Июнь 2022 г.

Российская наука и мир (по материалам зарубежной электронной прессы)

CONTENTS / ОГЛАВЛЕНИЕ


• Decided to increase 13 times the norms for dumping mercury into Lake Baikal
• Siberian Federal University: Radio signals will tell new facts about exoplanets
• Siberian tundra could vanish in less than 500 years
• Astronomers just practiced what would happen if a potentially dangerous asteroid was detected
• Ural Federal University: Paleontologists discovered teeth and bones of ancient animals in the Urals
• Scientists: global warming cannot be stopped without CO2 traps
• Chinese, Russian scientists create cheap, efficient new hydrogen energy material
• One site, 95 tons of methane an hour
• Human teeth found in 700-year-old graves may reveal where the Black Death started
• Mummified shaman in exquisite 18th century attire discovered in Siberia
• Russian researchers create sensor that can detect cancer - study
• Are the Russian covid-vaccine results accurate?
• Scientists create new fluorophores that could help fight cancer
• Un résultat soulève à nouveau la question de l'existence de la plus fantomatique des particules "fantômes"
• Russia ready for second stage of clinical trials of innovative Parkinson's disease drug
• Ancient wolf DNA is being used to sniff out where our love story with dogs began
• Humans dated back to the Arctic for over 40,000 years

Минприроды России предложило значительно повысить допустимый уровень загрязняющих веществ в воде Байкала. Если изменения будут одобрены, допустимый уровень содержания железа увеличится в 10 раз, хрома - в 1,3 и ртути в 13 раз. Допустимый уровень галогенорганических соединений - токсинов, обычно используемых в растворителях и пестицидах - будет выше допустимого в 200 раз. СО РАН предупредило, что даже существующие нормативы недостаточны, а их изменение создаст серьезные угрозы для экосистемы озера.

The Ministry of Natural Resources has decided to significantly increase the level of permissible pollution of Lake Baikal and its feeding rivers. As Kommersant writes, in industrial effluents, it was proposed to weaken the standards for the content of suspended solids in discharges by 1.6 times, iron - by 10 times, chromium - by 1.3 times, mercury - by 13 times, anionic surfactants (ASPAV) - 2 times, adsorbed organohalogen compounds (AOH) - 200 times.
It was proposed to allow three times more AOX and 1.5 times more ASPAW to be discharged into water bodies in the central and buffer ecological zones of Lake Baikal.
An official from the Ministry of Natural Resources explained to the publication that the existing standards were too strict. According to him, the concentration of some substances could not be measured with the accuracy specified in the law, for others it was problematic achieve the desired cleaning quality.
The issue of the permissible amount of harmful substances in Baikal was dealt with the Scientific Council of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (SB RAS) on the problems of Lake Baikal and the Scientific Council of the Russian Academy of Sciences on global environmental problems. The first council indicated in the conclusion that the proposed changes "would entail serious threats to the ecosystem of the lake", the second agreed to soften the standards. As a result, scientists leaned towards the opinion of the first council, but the President of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Sergeev sent the decision of the second to the ministry. "Let’s leave scientific disputes to scientists," the department concluded and accepted the sent document.
The Ministry of Natural Resources actually refuses to control the presence of hazardous organochlorine compounds in wastewater, academicians believe. These substances threaten the lake during the liquidation of the accumulated waste of the Baikal pulp and paper mill BPPM.
BPPM closed in 2013. Over the entire period of operation, the enterprise has accumulated about 6.5 million tons of hazardous waste, which are stored in the so-called storage cards near Lake Baikal. If they break down, tons of toxic substances can enter the lake.
Waste had to be gradually removed from the storage tanks and composted. However, in April, the government abandoned this method, announcing the import substitution of technologies against the backdrop of sanctions. This drew sharp criticism from profile scientists and Greens.
State Duma deputies proposed to ease the environmental obligations of industrialists not only on Lake Baikal and introduce a temporary moratorium on environmental audits of mining companies. It is planned to suspend the fulfillment of obligations of licenses for the development of deposits for two years, and inspections of mining enterprises for three years.
The State Duma also explained the need for such relief by sanctions against Russian companies. The Ministry of Natural Resources considers them redundant: the ministry calls such measures a way to leave from liability for improper fulfillment of the conditions of licenses for the use of subsoil.

Астрономы Сибирского федерального университета совместно с австрийскими и французскими коллегами провели математическое моделирование атмосферы массивной экзопланеты Ипсилон Андромеды b, чтобы выяснить, при каких условиях вблизи нее может генерироваться направленное радиоизлучение по типу циклотронного мазера и может ли оно покинуть магнитосферу. Оказалось, что решающее значение имеет масса планеты, которая должна превышать некоторое пороговое значение, рассчитанное учеными.

Researchers of Siberian Federal University and their partners from Austria and France have found out whether radio emission can escape from the magnetosphere of the planet Upsilon Andromedae b, and presented a new method for obtaining a lower estimate of the mass of hot Jupiters.
The researchers carried out mathematical modeling of atmosphere of Upsilon Andromedae b (a massive exoplanet in the constellation of Andromeda). In particular, experts were interested in under what conditions can directional radio emission based on the principle of a cyclotron maser be generated near the planet and whether it can leave the area of its source and be registered on Earth. To answer these questions, the experts ran calculations of the distributions of physical parameters in the atmosphere and ionosphere of the planet on the basis of the obtained model and checked the physical criterion of radio emission generation. It turned out that the mass of the planet is crucial for the occurrence and propagation of this radio emission. The mass should exceed a certain threshold value found as a result of model calculations.
Exoplanets have been in the focus of attention of astronomers and astrophysicists for several decades. Various methods of measuring the mass of these planets are being developed, in particular, to identify their suitability for life. Scientists believe that knowing the mass of an exoplanet, they can calculate the composition of its surface, study thermoregulation, plate tectonics, magnetic fields and gas flows in the atmosphere. As for radio emission, its registration from exoplanets is considered a promising way of searching for them.
"It is known that planets can emit coherent, polarized radio emission generated in the surrounding plasma during cyclotron maser instability. The essence of this effect is the amplification of electromagnetic waves by free electrons moving in a magnetic field. This happens if the frequency of electron oscillations in the plasma is significantly lower than their cyclotron frequency. By the way, it is the cyclotron maser instability that is the cause of the intense decameter radio emission from Jupiter," said Nikolay Yerkaev, co-author of the study, professor of the Department of Applied Mechanics at Siberian Federal University. "These radio waves can, under certain conditions, escape from the magnetosphere surrounding the planet into open space and reach Earth, bringing important information about the source planet. In the case of massive exoplanets called hot Jupiters, there may be a situation of strong heating of the upper atmosphere due to the absorption of X-ray and extreme ultraviolet radiation of the host star, which leads to the expansion of the upper atmosphere, in which ionized gas can prevent the release of radio emissions into outer space".
According to the scientist, the mass of Upsilon Andromedae b is still unknown, but in the case of detection of planetary radio emission, the proposed approach allows to unequivocally indicate the lower limit of the mass of this exoplanet. A foreign publication in 2021 informed about the preliminary experimental detection of radio emission from Upsilon Andromedae system.
Using the ground-based LOFAR system, a team of astronomers led by Jake D. Turner of Cornell University published radio observations of three planetary systems: 55 Cancer, Upsilon Andromedae, and Tau Boötis, which are within 50 light-years of the Sun. The scientists were looking for possible radio emission from exoplanets at frequencies of 10-90 megahertz with strong circular polarization, which would indicate a connection with the instability of the electron cyclotron maser. The researchers recorded one radio pulse from Upsilon Andromedae, although its statistical significance was only 2.2 sigma, which is not enough for a confirmed discovery.
In the case of Tau Boötis, the researchers found circularly polarized bursty emission in the range of 14-21 megahertz (3.2 sigma) and a stream of radio emission with circular polarization in the frequency range of 21-30 megahertz. According to the astronomers, the source of the radio emission is a hot Jupiter exoplanet in the system with a mass of about six Jupiter masses. The estimated magnetic field strength at the poles of the exoplanet near its surface is in the range of 5-11 gauss.
"I believe that further radio observations on several telescopes will confirm this significant discovery. If this signal is confirmed by subsequent observations using telescopes, then the ideas about the mass of this planet will be significantly adjusted," added Mr Yerkaev.
According to the calculations made during the Russian-European study, radio emission that can be detected by interplanetary probes can be generated only if the planet has a mass of at least 2.25 Jupiter masses. Thus, the proposed method opens up new opportunities for determining and clarifying the masses of many large exoplanets.

