Апрель 2021 г.

Российская наука и мир (по материалам зарубежной электронной прессы)

CONTENTS / ОГЛАВЛЕНИЕ


• Russia’s COVID-19 defense may depend on mystery vaccine from former bioweapons lab - but does it work?
• Scientists develop safe, cheap technology for egg disinfection
• Fossil discovery deepens snakefly mystery
• New materials for organic redox flow batteries
• Ural Federal University: New guide to scientometrics: UrFU scientists and Clarivate present its second edition
• Des chercheurs découvrent des milliers d'orchidées sur un site de Sibérie
• Semiconductor materials will grow in Earth’s orbit
• Climate change threatens Russia with billions in annual costs
• La domestication des animaux en Asie centrale remontent à au moins 8 000 ans
• Neanderthal nuclear DNA unlocks ancient human history
• La disparition du fleuve Oural
• Russia joins China's mission to sample an asteroid and study a comet
• Russia mulls withdrawing from the International Space Station after 2024
• TPU scientists first study composition of pore waters in methane cold seep of eastern Arctic seas
• Chimie : la théorie de l'électronégativité du prix Nobel Linus Pauling a été corrigée
• NUST MISIS scientists got photons to interact, taking step towards long-living quantum memory
• Transgenic mice are heroes to save us: Novel murine model with conditional expression of the SARS-CoV-2 entry receptor
• Laser paints durable works of art
• International collaboration needed for new Russian forest code

В конце марта ГНЦ ВБ «Вектор» опубликовал в российском научном журнале данные второй фазы клинических испытаний вакцины против COVID-19 «ЭпиВакКорона». Авторы не сообщили ни о каких побочных эффектах, но и не развеяли существующие сомнения в том, что вакцина действительно защищает от коронавируса. При этом «ЭпиВакКорона» проще в производстве, чем «Спутник V» и могла бы ускорить процесс вакцинации - при условии, что ее эффективность будет подтверждена.

When the Kremlin last month said Russian President Vladimir Putin had received the first dose of a homegrown COVID-19 vaccine, a guessing game began. Had he gotten Sputnik V, which Russia had given emergency use authorization - a world first - in August 2020 after testing in just 79 patients? Or had Putin been given another COVID-19 vaccine that Russia had sanctioned with much less fanfare - and with equally sparse evidence that it works?
Putin and state officials wouldn’t say, but Russia’s second COVID-19 vaccine, known as EpiVacCorona and first authorized in October 2020, has begun to emerge from the shadow of Sputnik V, bringing controversy of its own. Developed by VECTOR, the famed State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology that once studied bioweapons and now is one of two global repositories of the eradicated smallpox virus, the vaccine is key to the country’s plans to combat the pandemic. Russia began to offer it to small numbers of people last year, plans to administer 1.5 million doses per month by this summer, and aims for a bigger national campaign.
But only in late March did VECTOR publish any clinical data on EpiVacCorona, which consists mainly of multiple protein bits, or peptides, from the pandemic coronavirus. The paper, in an obscure Russian journal, described safety tests in 14 people, and a phase 2, placebo-controlled trial in 86 people. The authors reported no safety issues and said volunteers who received vaccine produced antibodies that block SARS-CoV-2’s infectivity. But VECTOR has not reported evidence that the vaccine actually protects people from COVID-19.
Two unusual letters from some of the trial participants to the Russian health minister, the first in January calling for the phase 2 trial to be publicly unblinded and the second in March asking for a review of the vaccine, have added to the doubts. The volunteers use commercial assays to look for virus-neutralizing antibodies and say they found none. They note that VECTOR used a special test system for the antibodies that is not public. "The very fact of the publication of this paper is a convincing argument for an independent review" of the vaccine, says Russian entrepreneur Andrey Krynicki, a trial participant who organized the open letters.
Officials at VECTOR, which is under the authority of the Russian government agency in charge of pandemic response, defend the initial clinical studies and note a phase 3 efficacy trial in more than 3000 people is underway in Russia. Venezuela, which had already approved and received Sputnik V, also got a vaccine batch for its own trial.
Many COVID-19 vaccines generate an immune response to SARS-CoV-2’s spike, the protein the virus uses to latch onto and fuse with cells. EpiVacCorona consists of three synthetic fragments of spike, attached to a carrier protein, which itself is composed of synthetic fragments of the virus nucleocapsid protein, known as N. One peptide is designed to create antibodies to the spike’s receptor-binding domain, the part that hooks onto a human cell protein. The other spike peptides are meant to elicit antibodies that prevent the virus from getting into the cell. The N peptides may generate still other protective responses. VECTOR officials say the vaccine ultimately provides "three lines of defense."
The innovative peptide approach, which VECTOR also uses for an Ebola vaccine, intrigues some outside scientists. But no peptide-based vaccines have been licensed to date by the United States, Europe, or the World Health Organization (WHO). "There are several in clinical trials. This means we don’t have definitive evidence they are effective, but they do look promising," says Sarah Caddy of the Cambridge Institute for Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Disease.
Caddy adds that peptide selection is "crucial" for this type of vaccine. But Olga Matveeva, a Russian biologist who now works at a U.S. biotech and has tracked the development of EpiVacCorona, is not convinced VECTOR has chosen the best ones. "Unfortunately, last spring, when the vaccine developers at VECTOR were selecting their peptides, there was little information available on the virus and the most appropriate spike protein fragments that should be recognized by the immune system and launch an effective antiviral attack," she says.
VECTOR has said the chosen peptides vary little between strains, ensuring the vaccine will work against new variants of SARS-CoV-2, and that they were extensively tested in animals. Preclinical study results in animals are under review at a scientific journal, the center says.
Russians could use another COVID-19 vaccine to supplement Sputnik V, which despite initial uncertainties appears to be highly effective and has been authorized for use in nearly 60 countries. Although cases are not obviously surging in Russia, unlike in Europe, it has had nearly 100,000 COVID-19 deaths, by some estimates. Vaccine manufacturing is not Russia’s strong suit, however; most of the 500 million doses of Sputnik V planned for this year will reportedly be made in India.
EpiVacCorona is easier to produce than Sputnik V, which consists of adenoviruses genetically engineered to make spike protein. It could boost a national vaccination campaign, if it clearly protects against COVID-19 and is embraced by Russians. There is significant vaccine hesitancy in the country, which stems in part from an overall distrust of the government and medical research it promotes. Participants in Sputnik V’s early trials, for example, used the popular Telegram messaging app to trade information about side effects and results from commercial antibody tests widely available in Russia.
EpiVacCorona trial participants were also wary, banding together on Telegram and recruiting Alexander Chepurnov, a former head of infectious diseases at VECTOR who now works at another medical institute in Novosibirsk, to run their ministudy that looked in vain for neutralizing antibodies. Chepurnov declined to talk to Science, citing "too much politics in science today."
In a written statement, VECTOR Deputy Director Tatyana Nepomnyashchikh said the center is satisfied with the phase 1 and 2 trials, although the results are preliminary, with final data due in May. "We have also tested the sera of people vaccinated with EpiVacCorona for neutralizing activity, and it has been shown to work against both the reference strain and the British variant. We are confident in this result," Nepomnyashchikh said. She said the antibody validation test, developed by VECTOR specifically for this vaccine, is available in every Russian region where EpiVacCorona is distributed.
Svetlana Zavidova, who heads the Association of Clinical Trials Organizations in Moscow, praised the groundbreaking "citizen science" effort of volunteers, but cautioned against overinterpreting their limited results. And she doubts the protest letters will prompt an independent review.
VECTOR has not applied for an emergency use listing for EpiVacCorona from WHO or other stringent regulatory agencies, but says it will. "More than 60 private and government entities" have expressed interest in the vaccine, Nepomnyashchikh’s statement notes. For now, VECTOR says, its priority is supplying Russian domestic demand.
Russia also has a third authorized COVID-19 vaccine, made by yet another research center and consisting of inactivated coronavirus, and even less is known about it. Zavidova laments that the practice of COVID-19 vaccine authorization and rollout before phase 3 trial results has largely gone mainstream in Russia, a concern she and her organization raised last year before the Sputnik V endorsement. "We’ve essentially crossed and burned that bridge," Zavidova concludes.

Ученые Уральского федерального университета и УрО РАН разработали электронно-лучевую технологию обеззараживания поверхности куриных яиц. Доза облучения и время воздействия позволяют продезинфицировать яичную скорлупу, не влияя на физические свойства яйца. Кроме того, вылупившиеся из таких яиц цыплята меньше болеют.

Scientists have developed an inexpensive, safe technology to eliminate risks of contamination by microorganisms on packed eggs’ surface. The technology can also be used to disinfect the surface of eggs of other birds, as well as products with peels or other natural packaging (seeds, bananas, oranges).
Viruses, bacteria and fungi are common pathogens that affect the quality of eggs. The innovative technology developed by Russian researchers helps to kill bacteria, including salmonella, on eggshells. Also, it allows growing broiler chickens with strong immunity to viral diseases. Packed eggs are disinfected with 50 nanoseconds (one billionth of a second) electron beam. Disinfection takes place in plastic containers.
The small size of the accelerator makes it easy to integrate into existing lines for control and packaging of eggs in poultry farms. The description of the technology is published in Food and Bioproducts Processing.
"Disinfection of the packed eggs protects eggs from subsequent contamination during storage", said Sergey Sokovnin, a professor at Ural Federal University and Ural Branch of Russian Academy of Science. "We found out that 5 kGy is enough for disinfection. Such dose allows disinfecting containers and eggshells but does not affect the physical properties of the protein, yolk, and shell, or their composition. The size of the eggs does not matter."
Disinfection does not affect the quality of meat and the volume of chicks. So, if 63 percent of chickens hatch from ordinary eggs, then from processed ones - 64 percent. But the difference is that healthy chickens emerge from the disinfected eggs.
"86 percent of chickens from untreated eggs show signs of chronic inflammation. In chickens from irradiated eggs, this figure reached only 4 percent", said Sergey Sokovnin. "At the same time, chickens from the second group had an increased immunity to Newcastle disease. This is a bird's viral disease. It means that chickens from sterilized eggs will be less sick. And it will be possible to significantly reduce the dose of antibiotics when they are growing."
The technology also saves time for industrial manufacturers. To hatch chickens from clean eggs, take about six hours less. Instead of the usual 22-24 hours, chickens appear in 16-18 hours. This is extremely important as it reduces production costs.
"The accelerator capacity is 108 million eggs per year, which is enough for a large poultry farm", said Sergey Sokovnin. "It permits irradiation up to 40 eggs per second. The cost of irradiation of plastic packaging for 10 eggs was 1.2 Eurocents. If one technological line will operate in one shift of 250 working days a year, then the investment will be returned in five years. The main costs are staff salaries, overhead costs, equipment costs''.

