Октябрь 2023 г.

Российская наука и мир (по материалам зарубежной электронной прессы)

CONTENTS / ОГЛАВЛЕНИЕ


• The new approach will improve the efficacy of models for sentiment analysis of texts on the Internet
• Creators of quantum dots, used in TV displays and cell studies, win chemistry Nobel
• Russian scientists offer to assistance in managing Fukushima water
• Third space station leak in a year prompts doubts about Russia’s programme
• Scientists have described molecular composition of connective tissue of echinoderms
• St Petersburg University palaeontologists discover that dinosaur remains found more than 20 years ago in Mongolia belong to a juvenile
• Economist develops modern typology of innovation research
• Ecologists describe strong desertification in northern Algeria
• What was an ancient Chinese palace doing in the enemy territory of Siberia?
• La Russie veut concurrencer Elon Musk, ce qu’il faut savoir
• Seize the opportunity: satellite images enabled to estimate the salinity of the Azov Sea
• The project "Popularization of the Russian language and Russian education in African countries"
• From Russia with theory: Landau’s quasiparticles come to life

Сотрудники лаборатории интеллектуальных систем Вятского государственного университета разработали новый подход к обучению моделей для анализа тональности интернет-текстов, определяющих отношение автора к тому или иному вопросу. Предложенное решение позволяет быстро менять и переносить модель из одной области в другую, например, из маркетинга в политологию.

Russian scientists have developed an approach to training models for sentiment analysis of Internet texts. Such models determine whether text expresses the author’s positive or negative attitude towards a particular issue. The developed technology helps, for example, in more precise selecting the required product for the consumer. This approach allows you to quickly and inexpensively fine-tune the model in order to use it in various domains, including marketing, political science and sociological research. The work was published in IEEE Access journal.
Sentiment analysis is the process of identifying, measuring, and interpreting positive or negative opinions expressed in large amounts of text data on the Internet. This method is used in recommendation systems, news analysis, political science, marketing and sociological research. Sentiment analysis can help customers choose products based on reviews, recognize users’ true search needs, and identify extremist resources. In addition, such analysis can be used to study the impact of social media posts on the effectiveness of marketing policies, consumer reactions to a company’s products, and even to predict stock market movements based on social media sentiment.
Significant progress has been made in sentiment analysis over the past few years, especially with the application of deep neural networks to text processing. However, if you transfer a trained model from one domain to another, problems arise. For example, a model for analyzing restaurant reviews will not work well with bank reviews. Scientists today are trying to find a way to speed up the transfer of models between domains and make it more efficient - this would save a lot of money and effort. Another challenge facing scientists is how to quickly and inexpensively improve the quality of sentiment analysis using a neural network in a specific domain.
Scientists from the Intelligent Systems Laboratory of Vyatka State University have developed an approach that allows to quickly transfer a sentiment analysis model from one domain to another. The authors found that when transferring some universal sentiment analysis model, which was trained on a large collection of various texts from a certain domain, to another domain, the quality of analysis will be low. This means that the model needs to be fine-tuned. The authors determined that fine-tuning a universal model requires only a few hundred labeled texts from a new domain, and not thousands or tens of thousands as for primary training. The research is large-scale: for the first time in the Russian language hundreds of experiments were carried out with 30 sentiment-annotated corpora from 12 domains, which contained more than 280 thousand texts. Such a large volume of research materials reinforces the validity of the conclusions.
Additionally, the authors trained a cross-domain Russian-language model, which effectively analyze sentiment in different domains, and made it publicly available. They also labelled by sentiment and shared a new text corpus RuNews, including 1,823 news texts, and obtained sentiment analysis quality scores that exceeded the best state-of-the-art assessments for 7 test corpora.
"The main task we solve in our work is improving the quality of sentiment analysis using a neural network in a certain domain (for example, when analyzing bank reviews). It is desirable to do this quickly and cheaply. The key problem in this case is that in the domain of interest, as a rule, there is no high-quality labelled corpus of texts, that is, texts that have been processed and provided with additional information, such as labels, tags or descriptions," says the leader of the project, Evgeny Kotelnikov, professor at Vyatka State University.
The material has been prepared with the financial support of Ministry of Education of Russia within the federal project «Popularization of science and technology».

