Ноябрь 2023 г.

Российская наука и мир (по материалам зарубежной электронной прессы)

CONTENTS / ОГЛАВЛЕНИЕ


• New study explores optical properties of hollow cirrus clouds for enhanced lidar data interpretation
• China, Russia join efforts to protect bird migration routes
• Expérience SIRIUS-23 : un an d'isolement pour simuler un vol vers la Lune
• US, Russian scientists say "bombarding" meteorites carried cell making chemicals 4B years ago igniting life on Earth
• L’insigne de souvenir "Pour la cause des arts et des lettres vietnamiens" décerné un expert russe
• Giant telescope - 8x the size of Earth - reveals unprecedented view of colossal cosmic jet
• Climate change is weakening the ability of buildings in Siberia to resist warming
• Meet "Amaterasu": Astronomers detect highest energy cosmic ray since 1991
• Targeted depletion of TRBV9+ T cells as immunotherapy in a patient with ankylosing spondylitis
• Scientists warn of need to preserve genetics of native horse breeds
• World’s oldest forts upend idea that farming alone led to complex societies

Китайские и российские физики провели исследование оптических свойств перистых облаков, состоящих из кристаллов льда различной формы и играющих важную роль в изменениях погоды и климата Земли. С помощью лидарного зондирования ученые построили модель обратного рассеяния света для кристаллов в форме случайно ориентированных полых столбиков.

According to a research published in Optics Express, a team led by Prof. Wang Zhenzhu, Anhui Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, collaborated with Prof. Alexander Konoshonkin, from the V.E. Zuev Institute of Atmospheric Optics, Russian Academy of Sciences conducted a study into the optical properties of cirrus clouds, with a focus on hollow column ice crystal particles.
Cirrus covers more than 30% of the global airspace and is one of the key factors affecting the radiation budget balance of the earth-air system. In order to meet the requirements of the earth-air system model, it is necessary to conduct in-depth research on the microphysics of cirrus. Previous lidar detection experiments often ignored the hollow ice crystals in cirrus clouds, but more than 50% of the hollow columns in the real atmosphere were captured by the Cloud Particle Imager (CPI).
In this research, the team introduced the concept of "modal hollow columns" (MHC) to better represent the hollow ice crystals found in nature. Using the physical optical approximation method (PO), the team calculated the backscattering properties of this randomly oriented model and derived lidar parameters.
They found that when the ratio of MHC to solid columns (SC) exceeds 50%, it becomes possible to distinguish between the two based on the lidar ratio of 1064nm wavelength and the lookup table for the relationship between the color ratio of 1064/532nm and the depolarization ratio of 532nm.
Furthermore, the precise microphysical parameters can be obtained through this method.
"Our study has significant implications for the development of accurate earth-air system models," said Zhu Xuanhao, first author of the paper.

Китай и Россия развивают сотрудничество в сфере мониторинга и защиты перелетных птиц и их миграционных маршрутов.

China and Russia have strengthened their ecological cooperation in recent years with the aim of protecting birds and their migration routes in both countries. The two countries have also worked together to improve wetland conservation, and have exchanged relevant data to enhance the protection of bird populations.
Cooperate To Boost Bird Populations
Despite the cold temperatures that have hit northeast China, the Scirpus triqueter, a primary food of Siberian cranes, still grows in flocks at Momoge National Nature Reserve in Zhenlai County and Baicheng City of China's Jilin Province. The nature reserve is located on the East Asian-Australasian Flyway, which is one of the nine major flyways for migratory birds in the world, with more than 5 million birds passing through here every year. There are nearly 300 species of birds in the nature reserve alone including oriental storks, red-crowned cranes, and hooded cranes. Around 150,000 water birds stay here during the migration season.
"In the 1980s and 1990s, oriental storks were found nesting in trees at the reserve, but they have not been seen for a long time since then. In recent years, the number of oriental storks' nests at the reserve has increased to 15," said Zou Changlin, a senior engineer at the reserve.
The Momoge Nature Reserve is also an important stopover site for Siberian cranes. Around 3,500 Siberian cranes stop here in spring and autumn every year. After resting for about 100 days, they move to other stopover sites within the Siberian crane migration corridor. The starting points of the two-season migration of Siberian cranes are Poyang Lake in China and Kytalyk National Park in Russia.
Researchers have discovered a number of new habitats along the migration corridor since 2014. Such an increase in the habitats of migratory birds ensures the safety of the population during migration.
"The number of migratory birds has been increasing in recent years, thanks to the joint efforts of Russia and China," Amirkhan Amirkhanov, head of the Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resources, said. He noted that Russia conducts an annual bird census, and the Siberian crane population and habitat locations, as data has shown, have increased.
The Poyang Lake National Nature Reserve Administration signed a Memorandum of Understanding on strategic cooperation with Kytalyk National Park for better protection and monitoring of the birds in December 2021.
Ecological Changes
Northeast China is the first stop for Siberian cranes departing from Russia every autumn. Since the 1970s, due to land desertification in Baicheng City, and subsequent water shortages and a dearth of the Scirpus triqueter plant, fewer migratory birds have chosen to stay at this location. In recent years, in order to reverse ecological deterioration, a series of projects have been implemented in western Jilin Province to form a water network in the once severely saline-alkali land. Songyuan City, a neighboring city of Baicheng, has become a famous location at home and abroad due to its winter fishing on Chagan Lake.
Yang Jingshuang, a staff member of the administration of Chagan Lake National Nature Reserve, said that the number of various migratory birds at the reserve has increased significantly this year. More than 200 oriental storks were spotted among these birds. Oriental storks are under first-class national protection and chose to stay here for the first time. The number of Eurasian spoonbills, which are under second-class national protection, has also topped 1,000.
"China, particularly the country's northeast part, has achieved fruitful results with regard to strengthening the protection of wild forests, wetlands and wildlife resources within recent years. We hope to continue to foster in-depth exchanges with China in this field," Amirkhanov said.
Voluntary teams across China have also played an important role in bird protection. As snowfalls tend to affect the foraging behaviors of migratory birds, those teams will feed the birds with small fish, corn and other food before they fly south.
Emerging Ecotourism
An annual winter fishing-themed festival will be held at Chagan Lake in a little more than a month's time. Over the past five years, tourism revenue reached a total of 10.37 billion yuan (about 1.42 billion U.S. dollars) in Chagan Lake, and a total of 11.78 million tourists have visited the location.
At the same time, ecotourism is becoming more popular among Russians. Russia is currently focused on promoting biodiversity protection through ecotourism development projects and plans to build 24 new special nature reserves by the end of 2024. Kytalyk National Park, which was built in 2019 and home to Siberian cranes, is one of them.
Russia will use these new sites to promote the attractiveness of ecotourism. The accumulative number of tourists visiting the new nature reserves are expected to exceed 10 million by 2024.