Палеонтологи Брюс Арчибальд из канадского Университета Саймона Фрейзера и Владимир Макаркин из ФНЦ биоразнообразия наземной биоты Восточной Азии ДВО РАН открыли четыре новых вида ископаемых хищных насекомых верблюдок (змеиных мух). Окаменелости возрастом 52 млн лет были обнаружены в Британской Колумбии и штате Вашингтон. По мнению ученых, это странно, поскольку в то время климат в этих регионах был для верблюдок слишком теплым. Если же они были приспособлены к жизни в таких условиях, то почему потеряли эту способность?

Fossil discoveries often help answer long-standing questions about how our modern world came to be. However, sometimes they only deepen the mystery - as a recent discovery of four new species of ancient insects in British Columbia and Washington state is proving.
The fossil species, recently discovered by paleontologists Bruce Archibald of Simon Fraser University and Vladimir Makarkin of the Russian Academy of Sciences, are from a group of insects known as snakeflies, now shown to have lived in the region some 50 million years ago. The findings, published in Zootaxa, raise more questions about the evolutionary history of the distinctly elongated insects and why they live where they do today.
Snakeflies are slender, predatory insects that are native to the Northern Hemisphere and noticeably absent from tropical regions. Scientists have traditionally believed that they require cold winters to trigger development into adults, restricting them almost exclusively to regions that experience winter frost days or colder. However, the fossil sites where the ancient species were found experienced a climate that doesn't fit with this explanation.
"The average yearly climate was moderate like Vancouver or Seattle today, but importantly, with very mild winters of few or no frost days," says Archibald. "We can see this by the presence of frost intolerant plants like palms living in these forests along with more northerly plants like spruce."
The fossil sites where the ancient species were discovered span 1,000 kilometers of an ancient upland from Driftwood Canyon in northwest B.C. to the McAbee fossil site in southern B.C., and all the way to the city of Republic in northern Washington.
According to Archibald, the paleontologists found species of two families of snakeflies in these fossil sites, both of which had previously been thought to require cold winters to survive. Each family appears to have independently adapted to cold winters after these fossil species lived.
"Now we know that earlier in their evolutionary history, snakeflies were living in climates with very mild winters and so the question becomes why didn't they keep their ability to live in such regions? Why aren't snakeflies found in the tropics today?"
Pervious fossil insect discoveries in these sites have shown connections with Europe, Pacific coastal Russia, and even Australia.
Archibald emphasizes that understanding how life adapts to climate by looking deep into the past helps explain why species are distributed across the globe today, and can perhaps help foresee how further change in climate may affect that pattern.
"Such discoveries are coming out of these fossil sites all the time," says Archibald. "They're an important part of our heritage."

Российские ученые разработали новые соединения на основе триариламина и феназина для использования в качестве католитов и анолитов в органических проточных аккумуляторах. Это позволит решить основную проблему проточных батарей - малую удельную емкость. К тому же новые соединения дешевле и экологичнее, чем обычно используемые соли ванадия в серной кислоте.

Scientists in Russia have designed a whole series of new compounds that could serve as catholytes and anolytes in organic redox flow batteries. The materials promise to open up new pathways for further research, and overcome some of the challenges for organic redox flow batteries in commercial, large-scale energy storage projects.
Thanks to the potential size of the market for electric vehicles, battery research in recent years has tended to focus on innovations in lithium-ion and other related chemistries that promise to serve this market.
For the large-scale energy storage that is increasingly required to balance the intermittency of wind and solar energy, however, redox-flow batteries present an attractive opportunity. The batteries are inherently scalable, and avoid many of the issues with long-term performance, safety, and material availability associated with lithium-ion batteries. Many of the early commercial projects for redox flow batteries (RFBs) rely on vanadium, which comes with some toxicity concerns. There is, however, a long list of materials worth investigating as flow battery components, including abundant organic materials.
Among other issues, organic redox flow batteries are held back by low specific capacity. Finding new materials (and combinations of materials) with better characteristics is the simplest way to overcome this challenge, and has been the focus for a group of scientists led by Russian’s Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech). "We are working with organic redox-active materials solubilized in organic solvents (non-aqueous organic RFBs)," says Skoltech Ph.D. student Elena Romadina. "The main advantages for non-aqueous organic RFB are high cell voltage (up to 5V, versus around 1.6 V for water-based systems), a huge variety of organic redox-active molecules which could be applied, and potential operability at low temperatures, without any concern for freezing below 0 degrees C," she stated
Romadina is the lead author of two new papers exploring new organic materials for RFBs, published in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A and in Chemical Communications. The first evaluated a series of seven promising catholyte materials, and the second describes the synthesis of a phenazine-based anolyte material.
Combining the two resulted in a flow battery that achieved a high cell voltage of 2.3 V and better than 95% coulombic efficiency, as well as high capacity and good stability over 50 cycles. This battery is described further in the Chemical Communications paper.
The group notes that the poly-triarylamine materials it demonstrated as catholytes have previously shown promise as cathodes in metal-ion batteries, but had not previously been investigated in flow battery chemistries. "A new and very promising core structure was opened up for us and other scientists. Triarylamines have a stable and fully reversible redox potential, and could be easily modified, providing different redox potentials and physical properties," explains Romadina. "Moreover, we found that triarylamines-based compounds could retain their electrochemical properties even in the presence of water in organic solvent, which lowered the requirements for solvent preparation and cost."
And while these are promising developments, Skoltech notes that more work is still needed in other areas for organic RFBs to achieve commercial interest. "To make organic RFBs commercially viable, we also need research in areas such as low-cost scalable synthesis of highly soluble redox-active molecules; the development of high-performance membranes that are good ionic conductors, but inhibit cross-over of anolytes and catholytes upon charge and discharge; and the scaling of larger cell and stack level device configurations to enable grid scale energy storage," noted Skoltech Professor Keith Stevenson.

Компания Clarivate и Уральский федеральный университет представили второе издание совместной книги «Руководство по наукометрии: индикаторы развития науки и технологии», обновленное и дополненное.

Employees of the Ural Federal University and Clarivate Plc presented the second, updated and expanded edition of the popular textbook in Russian "The Guide to Scientometrics: Indicators of Science and Technology Development". The book was prepared under the editorship of Mark Akoev, head of the scientific laboratory of scientometrics of the Ural Federal University, and is intended for researchers, research leaders, university librarians and anyone interested in measuring and evaluating the development of science and technology.
"Since the first edition of the Guidelines in 2014, the use of scientometric indicators has become an integral part of Russian research management practice. The leaders of organizations began to pay more attention to the quality of publications and the development of scientific research, and not to chase a wave of publications at any cost," says Mark Akoev. "The book is very popular among researchers, heads and administrators of universities, scientific organizations and projects, employees of libraries and information centers, both in Russia and in the countries of the former Soviet Union."
The first edition included a foreword by Dr. Eugene Garfield, founder of the Scientific Information Institute (ISI)™, which is preserved in the second edition. The second edition highlights new data sources, tools and approaches to the analysis of scientific activity. A special section has been added to the manual to familiarize researchers with the method of scientometric analysis by means of "profiling" citations. This method allows you to move from a one-dimensional assessment of scientific activity for any one indicator to a multivariate analysis.
The second edition also includes an introduction prepared by experts from the Institute of Scientific Information and Russian translation of two research reports: Profiles instead of indicators and Mega-Authorship and Scientific Analytics. Both reports are dedicated to the responsible application of modern methods of scientometric analysis.
"The new edition has been revised and supplemented taking into account the numerous wishes of readers, the availability of scientometric tools, the increased level of qualifications of Russian-speaking specialists in the field of scientometrics. A common thread running through the entire publication is the idea that quantitative methods of measuring scientific results are only a supplement to the qualitative - expert assessment of the impact and effectiveness of scientific teams, "says Mark Akoev.
Order an electronic copy of the second edition of the "Guide to Scientometrics: Indicators of Science and Technology Development" at: clarivate.com/ru/book.

Сотрудники Центрального сибирского ботанического сада СО РАН опубликовали результаты наблюдений за территорией в Искитимском районе, где полтора десятка лет назад был обнаружен настоящий «заповедник» диких орхидей. Многие из обнаруженных там видов никогда прежде не встречались в Новосибирской области. Ученые настаивают на необходимости придания территории статуса охраняемой и организации ботанического заказника.

