, said: "Russia is home to many fine universities that deserve a much higher profile internationally. Higher education is experiencing rapid change - one of the largest in the past 10-15 has been the rise of Asian universities in global rankings and the next 10-15 years may well be marked by the rise of Russian and Central [Asian] universities."
Vladimir Filippov, rector of RUDN in Moscow, echoed such comments in an opening address at the conference on Tuesday.
A popular and influential figure in Russian academia, Filippov, who served as a minister of education for more than six years, has long headed the university, founded in 1960, steering it through the tumultuous changes in Russia since the 1990s. Speaking in English, he told 450 delegates from more than 27 countries, representing 1,128 higher education institutions, that Russian government backing would ensure greater visibility for Russian higher education worldwide in the coming years. "The development of the export potential of the Russian education system is now an [official government] aim - and that includes the promotion of Russian education as a brand in the international market," he said. As the only 'multi-profile' university in Russia - embracing everything from the humanities to science, technology and engineering - RUDN attracts students from more than 150 countries worldwide under a mission statement that reads "uniting people of different cultures by knowledge [to] create world leaders", he added.
In line with the new national priority on developing Russian higher education as a global brand, RUDN was aiming to double the number of foreign teachers over the next two years from 4.5% of faculty to 10.2% and double the number of international students on, for example, lifelong learning programmes from 2,000 today.
As part of the drive to broaden the reach of Russian higher education, the university has signed cooperation agreements with more than 250 universities worldwide, Filippov said. "We are expanding RUDN regional clusters in Asia, Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and North Africa and the countries of the CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States]. Engaging with other universities and governments and working with employment associations to increase employability of graduates" is core to the university's international mission, he added.
Filippov told University World News that recent ministerial reforms - separating off responsibility for universities from the general education ministry to a new higher education and science ministry - would help speed up Russia's new drive to connect to the wider world of higher education.
"I am sure the creation of a new ministry will help leading Russian universities to advance in the rankings," he said.
"Russian education is becoming more open - in the 1990s students from 100 countries studied at RUDN, today that figure is 155 and 38% of our students are from overseas. Currently Russia provides scholarships for 150,000 foreign students and there are plans to make Russian education even more open to the world with as many as 700,000 foreign students studying in Russia by 2025."

Ученые из Института ИТМО и Всероссийского научно-исследовательского геологического института им. А.П.Карпинского разработали способ поиска месторождений нефти с помощью беспилотных летательных аппаратов. Специальный датчик анализирует состав атмосферы, определяя вещества, указывающие на наличие месторождения.

Russian scientists have developed a method of searching for oilfields with the help of drones, through a special sensor (a kind of "artificial nose") installed. It analyzes the composition of the atmosphere around the earth's surface. The new method was invented by specialists of the All-Russian Research Institute of Geology and the St Petersburg National Research University of Information Technology, Mechanics and Optics.
The droned laser-optical complex recognizes the presence of substances in the atmosphere that are a sign of a locality. These are, for example, gases of saturated hydrocarbons such as methane, ethane, propane, butane and pentane. The geologists receive a map of the concentration of the gases. If it is exceeded, oil can be found at the site.
Initially, the apparatus was developed to search for explosives in anti-terrorist operations. It is very accurate and captures the smallest traces. Scientists then added an additional indicator of hydrocarbon search. Currently, Russian oil and gas companies use drones to detect leakages in pipelines but not to search for deposits.
The UAV will make the project more cost-effective, as well as more environmentally friendly and safer for operators. The scientists say the laser technology will not replace traditional oil search methods, but will complement them. In combination with seismological studies, the credibility of the new method increases to 80%. The method also has drawbacks, for example, a lot of disturbances due to non-oil fields - for example, gaseous gas.
According to experts, traditional research will be leading in the future, but the new method may provide additional arguments for choosing drilling grounds.

Российский физик-теоретик Александр Березин (МИЭТ) предложил свое решение парадокса Ферми (отсутствие во Вселенной следов существования инопланетных цивилизаций). Идея состоит в том, что даже если инопланетяне существуют, жители Земли - единственные, кто продвинулся достаточно далеко в освоении космоса и будет продвигаться дальше. Кроме того, первая цивилизация, вышедшая за пределы своей звездной системы, начнет поглощать столько ресурсов, что уничтожит - возможно, случайно, просто «не заметив» - другие, менее развитые цивилизации.