В Институте медико-биологических проблем РАН начался эксперимент SIRIUS-23 по имитации полета на Луну длительностью один год. Четыре женщины и двое мужчин проведут 365 дней в изоляции, участвуя в различных исследованиях. Это четвертый и самый продолжительный подобный эксперимент ИМБП РАН, направленный на изучение длительного пребывания людей в закрытой среде.

L'expérience internationale d'isolement terrestre SIRIUS-23, simulant un vol vers la Lune sur une durée d'un an, a commencé à Moscou à l'Institut des problèmes biomédicaux de l'Académie des sciences de Russie.
L'équipage de la mission est composé de six volontaires : le commandant de l'équipage Yury Chebotaryov, l'ingénieure de vol Angelika Parfenova, la médecin de l'équipage Ksenia Orlova, la scientifique Ksenia Shishenina, le scientifique Rustam Zaripov (tous russes), ainsi que la scientifique Olga Mastitskaya, du Bélarus.
SIRIUS-23 simule une mission lunaire et effectue des entraînements pour l'amarrage avec des vaisseaux cargo, l'orbite autour du satellite à la recherche d'un site d'atterrissage, de multiples atterrissages de quatre membres d'équipage à la surface lunaire, et le contrôle à distance du rover. Des simulateurs spéciaux et un complexe de réalité virtuelle développés à l'Institut des problèmes biomédicaux seront utilisés pour simuler la vie terrestre, y compris les situations d'urgence.
Selon l'institut, des aspects physiologiques, psychologiques, sanitaires-hygiéniques et microbiologiques liés au séjour à long terme d'humains dans un environnement artificiellement clos avec des ressources limitées et des retards de communication seront étudiés au cours de l'expérience. Le projet comprendra 52 études du programme scientifique et 15 études du programme opérationnel et technique.
L'expérience SIRIUS (Scientific International Research In Unique Terrestrial Station) est un projet international réalisé dans le cadre du concept du Centre international pour le développement du système de soutien biomédical aux missions interplanétaires à Moscou, sous l'Institut des problèmes biomédicaux de l'Académie des sciences de Russie. Il est organisé par l'Institut des problèmes biomédicaux et le programme de recherche humaine de la NASA en coordination avec des spécialistes de la Russie, de l'Allemagne, du Canada, des États-Unis, de la France, de l'Italie, des Émirats arabes unis et d'autres pays. Ce comprend une série d'expériences d'isolement. La première a eu lieu en novembre 2017, après quoi l'équipage a passé 17 jours en isolement. Trois expériences annuelles sont prévues jusqu'en 2028, au cours desquelles des missions dans l'espace lointain seront simulées.

Астрофизики Самарского университета имени С.П.Королева и Гавайского университета (США) теоретически и экспериментально доказали возможность возникновения в космосе сложных органических веществ, которые могли способствовать зарождению жизни на Земле, попав на нее с помощью метеоритов и комет. Ученым впервые удалось получить в аналогах межзвездного льда органические хелатирующие агенты, которые считаются необходимыми для существования и развития первых биологических протоклеток.