Нобелевская премия по химии этого года присуждена за открытие и синтез квантовых точек (крошечных кристаллов, флуоресцирующих яркими цветами) трем ученым, работающим в настоящее время в США: Алексею Екимову, Луису Брусу и Мунги Бавенди. В конце 1970-х ленинградцу Екимову впервые удалось создать нанокристаллы хлорида меди, встроенные в стекло, и доказать, что точки разного размера флуоресцируют разными цветами. Несколько лет спустя американец Луис Брус продемонстрировал подобные квантовые эффекты в частицах, плавающих в жидкости, а в 1993 году уроженец Франции Мунги Бавенди смог получить кристаллы определенного размера, которые давали яркий свет одного цвета и которые можно было использовать в прикладных задачах. Сейчас квантовые точки используются в оптике и электронике в самых разных областях, от производства светодиодов до медицинской диагностики; в перспективе возможно их применение при создании квантовых компьютеров и микроскопических лазеров.

Three researchers have been awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry for work on quantum dots - tiny crystals a few dozen atomic diameters wide that have highly tunable optical and electronic properties.
Moungi Bawendi of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Louis Brus of Columbia University, and Alexei Ekimov of Nanocrystals Technology Inc. will share a prize of roughly $1 million for discovering the crystals and showing how to produce them reliably. In doing so, they "planted an important seed for nanotechnology," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a press release this morning. The dots, which fluoresce in brilliant colors, have found applications in television and computer displays, LED lighting, and medical imaging. Scientists now envision using them to create tiny lasers, improved solar cells, and quantum computers.
The award "is a great example of fundamental science connected to things where you already see applications from the work," says Cherie Kagan, a materials engineer at the University of Pennsylvania who was a former graduate student of Bawendi’s. "There’s a lot more in front of us."
Theorists speculated about the powers of such tiny structures as long ago as the 1930s, in the early days of quantum mechanics. The theory, which describes the behavior of the atomic world, implied that crystals a millionth the size of a pinhead would act like a box, confining electrons in a way that alters their properties. A smaller box would compress the electron’s wavelike properties to shorter wavelengths. When stimulated by an external source of light, the electrons of a smaller quantum dot should emit bluer, shorter wavelength light. A larger dot should emit longer wavelength yellow or red light.
In the late 1970s, Ekimov, then at the Vavilov State Optical Institute in Russia, first managed to make nanometer-size crystals of copper chloride, embedded in glass. He confirmed that dots of different size fluoresced in different colors.
A few years later, Brus, then at Bell Labs and working independently of Ekimov, was looking for catalysts to capture the energy of sunlight in a chemical reaction. When Brus’s team crystallized particles of cadmium sulfide out of a solution, they noticed that the larger ones reacted to light differently than the smaller ones and realized it was the same quantum phenomenon. This research also removed a major limitation of Ekimov’s dots, which were "frozen" in glass. Brus’s dots were suspended in solution, which gave them the ability to flow and made them more attractive for applications like displays.
Still, defects in these early quantum dots - especially their variable sizes - kept them from wide commercialization. In 1993, Bawendi and his team, also at Bell Labs, devised a way to make high-quality crystals of a well-defined size that would produce sharp, vivid light of one specific color.
Bawendi’s breakthrough involved injecting the chemical ingredients for quantum dots into a hot solvent to immediately form crystal seeds, and then quenching their growth by rapidly cooling and diluting the solvent. To make dots of a required size - usually 2 to 10 nanometers nowadays - the solvent is slowly warmed up again to continue crystal growth in a more controlled way. "It was just an exciting time," says David Norris, a materials engineer at ETH Zürich and a former graduate student of Bawendi’s. "It was a really great environment that Moungi had created in those early days."
Many companies now use variations of the process as they compete to produce quantum dots cheaply for different technologies, using semiconductor materials such as zinc selenide, cadmium selenide, or indium phosphide. The market for quantum dot applications in the United States alone reached $4 billion in 2021, and some 8% of the global TV market now relies on quantum dots to add brilliant colors.
But researchers are testing other applications. In medicine, doctors want to use quantum dots as tissue-specific beacons to hunt for tumors or other problems. For example, quantum dots covered in organic materials to make them more biocompatible inside cells and blood could map blood vessels and lymph nodes or monitor changes in tumors. The dots could also help track the movements of drugs throughout the body.
In solar cells, quantum dots could be tuned to absorb a wider spectrum of light and convert it more efficiently into electrical energy. Because the dots produce such specific wavelengths of light, they could also act as microscopic lasers to optically shuttle information around computer chips, reducing heat loss and making chips more energy efficient.
Perhaps the most exciting potential use is in quantum computers, which have the potential to outstrip even supercomputers in some applications. Some researchers are trying to manipulate the spins of quantum dot electrons as the gates and switches of a quantum computer, while others hope to exploit individual photons produced by quantum dots for a light-driven quantum computer. "That’s not in the commercial domain yet, but that could be the future," says Mark Fox, an optical physicist at the University of Sheffield.
However, quantum computing would require quantum dots that differ from those in television displays, says Sofia Patomäki, a recent Ph.D. graduate at University College London. Among other reasons, quantum dots for displays often use chemical elements that are optimized for light in the visible spectrum, whereas quantum computing dots would need to incorporate elements optimized for light of lower energies.
The names of the three chemistry laureates - normally a closely guarded secret - were leaked to Swedish newspapers 4 hours before the Nobel committee’s official announcement. It’s not clear what happened, and flustered officials said they are investigating the breach. But the news did not seem to have reached at least one of the laureates. Speaking on the phone during the press conference, Bawendi pronounced himself "surprised, sleepy, shocked … and very honored" by the award.
He added, "There’s still a lot of exciting work to be done in this field, that’s for sure."