The Universe is so unimaginably big, and it's positively teeming with an almost infinite supply of potentially life-giving worlds. So where the heck is everybody?
At its heart, this is what's called the Fermi Paradox: the perplexing scientific anomaly that despite there being billions of stars in our Milky Way galaxy - let alone outside it - we've never encountered any signs of an advanced alien civilisation, and why not?
It's a decent question, and one that generations of scientists and thinkers have grappled with since the paradox was formulated decades ago. Some suggest aliens might be hibernating, or that something mysterious is preventing their evolution from taking place. Or maybe they just don't want anything to do with us?
Now, theoretical physicist Alexander Berezin from the National Research University of Electronic Technology (MIET) in Russia has devised his own explanation for why we're seemingly alone in the Universe, proposing what he calls his "First in, last out" solution to the Fermi Paradox.
According to Berezin's pre-print paper, which hasn't as yet been reviewed by other scientists, the paradox has a "trivial solution, requiring no controversial assumptions" but may prove "hard to accept, as it predicts a future for our own civilisation that is even worse than extinction". As Berezin sees it, the problem with some proposed solutions to the Fermi Paradox is they define alien life too narrowly. "The specific nature of civilisations arising to interstellar level should not matter," he writes. "They might [be] biological organisms like ourselves, rogue AIs that rebelled against their creators, or distributed planet-scale minds like those described by Stanislaw Lem in Solaris."
Of course, even with such a wide scope, we're still not seeing evidence of these things out there in the cosmos. But for the purposes of solving the paradox, Berezin says the only parameter we should concern ourselves with - in terms of defining extraterrestrial life - is the physical threshold at which we can observe its existence.
"The only variable we can objectively measure is the probability of life becoming detectable from outer space within a certain range from Earth," Berezin explains. "For simplicity let us call it 'parameter A'."
If an alien civilisation doesn't somehow reach parameter A - whether by developing interstellar travel, broadcasting communications across space, or by other means - it might still exist, but not help us solve the paradox.
The actual "First in, last out" solution Berezin proposes is a grimmer scenario.
"What if the first life that reaches interstellar travel capability necessarily eradicates all competition to fuel its own expansion?" he hypothesises.
As Berezin explains, this doesn't necessarily mean a highly developed extra-terrestrial civilisation would consciously wipe out other lifeforms - but perhaps "they simply won't notice, the same way a construction crew demolishes an anthill to build real estate because they lack incentive to protect it". So is Berezin suggesting that we are the ants, and the reason we haven't encountered aliens is because we simply haven't had our own civilisation unthinkingly demolished by such unimaginably superior life forms yet?
No. Because we are probably not the ants, but the future destroyers of the very worlds we've been looking for this whole time.
"Assuming the hypothesis above is correct, what does it mean for our future?" Berezin writes. "The only explanation is the invocation of the anthropic principle. We are the first to arrive at the [interstellar] stage. And, most likely, will be the last to leave."
Again, such potential destruction wouldn't need to be wilfully designed or orchestrated - it could just play out like a completely unrestricted system, bigger than any individual's attempts to control it.
One example Berezin gives is free market capitalism, and another could be the dangers of an artificial intelligence (AI) untethered by constraints on its accumulation of power.
"One rogue AI can potentially populate the entire supercluster with copies of itself, turning every solar system into a supercomputer, and there is no use asking why it would do that," Berezin writes. "All that matters is that it can."
It's a pretty terrifying outlook on Fermi - basically, we may be the winners of a deadly race we didn't even know we were competing in, or as Andrew Masterson at Cosmos put it, "we are the paradox resolution made manifest".
Even Berezin admits he hopes he is wrong about this, and it's worth noting that many other scientists have much more optimistic views about when we can expect to hear from advanced alien life.
But the physicist's views are just the latest scientific statement of why we may be destined to gaze at the stars alone in time and space, much as we might wish it were otherwise.

Статья о Николае Федоровиче Федорове (1829-1903), русском мыслителе, ученом, философе-футурологе и педагоге, чьи идеи оказали влияние на многих ученых, философов и писателей. «Идеальный библиотекарь», прослуживший 25 лет в библиотеке Московского публичного и Румянцевского музеев, он также внес большой вклад в развитие отечественного библиотековедения и книговедения.