Russian and American scientists, in a collaborative study, have proven a long-held theory that life was delivered to Earth from outer space through falling rocks. Meteorites and comets, made of metal and ice, also held chemicals that triggered the chain reaction to form organic cells.
The study discusses 4 to 5 billion years ago when the solar system was just a cloud of gas and dust. The first planets were beginning to form, and collisions of space rocks, asteroids, and comets were frequently bombarding an Earth that was taking shape.
Ironically, the fascinating discovery through scientific and academic collaboration comes when ties between Russia and the US are at their lowest.
Meteorites and comets transported intermediate chemicals that fostered the formation of biomolecules and, thereby, the conditions for cellular life forms. RIA Novosti reported this joint research between the University of Korolev Samara and the University of Hawaii. The research is among many studies and experiments that have theorized this possibility over the decades. Their analyses arrived at the same indication by studying different aspects of the more significant phenomenon - violent collisions in space when planetary bodies were developing from the matter and dust left over from the formation of stars.
Life From Meteorites
The study by "astrophysicists" from Korolev Samara University, together "with American colleagues, theoretically and experimentally proved" the possibility of organic substances appearing in space. "They fell to Earth along with meteorites and created conditions for the development of life," the report said, quoting a press release from Samara University. Astrophysicists believe that early forms of life must have contained "biomolecules" in the form of "Ribonucleic Acid (RNA) and amino acids." RNA is a sister molecule of Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA).
"Metal ions play a key role in stabilizing and copying RNA." Cells in the current stage of evolution use particular proteins to transport ions across membranes, but they are too large and complex and could "hardly have existed at the time of the first protocells."
What The Space Rocks Carried
According to the scientists, these ions could be transported in the first cells with the help of "chelating agents" that arose in interstellar ice in space and fell along with meteorites to Earth. Chelating agents are commonly used in various detergents, washing powder, shampoos, cosmetics, and restoring archaeological finds, as they easily remove rust.
"The scientific significance of our research is that, for the first time, organic chelating agents were obtained in interstellar ice analogs. According to many scientists, chelating agents were essential for the existence and development of the first biological protocells," said Associate Professor Ivan Antonov of the Department of Physics at Samara University.
"These substances facilitate the transfer of metal ions through the cell membrane, and thus, they could participate in the catalysis of RNA replication. This means copying RNA data and dividing ancient protocells," Ivan Antonov, one of the study’s authors, said.
The university clarified that the theoretical part of the study was carried out at Samara University and the experimental part at the University of Hawaii in the US. Antonov noted that "calculations and experiments" reliably indicated that "complex organic matter formed inside interstellar ice in deep space."
"This fundamentally expands knowledge about the achievable level of molecular complexity of organic molecules in space," Antonov added.
The practical and experimental parts of the study being split between Samara University and the University of Hawaii can be explained by the latter’s renowned specialization and laboratory for studying ‘meteoritics.’
Its School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) describes its aim to answer "questions about the origin and composition of the building blocks of our Solar System." A significant component is "understanding planetary evolution and exploring the processes linking the distribution of water and life in the Universe."
Other Studies Indicating Space Rocks Carried Life
Scientists have long studied the impact of sizeable interstellar matter on Earth and its effect on the evolution of life. The University of Hawaii was involved in a 2013 research with the University of California, Berkeley.
They showed that "conditions in space are capable of creating complex dipeptides - linked pairs of amino acids - that are essential building blocks shared by all living things." The molecules brought to Earth by a comet or meteorite "catalyzed the formation of proteins (polypeptides), enzymes and even more complex molecules, such as sugars, that are necessary for life."
In 2021, Japanese scientists led by astrochemistry Professor Yasuhiro Oba from Hokkaido University uncovered evidence of various compounds needed for DNA or RNA from three different meteorites that landed on Earth in the last eight decades. Oba and his fellow scientists said, "A diverse suite of exogenous meteoritic organics, including nucleobases, may have been delivered to the early Earth during the late heavy bombardment period." This was 3.8 to 4 billion years ago. The researchers studied the Murchison meteorite, which fell in Australia in 1969. The second was the Lake Murray meteorite, which fell in 1933 and was found on a farm in Carter County, Oklahoma. It is the fifth-largest meteorite found on Earth.
The last meteorite used was the Tagish Lake meteor, which fell on a frozen lake in the middle of winter in north-western British Columbia in Canada on January 18, 2000.

В посольстве Вьетнама в Москве состоялось вручение памятной медали «За вклад в искусство и литературу Вьетнама» сотруднику Института востоковедения РАН, ученому-вьетнамисту и переводчику Анатолию Соколову.

La cérémonie de remise de l’insigne de souvenir "Pour la cause des arts et des lettres vietnamiens" au Professeur agrégé-Docteur Anatoly Sokolov de l'Institut d'études orientales, rattaché à l’Académie des sciences de Russie a eu lieu le 21 novembre, au siège de l'ambassade du Vietnam en Russie, à Moscou.
S'exprimant avant la remise de cette distinction à l'universitaire Anatoly Sokolov, le président de l'Union vietnamienne des associations des arts et des lettres, Dô Hông Quân, a affirmé que la littérature et les arts de l'ex-Union soviétique et de la Russie d'aujourd'hui ont grandement influencé ceux du Vietnam.
Les œuvres de grands écrivains russes ont été traduites en vietnamien. Anatoly Sokolov est l'un des vietnamologues ayant de nombreuses contributions dans ce domaine de recherche et de traduction.
Dô Hông Quân a affirmé que cet insigne visait à souligner les contributions à la littérature vietnamienne du professeur agrégé, le Dr Sokolov.
Pour sa part, l'ambassadeur Dang Minh Khôi a affirmé que cet insigne était une reconnaissance de l'Union vietnamienne des associations des arts et des lettres, du Vietnam en général, pour les contributions et les efforts inlassables de cet universitaire dans la recherche, la présentation et la promotion de la littérature et de l'art vietnamiens auprès du public russe et des amis internationaux.
Anatoly Sokolov est connu de nombreux Vietnamiens comme l'éditeur du livre "Dictionnaire vietnamien-russe". Travaillant à de l'Institut d'études orientales, rattaché à l’Académie des sciences de Russie, cet érudit est passionné et doté d'une connaissance approfondie de l'histoire, de la langue et de la culture vietnamiennes.
Il est également l'auteur de plus de 100 articles, de projets de recherche prestigieux et de projets sur le Vietnam dans de nombreux domaines différents, notamment dans la littérature et les arts.
M. Sokolov est également un traducteur réputé, ayant participé à la traduction de nombreuses œuvres littéraires vietnamiennes en russe, notamment le Truyên Kiêu ». Le "Truyên Kiêu" (Histoire de Kiêu) ou "Kim Vân Kiêu" du poète Nguyen Du, le Journal intime de Dang Thuy Trâm (journal intime d'une femme médecin qui s'est sacrifiée dans la lutte pour l'indépendance nationale).

Международная группа астрономов, включая российских (Физический институт им. П.Н.Лебедева РАН и Астрономический институт им. В.В.Соболева), получила подробные изображения колоссального плазменного выброса - джета - из сверхмассивной черной дыры в блазаре 3C 279. Джет движется почти со скоростью света и простирается более чем на 570 световых лет. Структуру джета удалось наблюдать с помощью виртуального телескопа, объединившего данные 23 наземных и космических телескопов (проект «РадиоАстрон»), что дало максимальное угловое разрешение, эквивалентное диаметру телескопа в 350 000 км.