К 2500 году сибирская тундра может полностью исчезнуть - потепление климата приведет к тому, что граница лиственных лесов сдвинется далеко на север, вытеснив тундровую экосистему.

The Siberian tundra could disappear by the year 2500, unless greenhouse gas emissions are dramatically reduced.
Even in the best-case scenarios, two-thirds of this landscape - defined by its short growing season and cover of grasses, moss, shrubs and lichens - could vanish, leaving behind two fragments separated by 1,553 miles (2,500 kilometers), scientists recently predicted. And as the tundra's permafrost cover melts away, it could release vast quantities of stored greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, potentially accelerating warming worldwide.
"This was stunning for us to see how quickly the tundra will be turned over to forest," said ecologist and forest modeler Stefan Kruse of the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany. The loss of the tundra will not only be a blow for biodiversity and human culture, but might also worsen Arctic warming, Kruse told Live Science.
Warming in the Arctic has advanced rapidly in recent decades, about twice as fast as warming in the rest of the globe. Between 1960 and 2019, air temperatures rose nearly 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius) across the Arctic region, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). This heat reduced sea ice cover and is affecting the Arctic's land as well. One of those implications is the northward march of Siberian larch forests.
How quickly these forests will replace the grassy, shrubby tundra ecosystem is unknown. Treeline changes in response to climate aren't consistent around the globe, Kruse said. In some areas, treelines have advanced northward. In others, they have remained static; in still others, they've even retreated. Previous research in the Siberian tundra has focused on small areas, but there can be a lot of variability from location to location.
Now, Kruse and his colleague, AWI professor Ulrike Herzschuh, have created a new computer model that evaluates the full 2,485-mile-long (4,000 km) expanse of the Siberian tundra. The model takes into account the life cycles of individual trees: from how far they can disperse their seeds, to how well they grow when faced with competition from other trees, to growth rates based on temperature, precipitation and depth of the summer thaw of permafrost that occurs in tundra regions.
The researchers found that once the trees start marching northward in response to warming, they do so quickly - and they are not likely to retreat again should temperatures cool. Under a scenario in which carbon emissions are reduced to zero by 2100 and global temperature rise remains below 3.6 degrees F (2 degrees C), only 32.7% of today's tundra would remain by 2500. This fraction would be split into two mini-tundras: one in Chukotka in the far east and one on the Taymyr Peninsula in the far north.
Cascade of change
But even that bleak scenario may be impossible to achieve without very quick action, meaning that the outcome for the tundra could easily be far worse. In an intermediate scenario in which carbon emissions don't start declining until 2050 and are cut by half by 2100, larch trees would cover all but 5.7% of the current tundra by 2500, essentially annihilating the ecosystem.
In the warmer global scenarios, trees could spread northward by as much as 18.6 miles (30 km), the researchers reported on May 24 in the journal eLife. When Kruse and Herzschuh tested what would happen if temperatures cooled after the tundra became a forest, they found that the treeline did not retreat as quickly as it had advanced. Once mature trees are established, they can withstand a lot, Kruse said.
The study didn't directly model what might happen to tundra dwellers, such as reindeer, Kruse said, but splitting populations into two regions, where they are cut off from interbreeding, is typically bad for the survival of species. Reindeer (known as caribou in North America) migrate from north to south and back again throughout the year, and it's not known how forest expansion may affect their migration and life cycles.
The impacts are likely to be felt by humans, too. Indigenous cultures such as the Nenets people of northwestern Siberia both herd and hunt reindeer.
"The culture is dependent partly on tundra," Kruse said. "If this gets lost, it will be a major loss for humanity."
How the loss of the tundra may affect future warming is also uncertain, but covering the mossy, scrubby grasslands with tall trees could make matters worse. Snow-covered tundra is lighter in color than larch forest canopy; the forests will therefore absorb more heat than the tundra does, potentially making the Arctic hotter, faster, Kruse said. This additional heat could hasten and deepen the melting of the tundra's permafrost, which stores massive amounts of greenhouse gases - up to 1,400 gigatons globally, according to the NSIDC. Permafrost thaw could release these gases as well as long-frozen microbes and viruses.
Change will likely go beyond the replacement of tundra with larch trees, Kruse added. As warmer summers thaw deeper and deeper layers of permafrost, evergreen trees can then move in as well. These trees remain leaf-covered year-round, potentially absorbing even more heat than larch do. The southern side of the taiga, where temperatures are already higher than in the north, will likely heat up even more, leading to drought and wildfires - which release still more carbon into the atmosphere.
The findings present compelling reasons to push for the ambitious reduction of fossil fuel emissions. The model used in the study, however, can also be used to identify the most resilient portions of the Siberian tundra, Kruse said. These resilient areas could be prioritized for conservation investments.
"The best option would be to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to reduce the pressure," he said. "But nevertheless, if we cannot do that, one needs to do species conservation."

Более 100 астрономов из 18 стран мира, включая Россию, приняли участие в эксперименте по обнаружению потенциально опасных астероидов. Тренировалась рабочая группа на реальном астероиде Апофис, сближение которого с Землей отмечалось в период с декабря 2020 года по март 2021. Для чистоты эксперимента данные об Апофисе были изъяты из базы мониторинга, и астрономы видели астероид как «незнакомый». Результаты, опубликованные в The Planetary Science Journal, показали, что в случае необходимости исследователи способны быстро обнаружить опасный объект и рассчитать степень возможной опасности.