Des chercheurs viennent de publier une nouvelle étude sur une zone riche en orchidées identifiée dans la région de Novosibirsk en Sibérie. Pas moins de quatorze espèces y ont été documentées et l'une d'elles a présenté jusqu'à 5.000 spécimens.
Les orchidées forment une famille de plantes largement répandue. Quelque 28.000 espèces sont aujourd'hui répertoriées à travers le monde. Mais une grande partie d'entre elles se rencontrent dans les régions tropicales. C'est ainsi en Colombie que l'on retrouve le plus d'orchidées avec quelque 4.200 espèces dont plus d'un millier sont endémiques.
Dans les zone boréales, en revanche, ces végétaux se font un peu plus rares. En France métropolitaine, par exemple, moins d'une vingtaine d'espèces sont observées. Ceci ne veut toutefois pas dire que l'hémisphère nord est totalement dépourvu de hotspot (en français, "point chaud") d'orchidées.
C'est ce que démontre l'étude publiée dans la revue Acta Biologica Sibirica par des chercheurs russes. Ces derniers ont mené plusieurs années de recherche dans la région de Novosibirsk en Sibérie et ils y ont mis en évidence un nombre inattendu d'orchidées dont certaines n'avaient jamais été documentées dans la zone.
Un "sanctuaire" sibérien d'orchidées
La découverte de l'endroit remonte à il y a quinze ans. C'est un professeur de biologie local, Yuri Panov, qui a identifié pour la première fois une surface de 40 hectares où il a trouvé pas moins de 13 espèces d'orchidées. Il a décrit le lieu comme un "orchid zapovednik", un terme qui désigne une sorte de sanctuaire naturel.
Les années suivantes, le professeur a continué de se rendre sur le site, avec ses élèves, afin de l'étudier et d'en prendre soin. En 2014, un feu déclenché par des fermiers voisins s'est propagé et a causé d'importantes destructions sur la végétation de la zone. Ceci a poussé Yuri Panov à inviter des spécialistes pour mener une étude plus approfondie du territoire.
En 2018, Lyudmila Gerasimovich, une spécialiste des orchidées, a établi la première description scientifique de ce zapovednik. Elle y a répertorié un total de treize espèces. Grâce à leur étude de terrain menée entre 2017 et 2019, Alexander Dubynin du Central Siberian Botanical Garden et ses collègues sont allés plus loin.
A partir de leurs observations analysées à l'aide de la plateforme iNaturalist, ils ont identifié quatorze espèces dont certaines n'avaient pas encore été signalées. Ils ont également mis en évidence de nouvelles populations étendues sur une surface totale de quelque 300 hectares. Des populations qui sont apparues particulièrement grandes.
Des milliers d'orchidées
Les chercheurs ont ainsi observé jusqu'à 5.000 spécimens d'une espèce appelée sabot de Vénus à grandes fleurs ou Cypripedium macranthos. Il s'agirait selon eux de l'une des plus grandes populations connues dans le nord de l'Eurasie. Une autre espèce, Cypripedium × ventricosum, pourtant assez rare est aussi apparue relativement nombreuse.
Ajouté à cela, l'équipe a découvert quelques formes inhabituelles d'orchidées présentant des caractéristiques des genres Gymnadenia, Platanthera et Dactylorhiza. Des analyses plus approfondies sont nécessaires, les spécialistes pensent qu'il pourrait s'agir de spécimens hybrides.
Selon Alexander Dubynin et ses collègues, ces recherches confirment la grande richesse de l'endroit. "Près de la moitié des espèces d'orchidées connues dans la région de Novosibirsk ont été détectées dans les limites de cette zone", écrivent-ils dans leur rapport. Cette dernière "est unique dans la région mais a aussi une importance nationale pour la Russie".
Classer pour mieux protéger
Si les orchidées font partie des plantes les plus répandues et diversifiées au monde, elles figurent aussi parmi les plus menacées. Elles sont en effet particulièrement vulnérables à la destruction de leur habitat et à la transformation des écosystèmes liées aux activités humaines. Elles sont également menacées par la collecte de fleurs sauvages.
En Amérique du Nord comme en Eurasie, on enregistre un déclin des populations. Pour l'heure, les populations au sein du zapovednik semblent stables, les communautés naturelles apparaissent en bonne santé et les pressions demeurent limitées, le territoire étant "modérément utilisés".
Sur les quatorze espèces néanmoins, quatre sont classées sur la liste rouge nationale et quatre sur la liste régionale. Face à la richesse du site sibérien, les scientifiques jugent ainsi la préservation in situ insuffisante. A travers leur étude, ils appellent à classer la zone comme une Important Plant Area (IPA), en français "zone importante pour les plantes".
Ce statut permettrait de reconnaitre la richesse du site et ainsi d'accroitre la surveillance à long terme des populations d'orchidées et leur conservation.

Ученые из Института физики полупроводников им. А.В.Ржанова СО РАН проведут эксперимент по выращиванию полупроводниковых материалов на орбите Земли. В будущем это позволит восстанавливать солнечные элементы прямо в космосе.

Scientists will grow semiconductor materials in Earth’s orbit. This is necessary to restore solar cells directly in space in the future.
Scientists from the Novosibirsk Institute of Semiconductor Physics. AV Rzhanov of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IPP SB RAS) will grow semiconductor materials in Earth’s orbit. This task has been included in the long-term program of scientific and applied research on the ISS from Roscosmos.
"We got into a long-term program of scientific and applied research on the ISS. This year we must complete climatic tests, tests of vibration resistance, and also radiation resistance. After that, it is planned that an experiment will be carried out already on the ISS in the next year or two" (Alexander Latyshev, Director of IPP SB RAS).
It is better to experiment with space since a deep vacuum is available there: they are difficult to recreate on Earth.
Also, there are no working chamber walls in space, so you don’t have to spend a lot of time creating vacuum conditions there. Ultrapure conditions are required for the synthesis of semiconductor structures.
Latyshev added that in the future, the results of the experiment would make it possible to restore solar cells directly in space without complicated transportation of components from Earth.

Россия - одна из стран, наиболее уязвимых перед изменением климата. Значительная часть ее территории находится в Арктике, которая нагревается более чем в два раза быстрее, чем остальной мир. Это проявляется в таянии вечной мерзлоты и участившихся стихийных бедствиях, от сибирских лесных пожаров до наводнений на Дальнем Востоке. Наносимый ими экономический ущерб еще только предстоит оценить в полной мере.

The residents of Irkutsk, one of Russia’s coldest regions, are used to harsh winters. But when the temperature dropped to negative 60 degrees Celsius (-76 Fahrenheit) last January, even they had to submit to the elements. "Please stay at home unless absolutely necessary," Governor Igor Kobzev pleaded on Instagram.
With the cold came the heaviest snowfall in 25 years. It blanketed Siberia, the Far East and central Russia. When temperatures starting rising at the end of March, the Ministry of Emergency Situations warned that the melting snow may cause dangerous floods.
"The unstable climate system is leading to increasing extremes, to a growing number of weather anomalies, including dangerous events," said Anna Romanovskaya, director of the Moscow-based Yu. A. Izrael Institute of Global Climate and Ecology. "The direction of the trend is undeniable."
Russia is one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change. A significant part of its territory is in the Arctic, which is warming more than twice as fast as the rest of the world. That’s manifested in Siberia’s unusually high 2020 temperatures, two consecutive years of record wildfires and thawing permafrost - the frozen ground that covers vast swaths of the country.
President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday at a meeting of the Russian Geographical Society that the nation will keep studying the negative consequences of climate change, especially in the Arctic. Russia has several cities located behind the Polar Circle and "if permafrost continues to melt, we need to understand what to do with it," he said.
The natural disasters have caused expensive damage. Reinsurance broker Aon Benfield estimated that June floods near Russia’s border with China in 2019 cost the nation more than $460 million. In total, major catastrophes may have led to just under $1 billion of losses in Russia that year, it said.
"The heat wave in Siberia in 2020 and the corresponding widespread fires are renewed evidence of climate change," said Ernst Rauch, chief climate and geo scientist at global reinsurance provider Munich Re. "We view with concern the thawing permafrost soils, which amplify global warming by releasing methane."
Russia hasn’t developed a comprehensive system for assessing weather-related losses. Leading databases only record events with registered damage, some of the nation’s top climate scientists at its Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring, or Rosgidromet, wrote in a 2019 paper. "Data on the losses are, for the most part, only descriptive, while monetary assessments are rare."
The paper also cites confidentiality requirements and the lack of a developed insurance system as key hurdles to assessing the nation’s economic damage from natural catastrophes. The lack of data means current estimates for Russia’s annual weather-related economic damage by insurers, researchers and governmental bodies vary greatly.
Munich Re, which been gathering estimates of losses caused by natural disasters across the world for nearly 50 years, has only limited information on Russia’s recent annual weather-related damage. "The data quality for Russia is not sufficient," a spokesman said.
The Russian climate scientists in their 2019 paper presented a mathematical model for assessing losses from only four high-impact weather events: strong wind, summer rain, winter snow and rain, and frost. According to the model, the events resulted in monetary losses of as much as 234 billion rubles ($4 billion) in 2017.
Romanovskaya from the Yu. A. Izrael Institute says that calculations should go further, including not only direct but also collateral economic losses, such as damage to residents’ health and the environment. She estimates Russia’s total weather-related losses for 2019 were around 850 billion rubles, meaning working citizens paid almost 10,000 rubles each. It’s "kind of a climate tax," she said.
The Russian government remains sanguine about the impacts of climate change. It’s the world’s biggest energy exporter and fourth-largest emitter of planet-warming greenhouse gases, yet lags other nations in taking steps to reduce its pollution.
The nation pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 70% from 1990 levels by 2030, assuming that its vast forests absorb the maximum amount of carbon dioxide possible. The target is so low that Russia met it years ago and has so far expressed no desire to set a more ambitious goal. Carbon Action Tracker, a U.K.-based nonprofit, rates its policies as "critically insufficient."
Russia's emissions targets until 2030 are conservative because the nation plans to raise its gross domestic product by at least 3% annually in the near future, which will lead to higher energy production and consumption, Petr Bobylev, head of energy efficiency department at the Russian economy ministry, said in response to criticism of Russia’s climate goals.
Russia is working on a national climate strategy set to be adopted this year, with recent comments from officials indicating the country aims to develop a low-carbon economy in the next decades rather than reach full carbon neutrality.
Meanwhile the warming Arctic will keep causing greater weather imbalances in the northern hemisphere, according to Yury Varakin, head of the Rosgidromet’s situation center. In recent weeks, scientists have linked higher temperatures in the Arctic to the cold spell that moved as far south as Texas, shutting down power plants and leaving residents without electricity.
Air masses "are moving more frequently from north to south or south to north" rather than in the west-east circulation that dominated during the 20th century, Varakin said. That means an Arctic blast can reach southern regions relatively quickly and Mediterranean heat can move rapidly into northern areas. "This trend will only increase irreversibly in the next 10 to 15 years," leading to wilder swings in the weather, he said.