Using a network of radio telescopes on Earth and in space, astronomers have captured the most detailed view ever of a jet of plasma shooting from a supermassive black hole at the heart of a distant galaxy.
The jet, which comes from the heart of a distant blazar called 3C 279, travels at nearly the speed of light and shows complex, twisted patterns near its source. These patterns challenge the standard theory that has been used for 40 years to explain how these jets form and change over time.
A major contribution to the observations was made possible by the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, where the data from all participating telescopes were combined to create a virtual telescope with an effective diameter of about 100,000 kilometers. Their findings were recently published in Nature Astronomy.
Insights into Blazars
Blazars are the brightest and most powerful sources of electromagnetic radiation in the cosmos. They are a subclass of active galactic nuclei comprising galaxies with a central supermassive black hole accreting matter from a surrounding disk. About 10% of active galactic nuclei, classified as quasars, produce relativistic plasma jets. Bazars belong to a small fraction of quasars in which we can see these jets pointing almost directly at the observer.
Recently, a team of researchers including scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) in Bonn, Germany, has imaged the innermost region of the jet in the blazar 3C 279 at an unprecedented angular resolution and detected remarkably regular helical filaments which may require a revision of the theoretical models used until now for explaining the processes by which jets are produced in active galaxies.
"Thanks to RadioAstron, the space mission for which the orbiting radio telescope reached distances as far away as the Moon, and a network of twenty-three radio telescopes distributed across the Earth, we have obtained the highest-resolution image of the interior of a blazar to date, allowing us to observe the internal structure of the jet in such detail for the first time," says Antonio Fuentes, a researcher at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC) in Granada, Spain, leading the work.
Theoretical Implications and Challenges
The new window on the universe opened by the RadioAstron mission has revealed new details in the plasma jet of 3C 279, a blazar with a supermassive black hole at its core. The jet has at least two twisted filaments of plasma extending more than 570 light-years from the center.
"This is the first time we have seen such filaments so close to the jet’s origin, and they tell us more about how the black hole shapes the plasma. The inner jet was also observed by two other telescopes, the GMVA and the EHT, at much shorter wavelengths (3.5 mm and 1.3 mm), but they were unable to detect the filamentary shapes because they were too faint and too large for this resolution," says Eduardo Ros, a member of the research team and European scheduler of the GMVA. "This shows how different telescopes can reveal different features of the same object," he adds.
The jets of plasma coming from blazars are not really straight and uniform. They show twists and turns that show how the plasma is affected by the forces around the black hole. The astronomers studying these twists in 3C279, called helical filaments, found that they were caused by instabilities developing in the jet plasma. In the process, they also realized that the old theory they had used to explain how the jets changed over time no longer worked. Hence, new theoretical models are needed that can explain how such helical filaments form and evolve so close to the jet origin. This is a great challenge, but also a great opportunity to learn more about these amazing cosmic phenomena.
"One particularly intriguing aspect arising from our results is that they suggest the presence of a helical magnetic field that confines the jet," says Guang-Yao Zhao, presently affiliated to the MPIfR and member of the scientists team. "Therefore, it could be the magnetic field, which rotates clockwise around the jet in 3C 279, that directs and guides the jet’s plasma moving at a speed of 0.997 times the speed of light."
"Similar helical filaments were observed in extragalactic jets before, but on much larger scales where they are believed to result from different parts of the flow moving at different speeds and shearing against each other," adds Andrei Lobanov, another MPIfR scientist in the researchers team. "With this study, we are entering an entirely novel terrain in which these filaments can be actually connected to the most intricate processes in the immediate vicinity of the black hole producing the jet."
The study of the inner jet in 3C279, now featured in the latest issue of Nature Astronomy, extends the ongoing strive to understand better the role of magnetic fields in the initial formation of relativistic outflows from active galactic nuclei. It stresses the numerous remaining challenges for the current theoretical modeling of these processes and demonstrates the need for further improvement of radio astronomical instruments and techniques which offer the unique opportunity for imaging distant cosmic objects at a record angular resolution.
Technological Advancements and Collaboration
Using a special technique called Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), a virtual telescope with an effective diameter equal to the maximum separation between the antennas involved in an observation is created by combining and correlating data from different radio observatories. RadioAstron project scientist Yuri Kovalev, now at the MPIfR, emphasizes the importance of healthy international collaboration to achieve such results: "Observatories from twelve countries have been synchronized with the space antenna using hydrogen clocks, forming a virtual telescope the size of the distance to the Moon."
Anton Zensus, director of the MPIfR and one of the driving forces behind the RadioAstron mission over the last two decades, states: "The experiments with RADIOASTRON that led to images like these for the quasar 3C279 are exceptional achievements possible through international scientific collaboration of observatories and scientists in many countries. The mission took decades of joint planning before the satellite’s launch. Making the actual images became possible by connecting large telescopes on the ground like Effelsberg and by a careful analysis of the data in our VLBI correlation center in Bonn."
Further Information
The Earth-to-Space Interferometer RadioAstron mission, active from July 2011 to May 2019, consisted of a 10-meter orbiting radio telescope (Spektr-R) and a collection of about two dozen of the world’s largest ground-based radio telescopes, including the 100-m Effelsberg radio telescope. When the signals of individual telescopes were combined using the interference of radio waves, this array of telescopes provided a maximum angular resolution equivalent to a radio telescope of 350.000 km in diameter - almost the distance between the Earth and Moon. This made RadioAstron the highest angular resolution instrument in the history of astronomy. The RadioAstron project was led by the Astro Space Center of the Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Lavochkin Scientific and Production Association under a contract with the State Space Corporation ROSCOSMOS, in collaboration with partner organizations in Russia and other countries. The astronomical data of this mission are being analyzed by individual scientists around the world, yielding results as the ones presented here.

