Ноябрь 2021 г.

Российская наука и мир (по материалам зарубежной электронной прессы)

CONTENTS / ОГЛАВЛЕНИЕ


• Russian physicist wins UNESCO International Mendeleev Prize
• DNA studies help unravel evolutionary history of rhinoceros
• Russia comes in from cold on climate, launches forest plan
• Off-world colony simulation reveals changes in human communication over time with Earth
• La RAS a annoncé son intérêt pour le projet de télescope spatial russe
• Orion Bar region investigated in detail by Russian astronomers
• Warrior’s grave reveals ornate Scythian treasures
• Researchers investigate link between bilingualism and false memories
• ITMO scientists’ research among the Year’s Top 30 Studies according to Optics & Photonics News
• Oldest-known fossils of mysterious human lineage uncovered in Siberian cave
• First standardized Russian-language test developed for aphasia-related disorders

Российский физик, академик РАН Юрий Оганесян стал первым лауреатом международной премии ЮНЕСКО-России им. Д.И.Менделеева за достижения в области фундаментальных наук, которая впервые вручается в этом году.
Награда присуждена «за прорывные открытия, расширившие границы периодической таблицы, а также значительный вклад в содействие развитию фундаментальных наук в глобальном масштабе». Под руководством академика Оганесяна в Объединенном институте ядерных исследований (Дубна) были открыты новые элементы таблицы Менделеева, получившие номера от 113 до 118.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization informed on Wednesday that it granted Russian scientist Yuri Oganesian the 2021 UNESCO-Russia International Mendeleev Prize in the Basic Sciences.
According to the jury’s minutes, Professor Oganesian was awarded for his "breakthrough discoveries that extended the boundaries of the periodic table, as well as his significant contribution for the promotion of the basic sciences at global scale."
Oganesian is a specialist in experimental physics of the atomic nucleus, research of nuclear reactions, the synthesis and study of the properties of new elements of the periodic table, TASS news agency reported.
The second winner was Italian chemist Vincenzo Balzani, of the University of Bologna, Italy, who earlier won the Leonardo da Vinci Award of the European Academy of Sciences.
The UNESCO-Russia International Mendeleev Prize aims to draw attention on the importance of these disciplines for peaceful and prosperous societies, promote scientific progress, spread science and international cooperation.
The awarding ceremony will take place on November 15 at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, France.

Международная команда ученых, включая российских, изучив геномы восьми видов носорогов, живых и вымерших, проследила историю эволюции этого семейства. Результаты показали, что три основные клады носорогов разошлись 14-17 млн лет назад, чему способствовал существовавший в то время сухопутный проход из Евразии в Африку.

A study published in August in the journal Cell has shed light on the evolutionary history of the rhinoceros. The rhinoceros family belongs to the Rhinocerotidae clade, which also includes the tapirs. A clade includes species from a single common ancestor.
The rhinoceros family diverged from the tapir family some 55-60 million years ago. The family then evolved into over a hundred species distributed across the world, but only nine of them survived to the Late Pleistocene age (14 to 12000 years ago).
Subsequent extinctions resulted in five extant species - the black, white, Sumatran, Indian, and Javan rhinoceroses - and four extinct ones - the Siberian, Merck, narrow-nosed and woolly rhinoceroses.
There are primarily three theories governing the story of rhinoceros evolution. One theory, known as the ‘horn hypothesis’, emphasises horn morphology, and puts the Sumatran, the black, and the white rhinoceros species together for they have two horns.
The ‘geographical hypothesis’ clubs species according to their geographical origins; for e.g., it puts the Sumatran, Javan, and Indian species together. The third hypothesis puts Sumatran rhinoceros with the other extant species.
Genomic analyses
The study assembled and examined genomes from eight rhinoceros species. The findings lend support to the geographical hypothesis and identify three major clades for the rhinoceros family.
One clad comprises the black and white rhinoceros species, both from Africa. A second clade comprises Sumatran, Merck, and woolly rhinoceroses. The third clade comprises the Indian and Javan species. The paper asserts that "the principal divergence among the rhinoceros lineages is related to the geographical division between species on the African and Eurasian continents."
However, the paper further establishes that there was gene flow between the ancestors of the African (black and white species) and the Indian-Javan species, which "may have been enabled by the Eurasian origin of both African species".
Loss of genetic diversity
A major finding of the study, important from the point of view of conservation efforts, is that of the loss of genetic diversity in rhinoceros populations in recent years due to rapid population declines.
"We find that present-day rhinos have lower genetic diversity, and higher levels of inbreeding, compared to our historical and prehistoric rhinoceros genomes. This suggests that recent population declines caused by hunting and habitat destruction have had an impact on the genomes. This is not good, since low genetic diversity and high inbreeding may increase the risk of extinction in the present-day species," explains one of the authors, Love Dalén, of the Centre for Paleogenetics and the Swedish Museum of Natural History, in a release.
Shedding further light on the evolutionary history of the rhinoceros, vis-à-vis the history of the Earth, the paper states that the three major clades of the rhinocerotinae family diverged 17-14 million years ago, an ‘epoch’ in geologic history when the climate was 3-4 degrees Celsius warmer than it is today.
The authors hypothesise that a land-‘bridge’ connecting Afro-Arabian and Eurasian land masses formed 20 million years ago, which ‘enabled dispersal events.’ But this was followed by the creation of geographical barriers to the movement of species, a phenomenon known as vicariance or allopatric speciation.
While the authors acknowledge that only a small fraction of the entire Rhinocerotinae group was studied here, they hope that genomic studies can aid the understanding of the rhino genetic history and augment efforts in population recovery.