In and around our planet, there are thousands of comets and asteroids known as Near-Earth Objects (NEOs). Multiple space agencies and government affiliates are responsible for tracking them, especially those known as Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHA). These objects are so-designated because they will cross Earth’s orbit and may even collide with it someday. Considering how impacts in the past have caused mass extinctions (like the Chicxulub Impact Event that killed the dinosaurs), future impacts are something we would like to avoid!
Monitoring PHAs is a huge responsibility that requires a worldwide effort, including tracking, alerts, and disaster preparedness. Last year, over 100 participants from 18 countries (including NASA scientists and the NEOWISE mission) conducted an international exercise that simulated an encounter with an asteroid that made a close flyby to Earth. As NASA revealed in a recently-released study, the exercise was a complete success. The lessons learned could help avert real impacts in the near future or significantly limit the devastation one could cause.
The study, which appeared in the May 31st issue of The Planetary Science Journal (titled "Apophis Planetary Defense Campaign"), was conducted by the Planetary Defense Exercise Working Group and led by Vishnu Reddy - an Associate Professor at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory (LPI). The working group is made up of more than 100 participants from 18 countries, and includes facilities like NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO), the ESA NEO Coordination Centre, the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI), and many universities and research institutes worldwide.
Simulating a Threat
As Reddy and his colleagues describe in the paper, the planetary defense exercise was the culmination of work that began in 2017, which was designed to test the operational readiness of our global planetary defense capabilities. The exercise was carried out with the support of NASA’s PDCO, the Minor Planet Center (MPC) - the internationally-recognized authority for monitoring the position and motion of small celestial bodies - and the International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN). The exercise was named the "Apophis Campaign" since it coincided with the close approach of the NEO (99942) Apophis, which flew past Earth from December 2020 to March 2021.
Apophis is one of many PHAs regularly monitored by the planetary defense-monitoring database. Shortly after it was discovered in 2004, Apophis was determined to have a significant chance of impacting Earth in 2029 or later. But after years of tracking and several close approaches, astronomers have refined Apophis’ orbit and concluded that it poses no risk of impacting Earth for a century or more. Apophis was specifically selected for this campaign because planetary defense experts knew it would closely approach Earth in early December 4th, 2020.
To make the exercise more realistic, the MPC removed Apophis from the planetary defense-monitoring database to see whether it could be properly detected anew, tracked, and characterized by the planetary defense system. With no prior record of it in the database, astronomers had nothing to reference it to, making it seem like astronomers were seeing it for the first time. Other goals included the ability of the system to conduct observations, hypothetical risk assessment, risk prediction, and hazard communication.
Finding Apophis (Again)
On Dec. 4th, the asteroid began to brighten in the night sky, and the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona was able to detect it and report its position to the MPC. The NASA-funded Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last at Alert System (ATLAS) and Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) in Hawaii made subsequent detections. This was followed by observations from NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) mission, an asteroid-hunting campaign that relies on the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) space telescope.
The space-based NEOWISE provided infrared observations of Apophis that were not possible using ground-based telescopes because of atmospheric interference - i.e., water vapor in our atmosphere absorbs light at these wavelengths. By Dec. 23rd, the MPC announced the discovery of this "new" asteroid and added it to the list of known PHAs. During Apophis’ next close approach (in March 2021), JPL astronomers used the NASA Goldstone Solar System Radar (GSSR) in California to take pictures and accurately measure the asteroid’s velocity and distance from Earth.
NASA engineer Davide Farnocchia, who led the orbital determination calculations for JPL’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), explained in a recent NASA press release:
"Even though we knew that, in reality, Apophis was not impacting Earth in 2029, starting from square one - with only a few days of astrometric data from survey telescopes - there were large uncertainties in the object’s orbit that theoretically allowed an impact that year."
Results
Combined with measurements from other observatories, the exercise not only "discovered" the object but managed to continually reassess its chances of hitting Earth. As Reddy indicated, they were able to rule out the possibility of an impact in 2029 and any chance of impact for 100 years or more. "This real-world scientific input stress-tested the entire planetary defense response chain, from initial detection to orbit determination to measuring the asteroid’s physical characteristics and even determining if, and where, it might hit Earth," said Reddy.
A second paper that describes the results obtained by the NEOWISE mission during the exercise (titled "NEOWISE Observations of the Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (99942) Apophis") was also recently published in The Planetary Science Journal. This study was led by undergraduate researcher Akash Satpathy and NEOWISE’s Principal Investigator Amy Mainzer, both from the University of Arizona. They were joined by researchers from Caltech, UCLA, the Astronomical Research Institute, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. As Satpathy explained:
"The independent infrared data collected from space greatly benefited the results from this exercise. NEOWISE was able to confirm Apophis’ rediscovery while also rapidly gathering valuable information that could be used in planetary defense assessments, such as its size, shape, and even clues as to its composition and surface properties."
The NEOWISE measurements also allowed for updated assessments of the asteroid’s size. As they indicated in the study, Apophis is an elongated object with an "effective spherical diameter" of 270 to 410 meters (~885 to 1345 ft). These improved measurements allowed the research team and participating scientists at NASA Ames Research Center to place new estimates on the impact energy this asteroid would deliver. In a series of simulations, which looked at impacts in different geographic locations, the team found that an impact by an Apophis-like object "would likely cause damage at a regional level and not a global one."
This collaborative effort could help disaster agencies plan for future impacts and develop possible mitigation and evacuation strategies. Michael Kelley, a program scientist with PDCO who guided the exercise participants, said:
"Seeing the planetary defense community come together during the latest close approach of Apophis was impressive. Even during a pandemic, when many of the exercise participants were forced to work remotely, we were able to detect, track, and learn more about a potential hazard with great efficiency. The exercise was a resounding success."
Last year, NASA approved the next-generation NEO Surveyor spacecraft - an asteroid-hunting space-telescope and NEOWISE’s direct successor - for further development. This mission will launch no earlier than 2026 and provide updated data that will greatly expand our knowledge about the near-Earth asteroids that populate our Solar System (and which ones pose a collision risk with Earth). On September 26th, 2022, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission will rendezvous with the asteroid Didymos and collide with its moon to test a key asteroid defense technique (the kinetic impact method).
As noted, a major impact (and an extinction-level event) is something humanity would like to prevent. A considerable amount of resources are currently directed towards developing every and all means for avoiding that. But the single-greatest tool we have in our arsenal is the regular tracking, which ensures that we are prepared for whatever threats might emerge someday.

Уральские палеонтологи обнаружили в Свердловской области кости и зубы животных эпохи эоцена. Возраст большинства находок - около 40 млн лет, когда почти весь Урал и Западно-Сибирскую равнину занимало море.

Paleontologists from the Institute of Plant and Animal Ecology of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Ural Federal University Dmitry Gimranov and Anton Kisagulov together with volunteers discovered teeth and bones of ancient Eocene animals in the Sverdlovsk Region (the Sugat River near the village of Talitsa). Most of the finds are 40 million years old. There are also later finds dating back to the Middle or Late Pleistocene (0.75-0.02 million years). The oldest finds were numerous and consisted mainly of shark and ray teeth and fish bones. The "mammoth time" finds were few and include bones of frogs, birds and mammals. Late finds will have to be dated by radiocarbon analysis.
Shark and ray teeth will be transferred for study to Tatyana Malyshkina, a Senior Researcher at the Laboratory of Stratigraphy and Paleontology at the Zavaritsky Institute of Geology and Geochemistry of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The finds will enrich her collection with new specimens and possibly serve as a basis for the description of new species. The mammal finds will be studied by Dmitry Gimranov, a Senior Researcher at the Paleoecology Laboratory of the Institute of Plant and Animal Ecology of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Laboratory of Natural Science Methods in Humanities of the UrFU.
"Among the mammals, the tooth of the badger deserves special attention. According to organoleptic indicators, the tooth completely corresponds to late Pleistocene preservation, i.e. to the period of 120-20 thousand years, when mammoths lived. If it turns out that it is so, then the finding becomes extremely important and interesting, because the remains of badgers of Pleistocene time in the Urals and Siberia almost not found. There are only a few finds in several caves in the Urals," explains Dmitry Gimranov.
The biology of the ancient badger is extremely poorly studied, as this animal was rare in the late Pleistocene, when the climate was colder and drier. Paleontologists also include otter, roe deer and elk among such rare species in the Pleistocene. Badger, just like roe deer and elk, is a forest animal, and forests in the Ural in the late Pleistocene apparently covered a much smaller area than they do now. Therefore, all forest animals of that time are rare in Late Pleistocene sediments and are of particular interest to scientists.
The fact that there was a sea in the Middle Urals and Western Siberia in the Eocene (40 million years ago) was confirmed by scientists long ago. Therefore, according to researchers, it is often possible to find shark teeth, rays, and fish bones from that time in the Urals.

Ученые НИТУ «МИСиС» убеждены, что для борьбы с глобальным потеплением климата недостаточно сократить потребление ископаемых источников энергии. Необходимо также удалить углекислый газ из воздуха, а для этого требуются соответствующие технологии. В настоящее время они существуют, но из-за высокой стоимости мало распространены.

Reducing the consumption of fossil fuels is not enough to prevent the world's average annual temperature from rising by two or more degrees above pre-industrial levels. Russian scientists at NUST MISIS are convinced that global climate change cannot be stopped without the development of technologies for removing carbon dioxide from the air. The results of their study are presented in Thermal Engineering.
The anthropogenic factor is considered to be the main cause of climate change. The use of fossil fuels, agriculture and forestry are among the main drivers of global warming.
In accordance with the Paris Climate Agreement signed in 2015, the world community is striving to prevent the global average annual temperature on the planet from exceeding 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2100 and to do everything possible to keep warming within 1.5 degrees Celsius.
According to last year's report of the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), this decade is the last chance for humanity to take the measures needed to slow global warming.
Scientists from NUST MISIS, the Moscow Power Engineering Institute and the Energy Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences have analyzed key trends in global energy and climate indicators, and concluded that although the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement are unattainable, there is no reason for apocalyptic sentiment.
Despite the fact that fossil fuels account for up to 90% of carbon dioxide emissions, the intensity of CO2 emissions per unit of energy consumed has steadily decreased over the past 100 years, the authors of the study note.
However, energy consumption in each country is highly dependent on climate and geographical factors. With the world's population projected to grow to 10 billion people, global energy consumption will rise to 28-30 billion tons of coal equivalent by 2100, just 30-40% more than today. While many international experts predict growth in energy consumption of up to 60, 100 and even 200 billion tons, such projections are based on the erroneous assumption that developing countries require the same amounts of energy to achieve a standard of living comparable to that of Western countries.
This theory does not take into account the geographical factor: most of the so-called developed countries are located in the middle and high latitudes, and up to 40% of all energy consumption is spent on space heating. In addition, climate change is also having an impact on energy consumption. Thus, according to various estimates, the total energy consumption in Russia over the past 30 years has decreased by 10 to 15%, and energy costs for heating premises - by 15-20%.
Alexander Klimenko, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, leading expert at the NUST MISIS Competence Center says, "In our work, we explain the discrepancy between the constant increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the non-monotonic increase in global temperature. There are periods when its growth is clearly slowing down and even halting. It would seem that the higher the concentration of carbon dioxide, the greater the greenhouse effect, the higher the temperature. In fact, the global temperature is also influenced by other factors - not of anthropogenic, but of natural origin. Taking into account all factors allows us to understand the nature of the change in global temperature and build reliable forecasts of its behavior in the future."
In their forecast, Russian researchers predict that the anthropogenic impact on climate systems will soon begin to weaken, and the peak values of carbon dioxide emissions will be reached in 10 to 15 years. According to the research, they will amount to 10 to 11 billion tons per year in terms of clean carbon, which is slightly different from today's 9.5 billion tons. This is, among other things, the result of the rapid expansion of the share of renewable energy in global energy production. Further gradual reduction of emissions will follow. Nevertheless, by the end of the century, their volumes will remain at least 6 billion tons per year.
In achieving full carbon neutrality, the so-called carbon capture technologies ("carbon traps") will help: the ocean, living biota (forests) and geological formations capable of capturing and retaining carbon dioxide. However, natural resources in this sense are limited, so achieving global carbon neutrality exclusively by natural capacity by 2050 doesn't seem feasible.
Industrial technologies for removing carbon dioxide from the air can help to control the rate of warming without completely abandoning fossil fuels, but they are now expensive, which is an obstacle to their widespread distribution. At present, only 26 such facilities operate worldwide in eight countries, and their combined capacity is only sufficient to capture less than one tenth of a percent of total emissions.
However, the authors of the study are confident that without the development of such technologies, the goal of keeping global warming below 2 degrees Celsius by the end of this century will not be achievable.