The elderly librarian was a staple at the Rumyantsev Museum and public library in pre-Revolutionary Moscow. With a long white beard growing from his weathered face, he looked almost as old as the ancient artworks and tomes that he shuffled about each day. He was a quiet, humble, and deeply pious man who spoke softly. His demeanor was so unobtrusive that he appeared to seamlessly blend into the Rumyantsev's austere neoclassical architecture. But like the books he dedicated his life to tending, this man was a silent wealth of knowledge, full of groundbreaking ideas that would influence scientists, philosophers, and writers for years to come.
This librarian's name was Nikolai Fedorov. He lived from 1829 to 1903 and was one of the most ambitious and quietly influential thinkers in Russian history. His philosophy, which is classified today as "Russian cosmism," explores ideas of space travel and scientifically-engineered immortality through the lens of Christian mysticism. Though his writings were repressed by Stalin in the 1930s, Federov was highly influential to the Russian space program. One of his students was the astrophysicist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, who is widely considered to be the father of spaceflight for the groundbreaking equations he developed.
Federov was the illegitimate child of a prince and a noblewoman. Fedorov, his mother, and his siblings were forced out of his family home after his father's death when Nikolai was only four. In spite of this embarrassment, the family remained relatively wealthy. In 1868, he became the librarian at the Rumyantsev Museum, the first public museum and library in Russia, where he worked for 25 years. It was during this period that he became the teacher and mentor of Tsiolkovsky. His works were compiled and published posthumously in 1903 under the name The Philosophy of the Common Task. Fedorov never copyrighted his works and insisted that they should be available to the public free of charge.
Fedorov's insistence that his philosophy be highly accessible to all perhaps owed to the fact that it proposed nothing short of a new phase of human evolution. As a devout member of the Russian Orthodox Church, Fedorov was dismayed by what he saw as a rampant lack of love and compassion amongst human beings. While good will towards man is a familiar and central tenet of Christianity, Fedorov found its focus only on the living to be exclusionary. His proposed cures for the lack of love he saw between the living and the dead were ambitious to say the least: immortality and resurrection.
Using science, art, and technology, Fedorov believed that humanity's primary goal should be to create the Kingdom of Heaven. He, unlike most Christians who equate this concept with the movement of the disembodied soul to the afterlife, saw the acceptance of death as false Christianity and believed that it was every human being's duty to work towards abolishing death.
"Death is merely the result or manifestation of our infantilism […]" he wrote in The Philosophy of the Common Task. "People are still minors, half-beings whereas the fullness of personal existence, personal perfection is possible."
On top of being a daring religious philosopher, Fedorov was also an avid and highly capable student of the sciences. His propositions for a death cure were shockingly prescient, though they seemed outlandish during his lifetime. To fix what he believed was the innate "flaw" of decay, Fedorov proposed replacing human body parts with artificial organs when needed.
Today, the practice of using artificial organs, including hearts, eyes, lungs, livers, and more, is fairly commonplace and an area of intense focus for contemporary Transhumanists, who support life extension via machine augmentation. In fact, theorists such as Ray Kurzweil, author of 1999 book The Age of Spiritual Machines, propose replacing the entire body with a technological host by uploading the brain to a computer.
For Fedorov, the quest for immortality required all of humanity to unite against the universal enemy of death. He was convinced that immortality would act as a panacea for all of humanity's greatest struggles, including war, poverty, and disease.
But The Philosophy of the Common Task stipulates that immortality for the living is impossible without the resurrection of the dead. In order to accomplish this, Fedorov proposed that humanity should assemble expeditions to fly out into the cosmos in search of particles belonging to their long-dead ancestors. He also suggested that dead tissue, specifically the tissue of the deceased ancestors, could be used to somehow revive them, effectively arriving at the idea of cloning without having any knowledge of DNA structure.
In order to make room for all the billions of resurrected dead and immortals, Fedorov envisioned the human race colonizing the galaxy, making homes for the returned on larger planets such as Jupiter. This idea clearly influenced Tsiolkovsky, who was a lifelong supporter of space exploration and colonization, believing that it would lead to "the perfection of the human race." The sweeping beauty of Fedorov's ideas inspired early Soviet artists and writers. The paintings of the Amaravella Collective, Aleksei Tolstoi's science fiction novels, and Iakov Protazanov'a film Aelita, for example, all fused space exploration with mysticism.
"[Fedorov's] quasi-mystical ideas were in some ways deeply embedded in many of [Tsiolkovsky's] more scientific and technical writings from the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s," explains Dr. Asif Siddiqi, author of The Red Rockets' Glare: Spaceflight and the Russian Imagination, 1857-1957. "Because Tsiolkovsky's influence was monumental in the establishment of the Soviet space program, one can say that Russian cosmism was also an important part of the puzzle of the history of Russian space."
Today, Fedorov's ideas continue to influence philosophers, scientists, and historians the world over, particularly in the field of Transhumanism. Both Federov and the Transhumanists believe that it is humanity's destiny to defeat death, becoming immortal either by bioengineering or technology.
Many Transhumanists find Fedorov's spiritual approach to life extension and space exploration deeply inspiring. Take for example Giulio Prisco, founder of the Turing Church, a "meta-religion" dedicating to finding the intersection between spiritual beliefs, science, and technology. "In particular, cosmism is open to the possibility that future science and technology might be able to resurrect the dead from the past, and to the idea that our universe might be, for want of a better word, a simulation," says Prisco. "These ideas are, like it or not, both compatible with science and totally indistinguishable from religion. Many Transhumanists, who tried to kick religion out through the back door of superstition, are now finding that religion is coming back to them through the main door of science."
Cosmism's popularity in the early decades of the Soviet Union was crushed under Stalin's regime. On top of their spiritual approach to science and technology, which ran directly counter to Stalin's atheistic vision of Soviet Russia, many cosmists were publically supportive of his rival Leon Trotsky. As a result, the vast majority of Cosmists were jailed, sent to labor camps, silenced, or executed after Stalin's victory. By the early 1960s, when the Soviet space program was in full swing and cosmonauts were lauded as national heroes, it seemed that cosmism's mystical influence on space exploration had been forgotten entirely. For example, one of the first cosmonauts, Gherman Titov, famously proclaimed during a visit to the United States that "no God helped build our rocket," adding that during his 17 orbits of Earth he had seen "no God or angels."
But in spite of its suppression, cosmism lived on thanks to a few dedicated adherents who were able to save Fedorov's writings, which finally emerged from Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. Transhumanism's revisitation of Fedorov's work poetically speaks to his philosophy, mentally reviving him from the dead through a camaraderie that crosses several lifetimes.