Изменение климата требует новых подходов при строительстве зданий в зоне вечной мерзлоты - например, стандартная 5-6-метровая глубина установки свай уже недостаточна, поскольку увеличилась глубина оттайки почвы.

Yakutsk in Siberia, with a population of about 350,000 people, is the largest permafrost city in the world. There are many risks resulting from the melting of ice, including the inability of buildings to resist climate warming. The special climatic conditions surrounding Yakutsk impose specific frameworks for the construction methods adopted therein, taking into account the peculiarities of the local soil and the large differences that may occur in temperatures.
Yakutsk has witnessed active construction operations in recent years, which constitutes a pressure factor in itself, as most of the construction techniques adopted there involve planting stakes in the frozen ground, as the stakes allow ventilation under the building and prevent the soil from rising in temperature. Installing these stakes at a depth of 6 meters was sufficient during the last sixties, but changing climate conditions and their impact on soil temperature now require installing them at greater depths, otherwise the structures will become unstable and become afflicted with cracks and cracks.
Director of the Information Forecasting Laboratory at the Russian Far Eastern University, Sergei Stepanov, comments on the issue, saying: "We have begun to monitor emergency situations in some facilities that sometimes threaten their structure, especially with the active construction movement in Siberia. In my opinion, this is due to climatic factors and their interactions with others, as they form. The local soil is made up of layers, the first of which melts in the summer and freezes in the winter, forming about 3 meters in Yakutsk."
Stepanov added while speaking to Sky News Arabia: "This layer follows the permafrost, which explains the depth to which the stakes used are installed, which in turn depends on the stability of the ice layer we are talking about."
The laboratory, whose research is supervised by Stepanov, specializes in making three-dimensional computer predictions that anticipate what will happen to the buildings of the region in the coming years. Its experts also estimate the possibility of constructing the building or not, in this or that location. Not far from that, other no less important research is continuing, concerned with studying and developing materials used in construction, in light of the available data. Here, the researcher in the field of concrete structures, Timur Nazarov, explains the matter, saying: "We are studying the interaction of various types of concrete structures used in construction with climate changes and their manifestations. We determine the durability of the structures in the laboratory by exposing them to different conditions and temperatures, some of which lead to cracking and breakage of some of the materials studied. While the endurance indicators increase in other parts, all of this helps us understand what happens to the composition of concrete structures under the influence of warming, as the melting of soil ice is reflected in its properties to one degree or another."
The challenges of warming and the corresponding building density in Siberia may multiply the problems associated with the region’s residential and infrastructure, and complicate ways to preserve them in the future.
Expectations indicate the need to take more measures to curb climate variability, in addition to those currently in effect, some of which come in the form of these black pipes installed next to a good portion of buildings, for the purpose of cooling the soil by pumping cold air into it to the point of freezing.

Международная коллаборация астрономов из США, Японии, Южной Кореи, России (Институт ядерных исследований РАН) и Бельгии, участвующих в проекте Telescope Array, опубликовала результаты исследования зафиксированной сетью детекторов в 2021 году космической частицы с ультравысокой энергией 244 эксаэлектронвольт. Частица, третья по энергии из зарегистрированных за все время наблюдений, получила неофициальное название в честь японской богини солнца Аматэрасу. По мнению ученых, подобные явления связаны с масштабными и энергоемкими процессами во Вселенной вроде выбросов-джетов из сверхмассивных черных дыр или гамма-всплесков. Для дальнейшего анализа таких частиц планируется использовать разработанные российской частью группы методы классификации, основанные на машинном обучении.