Исследование, опубликованное в журнале Nature: Human Behavior международным коллективом ученых из семи стран, включая Россию (Институт археологии и этнографии СО РАН, Новосибирский государственный университет), показывает, что одомашнивание рогатого скота в Центральной Азии насчитывает не менее 8000 лет. Это отодвигает прежние временные рамки более чем на три тысячелетия.

Une nouvelle étude interdisciplinaire vieillit de plus de 3000 ans la présence d'espèces domestiques au cœur de l'Asie Centrale.
Le long des chaînes de montagnes du Tian Shan et de l'Alay, en Asie centrale, les moutons et autres animaux domestiques constituent le coeur de l'économie contemporaine. Bien que les mouvements de leurs anciens prédécesseurs aient contribué à façonner les grands réseaux commerciaux de la route de la soie, on pensait que les animaux domestiques étaient arrivés relativement tard dans la région. Une nouvelle étude, publiée aujourd'hui dans la revue Nature: Human Behavior, révèle que les racines de la domestication des animaux en Asie centrale remontent à au moins 8 000 ans, faisant de la région l'un des plus anciens paysages pastoraux continuellement habités au monde.
La domestication des moutons, des chèvres et des bovins a eu lieu pour la première fois dans le Croissant fertile de la Mésopotamie et dans les zones montagneuses voisines de l'Asie occidentale il y a environ 10 000 ans, parallèlement à la domestication des cultures végétales comme le blé et l'orge. Cette innovation dans la subsistance humaine, connue sous le nom de "révolution néolithique", s'est propagée vers le nord en Europe et vers le sud en Afrique et en Inde, transformant les sociétés humaines sur trois continents. Mais jusqu'à récemment, il semblait que cette expansion spectaculaire des plantes et des animaux domestiques n'avait pas atteint les riches zones montagneuses d'Asie centrale vers l'est, où - malgré leur importance considérable dans les derniers millénaires de l'âge du bronze et au-delà - il y avait peu de preuves d'une dispersion néolithique.
Cela a changé lorsqu'une équipe internationale de scientifiques, dirigée par le Dr. Svetlana Shnaider désormais au sein du Laboratoire International de Recherche ZooSCAn du CNRS et de l'Institut d'Archéologie et d'Ethnographie de la Branche Sibérienne de l'Académie des Sciences de Russie (Novossibirsk, Russie) et le Dr. Aida Abdykanova de l'Université Américaine d'Asie Centrale (Kirghizstan), a décidé de revisiter l'abri sous roche Obishir V, niché dans un précipice montagneux le long de la frontière sud du Kirghizstan avec l'Ouzbékistan. Le site, qui avait été découvert et fouillé pour la première fois par des archéologues soviétiques au XXe siècle, avait livré un assemblage d'outils lithiques, dont certains semblaient avoir été utilisés pour le traitement des céréales.
Pour le vérifier, les Dr. Shnaider et Abykanova se sont associées à l'auteur principal, le Dr W. Taylor, spécialiste de la domestication des animaux au Musée d'Histoire Naturelle de l'Université du Colorado-Boulder et à l'Institut Max Planck pour la Science de l'Histoire Humaine, ainsi qu'à une équipe d'experts internationaux, incluant des chercheurs de deux laboratoires du CNRS, l'UMR PACEA et l'IRL ZooSCAn.
La couche culturelle la plus ancienne du gisement d'Obishir a été datée aux environs de 6 000 avant notre ère, soit vieille de plus de 8 000 ans, trois millénaires avant l'arrivée connue des animaux domestiques en Asie centrale. Elle livre des ossements attestant de la consommation sur place des animaux et l'étude des marqueurs de croissance dans le cément de leurs dents établit leur abattage à l'automne, comme c'est le cas dans de nombreuses sociétés d'élevage. Mais de par la forte fragmentation des ossements, les espèces n'ont pas pu être identifiées à l'aide d'une analyse anatomique standard.
Au lieu de cela, les chercheurs ont appliqué une approche interdisciplinaire utilisant à la fois la paléogénomique et l'empreinte peptidique du collagène pour identifier les restes d'animaux. En comparant leurs résultats avec les génomes d'espèces de moutons sauvages et domestiques de toute l'Eurasie, les chercheurs ont fait une découverte surprenante: "Avec chaque nouvelle preuve, il est devenu de plus en plus clair qu'il ne s'agissait pas de moutons sauvages, mais d'animaux domestiques", explique Taylor.
"Cette découverte ne fait qu'illustrer le nombre de mystères qui subsistent concernant la préhistoire de l'Asie intérieure - le carrefour culturel du monde antique", déclare le Dr. Robert Spengler, de l'Institut Max Planck - coauteur de l'étude et auteur de Fruits from the Sands: The Silk Road origins of the foods we eat.
Des travaux futurs seront nécessaires pour comprendre tout l'impact des résultats de l'étude et leurs implications pour le reste de l'Eurasie ancienne. Appuyée désormais par le laboratoire international du CNRS, le Dr. Shnaider prévoit de retourner à Obishir V l'été prochain pour y chercher des indices et déterminer si d'autres animaux domestiques, ou des plantes domestiques, comme le blé et l'orge, se sont également répandus au Kirghizstan depuis la Mésopotamie dans un passé lointain. Grâce à une bourse du Conseil européen de la recherche, Christina Warinner (Harvard/MPI-SHH), partenaire et co-auteur du projet, est à la tête d'un effort visant à déterminer si ces premiers moutons d'Asie centrale se sont répandus ailleurs dans la région et s'ils étaient utilisés pour produire du lait ou de la laine.
"Ce travail n'est qu'un début", déclare Taylor. "En appliquant ces techniques interdisciplinaires, nous commençons à dévoiler les indices du passé de l'Asie centrale."

Коллектив зарубежных и российских (НГУ, Институт археологии и этнографии СО РАН) антропологов и палеогенетиков впервые извлек и расшифровал ядерную ДНК неандертальцев не из человеческих останков, которые удается обнаружить не так часто, а из осадочных отложений пещер, где жили древние люди. Это значительно расширяет возможности изучения прошлого человечества.

Scientists have extracted Neanderthal nuclear DNA from cave sediments for the first time, greatly improving the scope of ancient DNA research to include whole populations.
Ancient DNA preserved in bones and teeth has previously revealed insights into ancient humans like Neanderthals and Denisovans. But since skeletal remains are exceedingly rare, archaeologists have turned to extracting DNA from cave sediments.
DNA exists in two places in the cell: the nucleus and the mitochondrion. The nuclear (or chromosomal) DNA exists as a set of chromosomes inherited from both parents and is about three million base pairs (units of DNA) long. This DNA codes for all of the proteins in the body.
The mitochondrial DNA, on the other hand, exists as small, circular pieces of DNA around 16,500 base pairs long, and holds information about what proteins to make specifically for the mitochondria to create energy.
Unlike nuclear DNA, mitochondrial DNA is only inherited from the mother, which somewhat limits the amount of information that can be gleaned from it.
Previously, this was the only type of Neanderthal DNA that could be collected from sediment, because there is a greater volume of it, making it is easier to find and isolate.
Now, a team of researchers, led by Benjamin Vernot from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, has fine-tuned their extraction technique to unearth the history of Neanderthals from both nuclear and mitochondrial DNA, collected from 150 sediment samples across three caves.
Instead of relying on only a single bone, and therefore only one genome, their samples revealed multiple genomes of a whole population.
"The dawn of nuclear DNA analysis of sediments massively extends the range of options to tease out the evolutionary history of ancient humans," says Vernot.
For example, the chromosomal DNA from Chagyrskaya Cave in Russia belonged to a single population that occupied it for a short period of time, which was difficult to determine from a bone previously found in the cave.
"We took sediment samples from throughout the stratigraphy, and they all looked very similar to the DNA from the bone, even though the sediment DNA came from multiple individuals," says Kseniya Kolobova from the Russian Academy of Sciences and lead archaeologist at Chagyrskaya Cave.
On the other hand, a site in northern Spain called Galería de las Estatuas housed two separate populations, where the original group was replaced by a second around 100,000 years ago.
"We wondered if these ‘radiations’, along with the population replacement in Estatuas, might have been tied to climate changes, or to changes in Neanderthal morphology that occurred around this time period - although we will need more data to say for sure," says Juan Luís Arsuaga of Universidad Complutense de Madrid, who led the excavations in Spain.
In their paper, published in Science, the authors suggest that this technique can help us learn more about Neanderthal and Denisovan populations, how they interacted and interbred, and how the migrated.
"We can now study the DNA from many more human populations, and from many more places, than has previously been thought possible," says Matthias Meyer, from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

С 1970-х годов река Урал, протекающая по территории России и Казахстана, постепенно мелеет. Причины этого в первую очередь - деятельность человека, хотя сказываются и климатические факторы, считает академик РАН Александр Чибилев, один из самых известных специалистов в области экологии бассейна Урала.