На Сахалине начался эксперимент по регулированию эмиссии парниковых газов с целью достижения к 2025 году углеродной нейтральности, когда поглощение углерода уравновешивает его выбросы. Помимо перехода на экологичные виды топлива и введения системы квот для предприятий, важную роль должно сыграть расширение площади лесов с их способностью поглощать углекислый газ.

A Russian island north of Japan has become a testing ground for Moscow’s efforts to reconcile its prized fossil fuel industry with the need to do something about climate change.
More than two-thirds of Sakhalin Island is forested. With the Kremlin’s blessing, authorities there have set an ambitious goal of making the island - Russia’s largest - carbon neutral by 2025.
Tree growth will absorb as much planet-warming carbon dioxide as the island’s half-million residents and its businesses produce, an idea the Russian government 4,000 miles to the west in Moscow hopes to apply to the whole country, which has more forested area than any other nation.
"The economic structure of Sakhalin and the large share of forestland in the territory and carbon balance distribution reflect the general situation in Russia," said Dinara Gershinkova, an adviser to Sakhalin’s governor on climate and sustainable development. "So the results of the experiment in Sakhalin will be representative and applicable to the whole Russian Federation."
The plan reflects a marked change of mood in Russia on climate change.
President Vladimir Putin once joked about global warming in 2003, saying that Russians would be able to "spend less on fur coats, and the grain harvest would increase." But last year, he acknowledged that climate change "requires real actions and way more attention," and he has sought to position one of the world’s biggest fossil fuel exporter as a leader in the fight against global warming.
Russia’s vast forests are key to this idea.
"By aiming to build a carbon-neutral economy by no later than 2060, Russia is relying, among other things, on the unique resource of forest ecosystems available to us, and their significant capacity to absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen," Putin said in a video address last week to the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland. "After all, our country accounts for around 20% of the world’s forestland."
Scientists say natural forms of removing carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, from the atmosphere will indeed play a key role in tackling global warming.
Many countries at the climate talks rely on some form of absorbing emissions to achieve their targets of being "net zero" by 2050 - that is, emitting only as much greenhouse gas as can be recaptured by natural or artificial means.
But experts say the math behind such calculations is notoriously fuzzy and prone to manipulation by governments, who have a vested interest in making their emissions look good.
"Russia makes an enormous contribution in the absorption of global emissions - both its own and others’ - by means of absorptive capacity of our ecosystems, firstly of forests, which is estimated at 2.5 billion (metric) tons of CO2 equivalent a year," said Viktoria Abramchenko, deputy prime minister for environmental issues, speaking at a conference in St. Petersburg.
The figure came as a surprise to scientists contacted by The Associated Press. It constitutes a fivefold increase on the 535 million metric tons of CO2 absorption that Russia reported to the U.N. climate office for 2019.
Natalia Lukina, the director of the Center of Ecology and Productivity of Forests, a government-funded research institute, said the estimates are actually assumptions because "there is no real accurate data."
"Unfortunately, our official information about forestland is 25 years old, then this data was updated somehow, but there were no direct measurements," she said.
One problem is that nobody knows how many trees are in Russia’s forests. Last year, its forestry body finished an inventory that took 13 years and cost at least $142 million, but it hasn’t been made public.
Russia’s network of emissions monitoring stations is likewise limited, Lukina said.
Vadim Mamkin, a scientist who maintains one of the country’s 11 greenhouse gas measuring masts in the Tver region, said the carbon balance of such old forests is "usually about zero," although figures vary about 10% from year to year.
Wildfires that burn millions of hectares of forest are another, increasingly pressing problem. Forests that have stored carbon for decades suddenly become big emitters when they burn, undoing an absorption effect, said Sergey Bartalev, head of the boreal ecosystems monitoring lab at the Space Research Institute.
Such fires are becoming increasingly frequent in Russia, partly due to climate change.
This year saw a record 13.1 million hectares burned, leading to emissions of 970 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent, according to an estimate by the European Union’s Copernicus Programme - almost twice as much as the last reported absorption.
Fire protection is now a priority in Moscow’s new strategy of low-carbon development.
"We’re focusing on improving our forest management practices, enhancing wildfire prevention response capabilities, increasing wilderness areas, introducing new farming practices, as well as engaging in transformation toward cleaner energy," Alexey Overchuk, a senior Russian government official, told negotiators at the Glasgow talks.
He reiterated Putin’s pledge that Russia aims to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 - a goal similar to those set by China and Saudi Arabia - but a decade behind the 2050 deadline the U.S. and EU are aiming for.
Scientists say stopping additional emissions of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere by 2050 is the only way to achieve the Paris accord’s goal to keep the Earth’s warming below catastrophic levels of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century.
Environmental advocates and other nations are wary of giving Moscow a free pass while they ramp up their own efforts to cut emissions.
Vasily Yablokov, the head of Energy and Climate Sector at Russian Greenpeace, said Russia’s forest calculations will play a key role in its climate plan, and he fears that estimates would be made to "fit into the answer."
One reason why Russia has a vested interest in minimizing its reported emissions is the prospect of a carbon tariff being mulled by the EU on imports from countries that are deemed to be not doing enough on climate.
"The role of forest is overestimated, unfortunately," said Alexey Kokorin, the head of climate and energy program at WWF-Russia. "It would be good to trust that Russia will be able to increase the absorption as it is in the draft strategy, and all of us will do the best to achieve it, but it looks like it’s too much."
Overchuk, meanwhile, made it clear that Moscow has no plans to turn off the flow of fossil fuels soon.
"Addressing global warming and climate change should not lead to further increase of poverty, not just in the developing world but in the developed world as well," he said. "Russia will remain a reliable supply of energy to international markets and consumers."