Astronomers involved with the Telescope Array experiment in Utah's West Desert have detected an ultra-high-energy cosmic ray (UHECR) with a whopping energy level of 244 EeV, according to a new paper published in the journal Science. It's the most energetic cosmic ray detected since 1991, when astronomers detected the so-called "Oh-My-God' particle, with energies of an even more impressive 320 EeV. Astronomers have dubbed this latest event the "Amaterasu" particle, after the Shinto sun goddess said to have created Japan. One might even call it the "Oh-My-Goddess" particle.
Cosmic rays are highly energetic subatomic particles traveling through space near the speed of light. Technically, a cosmic ray is just an atomic nucleus made up of a proton or a cluster of protons and neutrons. Most originate from the Sun, but others come from objects outside our solar system. When these rays strike the Earth’s atmosphere, they break apart into showers of other particles (both positively and negatively charged).
They were first discovered in 1912 by Austrian physicist Victor Hess via a series of ascents in a hydrogen balloon to take measurements of radiation in the atmosphere with an electroscope. He found that the rate of ionization was a good three times the rate at sea level, thereby disproving a competing theory that this radiation came from the rocks of Earth. If you've ever seen a cloud chamber in a science museum, cosmic ray tracks look like wispy little white lines, similar to tiny jet contrails.
Cosmic rays come in a broad range of energies, with the least energetic being the most common. Those were the cosmic rays Hess detected and are the ones most likely to show up in a museum cloud chamber. There is a theoretical limit, proposed in 1965, to just how energetic a cosmic ray should be: no more than 50 EeV coming from more than 300 million light-years from Earth. That's because of the cosmic microwave background radiation, the afterglow of the Big Bang that pervades the universe, discovered in 1964. Any cosmic rays traveling farther than that would be destroyed via interactions with the CMB before they reached Earth's detectors. It's known as the GZK cutoff after the scientists who proposed it (Kenneth Greisin, Georgiy Zatsepin, and Vadim Kuzmin).
The 1991 discovery of the "Oh-My-God" particle challenged that prevailing theory, hitting the Earth's atmosphere at very near the speed of light and apparently traveling from the direction of the Perseus constellation in the Northern Hemisphere. It carried the energy equivalent of a bowling ball dropped from shoulder height, packed tightly into a subatomic particle. Astronomers haven't seen its equal since, although they have detected dozens of events that qualify as UHECRs over the ensuing decades.
But what could be the source of such UHECRs, capable of accelerating the subatomic particles to such impressive speeds? Even a supernova wouldn't be able to do this. One possible source is an expanding shock wave from a cosmic-scale explosion - say, a black hole ripping apart a star and producing a massive jet of plasma - in which particles traverse magnetic fields over and over and pick up energy as they travel through space. Another candidate is active galactic nuclei (AGNs) typically found at the center of galaxies and assumed to contain a supermassive black hole. AGNs produce powerful jets of superheated plasma accompanied by shock waves.
Other suggestions include gamma ray bursts (themselves arising from an unknown source) or intense regions of star formation known as starburst galaxies. It doesn't help that the trajectories of UHECRs are bent by magnetic fields en route to our detectors on Earth, making it difficult to reconstruct the route they traveled and thereby pinpoint an origin point in the sky. Astronomers thought they had identified a couple of intriguing hot spots back in 2017, one in Centaurus A and the other in a galaxy called M82 in the Ursa Major constellation. But confidence in the former hotspot has weakened since 2019 as the number of UHCERs detected from there appears to be dropping.
The Telescope Array consists of over 500 surface detectors arranged in a square grid that covers some 270 square miles (700 square kilometers) just outside of Delta, Utah. It has picked up more than 30 UHECRs since it began operation. Even so, co-author Toshihiro Fujii of Osaka Metropolitan University in Japan "thought there must have been a mistake" when the experiment picked up the "Amaterasu" particle on May 27, 2021. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, as the mantra goes, so the detection and trajectory analysis weren't announced until a conference last fall, with the paper only now just coming in Science.
Like its 1991 predecessor, astronomers are baffled as to where the particle came from. Tracing its trajectory led them to an empty area of space known as the "Local Void" bordering our Milky Way galaxy. "The particles are so high energy, they shouldn’t be affected by galactic and extra-galactic magnetic fields. You should be able to point to where they come from in the sky," said co-author John Matthews, Telescope Array co-spokesperson at the University of Utah. "But in the case of the Oh-My-God particle and this new particle, you trace its trajectory to its source and there’s nothing high energy enough to have produced it. That’s the mystery of this - what the heck is going on?"
We might learn more once astronomers finish expanding the Telescope Array, adding 500 new scintillator detectors, which would expand the detection area to 1,100 square miles (2,900 square kilometers). That should increase how often they detect such UHECRs.
"These events seem like they're coming from completely different places in the sky. It’s not like there's one mysterious source," said co-author John Belz, also with the University of Utah. "It could be defects in the structure of spacetime, colliding cosmic strings. I mean, I’m just spit-balling crazy ideas that people are coming up with because there's not a conventional explanation. Maybe magnetic fields are stronger than we thought, but that disagrees with other observations that show they’re not strong enough to produce significant curvature at these ten-to-the-twentieth electron volt energies. It’s a real mystery."

Российские ученые описали инновационный метод лечения анкилозирующего спондилита (болезнь Бехтерева) - аутоиммунного заболевания, поражающего суставы и позвоночник. Проходящий вторую фазу клинических испытаний препарат представляет собой моноклональное антитело, избирательно подавляющее определенную группу Т-лимфоцитов, клеточные рецепторы которых содержат сегмент TRBV9, связанный с развитием заболевания.

Researchers from Skoltech contributed to a large study made by colleagues from Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University, Shemyakin-Ovchinnikov Institute of bioorganic chemistry and other universities and organizations. The article, published in the Nature Medicine journal, presents an innovative treatment for ankylosing spondylitis.
Ankylosing spondylitis - or Bekhterev's disease - is an autoimmune disease affecting limb and spinal joints. Chronic inflammation leads to ankylosis (adhesion of joints and their stiffness), impaired motor functions, and other complications. Autoimmunity includes many diseases, in which the immune system erroneously attacks healthy tissues of the body, taking them as foreign.
In previous work, the research team has shown a relationship between ankylosing spondylitis and specific TRBV9+ T-cell receptors. The new treatment, which directly attacks cells that are the primary cause of the disease, is based on the TRBV9+ T-lymphocytes depletion with a cytotoxic antibody.
Previously, patients could only receive symptomatic treatment, but the disease continued to progress. The new drug affects only a small part of T-lymphocytes and does not have systemic immunosuppressive effects (that is, it does not suppress any type of immune response systematically).
The article focuses on a patient who has been in stable remission for four years, thanks to the treatment. The authors point out that his quality of life has significantly increased compared to the previous period, when he was on immunosuppressive anti-TNF therapy. He is experiencing better mobility and less pain. It is now possible to lead a more active lifestyle. The patient also stopped taking anti-TNF therapy after five years of continuous use.
A contribution to the project was made by Skoltech Ph.D. student Kseniia Lupyr. According to Kseniia, she contributed to the bioinformatic part of the work. "I have been analyzing T-cell repertoires for four years now. When I was doing my master's degree, the first tests on primates were performed. I analyzed the results and confirmed that TRBV9+ T cells were removed, and no other T cells were affected. Later, I analyzed data from the first patient who received the new drug."
"I integrated all available information: lab test results, mobility metrics, sequencing data of T-cell repertoires; analyzed and visualized the results for the new paper. As the patient's T-cell repertoires are available for 15 years, it's possible to trace autoimmune clones over a long period of time. For example, we noticed that the patient's well-being deteriorates with an increase in the proportion of autoimmune clones in the T-cell repertoire."
According to Ksenia, targeted treatment for ankylosing spondylitis was achieved because, among other things, it is associated with human leukocyte antigen (HLA) B27. HLAs code for proteins that act as "showcases" on cell surfaces that show T cells what peptides are inside. Recognizing them, T-lymphocytes get activated and attack the corresponding cells of the body.
"Adaptive immune response varies between people. So different patients may have different autoimmune clones. Since the disease is associated with HLA B27, there is a chance that the drug will help many HLA-B27 positive patients with ankylosing spondylitis," adds Ksenia.
The authors of the paper also note that anti-TRBV9+ therapy may have applications in other HLA-B27-associated diseases, such as psoriatic arthritis, acute anterior uveitis, juvenile idiopathic arthritis, and Crohn's disease.
Clinical trials of the drug against ankylosing spondylitis are currently in the second phase, and the third one has recently been approved. Researchers are waiting for the results to draw conclusions about the drug's effectiveness in a wider sample of patients.