В конце августа японская компания Tokyo Electric Power начала сброс в Тихий океан очищенной воды, использовавшейся для охлаждения реакторов АЭС «Фукусима-1» во время аварии 2011 года. Резервуары, в которых находились почти 1,5 млн тонн воды, заполнены на 90%, поэтому было принято решение понемногу сливать воду в океан в течение 30 лет. Хотя схема сброса была одобрена экспертами МАГАТЭ, против нее выступили соседние страны, а также представители японской рыболовной промышленности, поскольку полностью удалить из воды радиоактивные изотопы, в частности, трития, невозможно. Уральские и дальневосточные ученые предложили несколько способов утилизации очищенной воды, а также высказались о необходимости мониторинга последствий сброса.

At the end of August, Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), which maintains the Fukushima Daiichi NPP, began releasing water into the Pacific Ocean. To cool the reactors during the core meltdowns that resulted from damage caused by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, water was taken from the Pacific. After use, it was treated to remove most radionuclides and stored sealed tanks. In addition, the nuclear units collect and isolate groundwater and rainwater that becomes contaminated and need treatment. More than 1m tonnes of treated water has accumulated at the station, which still contains tritium that the ALPS technology (advanced liquid processing system) cannot remove. According to Japanese nuclear plans, this water will be diluted to safe levels and discharged to the sea over about 30 years. And although the project was approved by IAEA experts, neighbouring countries and the fishing industry are opposing the plan.
The ALPS system removes 62 types of radionuclides, except for tritium (3H), a radioactive isotope of hydrogen. In addition, carbon-14 (C-14), potassium-40 (K-40), strontium-90 (Sr-90), iodine-129 (I-129), and some isotopes of caesium (Cs) and plutonium (Pu) remain in the water, albeit in smaller quantities. More than a thousand of tanks are located at the Fukushima site containing 1.34m tonnes of water and there is no further capacity. In 2013, Tepco began discussing plans to release the tritium water into the Pacific Ocean, which met with strong opposition from the scientific community, environmentalists and politicians in neighbouring countries: China, South Korea, Russia, and even in Japan itself. It took more than 10 years to convince key opponents that the solution was safe.
In July the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released a final report in which they approved the water discharge scheme, which began in August. The trial stage lasted 17 days, with 7,800 cubic metres of treated water being discharged. The planned volume for release by the end of March 2024 is 31,200 tonnes. The tritium concentration in the discharged water is 5,000bn Becquerels (Bq).
On 1 September, Tepco first detected the presence of tritium in sea waters on the northeastern border of the port adjacent to the station at a level of 10 Bq/litre - the permissible limit is a thousand times higher. Previously, Tepco set a limit of 700 Bq/litre above which the discharge of water would stop.
There were mass protests including mass mailings on social media in South Korea and Japan. At the official objections were raised by China including bans on seafood imports from 10 Japanese prefectures. Taiwanese authorities also expressed concern. The South Korean leadership also opposed the original plan to dump water but changed its position after the publication of the IAEA report.
"The concerns of the public in a number of countries, including Russia, from my point of view, are justified," says Valery Menshchikov, a member of the board of the Centre for Environmental Policy of Russia and the public council of Rosatom. "If the discharge of treated water was a one-time event, there would be no alarm…. But the trouble is that more than 1m tonnes of contaminated water have accumulated at the station, and the discharge will continue for at least 10 years. In this case, up to approximately 1,000bn Bq of tritium will enter the ocean. It seems that Japan is setting up a global experiment on the influence of such a volume of isotopes on the marine environment and the creatures living in it."