Томские ученые совместно с китайскими коллегами разработали недорогой и безопасный способ повысить эффективность преобразования солнечного света в энергию для производства водорода за счет изменения микроструктуры популярного фотокаталитического материала - нитрида углерода.

A research team comprised of Chinese and Russian scientists have recently developed a cost-effective and environmentally friendly way to lift efficiency to convert sunlight into hydrogen energy, a method that could help Russia and China enter a new era of clean energy and help both countries take a leading position in the industry.
Scientists from Russia's national research-oriented Tomsk Polytechnic University (TPU), China's Shihezi University, and China's Wuhan University of Geosciences say they have found an inexpensive and environmentally friendly way to treat a popular photocatalyst material.
The findings were published in the scientific journal Applied Catalysis B-environmental.
Scientists said that they have found a method to change the microstructure of carbon nitride (an important photocatalytic material) by treating carbon nitride with water at high temperature to form porous nanolayers of oxygen-containing molecules.
Raul Rodriguez, a professor from Tomsk Polytechnic University's Research Faculty of Chemistry and Biomedical Technology said that Carbon nitride is a promising and inexpensive material that can be easily synthesized from urea or other nitrogen-carbon compounds by high-temperature reactions.
"After steam and high-temperature treatments the material will have better performance in generating hydrogen from sunlight," he said.
China-Russia energy cooperation is quickly becoming one of the biggest areas of bilateral cooperation.
China-Russia bilateral trade in 2021 grew 35.9 percent year-on-year, reaching $146.8 billion, exceeding the threshold of $140 billion for the first time, an all-time high, official data showed. The two nations have set a goal of reaching $200 billion in bilateral trade by 2024.

В январе космические спутники канадской компании GHGSat, которая занимается мониторингом атмосферы, зафиксировали тринадцать мощных выбросов метана с угольной шахты «Распадская» в Междуреченске. Объем выделяемого газа доходил до 87 тонн в час, по оценке компании это самая большая утечка за все время наблюдения.

A remote-sensing satellite has detected one of the largest releases of methane from a single industrial site, an underground coal mine in south-central Russia. The finding is another indication of the scope of the problem of curbing emissions of methane, a potent planet-warming gas.
Thirteen plumes of the gas were observed at the Raspadskya mine, the largest coal mine in Russia, in late January during a single pass of a satellite operated byвGHGSat, a commercial emissions-monitoring firm. The total flow rate from all the plumes was estimated at about 87 metric tons (about 95 U.S. tons) an hour.
"This is the biggest source we’ve ever seen," said Brody Wight, director of energy, landfills and mines at GHGSat, which was formed in 2011 and now has six emissions-sensing satellites. By contrast, the highest rate measured at Aliso Canyon, a natural gas storage facility in Southern California that had a major leak for nearly four months in 2015 and 2016, was about 60 metric tons an hour.
"This is a really big fish," said Felix Vogel, a research scientist with Environment and Climate Change Canada in Toronto who is not affiliated with GHGSat.
Mr. Wight said it was not known how long the releases continued at this rate at the mine. But several previous satellite passes had detected emissions in the tens of tons an hour. "We’ve seen a pretty steady increase in what’s coming from this site overall," he said.
Were the flow continuous at 87 metric tons of methane an hour, total yearly emissions would be equivalent to those from five average coal-fired power plants, the company said.
Mr. Wight said that the releases were most likely deliberate, as the Raspadskya mine, like other coal mines, has naturally occurring methane-rich pockets amid the seams of coal. A buildup of methane at the mine in 2010 led to an explosion that killed 66 people.
To reduce methane concentrations, large fans draw air into and through the mine, ventilating the methane into the atmosphere.
Methane has more of an effect on warming than carbon dioxide, the major greenhouse gas emitted by human activities. Over two decades, methane can result in about 80 times the warming of the same amount of carbon dioxide.
Methane emissions are far lower than carbon dioxide emissions, and the molecules break down much more rapidly. But because of methane’s warming potential, reducing intentional or accidental emissions of the gas is seen as a way to more quickly limit global warming this century.
At the global climate talks in Glasgow last fall, more than 100 countries pledged to cut methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030, although Russia and some other large emitters were not among them.
Until recently, precisely measuring emissions from specific industrial sites like mines, oil and gas production facilities and landfills could only be done using equipment on the ground or in airplanes. That limited the number of sites that could be studied.
While ground and airborne sensing is still conducted, satellites now can easily monitor much bigger areas. Most of these satellites have relatively coarse resolution, however, meaning that while they can detect gas over an area in volumes similar to or greater than that measured at the Russian mine, they cannot narrow the emissions down to specific sites. The GHGSat satellites are among a new generation with much finer resolution.
Dr. Vogel said that with these newer satellites, "We have tools now to allow us to get actionable information." "They allow you to really get down to the facility scale, to see specific parts of the facility where emissions are happening," he said. "You can tell companies where to go to fix something."

В конце XIX века у озера Иссык-Куль российские археологи раскопали два средневековых могильника с необычайно большим количество захоронений, датирумых 1338-1339 гг. В наши дни международная группа археологов и генетиков (Германия, Казахстан, Россия, Италия, Великобритания), проанализировав зубы людей, похороненных на этих кладбищах, обнаружила ДНК бактерии Yersinia pestis. Более того - это оказался тот самый штамм, который в 1347 г. вызвал в Европе и Азии пандемию бубонной чумы, получившей название «Черная смерть». Это дает основания утверждать, что первая вспышка Черной смерти случилась в Чуйской долине на территории современных Кыргызстана и Казахстана в 1338 г., после чего болезнь начала распространяться по маршрутам Шелкового пути.