Plus de quatre millions de personnes au Kazakhstan et en Russie vivent le long du fleuve Oural et s’aperçoivent qu’il est de moins en moins profond. Les scientifiques affirment que les causes de ce problème sont d’abord humaines. Existe-il des solutions pour changer le destin de l’Oural ?
L’académicien Alexandre Tchibiliоv vit à Orenbourg en Russie. Il est l’un des scientifiques les plus reconnus pour ce qui est de l’écologie du fleuve Oural : il sait tout. Ou presque. Depuis les années 1980, l’académicien étudie l’état de ce fleuve naissant en Russie et se jetant dans la mer Caspienne côté kazakh. Il est l’auteur de plusieurs ouvrages scientifiques. « Quand on me demande ce qu’il faut faire, je sais plutôt ce qu’il ne faut pas faire, car je peux analyser les erreurs commises précédemment », dit le scientifique.
Et, d’après l’académicien, il y a eu beaucoup d’erreurs. Elles concernent l’exploitation des terres improductives et à faible rendement, qui endommagent tout le bassin de l’Oural. Il s’agit aussi du réservoir d’Iriklinsk, construit pour la centrale hydroélectrique, ou encore des entreprises industrielles qui, même fermées, continuent d’empoisonner les réservoirs.
« Tout le monde connait les dégâts causés par ces actions. Les polluants qui ont pénétré l’eau se sont posés dans les sédiments de fond et nous ne savons pas quelle est la quantité qui s’est accumulée. Cet héritage est une bombe à retardement. Aujourd’hui, nous récoltons les fruits de l’activité humaine du XXème siècle. Et les dommages environnementaux s’accumulent chaque année et aggravent la situation », pense Alexandre Tchibiliov.
Un fleuve énormément pollué
Seuls des calculs très inexacts sur le volume de la pollution industrielle sont disponibles, publiés en 2017 dans un rapport spécial sur les résultats préliminaires des études sur l’Oural par un groupe de scientifiques kazakho-russe. Ce rapport était constitué sur la base de documents préparés par des experts du Kazakhstan et de la Russie.
« Dans le bassin de l’Oural se sont accumulés 20 milliards de tonnes de déchets industriels. Ce montant comprend les déchets des usines de traitement, les mort-terrains et les roches encaissantes. Des milliers d’hectares de terres étaient réservés à des polygones et à des déchetteries où étaient stockés les déchets industriels », communique le rapport.
Le bassin désigne la surface d’un territoire à partir duquel les affluents se jettent dans le fleuve. Au total, l’Oural compte 58 affluents, dont les plus grands sont la Sakmara, l’Ilek et le Tchagan. Depuis la construction du réservoir d’Iriklinsk dans la partie supérieure de l’Oural, 80 % de l’eau de l’Oural provient de la Sakmara.
« En général, l’activité des réservoirs n’a pas pour but de préserver l’écosystème du fleuve. Beaucoup de réservoirs, qui sont construits dans la partie supérieure et au milieu du bassin, ne sont pas utilisés d’une manière efficace. Ils doivent être revus », affirme Alexandre Tchibiliov.
Des barrages et des réservoirs qui s’enchainent
Les barrages et les réservoirs affectent-ils vraiment l’abaissement du niveau du fleuve ? A l’heure actuelle, nombreux sont ceux qui définissent la construction des réservoirs sur le lit de l’Oural et sur ses affluents comme l’une des causes de la faible profondeur du fleuve.
Selon les informations d’Alexandre Tchibiliov, la diminution du niveau du fleuve est observée depuis les années 1970. C’est notamment lors de cette période que des constructions de centrales hydroélectriques et de grands réservoirs commencent dans la partie supérieure de l’Oural. Aujourd’hui, dans le bassin de l’Oural, outre le réservoir d’Iriklinsk, il y en a encore 12 réservoirs, chacun avec un volume d’au moins 10 millions de mètres cubes d’eau.
« La commission interétatique des problèmes liés aux fleuves transfrontaliers définit son objectif comme étant la préservation du fleuve, mais comment le préserver si nous construisons des réservoirs même en Bachkirie où se forme le cours d’eau ? » demande l’académicien.
« La Volga n’existe plus ; à sa place, il y a des réservoirs en cascade. Un tiers de la partie supérieure de l’Oural est exploité. Pendant de nombreuses années, le principal avantage de l’Oural face à tous les fleuves du versant de la plaine européenne comme le Don, le Dniepr, le Dniestr et la Volga, était l’absence de réservoirs et de barrages dans la partie inférieure et médiane du cours du fleuve », continue-t-il.
Les barrages sur le fleuve ne sont pas le seul problème
Parmi les différents projets pour sauvegarder l’Oural, la proposition d’allouer de l’argent pour approfondir le fleuve apparait souvent. Les scientifiques, par principe, ne sont pas d’accord avec cette proposition et considèrent que l’approfondissement du fleuve est une idée frivole.
« Le niveau d’eau ne changera pas en fonction de la profondeur du fleuve. Avec cela, il y a le problème de la pollution du lit du fleuve par les algues, la boue et les troncs des arbres, qui créent des encombrements », affirme Sérik Khaïrov, le directeur du laboratoire technico-scientifique des ressources en eau de l’administration du bassin de l’Oural et de la mer Caspienne.
« Mais dans la nature, il existe plusieurs mécanismes fonctionnels : les crues printanières naturelles, par exemple, éliminent les encombrements des arbres tombés et érodent les îles de sable et les fissures avec un puissant courant d’eau. Une grande quantité d’algues bleues, dont nous considérons l’apparition comme négative, purifient en réalité l’eau polluée par les activités industrielles », poursuit-il.
Penser globalement, agir localement
Galidolla Azidoulline, directeur de l’inspection des eaux de l’Oural-Caspienne, se montre sceptique quant au nettoyage artificiel du lit du fleuve. Selon lui, ce serait coûteux et inutile.
« En réalité, il faut nettoyer les lits des canaux et des affluents qui se jettent dans le fleuve Oural. Nous avons inspecté le canal Oural-Kouchoum et ce que nous avons vu nous a bouleversé, car de nombreux barrages et réservoirs ont pratiquement stoppé l’écoulement de l’eau. Par conséquent, le lit des canaux est envahi par les roseaux et les algues », se désole Galidolla Azidoulline.
« Il n’y a pas de débit d’eau. La même chose se produit avec les lits des rivières plus petites du bassin de l’Oural, comme le Barbastaou, le Derkoul, le Bolchoï Ouzen et le Maly Ouzen. En d’autres termes, la moitié de ces petites rivières n’arrivent plus à porter leur eau jusqu’à l’Oural. Ce n’est pas surprenant que le niveau du fleuve baisse », continue-t-il.
Alexandre Tchibiliov estime de son côté qu’il serait incorrect d’associer le niveau faible des eaux uniquement à la présence des réservoirs. Les données de plusieurs recherches montrent que même avant la construction des réservoirs, il y avait des périodes où le niveau d’eau était élevé et d’autres où il était faible. Ces périodes ont leurs propres cycles et sont étroitement liées au changement climatique.
L’impact du changement climatique
Plus largement, la fonte des calottes polaires de la Terre affecte l’Oural. Selon plusieurs scientifiques, les icebergs qui se détachent des glaciers peuvent refroidir les courants océaniques chauds dans l’Atlantique nord, et cela impacte le climat en Eurasie. Alexandre Tchibiliov attire l’attention également sur le fait que les changements climatiques mondiaux influencent tous les fleuves du centre de l’Eurasie.
« Il est nécessaire d’admettre que les causes premières et l’ampleur du changement climatique, sans prendre en compte les multiples données et les pronostics, sont peu étudiées. Une chose est certaine : ces changements se font fortement ressentir dans la région de l’Eurasie où se trouve le bassin de l’Oural. Les fleuves comme le Don, le Kouban, le Terek, la Volga et l’Oural souffrent d’un manque d’eau », explique l’académicien.
« Mais dans l’Altaï et à l’est de celui-ci, y compris dans le bassin de l’Amour, nous observons des inondations catastrophiques. Le changement climatique n’est pas suffisamment étudié. C’est aussi parce que la plus grande partie de notre planète, occupée par l’océan, avec tous ses courants, est considérablement moins étudiée que la partie terrestre que nous habitons », ajoute-t-il.
S’adapter rapidement au changement devient nécessaire
Les évolutions du fleuve attirent également l’attention du public car ces changements sont visibles à l’œil nu. Une population nombreuse vit sur ces rives : d’après les statistiques, sur le territoire entre les montagnes de l’Oural en Bachkirie et son embouchure dans la mer Caspienne vivent plus de 4 millions de personnes.
Non seulement cette population s’aperçoit de l’évolution du fleuve, mais elle constitue aussi la source principale de ces changements : elle utilise le fleuve et consomme l’eau. La consommation industrielle de l’eau de l’Oural n’est pas meilleure. Les entreprises industrielles utilisant le fleuve y rejettent une eau polluée.
« C’est pour cela qu’aujourd’hui nous devons adapter la gestion des ressources naturelles aux eaux peu profondes, refuser l’utilisation massive des eaux et être prêts à l’avenir à subir des périodes où le niveau d’eau sera critique », pense Alexandre Tchibiliov.
Il note que de telles périodes de sècheresse critique étaient déjà observées dans les années 1920 et 1954-1955, contrairement aux années 1942 et 1957, lorsque l’Oural était sorti de son lit et que son courant violent avait même démoli les ponts ferroviaires.
« La seule chose dont je suis certain, malgré la tendance générale, c’est que nous aurons encore des périodes avec un haut niveau d’eau ; il y aura à nouveau des inondations dans la ville d’Oural et une vague de froid arrivera. La nature sur la Terre change constamment. C’est pour cette raison que je parle sans cesse de la nécessité d’un soutien scientifique, de recherches prolongées et régulières sur les fleuves avec l’aide de la science fondamentale », ajoute Alexandre Tchibiliov.
Les esturgeons menacés
Le fleuve Oural était considéré, jusqu’à récemment, comme le fournisseur principal de caviar béluga et d’esturgeon pour le marché mondial. Dans les années 1970, les produits issus du fleuve représentaient 40 % du caviar béluga sur le marché mondial. Dans les années 1990, les scientifiques commençaient déjà à affirmer que le nombre d’esturgeons était 40 fois plus bas que dans les années 1970.
A présent, dans la partie en amont d’Atyraou, il n’y a plus d’esturgeons. Alexandre Tchibiliov a créé dans les années 1970 une carte des frayères d’esturgeon de l’Oural. Aujourd’hui, cet atlas est obsolète, mais il propose de considérer la restauration de la population de l’esturgeon comme un critère précis de la protection écologique de l’Oural.
« La restauration des bancs d’esturgeons constitue un point de repère, et c’est plutôt un objectif utopique. La présence d’esturgeons dans le fleuve est un indicateur écologique de l’état du fleuve. L’apparition d’un nombre important d’esturgeons dans le fleuve signifie que le fleuve "se remet". Comme pour le Rhin, le fleuve le plus pollué d’Europe dans les années 1960 : le programme Saumon 2000 fut créé et le saumon apparut, bien qu’il soit encore loin d’être présent en quantités industrielles », estime Alexandre Tchibiliov.
Des mesures insuffisantes
Aujourd’hui, l’académicien propose aux autorités de la Russie et du Kazakhstan de prendre des mesures concrètes pour protéger l’Oural. « Oui, les deux États dépensent beaucoup de ressources pour que l’Oural redevienne comme avant. Mais il suffit d’examiner rapidement les publications sur les dépenses de cet argent pour comprendre que cela n’aura pas d’effet », déclare Alexandre Tchibiliov.
« Chez nous, beaucoup d’argent est dépensé pour l’organisation de conférences, de tables rondes, de forums, et très peu pour des actions concrètes. A mon avis, les efforts des organes gouvernementaux doivent être dirigés vers l’octroi d’un statut spécial pour Oural », estime le scientifique.
La nécessité de créer une zone protégée
« Le fleuve Oural et ses affluents, porteurs d’une diversité biologique et d’un paysage uniques, sont des sources d’approvisionnement en eau ; ce sont des ressources à la fois précieuses et récréatives », affirme Alexandre Tchibiliov.
« Sur le territoire entre l’Oural et la Caspienne, de façon générale, le fleuve est pratiquement la seule source de vie et il est nécessaire qu’il ait le statut spécial de territoire naturel protégé. Au moins certaines parties du fleuve : les crénons et les sources abondantes, les gorges des rivières en altitude et les zones en vallée qui comptent une multitude de forêts et de lacs, les habitats des espèces migratoires rares, les frayères de poissons, etc », ajoute-il.
« Dans la législation de certains pays, il existe une catégorie spéciale pour les rivières protégées. A l’époque soviétique, le statut de zone protégée était attribué au territoire de l’Oural dès les embouchures du Barbastaou jusqu’aux zones côtières de la mer Caspienne. Il était prévu dans les années 1980 d’étendre la zone jusqu’à l’Ilek. La commission kazakho-russe doit travailler à la création d’un statut de protection du fleuve, sinon elle n’a aucune raison d’avoir été créée », conclut Alexandre Tchibiliov.
4,2 millions de personnes vivent sur le territoire du bassin de l’Oural. Il est encore possible d’agir pour sauver le fleuve.
Cet article fait partie de la série "Little People, Big River", un projet journalistique soutenu par le média allemand n-ost, le centre kazakh MediaNet International Centre for Journalism et le ministère allemand de la coopération économique.