Компания Philips и Сколковский институт науки и технологий (Сколтех) подписали соглашение о сотрудничестве в разработке передовых медицинских технологий, в частности в сфере машинного обучения и искусственного интеллекта для медицинских приложений.

Skoltech and the Russian branch of tech giant Philips formally agreed on Thursday to launch a joint research initiative in the areas of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence for healthcare applications.
The two organizations, represented by Skoltech President Alexander Kuleshov and Philips Russia/CIS General Director Maxim Kuznetsov, signed an agreement to this effect on the main stage of the Skolkovo Startup Village indicating their willingness to work together on a series of R&D projects.
The agreement highlights two image analytics projects - in particular, segmentation and image translation in major medical modalities - and two projects related to the smart analysis of medical records using natural language processing.
Maxim Fedorov, Director of the Skoltech Center for Computational and Data-Intensive Science (CDISE) said: "Skoltech has created optimal conditions for scientific development at a high level, in addition to providing training in innovation activities. The projects of our employees and students have tremendous potential for solving key scientific and technological problems in Russia and around the world. We are pleased to work with Philips as the company's medical and IT solutions are broadly recognized and utilized in the work of medical institutions around the world. Our partnership will enable Skoltech students to gain practical experience working with healthcare projects and contributing to the development of advanced medical technologies."
Maxim Kuznetov, CEW of Philips Russia, said: "Scientific cooperation and the development of digital healthcare is a priority for Philips Russia. That's why we want to attract the brightest minds from Skoltech to projects at our research laboratory at Skolkovo. This partnership with Skoltech, a world-class institute, will give a serious boost to the development of innovations in the Russian health sector. We anticipate that our cooperation will contribute to attracting, developing and regaining young talent, and will pave the way to numerous achievements in the field of medicine and healthcare."
This marks a concrete step forward following the announcement in October that Skoltech and Philips Russia planned to work together on projects at the convergence of AI and medical imaging. At the Skolkovo Open Innovations Forum, the organizations said that they planned to work together to create opportunities for Skoltech students to conduct cutting edge research in niche areas ranging from predictive modeling of health conditions to automated analyses of diagnostic images, all under the supervision of scientists and faculty members from Philips and Skoltech, respectively.
At last year's Startup Village, Philips opened a lab at the Skolkovo innovation center.
The Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech) is a private graduate research university situated on the outskirts of the Russian capital. Established in 2011 in collaboration with MIT, Skoltech cultivates a new generation of researchers and entrepreneurs, promotes advanced scientific knowledge and fosters innovative technology to address critical issues facing Russia and the world. Skoltech applies the best Russian and international research and educational practices, with particular emphasis on entrepreneurship and innovation. Skoltech's model leverages on the integration of basic and applied research and education. The Institute's close link with the industrial and business ecosystem fosters frontier research and generates a flow of innovative solutions for the benefit of the Russian economy.
Royal Philips is a leading health technology company focused on improving people's health and enabling better outcomes across the health continuum from healthy living and prevention, to diagnosis, treatment and home care. Philips leverages advanced technology and deep clinical and consumer insights to deliver integrated solutions. Headquartered in the Netherlands, the company is a leader in diagnostic imaging, image-guided therapy, patient monitoring and health informatics, as well as in consumer health and home care. Philips' health technology portfolio generated 2016 sales of EUR 17.4 billion and employs approximately 70,000 employees with sales and services in more than 100 countries. News about Philips can be found at www.philips.com/newscenter.

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