Сотрудники ВНИИ коневодства и ВНИИ генетики и разведения сельскохозяйственных животных исследовали ДНК 102 лошадей 11 аборигенных пород, описав их генетические данные, а также выявив наличие следов селекции и скрещивания с другими породами. Оказалось, что сокращение численности популяций привело к значительному снижению генетического разнообразия, а скрещивание в пределах одной популяции для улучшения породы привело к уменьшению количества породных признаков.

Researchers who investigated Russia’s horse breeds have warned of the need to find ways to preserve genetic diversity within native breeds.
"Scientific and technological progress, along with historical factors, have had a significant impact on indigenous horse populations," Mikhail Atroshchenko and his fellow researchers said. "The reduction of population size has led to a significant decrease in genetic diversity, and the use of purebreds for improvement has led to a decrease in divergent breed traits."
The problem of maintaining the genetic diversity in horses is of great importance, Atroshchenko and his colleagues wrote in the journal Genes.
"There is a risk of permanently losing not only the horse breeds themselves, but also the monuments of the historical development of mankind, that include not only artworks and architecture, but also the unique genomic architecture of animal breeds. A balanced approach is required when using the current horse gene pool," they said, "as it affects the preservation of national traditions and history."
The study team set out to explore the genetic diversity of native horse breeds in Russia. Data from 31 stud farms and ranches located in 15 regions of the Russian Federation were used in the study. DNA was sampled from 102 stallions of 11 breeds: Arabian, Akhal-Teke, Don, Orlov Trotter, Vladimir Heavy Draft, Russian Heavy Draft, Soviet Heavy Draft, Kabardin, Yakut, Tuva, and Vyatka.
The authors noted that horse breeding in Russia has four distinct aims - for work, food production, sports, and breeding. Draft and indigenous horse breeds serve a dual purpose, as they can be used for both work and production, including milk and meat. They are bred in local areas, often with extreme climatic conditions.
"In our study, they are represented by Vyatka, Tuva, and Yakut horse breeds, which are characterized by exceptional endurance, as well as high adaptability to the surrounding natural and climatic conditions."
The body features of native Russian horses include a medium-sized stature, broad body, elongated body, and relatively short legs. The researchers said scientific and technological advances have had a significant impact on the quantitative aspects of indigenous horse populations, and the decline in population size has led to a significant reduction in genetic diversity, they said.
"However, all local breeds have a distinctive, and often unique, genetic structure, which in most cases is characterized by the presence of private alleles."
The researchers traversed the various breeds, describing not only their genetic findings but what is known about the historic introduction of outside bloodlines. However, such introductions have not occurred with all Russian breeds. For example, genetic analysis of the hardy Yakut horse revealed no traces of crossbreeding with other breeds (with the exception of one animal with low bloodlines from other breeds). However, they did identify low heterozygosity and high inbreeding levels in the studied population.
"A number of horse breeds have a significantly lowered level of genetic diversity as a result of high selection pressure and purebred breeding," they said.
Both the Akhal-Teke breed and the Arabian breed have retained a minimum effective population size over many generations, they noted. "We note significant accumulations of homozygosity in these breeds."
The authors said their findings across the 11 breeds will help to further evaluate the problems of genetic variability and inbreeding in horse populations.
"The search for traces of selection helps to expand the understanding of genetic factors contributing to the adaptability of horses to extreme environments," they said.
They said the general reduction in the diversity of the horse breed gene pool, due to numerous crosses for breed improvement with thoroughbreds, has led to a decline in the differences between the top sporting breeds in Russia.
"Our study presents new opportunities for exploring the genetic factors that influence the formation of adaptive traits in indigenous breeds, and for finding ways to preserve genetic diversity for effective population reproduction."
The study team comprised Mikhail Atroshchenko, Oksana Makhmutova, Andrey Datsyshin, Viktor Zakharov and Alexander Zaitsev, all with the All-Russian Research Institute of Horse Breeding; and Natalia Dementieva, Yuri Shcherbakov, Olga Nikolaeva, Anastasiia Azovtseva, Anna Ryabova and Elena Nikitkina, all with the Russian Research Institute of Farm Animal Genetics and Breeding.

Традиционно считается, что люди стали строить постоянные поселения и создавать сложные сообщества - словом, вести оседлый образ жизни - лишь с появлением сельского хозяйства. Однако ряд открытий, прежде всего на территории Западной Сибири, опровергают распространенное мнение. Одна из таких находок - укрепленное поселение охотников-собирателей на реке Амне. Результаты исследования российских и немецких археологов показали, что самые ранние постройки на этом месте датируются примерно 6000 г. до н.э., таким образом, это одно из старейших известных укрепленных поселений в мире.