Россия и Китай проведут совместное исследование астероида Камоалева, открытого в 2016 г. Астероид представляет собой квазиспутник Земли - по оценкам ученых, около 100 лет назад он был захвачен земной гравитацией, в результате чего период его обращения вокруг Солнца стал соответствовать периоду обращения нашей планеты.

China has selected a Russian science payload to fly on an upcoming mission to sample a near-Earth asteroid and later visit a main-belt comet.
China is aiming to launch the ambitious mission around 2024. First, it will collect samples from the small near-Earth asteroid Kamo'oalewa. Then, the spacecraft will return to Earth to deliver the samples and use the planet's gravity to send the spacecraft toward the main asteroid belt to orbit the Comet 133P/Elst-Pizarro.
Russia will now join the mission with instruments built by the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The payload was selected following a 2019 call for proposals announced by the China National Space Administration (CNSA) for the combined asteroid-comet mission.
The spacecraft, tentatively named ZhengHe after a famous Chinese naval explorer of the early 1400s, will carry a range of imaging, multispectral and spectrometer cameras as well as a radar, a magnetometer and payloads for detecting a range of particles. Now, some of those payloads will come from Russia's Space Research Institute.
"We agreed with one group from China to split instruments," Oleg Vaisberg, a space physicist at the Space Research Institute and principal investigator of the payload, said. ULTIMAN and ULTIWOMAN will detect ions and electrons, and a small detector for studying how solar wind plasma interacts with the small bodies will also be provided by the Russian side. That payload will measure any potential tenuous atmosphere and ionosphere of the main-belt comet, as well as study the interaction between the solar wind and the two small bodies.
The ambitious mission will see the spacecraft use four robotic arms to land on Kamo'oalewa, with drills on the arms to secure the probe to the asteroid's surface, according to an early mission outline.
In addition to carrying a sample capsule that will deliver asteroid bits to Earth, ZhengHe will also carry a nano-orbiter and a nano-lander for remote sensing and on-the-ground exploration of Comet 133P. The spacecraft will use an explosive to expose the subsurface of the comet ahead of the nanolander's touchdown; that robot aims to use its instruments to study the composition of the comet's subsurface, with a special interest in water and volatiles.
China and Russia have a long history of cooperation in spaceflight going back to the 1950s, when the Soviet Union supported early Chinese rocket development. More recently, in March China and Russia signed a memorandum of understanding on creating a joint robotic moon project. The "international lunar research station" will consist of small spacecraft landings at the lunar south pole but could be expanded into larger structures and eventual crewed habitats.
Russia, an International Space Station member, will not be participating in NASA's Gateway, an initiative to establish an outpost in lunar orbit, signaling a shift in partnerships among major space players.

Россия намерена создать собственную орбитальную станцию и отказаться от использования МКС. Это может случиться уже после 2024 года.

The 20-year-old International Space Station (ISS) is showing its age: Last month, cosmonauts patched up cracks in a Russian module that were thought to be the source of minor air leaks. Cracks are also appearing in the international alliance that keeps the station going. This week, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yury Borisov suggested Russia would back away from the ISS as early as 2025 to pursue a national space station.
Although he and other officials have since backpedaled from such a concrete date for withdrawal, Russian skepticism over the future of the ISS could complicate U.S. efforts to keep it operating until the end of the decade. "ISS partners would have a really hard time keeping the station functional without Russia," says Vitaly Egorov, an industry observer, writer, and former spokesperson for Dauria Aerospace, a Russian company.
On 18 April, Russia 1, a state TV channel, reported that Borisov told a meeting chaired by President Vladimir Putin, "We need to honestly inform our partners about leaving the ISS in 2025." In a statement to newswires released later that day, Borisov’s office clarified his remarks and backtracked from the date. "A technical inspection is needed, and then we can make a decision and inform our partners," the statement said. But it reiterated that the ISS has run well past its original life span, and its condition "leaves much to be desired."
It’s not the first sign of Russian dissatisfaction with the ISS. In November 2020, Vladimir Solovyov, flight director for the Russian module, caused a stir with remarks at a meeting of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He predicted a swift decline for the ISS in the next 5 years and said Russia should prioritize building a new station.
Seemingly downplaying Borisov’s remarks this week, Dmitry Rogozin, who leads Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, said on Monday that Russia would not pull out of the ISS until the proposed new station becomes functional. "Pauses are deadly for human spaceflight," he wrote in a Facebook post. Rogozin later added that the new station, which does not have a name yet, could be based on one of the modules initially planned for the ISS.
For the moment, a new Russian space station - which would be a successor to the Salyut and Mir stations launched in the 1970s and ’80s-seems like a distant prospect. And for Andrey Ionin, a member of the Russian Academy of Cosmonautics who favors international projects, a new station would represent a step backward. "The biggest ISS achievement is not technology, but cooperation between countries," he says. In any case, before Russia could embark on a new station, Roscosmos must first launch Nauka, a science module, to the ISS later this year; it was conceived more than 2 decades ago but has been grounded by technical flaws for the past 8 years.
Greg Autry, a space policy expert at Arizona State University, Downtown Phoenix, says it would be unfortunate for the ISS to lose an "invaluable" partner like Russia. But he says the United States, with cargo and crew services provided by SpaceX rockets, could potentially keep the ISS afloat on its own. "I believe ISS can and should continue to provide value until new, commercial stations are available for everyone to use," he says. At that point, Autry says, governments should shift their efforts "to the Moon, either together or in a constructive competition."

Сотрудники Томского политехнического университета впервые изучили состав поровых (иловых) вод на трех участках выброса метана на поверхность в Восточной Арктике. В дальнейшем это поможет определить индикаторы для обнаружения подобных выбросов.