During a frenzy of archaeological activity in the waning years of the 19th century, a team of Russians excavated two medieval cemeteries near Lake Issyk-Kul (Kyrgyzstan). In the tombs they found small treasures of coins and ornaments brought from the farthest corners of Eurasia along the Silk Road that passed through the region. The archaeologists noted an unusually large number of tombstones from 1338 and 1339, a mystery that endured to this day. A collaborative study conducted by historians, archaeologists and geneticists recently published in Nature analyzed the teeth of people buried in the cemetery, and discovered the DNA of Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that caused the deadly pandemic of bubonic plague known as the Black Death, which ravaged Europe and Asia a decade later.
One of the tombstone inscriptions reads, "In the Year 1649 [AD1338 in the Gregorian calendar used in most of the world], the Year of the Tiger. This is the tomb of the believer Sanmaq. [He] died of pestilence." The last word on the tombstone caused great confusion among historians of that time period. Pestilence could indeed refer to the plague, but the pandemic that killed between 50 and 200 million people did not officially break out until 1347, when it was first reported in Black Sea port cities, Constantinople, Marseilles and Barcelona. Much is known about the Black Death -what bacteria caused it, how fleas from infected rats passed it on to humans, that the same strain has caused outbreaks for the last 500 years, and that it came from somewhere in Central Asia. But the precise point of origin has been a topic of intense debate among historians until now.
German, British, and Russian scientists obtained permission from local authorities to remove 50 milligrams of enamel and dentin from the teeth of 30 bodies disinterred from the cemetery and preserved in the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kuntskamera, St. Petersburg). They were able to extract DNA from seven of the samples, which confirmed that the people were residents of the area where they were buried. But the most important finding came later-three of the samples analyzed contained foreign genetic material. It was DNA from a strain of Y. pestis bacteria, and not just any ordinary strain.
Johannes Krause, director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Germany) and senior author of the study published in Nature, unequivocally stated, "[This strain] is the predecessor of 80% of all the currently circulating strains, including the Black Death strain, and all the strains that came after it." To support their claim, Krause and his colleagues built the phylogenetic tree of Y. pestis with the genome of 250 specimens, 47 of them from historical outbreaks. They observed that a star-shaped explosion and diversification of bacterium strains occurred around the middle of the 14th century. One particular strain detected in bodies buried in the Chüy Valley (northern Kyrgyzstan and southern Kazakhstan), where Lake Issyk-Kul is located, triggered the pandemic known as the Black Death.
University of Tübingen researcher Maria Spyrou, the study’s lead author, wrote, "We found that the ancient strains from Kyrgyzstan are located exactly at the central node of this massive diversification event. In other words, we found the source strain of the Black Death and even know the exact date when it started [1338]." The Russian archaeologists who excavated the two medieval cemeteries near Lake Issyk-Kul suspected that something unusual happened that year. During the decade leading up to 1338, no more than 20 people were buried each year in the Kara-Djigach and Burana cemeteries. That number doubled in 1338, and reached 100 deaths the following year. The dots began to connect.
All the evidence indicates that the first documented cases of Black Death occurred in 1347 in the port cities of modern-day Turkey (which has recently changed its name to Türkiye). The following months saw outbreaks in ports further and further west, hitting Athens, Naples, Marseilles and Barcelona by the spring of 1348. Within two years, the pandemic had reached Scandinavian countries. It also swept through North Africa, the Arab countries, India and China. But the deadly pandemic must have started in or near the Chüy Valley, at the foot of the Tian Shan mountain range that sprawls across the Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and the People’s Republic of China border region.
Philip Slavin, a University of Stirling (UK) historian and co-author of the study, noted the key role played by trade routes in transmitting the plague and its inception in the region under study. "Both cemeteries were located in the heart of the Silk Road trade network, right next to the road," he wrote in an email interview.
However, some historians disagree with the study’s conclusions, and one skeptic is a prominent expert in the field. Ole J. Benedictow is a Norwegian professor emeritus at the Institute of Archaeology, Conservation, and History at the University of Oslo (Norway). He published his best-known book in 2004: The Black Death 1346-1353: The Complete History (updated last year in a second edition). In an email, Benedictow summarizes the central thesis of his work. "There is substantial historical evidence that the Black Death originally broke out in the lower part of the Volga [River], most likely in the delta, where there is an active plague reservoir that is amply documented by a large body of historical data, and which still causes plague cases today." Benedictow believes it all started where Russia’s Volga River empties into the Caspian Sea, far from the Chüy Valley.
When the Black Death broke out, most of the rodents in the area ruled by the khanate of the Golden Horde (one of the Mongol Empire successor states) carried the plague pathogen. Benedictow said, "This area [the khanate] extended from the western border of China to the eastern border of present-day Romania." He accepts that the genetic structure of the plague strain found in the lower Volga reservoir could be similar to the strain identified in the two cemeteries, but does not believe the latter strain triggered the pandemic. "Issyk-Kul is situated in a rather remote part of a vast area that has a reservoir of wild rodent plagues. An area like this will experience continual episodes of plague infections in people who come into contact with diseased rodents. This must have been true for the population in Issyk-Kul. Whether there was any contact between Issyk-Kul and the lower Volga area is unknown, but I doubt it."
Benedictow acknowledges that analyses of ancient DNA can significantly contribute to the study of the history of plagues. "It’s valuable to have a basic understanding of a pathogen’s origin and development." But he diplomatically cautioned, "I hope that people who read this excellent study [published in Nature] will also realize that the genetic history of plague is of limited interest and importance in itself." Benedictow says, "The most important aspect of plagues and Black Death epidemics is their impact on historical society. The significance of such events is derived from the actions of people at the time, and the plague’s efficiency in propagating throughout society resulting from human culture and technology."

Институт гуманитарных исследований и проблем малочисленных народов Севера СО РАН рассказал об обнаруженном в Якутии прошлым летом почти идеально сохранившемся захоронении шамана XVIII в. Это второй случай в археологии Якутии, когда по одежде и артефактам можно точно утверждать, что погребение принадлежит именно шаману.

An almost perfectly preserved shaman burial site dating back as far as the 18th century has been discovered in remote Siberia.
In only the second-ever archaeological study in the Yakutia area of Siberia, Russian researchers at the Institute for Humanitarian Research and North Indigenous Peoples Problems discovered the mummified remains of a fully-clothed man inside a sarcophagus.
Shamans are religious leaders amongst the Yakut, practicing as healers and diviners in their communities. Yakutia, the Yakut homeland, is hugely remote, situated in the far northeast of what is now Russia. When Russia occupied Yakutia in the 17th century, Orthodox Christianity began to leak some influence into the folk religion. However, during Soviet rule, shamans and their followers were persecuted. The religion didn't die out, though, and continued to be practiced in secret.
"It contained the partially mummified body of a man," Aleksandra Nikolaevna Prokopyeva, from the Russian Academy of Science's Man in the Arctic Laboratory, said in a statement. "A shaman's caftan with pendants made of iron and copper was laid on top, the legs were covered with a fur coat 'hotoydoh son.' The man was wearing a suit consisting of a caftan, a silk shirt, cuffs and legs."
The burial lay at a depth of around 2.5 feet, and the sarcophagus was made of wide planks and covered with birch bark. Prokopyeva doesn't want to release any pictures of the shaman or their burial out of respect.
"Shamanism is still quite strong in Yakutia, so out of respect for the indigenous people, I try not to distribute photos of the burial," she told Newsweek.
The shaman's legs were of particular interest, as they were covered with fabric that was embroidered with colored threads and a patchwork of leathers from hips to ankles. The shaman also wore a pair of leggings, a caftan, a belt, and was accompanied by a saddle, girth straps with iron buckles, stirrups, two bags and a funeral feast.
"In the entire history of Yakutia, this is the second burial where it is known for sure that a shaman was buried," Prokopyeva told Newsweek. "There are about 15 other burials that can be attributed to shamanic narrative, but none of them were found [in] shamanic attire."
The All-Russian Artistic Research and Restoration Center is currently restoring the rare costume.
The shaman and its burial site are in remarkably good condition considering it has been buried for over 200 years. According to Prokopyeva, its preservation is probably caused by the soil and location.
"This is a truly unique find, because due to climate change, the preservation of items from archaeological excavations is getting worse every year, and the search for funerary monuments is gradually becoming more difficult due to dynamic changes in the landscape," she said in a statement. "It is likely that the burial complex is so well preserved due to a combination of many physical and chemical factors and the natural environment."
The team plans to carry on restoring the burial site and the artifacts within the next few years.

Российские физики разработали гибридный нанофотонно-микрофлюидный сенсор для ранней диагностики рака. Сенсор ориентируется на микроскопические внеклеточные пузырьки-экзосомы, концентрация которых часто увеличивается на ранних стадиях онкологических заболеваний.

Russian researchers have developed a sensor that can analyze liquids and gases in very small amounts, and which may be able to detect and monitor cancer.
According to a peer-reviewed study published in Optics Letters, the researchers, including lead author Aleksei Kuzin from HSE University and Skoltech and Prof. Dmitry Gorin of the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, assembled a chip with nanophotonic optical sensors and microfluidic channels that are highly sensitive to fluids and gases.
When fluids or gases are pumped through the channels, optical radiation is detected by the nanophotonic devices, allowing researchers to detect changes in the output's spectral characteristics and thereby determine the composition of the fluids or gases.
The small size of the device allows researchers to accurately analyze samples, even in very small concentrations. This is important when researchers are unable to analyze samples at the site where they are found and must move them to another location for study.
According to HSE University, human blood contains objects that can be used to diagnose cancer, such as exosomes, which are microscopic vesicles released by tissue and organ cells.
Sign of cancer
"Cells communicate among themselves by using extracellular vesicles, such as exosomes, to send out messages. However, certain factors - either internal or external - can disrupt a cell's normal functioning, causing it to send the wrong messages, leading to uncontrolled cell division and tumor growth" - Prof. Dmitry Gorin, Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology
In cases of early-stage cancer, the concentration of exosomes in the blood often increases markedly, which can indicate the presence of the cancer to oncologists.
"Cells communicate among themselves by using extracellular vesicles, such as exosomes, to send out messages," Gorin said, according to HSE. "However, certain factors - either internal (genetic predisposition) or external (environmental, such as radiation) - can disrupt a cell's normal functioning, causing it to send the wrong messages, leading to uncontrolled cell division and tumor growth."