Российские исследователи опубликовали результаты первых двух этапов программы SIRIUS (Scientific International Research in Unique Terrestrial Station) по воссозданию условий социальной изоляции экипажей длительных межпланетных экспедиций. Оказалось, что со временем экипаж становится менее зависимым от центра управления полетами, сокращая общение с ним, а сплоченность самих космонавтов возрастает, несмотря на разное происхождение и конфликты.

In a paper published with Frontiers in Physiology, researchers in Russia observed volunteers in isolation attempting to replicate life in deep space to see how it would impact their mood and communication styles.
Elton John famously sang that Mars "ain't the kind of place to raise your kids", but one day space agencies across the globe hope to prove him wrong by seeing the first human set foot on the Red Planet, and potentially colonizing it or any other moon or planet.
However, those who make the journey will not only have to survive on a freezing planet with no breathable atmosphere, but live in isolation unlike any other explorers in human history.
At its closest proximity, Mars is still almost 55m km away from Earth, making communication delays and supply issues between the two worlds unavoidable. This requires crew members to effectively cope with stressful conditions by themselves, with limited autonomous resources available on board.
With little chance of conducting a trial run in space, scientists have resorted to terrestrial experiments to see how astronauts cope with such challenges. A previous isolation experiment called Mars-500 revealed a psychological detachment from mission control among those who took part, raising fears that it could lead to resistance from future crews in deep space to any commands.
In 2017 and 2019, two further isolation experiments dubbed SIRIUS (Scientific International Research in Unique Terrestrial Station) were conducted across periods of 17 days and four months, respectively, in a facility in Moscow, Russia using international, mixed gender crews. These missions studied the effects of isolation and confinement on human psychology, physiology, and team dynamics to help prepare for long-duration space exploration beyond Earth.
Hello, can you hear me?
Now, researchers have published a paper in Frontiers in Physiology revealing how the crews' communication with the outside world in these experiments not only diminished over time, but caused friction initially, and eventually resulted in cohesion.
"The crews in such missions tend to reduce their communication with mission control during isolation, sharing their needs and problems less and less," said Dr Dmitry Shved, of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Moscow Aviation Institute, as well as an author of the study.
"The rare bursts of contacts were seen during important mission events (eg landing simulation). Also, there was a convergence of communication styles of all SIRIUS crew members, and an increase in crew cohesion in the course of their mission. This happened even though the crew composition was diverse by gender and also cultural background, with pronounced individual differences."
Among the different ways the crews' behavior was measured included the tracking of facial expressions and speech acoustic characteristics (intensity, frequency and variability of speech) from video recordings.
During SIRIUS-19, the researchers recorded 320 audio conversations with external observers lasting 11 hours in the first 10 days alone. However, this fell to just 34 conversations lasting a total of 77 minutes during the last 10 days.
11 days into the experiment, an artificial communications delay was added similar to what would be experienced by those living on the moon, Mars and beyond. Over the course of four months, the number of video messages sent to mission control decreased from 200 in the first week of isolation to between 115 and 120. The duration of these videos also decreased significantly.
Under these conditions, the researchers also noted differences in communication between men and women participants. In women, there were more manifestations of joy and sadness emotions, while, men were more likely demonstrated anger.
"It should be generally noted that, while the male and female parts of the SIRIUS-19 crew showed significant differences in the style and content of their communication with the control center in the first month of isolation, then, during the course of the experiment, these differences were smoothed out," the authors wrote.
Promising for future colonists
According to Shved: "Our findings show that in autonomous conditions, the crews undergo psychological 'autonomization', becoming less dependent on mission control.
"Also, the crews in such conditions tend to increase their cohesion when crew members become closer and more similar to each other, despite their personal, cultural, and other differences. So, these phenomena look promising for future solar system exploration - or for any teams living and working in isolation on Earth."
Looking to the future, Shved and his fellow researchers aim to analyze more data from the latest isolation experiment, SIRIUS-21, which began on 4 November this year. This, he said, will help in overcoming the limitation of a small sample size that comes with such unique experiments.
"Our findings pose serious questions that should be taken into consideration [before sending crews to Mars]," Shved said.
"The promising part is, that the crews seem to become more autonomous and independent from Earth. The increasing crew cohesion should also help them in dealing with various problems during their mission."