Young scientists of Tomsk Polytechnic University as a part of the team of Arctic researchers have studied pore waters in three areas of methane release on the surface. They first managed to define in details the composition of pore waters in the cold methane seeps of the Eastern Arctic seas. The research findings are published in the Water academic journal.
The research was based on the samples obtained during the Arctic expedition aboard the research vessel "Akademik Mstislav Keldysh" in 2019. The scientists and students from 12 scientific institutions, including Tomsk Polytechnic University, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, the Research Center of Biotechnology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Zhirmunsky National Scientific Center of Marine Biology of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences and others took part in the expedition arranged by the Shirshov Institute of Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences jointly with the Ilichev Pacific Oceanological Institute of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The TPU researchers completed a number of research tasks, including the study of conditions of sediments and pore waters. The pore waters are noteworthy due to their reflection of the composition of seawater and the composition of sediments. Researching the samples of pore waters from the point of view of geochemical, biochemical and hydrochemical data, it is possible to reconstruct processes occurring in the waters and sediments, as well as to forecast the development of the situation.
"During the expedition, we focused on the methane yield areas and the changes of hydrochemical properties in these areas. In total, there were six test cores and 42 samples of pore waters collected at depths of 22 to 68 m. The main focus was on the methane yield areas on the surface. Thuswise, three areas with their features were studied: the Lena River Delta, the continental margin of the Laptev Sea and the central part of the East Siberian Sea. In fact, we compared three cold methane seeps together. Moreover, the samples were collected in the sampling points in the immediate vicinity of methane release on the surface," Yulia Moiseeva, Research Fellow of the TPU Division for Geology, one of the authors of the article, says.
To collect the samples, the scientists used special filters and vacuum test tubes to exclude oxygen and obtain valid results. A part of the analyses was conducted aboard. For instance, rapidly changing indicators, i.e. biogenous elements such as nitrates, nitrites, phosphates, ammonia and total alkalinity were researched. A more detailed study of the samples was continued in the TPU laboratories.
"Having come back from the expedition, we studied the macro- and microcomponent composition of pore waters that was conducted in the accredited TPU Research Laboratory for Hydrogeochemistry using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. The data on 66 elements for every sample were obtained, it allowed us to define geochemical indicators of the presence of cold methane seep: in this context, what elements can be in higher or lower concentrations in comparison with background concentrations," Darya Purgina, Research Fellow of the TPU Division for Geology, explains.
The scientists managed to define the regional features of the Eastern Arctic seas, including the features of the methane yield areas. For instance, the stations located in the East Siberian Sea are characterized by the high concentration of Mn, Al, Si, P, Fe, Cu, Ba in comparison with the stations in the Laptev Sea, where there was the high concentration of Li, B, V, Br, U and the low concentration of I, Mn.
In general, the concentration of V, Th, P, Al is increased in the methane yield areas, while the concentration of Co, Fe, Mn, U, Mo, Cu is decreased.
"Thus, we first defined a number of elements that can be used as indicators of methane yield. The research is still ongoing to confirm the results. The extended data have already been obtained on the results of the 2020 Arctic expedition. The materials are currently being processed, however, it is already possible to say that the part of the new data confirms the previously obtained results. Furthermore, the extended data will allow reconstructing processes more detailed, which occur in the methane yield areas. The uniqueness of the obtained data lies in the application of modern sampling methods, which allow minimizing failures, as well as obtaining a wide array of elements with high accuracy. The pore waters in the methane yield areas of the Eastern Arctic have not been studied so detailed and comprehensive yet," the scientists sum up.

Теорию электроотрицательности атомов, их способности притягивать электроны других элементов, сформулировал в 1932 году Нобелевский лауреат Лайнус Полинг. Он также создал метод расчета и шкалу электроотрицательностей, ставшую классической. Однако со временем стало ясно, что формула Полинга не дает высокой точности.
Профессор Сколковского института науки и технологий Артем Оганов и сотрудник Института химии твердого тела и механохимии СО РАН Кристиан Тантардини, взяв за основу идею Полинга, но переопределив электроотрицательности элементов, предложили новую, более точную шкалу.

Le rideau de fer de la guerre froide a parmi ses effets causé l'ignorance de plusieurs grands noms de la science russe du XXe siècle en dehors du cercle restreint des spécialistes européens et américains. Qui par exemple est familier encore de nos jours avec les noms des prix Nobel de physique Lev Landau et Piotr Kapitsa ? Si l'on doit chercher du côté des prix Nobel de chimie, qui a entendu parler de Nikolaï Semionov et de ses travaux sur les réactions en chaîne en chimie ? Enfin, qui a entendu parler de l'Institut de physique et de technologie de Moscou (MIPT pour Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Московский Физико-Технический институт, en russe), baptisé PhysTech (Физтех), comme on parle de l'X en France ou du MIT aux États-Unis, et qui a été fondé après la seconde guerre mondiale par ces trois prix Nobel ?
Linus Pauling et la liaison chimique quantique
En ce qui concerne la chimie, et de l'autre côté de l'Atlantique à la même époque, l'une des stars et également prix Nobel s'appelait Linus Pauling. On lui doit des travaux fondamentaux sur la nature de la liaison chimique qu'il a aidée à élucider en faisant intervenir dans les années 1930 la toute jeune mécanique quantique via sa théorie de l'hybridation des orbitales atomiques.
Au cours de la même période il va reprendre, pour le corriger, le concept d'électronégativité introduit pour la première fois par le chimiste suédois Jöns Berzelius en 1819. Il en fera vers 1932 la théorie moderne associée à ce qui est appelé l'échelle d'électronégativité de Pauling pour les éléments chimiques. Autant dire que même encore aujourd'hui, il reste inspirant de lire les ouvrages de Pauling, aussi bien son introduction à la chimie générale que son traité sur la liaison chimique, voire son traité de chimie quantique. (Par contre, vers la fin de sa vie, ses travaux sur la vitamine C sont hélas devenus un exemple de ce que l'on appelle la maladie du Nobel).
Faisons quelques rappels rapides sur la notion d'électronégativité. Il est admis depuis les travaux du physicien et chimiste états-unien Gilbert Lewis vers 1916 qu'une liaison chimique, en particulier covalente, est une mise en commun d'électrons. Les idées de Lewis (à qui l'on doit le nom de photon pour les quanta de lumière d'Einstein) se sont retrouvées justifiées par la découverte de la mécanique quantique. On peut montrer alors que les densités de probabilités de présence des électrons autour des noyaux d'atomes et dans les molécules sont plus ou moins équivalentes à des densités de charges électriques. Tout se passe alors comme si certains atomes concentraient plus ou moins une charge électrique négative autour d'eux dans une liaison chimique, donnant éventuellement lieu à l'existence d'un moment dipolaire, comme le disent les chimistes et les physiciens dans leur jargon. La liaison chimique devient alors polarisée, toujours dans ce même jargon.
L'électronégativité d'un élément chimique comparée à celle d'un autre est donc une mesure de la capacité du premier à concentrer une charge électrique négative à son avantage lors de l'établissement d'une liaison chimique. La connaissance et la classification des électronégativités des éléments aident donc à prédire et à comprendre quels types de liaisons chimiques ils vont pouvoir former, leur stabilité et finalement des énergies de réactions chimiques ainsi que des propriétés de certains cristaux. Pauling a donc fourni une formule et une classification pour rendre compte de l'électronégativité. Elles sont les plus utilisées mais par la suite d'autres ont été proposées, comme celle de Robert S. Mulliken.
Quid de l'électronégativité à haute pression ?
Aujourd'hui, c'est une nouvelle révision de l'échelle de Pauling qui vient d'être publiée dans un article du prestigieux journal Nature Communications. On la doit au physicien, chimiste et cristallographe russe Artem Oganov, en compagnie de son collègue Christian Tantardini, au Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech) que l'on peut considérer comme l'équivalent russe du MIT aux États-Unis. Futura a déjà consacré plusieurs articles aux découvertes faites par Artem Oganov avec ses collègues et collaborateurs dans le domaine de la physique et de la chimie des hautes pressions.
Dans un communiqué du Skoltech, Artem Oganov explique le résultat qu'il a obtenu avec Christian Tantardini et qui est mis à l'honneur dans une sélection de Nature Communications :
«Tout a commencé lorsque nous avons décidé de calculer les électronégativités de Pauling sous pression. La chimie des hautes pressions est assez exotique, mais on sera probablement en mesure de comprendre beaucoup de choses une fois que l'on aura découvert comment les électronégativités des éléments changent sous la pression. Nous avons utilisé la définition de Pauling pour calculer l'électronégativité dans des conditions normales et avons été étonnés de découvrir que son échelle ne correspondait pas aux énergies de liaison théoriques ou expérimentales pour des molécules significativement ioniques. De plus, de nombreuses publications dans la littérature chimique mentionnaient ce problème mais aucune n'offrait de solution cohérente. J'ai compris que la raison principale en était que Pauling traitait la stabilisation ionique de la molécule comme un effet additif, alors que si nous la considérons comme un effet multiplicatif, de nombreux inconvénients seront supprimés. Avec la nouvelle formule et les énergies expérimentales des liaisons chimiques, nous avons déterminé les électronégativités de tous les éléments et obtenu une belle échelle qui fonctionne aussi bien pour les petites que pour les grandes différences d'électronégativité.»

С помощью волновода и цепочки сверхпроводящих кубитов ученые из НИТУ «МИСиС», Технологического института Карлсруэ, Российского квантового центра и Физико-технического института имени А.Ф.Иоффе впервые экспериментально доказали возможность эффективного взаимодействия микроволновых фотонов. Это может стать шагом на пути решения проблемы долговечной квантовой памяти.

An international research team, obtained experimental evidence for effective interaction between microwave photons via superconductive qubits for the first time. The study, published in npj Quantum Materials, may be a step towards the implementation of a long-living quantum memory and the development of commercial quantum devices.
Scientists believe that individual light particles, or photons, are ideally suited for sending quantum information. Encoded with quantum data, they could literally transfer information at the speed of light. However, while photons would make for great carriers because of their speed, they don't like to interact with each other, making it difficult to achieve quantum entanglement.
A team of scientists from NUST MISIS, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Russian Quantum Center and the Ioffe Institute St. Petersburg for the first time, made photons interact with each other effectively using an array of superconducting qubits and a waveguide. In their experiments, the researchers used photons with the frequency of a few GHz and the wavelength of a few centimeters.
"We used superconducting cubits, which are basically artificial atoms, because they have been proven to strongly interact with light. Interaction between natural atoms and natural light is weak due to the small size of natural atoms. Superconducting cubits are man-built, their size can reach up to 0.1mm, which makes it possible to significantly increase their dipole moment and polarity, engineering strong interaction between light and matter," noted Prof. Alexey Ustinov, Head of the Laboratory for Superconducting Metamaterials at NUST MISIS and Group Head at Russian Quantum Center, who co-authored the study.
Superconducting qubits are a leading qubit modality today that is currently being pursued by industry and academia for quantum computing applications. However, they require milli-Kelvin (mK) temperatures to operate. The most powerful of the existing superconducting quantum devices contains under 100 qubits. As you add qubits, the number of operations a quantum computer can perform grows exponentially, but the maximum number of qubits that can be integrated in a quantum computer is limited by the size of refrigerators used to cool them down to operational temperatures. Taking this into account, the efforts of the scientific community have been recently focused on increasing the processing power of a quantum computer by transmitting quantum signals from one refrigerator to another. To engineer this transmission, the scientists coupled an array of eight superconducting transmon qubits to a common waveguide - a structure that guides waves, e.g., light waves.
"By employing dedicated flux-bias lines for each qubit, we establish control over their transition frequencies. It was derived and experimentally verified that multiple qubits obtain an infinite range photon mediated effective interaction, which can be tuned with the inter-qubit distance," says Alexey Ustinov.
The circuit of this work extends experiments with one and two qubits toward a full-blown quantum metamaterial, thus paving the way for large-scale applications in superconducting waveguide quantum electrodynamics.