Международная группа ученых подвергла сомнению результаты третьего этапа испытаний российской вакцины «Спутник V», опубликованные в журнале Lancet в 2021 г. Исследователей смутила практически одинаковая эффективность вакцины во всех пяти возрастных группах. Ученые использовали статистическое моделирование для проверки результатов испытаний «Спутника V», а также - для сравнения - для вакцин AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Moderna и Pfizer. После 50 тысяч моделирований для каждой вакцины выяснилось, что распределение эффективности «Спутника V» по возрастам соответствует указанным диапазонам лишь в 0,026% случаев, у остальных вакцин этот показатель совпал с заявленными 23,8-51,1%.

If you flip a coin, your chances of getting heads or tails are equal. But if several people flip a dozen times each, the chance of them all getting a 50:50 split is small. Neither are they likely all to get exactly the same split, 50:50 or otherwise, between heads and tails. This simple concept is what Kyle Sheldrick of the University of New South Wales, in Sydney, and his colleagues have used to show that clinical trial results for Russia’s Sputnik V covid-19 vaccine, published in the Lancet in 2021, contain some numbers which are extremely unlikely to occur in that type of trial.
Dr Sheldrick’s team published their analysis on June 20th in the American Journal of Therapeutics. It was motivated by concerns that other researchers had raised earlier about one particular pattern in the Sputnik V paper: the vaccine’s efficacy was almost identical in each of the five age groups shown. The Russian scientists’ answer was that these results reflected a true efficacy that did not differ by age. But clinical trials are usually affected by all sorts of random circumstances, known as "noise" in the jargon. The implication is that, in this particular trial, the various sources of noise cancelled one another out in a way that generated a pattern of equivalent efficacy in all age groups.
To examine how likely this would be to have taken place, Dr Sheldrick’s team examined what happens when various combinations of statistical noise occurred in a hypothetical sample of trial participants constructed according to the methods described in the Sputnik V paper. They used computer simulation to create 1,000 random variations of noise and counted in how many of these the vaccine efficacy resulting in each of the five age groups fell within the range reported by the Russian scientists. For comparison, they replicated this exercise for four other covid vaccines: those by AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Moderna and Pfizer.
For the four comparison vaccines, between a quarter and a half of the computed efficacies for all age subgroups fell within the range of their actual published efficacies. For Sputnik V none did. The researchers then repeated the exercise with 50,000 simulations per vaccine. For Sputnik V only 13 of those iterations fell in the reported ranges. Put another way, a trial would need to be repeated, on average, more than 3,800 times in order to produce a single case where the efficacies in all age groups were in the reported ranges. For the four comparison vaccines, that result would be obtained in two to four repetitions.
These results thus call into question the efficacy numbers reported in the original Sputnik V paper. For its part, the Lancet said it recognised the concerns about the validity of the data and would be inviting the authors of the paper "to respond to these latest questions".
The matter could be resolved if those authors were to release the data in question, so others could verify the results, says Enrico Bucci of the Sbarro Health Research Organisation, in Philadelphia, who was one of the first to flag the matter up. The ball is now in the Russian team’s court.
Editor’s note (June 24th 2022): Since publication, The Economist has been contacted by the Gamaleya Institute, the developer of the Sputnik V vaccine. They told us that they dispute the findings of the University of New South Wales study, and that the high safety and efficacy of the vaccine has been confirmed by multiple scientific studies and publications of data on the use of the vaccine in more than ten countries.

Уральские химики создали флюоресцентные химические соединения (флюорофоры) для нового способа диагностики и лечения рака - фотодинамической терапии. Причем первоначально ученые исследовали только красящие свойства соединения, способного распространяться по тканям и окрашивать «подозрительные» клетки. Однако оказалось, что флюорофоры действуют еще и как фотосенсибилизаторы, под воздействием оптического излучения запускающие разрушение поврежденных клеток, не затрагивая здоровые.

Scientists from the Ural Federal University and the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences have created new fluorescent chemical compounds (fluorophores) for photodynamic therapy of cancerous tumors, the latest method of treating cancer. The compound is suitable simultaneously for the diagnosis of tumor processes by staining the affected tissues and their further treatment by destroying tumor cells without harm to healthy ones. The results of the primary studies was published in the Dyes and Pigments journal.
The synthesis of these fluorophores is characterized by low cost, due to the availability of all derivatives in the composition, as well as the absence of impurities that could lead to side effects. The effectiveness of the fluorophore was tested on HeLa cells used as a model of cervical cancer. Now scientists are testing how the new compound interacts with other types of cancer cells.
Fluorophores are chemical compounds that emit visible light (photoluminescence) when exposed to ultraviolet or visible light. They are able to spread through biological tissues and stain cells prone to inflammatory processes. Thus, a new compound interacts with biomolecules of body tissues and, under UV or visible irradiation, stains areas in which the process of tumor growth is taking place. This makes it possible to determine the size of the tumor in the body and outline its boundaries. During the experiments, scientists found that the new fluorophore performs a dual function: it not only stains diseased areas, but also begins to destroy them.
"Initially, we investigated only the dyeing properties of the compound. The compound is able to accumulate in certain areas of the cell - the cell membrane and reticulum (an intracellular organelle responsible for protein folding), and under ultraviolet or visible irradiation, highlight the infected areas in bright green. However, it turned out that the fluorophore then functions as a photosensitizer. That is, under the influence of optical irradiation, it begins to interact with the surrounding cellular environment (oxygen, water, etc.) and generates free radicals, the so-called reactive oxygen species. These active particles enter into chemical interactions with affected cells, starting their destruction, while practically not affecting healthy ones. This is called photodynamic therapy, it is a new promising method of cancer treatment with high efficiency and minimum side effects." (Grigory Zyryanov, co-author of the study and Professor of the Department of Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry at UrFU).
Scientists using the methods of heterocyclic chemistry created two experimental samples. Chemists synthesized a fluorophore based on naphthoxazole, an oxazole derivative used in the synthesis of medicinal and biochemical preparations, and a naphthalene fragment used as a platform and so-called antenna for more efficient perception of optical irradiation by a molecule. In addition, chemists added fragments of pyrene and anthracene, polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons with a high fluorescent response, that is, a bright glow, to the compound. The compound containing pyrene showed the highest fluorescent and anticancer activity.
"Pyrenes are very commonly used for bioimaging, anthracenes are less common," says Grigory Zyryanov. "These compounds are promising for many reasons, including we were able to show that the pyrene-containing compound begins to glow even when irradiated with visible light, and this is visible even to the naked eye. This is very convenient, including, for example, for surgical interventions, when it is still necessary in the treatment."

Новые данные, полученные в рамках Баксанского эксперимента по поиску стерильного нейтрино (BEST - Baksan Experiment on Sterile Transitions), подтвердили обнаруженную в 1990-х гг. российскими и американскими физиками аномалию, которая может указывать на то, что стерильное нейтрино, гипотетическая частица, не вписывающаяся в современную теорию строения и взаимодействия элементарных частиц, все-таки существует.
Проект BEST был начат в Баксанской нейтринной обсерватории Института ядерных исследований РАН в 2019 г. и представляет собой коллаборацию 15 научных организаций России, Германии, США, Канады и Японии.