Российская космическая обсерватория нового поколения «Миллиметрон», запуск которой запланирован на 2030 год, вызвала интерес зарубежного научного сообщества - шесть международных соглашений уже заключены, еще четыре готовятся к подписанию. «Миллиметрон» - единственная разрабатываемая космическая обсерватория субмиллиметрового и дальнего инфракрасного диапазонов.

L’observatoire spatial développé de la nouvelle génération « Millimetron » (le projet « Spectrum-M ») attire l’attention des scientifiques étrangers, six accords internationaux ont déjà été conclus, quatre autres sont en préparation pour la signature, cela est devenu connu de la décision du RAS Council on Space.
« Six accords internationaux ont été conclus et quatre autres sont en préparation pour la signature, ce qui augmente le prestige scientifique et technologique de la Fédération de Russie dans le monde », indique le document.
Le projet Millimetron est soutenu par la communauté astronomique internationale : des pays comme la Chine, la Corée du Sud, l’Italie, la France, les Pays-Bas et les États-Unis manifestent de l’intérêt pour le projet, la décision est précisée.
L’observatoire spatial russe de nouvelle génération est le seul observatoire spatial en développement dans les domaines submillimétrique et infrarouge lointain. L’observatoire pourra obtenir des données sur la structure globale de l’Univers, la structure et l’évolution des galaxies, de leurs noyaux, des étoiles et des systèmes planétaires. De plus, avec son aide, les scientifiques espèrent obtenir plus d’informations sur les composés organiques dans l’espace, ainsi que sur les objets dotés de champs gravitationnels et électromagnétiques super puissants.
La préparation du programme scientifique est assurée par six groupes scientifiques internationaux. Plus de 60 scientifiques étrangers participent au projet.
Le lancement de Millimetron est prévu pour 2030. Comme indiqué dans le rapport, les plus grands risques en termes de temps de production concernent les parties critiques de la production importée.

Российские астрономы изучили область фотодиссоциации в Перемычке Ориона, сосредоточив внимание на излучении в среднем инфракрасном диапазоне. Перемычка Ориона - гребневидная структура из газа и пыли на границе раздела между горячим ионизированным газом, исходящим со стороны молодых раскаленных звезд и холодными молекулярными облаками, где преобладают неионизирующие ультрафиолетовые фотоны. Фотоны, в свою очередь, воздействуют на органические молекулы, присутствующие в космосе, в том числе полициклические ароматические углеводороды.