People who lived in central Siberia thousands of years ago enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle despite the area’s cold winters. They fished abundant pike and salmonids from the Amnya River and hunted migrating elk and reindeer with bone and stonetipped spears. To preserve their rich stores of fish oil and meat, they created elaborately decorated pottery. And they built the world’s first known fortresses, perhaps to keep out aggressive neighbors.
With room inside for dozens of people and dwellings sunk almost 2 meters deep for warmth in Siberian winters, the fortresses were ringed by earthen walls several meters high and topped with wooden palisades. At some point, they were consumed by flame, a possible sign of early battles. And at least one set of structures was built startlingly early: 8000 years ago, 2000 years before the mighty walls of Uruk and Babylon in the Middle East and thousands of years before agriculture reached some parts of Europe and Asia, according to a study to be reported in Antiquity on 1 December.
That early date and the fact that hunter-gatherers built the structures add to the growing evidence challenging the textbook view that permanent settlements - and walls to protect them - could only arise after the dawn of agriculture. "To many people, this still is not part of what hunter-gatherers are. … There’s still an element in archaeology that believes complexity develops over time," says University of Oxford archaeologist Rick Schulting, who was not part of the research. "This is a nice study that demonstrates you can have alternate pathways to complexity."
The discoveries deep in Siberia are part of a wider re-evaluation of how complex societies arose. Predictable harvests and storable surpluses were needed, traditional thinking went, to support large sedentary populations, monumental architecture, and stratified societies - all of which made up what archaeologists called the Neolithic package. "If you found something like this in the Near East, as part of a farming society, it wouldn’t be a surprise," says co-author and Free University of Berlin archaeologist Henny Piezonka.
In recent years archaeologists had documented dozens of fortified settlements in central Siberia, an expanse of pine forest crisscrossed by rivers and pocked with permafrost and swamps, more than 2500 kilometers east of Moscow. Researchers generally assumed the forts were beyond the capabilities of Stone Age foragers and thus only a few thousand years old at most, dating from after metal tools first appeared in the region. "Hunter-gatherers are still seen as simple people who had no impact on their environment," says Free University Berlin archaeologist Tanja Schreiber, a co-author of the new study.
One fort sits on a high spit of land overlooking a bend in the Amnya. In 2019, Piezonka and a team of Russian and German researchers visited the site, days by boat and helicopter from the nearest city. They documented the defensive architecture, a network of deep ditches, banks, and palisades surrounding a cluster of houses. They also collected wood and charcoal from the settlement’s lowest, and therefore earliest, layers, which were visible as bands of black organic material in the promontory’s white sand. "It’s like they’re drawn with a ruler," Piezonka says.
Radiocarbon dating showed the site’s earliest walls and houses were built around 6000 B.C.E. At that time, local people lived by hunting, fishing, and gathering wild plants - a lifestyle still partially practiced by Nenets and Khanty people in the area today.
The Siberian findings add to others that challenge agriculture’s primacy in driving settlements and cultural complexity. In Anatolia, the monumental religious structures of Gobekli Tepe were built even earlier, at 9000 years B.C.E. But those people were beginning a transition to agriculture. In contrast, beginning about 10,000 years ago, hunter-gatherer societies in coastal areas around the world, including the Korean peninsula, the Japanese archipelago, and later Scandinavia, drew on marine resources to support large settlements. More recently, complex, hierarchical societies on the northwest coast of North America lived in large, permanent, and sometimes fortified settlements, all sustained by hunting, gathering, and fishing.
Yet North American societies like the Kwakwaka’wakw, Coast Salish, and Tlingit were seen as outliers on an evolutionary ladder that led from foraging to farming to complex states and the origins of modern society. "The Pacific Coast is always seen as an exception, not as evidence of another spectrum of diversity," Piezonka says.
That view of the past as a standardized progression has begun to change, a shift captured in the 2021 book The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by archaeologist David Wengrow and the late anthropologist David Graeber. "We can now see there are many societies in the archaeological record who are hunter-gatherers but have many of the features we traditionally assumed were associated with farmers," says University of Cambridge archaeologist Graeme Barker.
In Siberia, the abundant resources provided by the taiga may help explain the complexity reflected in the forts. Annual fish runs yielded dried fish, fish oil, and fish meal - all high-calorie, long-lasting foods. Reindeer, elk, and waterfowl migrations presented predictable opportunities to harvest still more meat to smoke and store for the long winter. "They don’t have to grow or raise resources," Piezonka says. "The surrounding environment provides them seasonally. It’s like harvesting nature."
At the Amnya site, she and her colleagues recovered dozens of decorated clay pots with pointed and flat bottoms from the earliest layers of the pit houses, where they were presumably used to store the abundant food. Once thought to be part of the Neolithic package, pottery may not be exclusive to farmers: East Asian hunter-gatherer cultures began to make pots during the last ice age. "Pottery and forts are like an alternative Neolithic package," Piezonka says. At Amnya, her team also noted a possible sign of social stratification, another development often linked to agriculture: a cluster of houses that sat, undefended, outside the palisade.
The fortified settlements, often situated overlooking rivers, might have been ways to stake out productive fishing spots. "When you start to get large numbers of people and storage of resources, you start to get into the world of competition," Barker says. "Part of that is going and taking."
A centuries-long cold spell that started about 8200 years ago may have made such rich sites particularly desirable. At Amnya and other fortified settlements, burned layers show that pit houses and palisades were periodically consumed by flames, and archaeologists found arrowheads in the Amnya’s outer ditch - possible signs of violent conflict. "These things we think about now, like property ownership and social inequality - people have been thinking about since we became human," Colin Grier of Washington State University says.

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