De nouvelles données récoltées sur vingt ans dans le cadre d'une expérience américano-russe confirment que, définitivement, quelque chose cloche avec les neutrinos. L'hypothèse de l'existence d'une particule de type inconnu appelée "neutrino stérile" est à nouveau sur la table.
Il y a bien un os quelque part. Mais où ? De nouveaux résultats obtenus dans le cadre de l’expérience Baksan sur les transitions stériles (BEST), menée en Russie, dans les montagnes du Caucase, confirment une anomalie déjà observée lors d'expériences précédentes. Celle-ci consiste en un déficit de neutrinos par rapport au nombre attendu à l’issue de la manipulation, qui pourrait pointer l’existence d’une particule élémentaire hypothétique appelée "neutrino stérile". Cet écart soulignerait également le fait que nous faisons erreur sur certains aspects essentiels du modèle standard de la physique des particules.
La surprenante masse des neutrinos
Pour comprendre ce que pourrait être ce neutrino stérile, il faut revenir sur un épisode fondamental de la recherche sur les neutrinos, ces particules élémentaires qui n’interagissent que très peu avec la matière et qui ont très certainement joué un rôle dans les tous premiers instants de l’Univers. En 1998, des résultats mis en évidence à l’observatoire de Super-Kamiokande, près de la ville de Mozumi au Japon, laissent entendre pour la première fois que les neutrinos ont une masse. L’annonce est fracassante, puisque depuis la supposition de l’existence de ce fermion par le physicien Wolfgang Pauli, en 1930 (surnommé ensuite le "petit neutre" par Enrico Fermi), celui-ci avait toujours été considéré comme dépourvu de masse et de charge.
Près de 70 ans plus tard, l’équipe de Super-Kamiokande constate néanmoins un étrange comportement quantique chez le neutrino : il oscille. C’est à dire que lorsqu’il se déplace, il passe de sa variété muonique à tauique (conformément à toutes les particules, le neutrino se décline en trois variétés ou "saveurs" - électronique, muonique et tauique). Du point de vue de la mécanique quantique, cette oscillation constitue la preuve irréfutable que ces particules sont bien dotées d’une masse. Infime certes, mais non nulle.
Oscillations et particule "fantôme"
La nouvelle soulage une foule de physiciens qui s’arrachaient jusqu’alors les cheveux à tenter de comprendre pourquoi les expériences d’étude des neutrinos débouchaient systématiquement sur un déficit de particules par rapport à ce que prévoyaient la théorie et les observations astrophysiques. Il était en effet vain de continuer à compter scrupuleusement les neutrinos d’un certain type si ceux-là, en cours de route, se transformaient en un autre type ! Ainsi, tous imaginaient que les oscillations des neutrinos désormais connues, le compte allait enfin être bon. Eh bien non. Nouveau coup de tonnerre. Dix ans plus tard, une autre expérience nommée Double Chooz montra cette fois que malgré une estimation précise du taux de conversion d’une espèce en une autre, 6 % des neutrinos électroniques manquaient toujours à l’appel quand les mesures étaient réalisées. Ainsi naquît notre fameux neutrino stérile dans l'esprit des théoriciens : et s'il existait une quatrième sorte de neutrino, plus "fantomatique" encore que les autres car n’interagissant qu’avec la force gravitationnelle, qui pourrait expliquer où sont passées ces particules manquantes ?
Anomalie du gallium
Aussi arrangeant soit-il, le neutrino stérile, non prévu par le modèle standard, reste à ce jour tout à fait hypothétique. Mais le déficit en neutrinos électroniques, lui, est bel et bien réel. Dans les années 1990, ce dernier fut mis en évidence d’une autre manière dans le cadre de l’Expérience soviéto-américaine sur le gallium (SAGE), qui lui valut le surnom d'"anomalie du gallium". La manipulation consistait à envoyer des neutrinos de haute intensité dans des réservoirs de gallium, un métal mou et argenté, par le biais d’un noyau de chrome. Parce qu’en capturant un neutrino, le gallium forme du germanium, les chercheurs pouvaient alors mesurer la quantité de gallium transformé en isotope de germanium. Là encore, ils constatèrent une divergence, à hauteur de 15% environ, entre le nombre prévu de neutrinos électroniques et le nombre observé dans le réservoir de gallium. Ces lacunes dans la synchronisation des oscillations furent là encore attribuées à cette potentielle quatrième saveur. Une saveur qui ne provoquerait pas la moindre micro-secousse dans le champ nucléaire faible.
Voilà qu’après plus de deux décennies de collecte de données, l'expérience Baksan sur les transitions stériles (BEST), prolongement direct de SAGE menée à plus d'un kilomètre sous terre dans l'Observatoire de neutrinos de Baksan, pointe à nouveau une différence substancielle entre théorie et pratique, avec une quantité de gallium mesurée de 20 à 24 % inférieure à celle attendue. "Cette anomalie existe depuis plus de vingt ans et BEST la confirme : la différence entre les taux mesurés et prédits est réelle", affirme à Sciences et Avenir Steven Elliott, analyste principal de l'une des équipes chargées d'évaluer les données et membre de la division Physique du Los Alamos National Laboratory, partenaire américain principal de BEST.
"Ce que cela signifie n'est pas évident", ajoute le chercheur, "car il y a maintenant des résultats contradictoires sur les neutrinos stériles. Mais si les résultats indiquent que la physique nucléaire ou atomique fondamentale est mal comprise, ce serait également très intéressant." En effet, d'autres expériences cherchant à prouver l'existence des neutrinos stériles sont restées vaines, suggérant plutôt que les modèles utilisés pour prédire les transformations sont erronés. Enfin, la possibilité "d'un malentendu dans les données théoriques de l'expérience" n'est pas non plus totalement exclue à ce stade.
En filigrane, l'énigme de la matière noire
Mais alors comment faire face à cette accumulation de constats ? Pouvons-nous espérer trancher un jour en faveur de l’existence de cette quatrième et insaisissable saveur ou, à défaut, obtenir la certitude qu'il y a bien une erreur quelque part dans le modèle standard ? "La phénoménologie des neutrinos stériles étant très compliquée, il pourrait être difficile de falsifier un jour l'hypothèse de leur existence. Le programme BEST s'est donc concentré sur la falsification de l'existence de l'anomalie plutôt que sur la falsification du neutrino stérile lui-même, explique Steven Elliott. "La prochaine étape est de produire une source radioactive différente qui aurait une énergie de neutrino plus élevée. Une source Zn-65 (un radio-isotope du zinc, NDLR) fournirait des statistiques plus importantes, mais aussi des neutrinos de plus haute énergie qui permettraient d'explorer des longueurs d'oscillation plus courtes si les neutrinos stériles sont vraiment la clé du mystère."
L'enjeu est de taille : si elle était prouvée, la présence des neutrinos stériles pourrait combler un certain nombre de lacunes en physique des particules et constituer la preuve qu'une matière existant en quantités énormes peut passer totalement inaperçue. Pour cette raison, les neutrinos stériles des candidats sérieux à la matière noire, cette mystérieuse substance invisible cinq fois plus abondante que la matière ordinaire.
Les résultats de l'expérience BEST sont rapportés dans les Physical Reviews Letters et dans Physical Review C.

В России планируется начать второй этап клинических испытаний инновационного препарата для лечения болезни Паркинсона, который разработали ученые Новосибирского института органической химии СО РАН и Томской государственной корпорации «Инновационные фармакологические разработки». По словам разработчиков, это первый в мире препарат, способный остановить развитие болезни.

Russia plans to begin a second stage of clinical trials of an innovative drug for the treatment of Parkinson's disease and which was developed by scientists from Novosibirsk and Tomsk. According to scientists, this is the world’s first drug that can stop the development of the disease.
The drug was designed by scientists from the Novosibirsk Institute of Organic Chemistry of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Tomsk State Corporation "Innovative pharmacological developments" (IFAR).
According to analysts, generics produced by domestic manufacturers cannot provide high-level of efficiency and safety of therapies, while the supplies of original Western drugs to Russia is currently seriously complicated by sanctions.
As claimed in the IFAR presentation, Protremin is the world's first drug that can stop the progression of Parkinson's disease. It is based on the substance DIOL, a molecule with a new mechanism of action.
In fact, Protremin underwent pre-clinical animal studies in 2012-2016 and the first stage of clinical trials in volunteers. The drug, according to scientists, showed efficacy, safety, neuroprotection effect and also proved to be suitable for long-term (lifelong) administration and use in the early stages of the disease.
Analysts and developers hope that with "timely financial support" clinical trials of the second phase of Protremin can start in January 2023 and "in case of good results" they will be able to get access to the drug by the end of 2024 in accordance with the government decree on the circulation of drugs in emergency situations.
Protremin was patented in Russia and abroad as an innovative drug with a pronounced dopamine-positive effect, eliminating parkinsonism symptoms at the level of the "gold standard of therapy" - Levodopa.