Using spacecraft and ground-based facilities, Russian astronomers have inspected the Orion Bar photodissociation region, focusing on the mid-infrared emission from this source. Results of the study could help astronomers to better understand the evolution of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in space. The research was published November 10 on arXiv.org.
At a distance of about 1,300 light years away, the Orion Nebula is the nearest region of massive star formation to Earth, with a complex and extensive gas structure. It hosts the so-called "Orion Bar" - a ridge-like feature of gas and dust formed by the intense radiation from nearby, hot, young stars, which appears to be shaped like a bar.
The Orion Bar is a photodissociation region or photon-dominated region (PDR). In general, PDRs are regions in the interstellar medium (ISM) at the interface between hot ionized gas and cool molecular gas that are energetically dominated by non-ionizing ultraviolet photons.
Given that the Orion Bar is a bright and nearby PDR with simple geometry it could serve as an ideal laboratory to inspect the life-cycle of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and other small carbonaceous grains, as their evolution strongly depends on the ultraviolet field. So far, wide PAH emission bands have been detected in the Orion Bar, and astronomers generally assume that the observed strong mid-infrared emission in the ISM is associated with PAHs.
That is why a team of astronomers led by Maria S. Murga of the Institute of Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, decided to investigate the mid-infrared emission in the Orion Bar by analyzing the archival photometric and spectroscopic observations of this region.
"We investigate the mid-infrared (IR) emission in the Orion Bar photodissociation region, using archival photometric and spectroscopic observations from UKIRT, Spitzer, ISO, and SOFIA telescopes. Specifically, we consider flux densities of the emission bands at 3.3, 3.4, 3.6, 6.6, 7.7, 11.2 µm in several locations and a spectrum from 3 to 45 µm in one location," the researchers wrote in the paper.
Murga's team modeled the PAH photo-destruction under a harsh ultraviolet field, and considered different limits on the PAH size, above which the loss of carbon is forbidden, assuming unrestricted loss of hydrogen. They also considered the case when no PAH evolution occurs in the Orion Bar.
The astronomers managed to calculate the size, hydrogenation state and charge distributions for PAHs in different positions through the Orion Bar, and used the results of the modeling to obtain simulated spectra and band intensities. Their modeling satisfactorily describes the variations of ratios of various band fluxes with the distance from the ionizing source.
The study found that carbon loss of PAHs in the Orion Bar is limited by the number of carbon atoms at a level of 60, and the band at 3.4 µm may indeed be attributed to PAHs with extra hydrogen atoms. The researchers concluded that large cations dominate at the surface of this PDR but small neutral PAHs and anions are abundant deeper in the molecular cloud.

При раскопках некрополя Девица V на Среднем Дону экспедиция Института археологии РАН обнаружила скифское погребение IV в. до н. э. В деревянной гробнице находились останки мужчины 40-49 лет, а также ряд артефактов, от конской сбруи до золотых бляшек. Самой примечательной находкой оказалась серебряная пластина, на которой изображены несколько божеств, в том числе богиня войны и плодородия Аргимпаса. Раньше в этом регионе предметов с изображением богов скифского пантеона не находили.

Archaeologists excavating a warrior’s grave have discovered Scythian treasures in the Ostrogozhsky District of Voronezh region, Russia.
The Scythians were an ancient nomadic people living primarily in the region known as Scythia, which today comprises the Eurasian steppes of Kazakhstan, the Russian steppes of the Siberian, Ural, Volga and Southern regions, and eastern Ukraine.
Excavations were conducted by the Don Expedition from the Institute of Archaeology at the Russian Academy of Science, where the researchers have been excavating the Devitsa V necropolis that consists of 19 burial mounds.
A study of mound 7 in the centre of the cemetery revealed a wooden tomb constructed with seventeen large oak pillars, covered with half oak beams that dates from the 4th century BC.
Within the burial was the skeleton of a man aged around 40-49 years of age, in addition to small gold semi-sphere plates, an iron knife, a horse rib, a spearhead and three javelins. Adjacent to the burial the team also discovered horse harnesses, six bronze plates in the shape of wolves, the cut jaw from a young bear, a moulded cup, and several black-glazed vessels.
The most notable discovery is a silver plate measuring 34.7 cm by roughly 7.5 cm, that depicts several deities, including the goddess Argimpasa, who was generally associated with fertility, power over sovereignty and the priestly force. Argimpasa was also an androgynous goddess of warfare, fecundity, vegetation and was the Scythian variant of the Iranian goddess Arti that Herodotus also equated with Aphrodite Urania.
Argimpasa is presented on the plate surrounded from both sides with the figures of winged eagle-headed griffons, that archaeologists suggest is a representation of the cultural fusion of traditions between Asian Minor and Ancient Greece.
The left side of the plate is decorated with the depictions of syncretic creatures standing in a so-called heraldic pose, whilst the right side has two round buckles depicting an anthropomorphic character with a crown surrounded by two griffins.
Commenting on the plate, Prof. Valeriy Gulyaev from the Don expedition said: "The discovery has made an important contribution to our concepts of Scythian beliefs. Firstly, a particular number of deities are depicted at once on one item. Secondly, it is the first example of an object depicting deities found so far from the main Scythian centres".

Ученые из НИУ «Высшая школа экономики» обнаружили, что у людей, владеющих несколькими языками, ложные воспоминания могут формироваться независимо от того, на каком языке была получена ложная информация, на родном или иностранном. Авторы исследования также предположили, что у билингвов обработка информации может отличаться в зависимости от языка и приводить к другим ошибкам памяти, нежели эффект дезинформации.