С распространением новой коронавирусной инфекции лаборатории по всему миру столкнулись с проблемой отсутствия подходящих животных для изучения развития болезни, а также для тестирования вакцин и лекарств от COVID-19, поскольку большинство лабораторных видов нечувствительны к вирусу.
Ученые Белгородского государственного университета и Института биологии гена РАН, начав работу в мае прошлого года, сообщили о создании трансгенных светящихся мышей. Внесенный человеческий ген делает их чувствительными к коронавирусу, а зеленое свечение в ультрафиолете облегчает обнаружение зараженных клеток и тканей.

COVID-19 is a master killer causing respiratory infection with a high risk of life-threatening complications. Unfortunately, despite the number "-2" in the SARS-CoV-2, scientific and medical communities found themselves quite defenseless against the new coronavirus. Even though the world has already experienced SARS and MERS epidemics, we have just developed vaccines and still do not have effective drugs against SARS-CoV-2 infection. For more than a year laboratories around the world were facing the problem of absence of appropriate animal models to test COVID-19 vaccines and drugs. Moreover, animal models are necessary to shed light on details of disease progression and to reveal a role of different organs and tissues in developing complications.
Actually, there are a raw of SARS-CoV-2 sensitive animals, including nonhuman primates, ferrets, dogs, and cats, but all of them are not routine laboratory species. To solve the problem, transgenic mice expressing human ACE2 have been proposed as an artificial COVID-19 model. In brief, human ACE2 protein is a SARS-CoV-2 entry receptor, and introducing the gene encoding it in the murine genome is the obvious way to "open" murine cells for SARS-CoV-2 invasion. Even several transgenic strains were created long before the first outbreak of COVID-19 just after MERS pandemic in 2007 (McCray et al. 2007; Tseng et al. 2007; Yang et al. 2007). However, these mice were not widely spread in 2020 and some authors proposed novel approaches such as delivery of exogenous human ACE2 gene to the alveolar epithelium via intranasal administration of replication-deficient adenoviruses (Sun et al. 2020; Hassan et al. 2020) or use of genetically modified SARS-CoV-2 with affinity to the own murine ACE2 (Dinnon et al. 2020; Gu et al. 2020).
In May, 2020, Russian scientists from the Institute of Gene Biology and Belgorod State University proposed their own strategy for the creation of a novel COVID-19 murine model. In their strategy there were two pivotal demands for the new line. The first is an ability of spatial and temporal control of SARS-CoV-2 sensitivity by the use of the Cre recombinase system. The second is double humanization meaning to introduce two genes involved in SARS-CoV-2 invasion (ACE2 and TMPRSS2 instead only ACE2). The full description is in the article "On the way from SARS-CoV-sensitive mice to murine COVID-19 model".
In April, 2021, the authors reported successful creation of their own transgenic SARS-CoV-2 sensitive mice. Guided by their initial strategy the scientists created mice with Cre-dependent expression of ACE2 allowing to adjust the localization and the level of transgene expression breeding mice with so called Cre-expressing lines. Cre recombinase is an enzyme that catalyzes the deletion of targeted genomic sequences flanked by LoxP (floxed) sites. In this model a floxed STOP-cassette, sequence disrupting transgene expression, is inserted between the transgene and its promoter. Thus, if Cre recombinase is active in the cell, it excises the STOP-cassette, resulting in the expression of hACE2. In the study Cre line with tamoxifen-dependent Cre-recombinase was used. Such a system requires two-step activation but this is what provides temporal control of transgene expression. Because in these mice Cre-recombinase works only after tamoxifen administration it can be launched on demand in any point of animal lifetime.
The only thing is, instead of double ACE2/TMPRSS2 humanization the hACE2 gene is coexpressed with GFP. The GFP gene encodes Green fluorescent protein, which exhibits bright green fluorescence when exposed to light in the blue to ultraviolet range significantly simplifying the detection of transgenic cells. Thus, in these mice the brighter light tissue has, the more SARS-CoV-2 sensitive it is. For detailed information read the article "Novel transgenic mice with Cre-dependent co-expression of GFP and human ACE2: a safe tool for study of COVID-19 pathogenesis". Right now, these mice serve as a test-system for testing of new Russian vaccines. All obtained results show that mice can be successfully inoculated by SARS-CoV-2 and develop a bright clinical picture.

Сотрудники Университета ИТМО разработали лазерную «кисть» для художников и дизайнеров, позволяющую рисовать на титановом «холсте», а также стирать нарисованное и менять цвет мазков. Такие картины очень устойчивы к условиям окружающей среды и химическим веществам.

The coherent, precisely directed light emitted by lasers has become indispensable to fields like medicine, science and telecommunications. Lesser known, perhaps, is the technology’s substantial impact in the art world. Lasers can cut intricate patterns in materials like paper, wood or metal and restore old artwork through ablation and cleaning techniques.
Now, a team of Russian researchers has developed a laser paintbrush for artists and designers that creates, erases and changes the colors of strokes on a titanium canvas (Optica, doi: 10.1364/OPTICA.420074). The tool doesn’t require any external colorants and creates pieces that are extremely resistant to harsh environments and chemicals.
A color palette
Yaroslava Andreeva and her colleagues had previously created a laser-based device that used oxidation to generate a complete color palette on stainless steel. Essentially, an oxide layer of a certain thickness and chemical composition is formed on top of the metal surface. Interference occurs between the light reflected from the top and bottom surfaces of the oxide film, which allows only certain wavelengths of light to be observed.
Once they discovered the right parameters needed for each color, the researchers wanted to take the project a step further by inventing a new tool to make art.
"We were impressed by how a real artist works with paints, brushes and other materials. Usually an artist has the opportunity to use different colors from a palette, mix colors, and sometimes the erasing of some fragments is needed," said Andreeva, an engineer at ITMO University in Russia. "So our work started from the development of these three main artistic operations."
Creating, erasing, rewriting
The team built a makeshift printer that takes an image as input and, after running it through a computer algorithm, could produce a laser-made titanium artwork of the same image. It consists of a nanosecond ytterbium fiber laser system equipped with a two-axis galvanometric scanner that could move the beam line-by-line within a 110×110 mm area.
To create strokes, the laser paintbrush heats up the titanium surface to the point where it evaporates, and when the metal cools, a thin oxide layer forms. It could access 25 to 30 different colors, with thicker films appearing blue and thinner films appearing red or orange.
Andreeva and her colleagues noticed that a second laser pass with increased scanning speed led to the reduction of color brightness. After tweaking the intensity and scanning speed a bit further, they hit upon a combination that led to the complete disappearance of visible color on the surface. Similarly, retreatment of the same area with multiple passes allowed for the changing of colors.
Developing a handheld tool
To demonstrate their laser paintbrush, the researchers created miniature renditions of famous masterpieces such as Vincent van Gogh’s "The Starry Night," which took a mere three minutes to produce. Next, the researchers hope to fabricate a handheld tool for artists and designers to use much like a pen or a real paintbrush.

Журнал Science опубликовал письмо специалистов по экологии леса, профессоров Вагенингенского университета (Нидерланды) Дугласа Шейла и Герта-Яна Набюрса и Анатолия Швиденко (Институт леса им. В.Н.Сукачева СО РАН), в котором они призвали международное научное сообщество к конструктивному взаимодействию с российскими коллегами в свете того, что Научный совет РАН по лесу начал работу над новым Лесным кодексом РФ. В России находится пятая часть мировых лесных угодий, сохранность которых важна для всей планеты, и международное сообщество может помочь в разработке и поддержке новой эффективной лесной политики.

On April 30 Douglas Sheil, professor in Forest Ecology, and Gert-Jan Nabuurs, professor European forest resources, published a letter in Science magazine in which they urge the international forest science community to engage constructively with Russia as the country develops and applies new forest policies.
Read the letter by professor Sheil and professor Nabuurs below. The full version, including references, can be found on the Science website.
Russia is home to one-fifth of the world’s forest lands, about 90% of which comprise fragile boreal areas. These forests sustain unique human cultures, valuable wilderness, and biodiversity. They also play a crucial role in the flows of atmospheric moisture on which millions of people depend and sequester a substantial, though uncertain, quantity of greenhouse gases. Despite their importance, Russian forests have suffered from wasteful over-harvesting of accessible timber, inadequate protection, fire, pests, and new challenges-such as forests on melting permafrost-are emerging. The previous forest code, and a long history of extraction without investment, have been widely blamed for exacerbating these problems. The Forest Council of the Russian Academy of Science has initiated work on a new national forest code. The future of Russia’s vast forests depends on the implementation of effective policy.
Initial drafts of the new code offer a step forward. They establish sustainable policies that are based on science, institutional reforms, and good governance, and they give conservation and climate concerns nearly as much emphasis as timber revenues. However, to achieve its goals, the finalized code must be passed as law and attract ample financial and political support.
The international community can help Russia develop and support an effective forest code and the institutions required to protect its forest lands. Globally, there is valuable experience and expertise that can guide best practice. This will be essential to guide the transition to a market economy, with payment for ecosystem services and the effective implementation of conservation and sustainable management in a fast-changing world. For example, international communities could augment the knowledge of Russians with local experience in conservation planning and effectiveness, the financial mechanisms to fund and incentivize forest conservation and restoration, and the development and implementation of the "climate-smart" strategies and practices required to sustain forests and forestry under climate change.
We urge the international forest science community to engage constructively with Russia as the country develops and applies new forest policies. Broad collaborations can help Russia develop and implement forest protection and sustainable management through an open exchange of ideas among local and international institutions. Russia’s forests are the country’s sovereign concern, but the fate of those forests has global consequences. International attention, collaboration, and support can help ensure that they continue to thrive.

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