Первые собаки произошли от волков примерно 15-30 тысяч лет назад, но где и как это случилось - точно неизвестно. Международная группа генетиков и биологов из 22 стран, включая Россию, проанализировала 72 генома древних волков из Европы, Сибири и Северной Америки за последние 100 тысяч лет и сравнила их с современными волками, а также современными и древними собаками. Ученые определили, что собаки в целом ближе к восточно-евразийским волкам, при этом различные волчьи популяции слабо отличались друг от друга на протяжении всего позднего плейстоцена, что, возможно, помогло им пережить ледниковый период.

Roughly 30,000 to 15,000 years ago, the first dogs emerged from gray wolves. Exactly when, where, and how this monumental event occurred isn’t known. For decades, geneticists and evolutionary biologists have been unable to come to a consensus on the long-standing mystery. However, a study published on June 29 in Nature may help narrow down the origins of our canine companions.
An international group of collaborators analyzed 72 genomes of ancient wolves from Europe, Siberia, and North America and compared them with modern wolves, as well as modern and ancient dogs. They determined that dogs are overall more genetically similar to ancient wolves from eastern Eurasia than those from western Eurasia. Additionally, the researchers found that ancient wolf populations remained closely related throughout much of the last 100,000 years and identified several mutations that may have helped the species weather the Ice Age.
"Overall, I found the study very exciting," Benjamin N. Sacks, an evolutionary biologist at UC Davis who wasn’t involved in the research, said in an email. "The impressive chronology of ancient DNA samples from wolves provided an unprecedented window into the past."
For their analysis, the researchers extracted DNA from the bones of 66 ancient wolves and sequenced their genomes. The team compared this genetic material with a handful of previously reported ancient wolf genomes, as well as data from 68 modern wolves, 369 modern and 33 ancient dogs, and several other members of the dog family.
On the whole, dogs were more closely related to ancient wolves from Asia than from Europe, says Anders Bergström, a geneticist at the Francis Crick Institute in London who co-authored the paper. But, he adds, "We also find that it gets a little more complex."
Dogs from Siberia, the Americas, East Asia, and northeastern Europe primarily stem from wolves somewhere in eastern Eurasia. "That source [of ancestry] is present in all dogs, and it peaks in its largest amounts in dogs from Siberia and also China and Australia," Bergström says, naming the Siberian husky and Australia’s dingo as examples of dogs with the most genetic overlap with eastern Eurasian wolves. Meanwhile, dogs from the Near East in Asia and Africa - such as the basenji, Afghan hound, and saluki - derive up to half their ancestry from a population related to modern southwest Eurasian wolves.
The results indicate that at least two different ancient wolf populations contributed DNA to dogs, Bergström says. One explanation is that dogs were domesticated from wolves in two separate regions, then met and bred later on. "But it’s also possible that domestication happened just once, and as dogs arrived from the east they mixed with the local wild wolves," Bergström says. "We can see very clearly this dual ancestry, but we cannot yet say whether this represents more than one domestication."
None of the ancient wolf genomes represent an immediate ancestor of early dogs. In the future, the researchers plan to examine genomes from more locations in hopes of pinpointing where dogs first emerged.
"While we do make some progress on where dogs fit into the wolf puzzle, we still haven’t solved the question of dog origins," Bergström says. "The range of possibilities for where dogs came from is still quite large."
He and his colleagues were also surprised to observe that distant wolf populations remained genetically similar to each other throughout the Late Pleistocene, which ended about 11,700 years ago. "We think this reflects a high degree of mobility of wolves in the Ice Age, and perhaps this is part of what allowed them to survive when many other animals disappeared," Bergström says. "They were able to avoid getting fragmented into small isolated groups."
Additionally, the researchers identified several mutations that arose during the last 100,000 years and rapidly spread through the wolf gene pool. Some of these mutations appeared on a gene known as IFT88 between 40,000 and 30,000 years ago. In humans and mice, this gene is involved in the development of the cranium and mandible. It’s possible that the mutations made ancient wolves evolve jaws that helped them become more effective hunters or allowed them to pursue new sources of prey.
"We think this dramatic example of natural selection could reflect how wolves adapted…during the changing climate of the Ice Age," Bergström says. He and his team also identified mutations on genes that play a role in olfaction, hinting that wolves may have improved their sense of smell during the Ice Age.
Many questions about the evolutionary history of wolves remain, Sacks noted. Ancient wolves from North America were more genetically distinct than other populations, perhaps as a result of mingling with coyotes. Understanding when this interbreeding occurred has "important implications" for demystifying the evolution of red and timber wolves in North America, Sacks said.
However, he added, the paper’s evidence for two sources of wolf ancestry in modern dogs fits genetic differences Sacks and his collaborators have independently observed in dogs from different parts of Asia and Australia.
"As the authors point out, however, there are still holes in need of filling before the story of dog origins is fully understood," Sacks concluded.

В 2020 г., исследовав фрагменты костей животных, обнаруженных на палеолитической стоянке Кушеват (ЯНАО), сибирские ученые выявили на некоторых из них следы человеческой деятельности. С помощью ускорительной масс-спектрометрии в Центре коллективного пользования «Ускорительная масс-спектрометрия НГУ-ННЦ» недавно было установлено, что возраст этих человеческих следов составляет около 40 тысяч лет. Это самая ранняя дата присутствия в Арктике человека современного типа.

The newest discovery in a series of archeological findings in the Siberian region further suggests that the first humans to inhabit the arctic appeared about 40,000 years ago. The discovery occurred when a group of scientists from the Siberian Section of the Russian Academy of Sciences (СО РАН) conducted radiocarbon analyses of reindeer antler fragments found at the Kushevat Paleolithic site in the Lower Ob region.
In 2020, scientists led by Ivan Zolnikov from the Institute of Geology and Mineralogy of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences investigated materials discovered during excavations at the Paleolithic site of Kushevat.31 animal bone fragments had been discovered at the site, which is located in the Shuryshkarsky district of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug.
Amongst these bones were the remains of a reindeer (Rangifer taradus), a woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), a steppe bison (Bison priscus), Elk (Alces alces), deer (Cervus elephus sibiricus), and, potentially, a musk ox (Ovibos moschatus). Analyses of the bones dated them back to a series of 20 different radiocarbon dates, all ranging from the period between 20 and 40 thousand years ago.
Although this finding solely points to animals, and not humans, inhibiting the Arctic region 40,000 years back, the discovery has now become the basis of further analyses which currently date human activity in the Ob region back to 40,000 years ago. This is because amongst this group of bones, two reindeer antlers held traces of human activity, which have only recently been analyzed.
Using accelerator mass spectrometry, scientists from СО РАН have recently concluded that the age of these human traces is about 40,000 years. Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) is a dating technique often used in archeology, biomedicine, and the geological and planetary sciences to measure the long-lived radionuclides that occur naturally in our environment.
The AMS analysis indicated that ‘modern’ humans were present in the lower reaches of the Ob at the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic age, which commenced about 50,000 to 40,000 years ago and concluded approximately 10,000 years ago. The period was marked with the fading out of Neanderthals and the emergence of grander settlements with ‘modern humans’, or Homo sapiens.
The dates indicated by the AMS findings are the eldest dates we have as of yet that manage to place modern humans in the Arctic region. Furthermore, the human remains on the reindeer antlers enabled scientists to suggest that the humans’ origin in the Arctic is associated with hunting activities.
Previous discoveries suggested that Homo sapiens first emerged in Western Siberia, but not specifically in the Arctic, at least 45,000 years ago. Scientists arrived at this conclusion due to a previously found femur bone, which was discovered in the Omsk region in 2008. Radiocarbon as well as paleogenetic analyses suggested that the bone had belonged to a man who died about 46,880 to 43,210 years ago in the region. However, the AMS analysis of the antlers has now suggested that Homo sapiens lived beyond the Arctic circle during the Upper Paleolithic age too.
Furthermore, the analysis suggests that Homo sapiens and not only Neanderthals inhabited the Arctic Circle in the Upper Paleolithic age. About two decades ago, it was only certain that Neanderthals, and not Homo sapiens, were occupants in the region during the period. This was discovered by radiocarbon dating a set of bones in 2001 from the Yanskaya group cite in Yakutia. The radiocarbon analysis suggested that the Neanderthals had found themselves in the region approximately 28,500-27,000 years ago.
The new AMS analysis has hence provided two major breakthroughs. The first one being that Homo sapiens as well as Neanderthals inhabited the Arctic circle during the Paleolithic Age. And the second find being that Homo sapiens lived north of the Arctic circle already 40,000 years ago.

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