HSE University researchers have discovered that false information in one’s native and second languages contribute equally to the formation of false memories. The study, entitled ‘False Memories in Native and Foreign Languages’, has been published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.
Say, for example, you are in another country on holiday and happen to witness a shop being robbed. The next day, you give a witness statement to the police. Could you be affected by false memories when recounting the event in a foreign language?
When dealing with witnesses, police detectives are aware of the fact that people’s memories of events can be inconsistent. New information and insight can alter one’s recollections, resulting in what is known as false memories.
One might suppose that people are less susceptible to forming false memories when examining information in a foreign language, as it requires more cognitive effort. The team of researchers from HSE University decided to conduct an online experiment to investigate how exactly false memories are formed in such circumstances.
Each of the 56 participants of the study was a native Russian speaker with an intermediate or higher level of English. They were shown a brief clip of someone stealing from a car, then asked to complete a four-minute arithmetic exercise to divert their attention. The subjects then read accounts of the theft by two ‘witnesses,’ one describing the event in Russian, the other in English. Both texts contained false information.
After watching the video and reading the two texts, the subjects were asked to answer a number of questions in Russian about whether a certain event occurred in the original video, and whether it was mentioned in either of the two texts. The subjects were also asked to rate how confident they were in their answers.
This was used to determine the influence of the misinformation effect - the degree to which false information obtained after watching the video distorted the subjects’ recollections of the original event. The researchers also assessed the source misattribution effect, which concerns how frequently the subjects mixed up whether a certain fact originated in the English or Russian text.
The researchers found that overall, the misinformation effect was equal for the Russian and English texts - in other words, that the false information contained in both texts had an equal impact on the subjects’ recollections. What’s more, the subjects frequently misattributed information from the English text to its Russian counterpart.
The results suggest that information processing in people who speak two languages may differ depending on the language the information is presented in.
Aleksandra Dolgoarshinnaia, one of the authors of the article and Research Assistant at the Centre for Cognition & Decision Making at HSE University:
‘Despite the fact that language did not have the expected impact on the degree of the misinformation effect, the results suggest that information processing in bilingual people may differ depending on the language the information is received from. Such differences could cause certain memory errors (such as the source misattribution effect), but not others (such as the misinformation effect). Furthermore, these processes may differ even in bilingual people depending on their level of second language proficiency. We observed that subjects with a more advanced command of English more frequently accepted false information obtained from English sources to be true. That said, these preliminary results require further testing.’
The results contribute to a greater understanding of information processing and memory function in bilingual people. The number of people in the world who speak two and more languages continues to grow, but much remains unknown about the effects of being bilingual on cognitive functions and their possible consequences. For example, memory errors can lead to wrongful convictions in legal proceedings. Learning more about how and when such errors occur could help improve the legal process and refine approaches to dealing with bilingual witnesses in order to minimize occurrences of false testimony.

Работа сотрудников ИТМО вошла в топ-30 самых значимых исследований года в области оптики и фотоники по версии журнала Optics & Photonics News. Российским ученым удалось продемонстрировать рекордно эффективный захват света в оптоволокно при больших углах падения с помощью диэлектрической наноструктуры из нитрида кремния.

Every year, the of Optics & Photonics News includes a list of the year’s 30 most impactful studies in the field of optics and photonics. This year, it by scientists from ITMO University who have succeeded in demonstrating record-breaking efficiency in light coupling at large incidence angles. ITMO.NEWS spoke to Oleh Yermakov, one of the authors of and a researcher at the university’s , to find out how the team plans to develop their research in the future.
In their work, written in collaboration with researchers from the Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology and the Australian National University, scientists from ITMO University using a dielectric nanostructure made of silicon nitride installed at the end face of an optical fiber in order to amplify the efficiency of light coupling. The study was conducted with the support from the Foundation for the Advancement of Theoretical Physics and Mathematics (BASIS), the German-Russian Interdisciplinary Science Center (G-RISC), and the Russian Science Foundation.
The efficiency of light coupling in optical fiber falls rapidly at large incidence angles. For instance, at an angle of only 15 degrees the value nearly approaches zero. This is a significant obstacle in the development of remote light collection that limits the possible applications for optical fiber in medicine - for measurements made within living tissues, such as during endoscopy, - in quantum technologies, and in biodetection, including when capturing single photons and molecules.
But the scientists were able to resolve the issue by installing a dielectric nanostructure on the end face of an optical fiber. This resulted in the amplification of light collection efficiency by a thousandfold when compared to existing counterparts at incidence angles up to 70 degrees and higher.
In 2021, the team submitted an application to have their work included in the special December issue of Optics & Photonics News. According to the regulations, each application is evaluated by 5-6 representatives of the international community - a group of experts in the fields of optics and photonics. Then, the special issue’s editors picked the 30 most important research projects published between September 2020 and August 2021.
According to the researchers, their work’s inclusion on the list is not only an honor and a sign of prestige, but also an opportunity to draw more attention to their project and the interdisciplinary research being done at the intersection of fiber optics and nanophotonics.
"I think there are several reasons why our project was chosen. First of all, we were able to demonstrate a remarkable improvement in the effectiveness of an important everyday technology. Increasing the productivity of solar cells by even 0.5% is already a substantial result, but we were able to improve the effectiveness with which light is collected into optical fiber by at least 10,000 times. Such a result is hard to ignore. Secondly, this project has allowed us to lay the foundation for a new interdisciplinary scientific field that brings together fiber optics and nanophotonics. We proved that "upgrading" optical fiber with nanophotonic structures is a promising endeavor and may lead to significant increase in functionality. And lastly, the results of our work may find a real practical application in, among others, endoscopy and laparoscopy. We believe that the results of our future research on this subject will eventually have an impact on our everyday lives," notes Oleh Yermakov.
Structurization of optical fiber is a complex process. But in recent years, the development of technologies for the production of nanostructures on unconventional substrates has allowed scientists to make significant advances in this field. According to the researchers, their study’s remarkable results can be credited to coordinated efforts of theoretical and experimental scientists and engineers. In the future, they plan to reduce the nanostructures’ cost of production and develop an automated algorithm for the optimization of their design. The scientists believe that it will take approximately five years to develop a final product and begin its integration into the industry.

В Денисовой пещере на Алтае обнаружены самые древние на данный момент останки денисовского человека - им не менее 200 тысяч лет. Ученые из Германии, России (ИАиЭт СО РАН), Великобритании и Австрии проанализировали 3791 фрагмент найденных в пещере костей, 5 из них оказались человеческими, а 4 содержали достаточно ДНК для митохондриального анализа. Оказалось, что один фрагмент принадлежит неандертальцу, а три другие - денисовцам, причем либо близким родственникам, либо вообще одному человеку.

Scientists have unearthed the oldest fossils to date of the mysterious human lineage known as the Denisovans. With these 200,000-year-old bones, researchers have also for the first time discovered stone artifacts linked to these extinct relatives of modern humans, a new study finds.
First identified a little more than a decade ago, the Denisovans - an extinct branch of the human family tree - are the closest known relatives of modern humans, along with Neanderthals. Analysis of DNA extracted from Denisovan fossils suggests they might have once been widespread across continental Asia, island Southeast Asia and Oceania, and revealed that at least two distinct groups of Denisovans interbred with ancestors of modern humans.
Until now, scientists had only discovered half a dozen Denisovan fossils. Five were unearthed in Denisova Cave in Siberia, and one was found in a holy site in China, Live Science previously reported.
Now, researchers have discovered another three Denisovan fossils in Denisova Cave. Scientists estimated that they are about 200,000 years old, making them the oldest known Denisovans ever found. Previously, the earliest known Denisovan specimens were about 122,000 to 194,000 years old.
In the new study, researchers examined 3,791 bone scraps from Denisova Cave. They looked for proteins they knew were Denisovan based on previous DNA research on the extinct lineage.
Among these scraps, the scientists identified five human bones. Four of these contained enough DNA to reveal their identity - one was Neanderthal, and the other three were Denisovan. Based on genetic similarities, two of these fossils may either come from one person or from related individuals.
"We were extremely excited to identify three new Denisovan bones amongst the oldest layers of Denisova Cave," study senior author Katerina Douka, an archaeological scientist at the University of Vienna in Austria, told Live Science. "We specifically targeted these layers where no other human fossils were found before, and our strategy worked."
The researchers estimated the age of these Denisovan fossils based on the layer of earth in which they were uncovered. This layer also contained a slew of stone artifacts and animal remains, which may serve as vital archaeological clues on Denisovan life and behavior. Previously, Denisovan fossils were only found in layers without such archaeological material, or in layers that might also have contained Neanderthal material.
"This is the first time we can be sure that Denisovans were the makers of the archaeological remains we found associated with their bone fragments," Douka said.
The new findings suggest these newfound Denisovans lived during a time when, according to previous research, the climate was warm and comparable to today, in a locale favorable to human life that included broad-leaved forests and open steppe. Butchered and burnt animal remains found in the cave suggest the Denisovans may have fed on deer, gazelles, horses, bison and woolly rhinoceroses.
"We can infer that Denisovans were well-adapted to their environments, utilizing every resource available to them," Douka said.
The stone artifacts found in the same layer as these Denisovan fossils are mostly scraping tools, which were perhaps used for dealing with animal skins. The raw material for these items likely came from river sediment just outside the entrance to the cave, and the river likely helped the Denisovans when they sought to hunt, the scientists noted.
"The site's strategic point in front of a water source and the entrance of a valley would have served as a great spot for hunting," Douka said.
The stone tools linked with these new fossils have no direct counterparts in north or central Asia. However, they do bear some resemblance to items found in Israel dating between 250,000 and 400,000 years ago - a period linked with major shifts in human technology, such as the routine use of fire, the researchers noted.
The new study found that Denisovans may not have been the only occupants of the cave at this time. Bones of carnivores such as wolves and wild dogs suggest Denisovans may have actively competed with these predators over prey and perhaps the cave itself.
"At the moment our team continues to work at Denisova Cave and several other Asian sites and hope to report some interesting new stuff very soon," Douka said.
The scientists detailed their findings online Nov. 25 in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

Специалисты Центра языка и мозга НИУ «Высшая школа экономики» разработали первый стандартизированный тест на русском языке для выявления нарушений речи у пациентов с афазией. Методика основана на современных нейролингвистических моделях и позволяет оценивать афазию по трем языковым функциям: понимание речи на слух, повторение и речеобразование.

Researchers from the HSE University Centre for Language and Brain have created and standardized a new test battery for diagnosing language disorders in people with brain damage. The test is the first standardized assessment tool in Russia in the field. The paper entitled 'The Russian Aphasia Test: The first comprehensive, quantitative, standardized, and computerized aphasia language battery in Russian' has just been published in the PLOS ONE journal.
Historically, clinicians in Russia have used qualitative methods to diagnose speech and language disorders. These tools require a high level of skill from the specialists using them, and it is difficult to compare assessment results to each other or use them in research. The small number of quantitative surveys used to assess speech were developed quite a long time ago, and often do not meet modern standards for assessment instruments.
Aphasia is one of the language disorders that lacks a standardized Russian test. People with aphasia can have difficulty understanding others' speech, producing words and sentences, and writing. Aphasia is most often caused by a stroke or a brain injury.
A team of researchers from HSE University has addressed this lack of a valid Russian methodology for evaluating and diagnosing aphasia by developing and testing the Russian Aphasia Test (RAT). This new tool utilizes modern neurolinguistic models and has been designed in accordance with psychometric requirements for this type of diagnostic batteries.
The test was validated in a group of 106 healthy participants and 85 individuals with aphasia. Each participant was assessed with the new test on a tablet. As expected, the healthy subjects had no difficulties with the test. The results of patients with aphasia accurately reflected their diagnoses, as well as specific linguistic deficits identified using qualitative methods in a clinical setting. These and other statistical tests conducted by the team of researchers demonstrate the validity and reliability of the test. The results obtained from the test subjects were also used to standardize the tool.
A validated test accurately measures what it intends to measure. Its results are consistent over time and vary among subjects exhibiting different levels of the parameter measured. Standardization is a separate procedure for identifying the test's assessment norms based on the results of subjects from different groups. This makes it possible to compare each patient's results to the same standard.
The fully developed version of the test allows specialists to assess aphasia in terms of three language functions: auditory language comprehension, repetition, and language production. Each of these functions is assessed at various linguistic levels, from the processing of individual sounds (phonemes), single words and sentences to the understanding and production of discourse. For example, in order to assess auditory language comprehension, subjects are asked to match the word or sentence they hear to a picture. The tasks to assess repetition involve repeating a nonword, word, or a sentence. Language production is assessed by asking participants to provide a verbal description of pictures. The test contains a total of 13 different subtests, each comprising of 8-24 items. On average, someone with aphasia takes 60-90 minutes to complete the whole test.
This kind of differential assessment affords a detailed profile of the patient's linguistic deficits, consequently enabling the clinician to select the most optimal and effective course of treatment. The test is the first Russian diagnostic tool to be standardized in accordance with modern psychometric standards. The Russian Aphasia Test can be used both in clinical practice and in neurolinguistic studies of language.
In another first (both in Russia and the world), the test automates the assessment of aphasia. The test can be administered to patients using an app on a tablet, which then automatically scores performance on some of the subtests. The test examiner can use the device to assess the accuracy of completion of the remaining subtests, and the program will then specify the level of disorder severity for each language function.
Maria Ivanova, is the head of the team behind the test, a research scientist at the Aphasia Recovery Lab at the University of California Berkeley, and a former research fellow of the HSE University Centre for Language and Brain:
"The publication of this test is a landmark event in Russian aphasiology. We spent almost ten years working on this project. First, we developed the tasks and tested them on a small number of subjects. We selected the best of them and conducted large-scale data collection to validate and standardize the test. Alongside this, we developed an app capable of automating the presentation and scoring procedures. The last few years have been devoted to processing data and preparing the test materials for publication. The use of the test in clinical and research settings will take Russian aphasiology to a new level."
Olga Dragoy, Director of the Centre for Language and Brain and co-author of the project:
"The Russian Aphasia test is the most outstanding clinical application created at the HSE University Centre for Language and Brain. It represents the latest in neurolinguistic knowledge, the best traditions of psychometrics, and modern technology. We believe that our tremendous effort will be of benefit to the field of speech-language disorders in Russia and set a global trend for language assessment tools."

предыдущий месяц

1998-2021

следующий месяц