He added: "First of all, it is necessary to analyse the consequences of possible radioactive contamination of fish. Ichthyologists note that the accumulation of excess radioactivity will primarily affect long-lived fish. The effect of low and ultra-low doses of radiation on human health has not been fully studied."
According to Oleg Tashlykov, Professor at the Department of NPPs and Renewable Energy Sources of the Ural Federal University, "The tritium content indicated for discharged water is not dangerous due to its relatively weak radiation characteristics. However, there is no reliable information about the concentration of tritium in certain algae, plankton and other ocean creatures that can be food for fish and other marine life - and they may end up on our table. The justification that water with tritium will still be diluted many times with ocean water does not provide complete confidence in the safety of this method."
However, there is an alternative to dumping thousands of tonnes of water with tritium into the ocean. Before Fukushima, Russia set up a demonstration pilot plant for purifying tritium water (it is now at the Leningrad NPP as a museum exhibit). Unfortunately, the productivity was clearly insufficient - up to 10 cubic metres a day and Japanese nuclear scientists rejected the proposal.
In 2019, Canada's Laker TRF said it had developed AWD (advanced water distillation) technology that would make water treatment at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant cost-effective and reliable. However, the industrial application of this technology at the station was never developed.
Tashlykov says a significant part of the water containing tritium can be used directly at the Fukushima site (subject to strict compliance with sanitary standards and regulations) for the manufacture of concrete products and structures: road slabs, buildings for radioactive waste storage facilities, etc. The permissible content of tritium in concrete products and structures is an order of magnitude higher than in water, he notes.
Cobalt, which is also contained in treated Fukushima water, can be converted from a liquid to a solid state. Physicists from the Ural Federal University participated in improving radiation protection for the technology of conditioning liquid radioactive waste (LRW), invented by Ural scientists. They designed a container for solidified liquid radioactive waste with long-lived Cs-137 and Co-60. The containers reduce radiation to a safe level; one such container can replace five or six regular ones, the university said in a statement. There was no response to this proposal from Japanese colleagues. And Tepco refused the university nuclear workers’ request to provide samples of ocean water from the waters of Fukushima Prefecture.
"Any restriction in the provision of information, and especially the denial of the possibility of direct control and sampling, causes distrust and doubt about the objectivity of the information provided by the Japanese side," notes Tashlykov. "And this mistrust is strengthened by the fact that the actions of the Japanese side to prevent and limit the development of the accident shown by their reluctance to accept advice and assistance from specialists from Russia."
Scientists from the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (FEB RAS) propose organising monitoring of the consequences of discharges from the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant. "We believe that it is necessary to assemble a commission from members of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. We need to formulate a programme by 1 by November, said Ilyicheva Grigory Dolgikh, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Director of the Pacific Oceanological Institute. "We assume that it is necessary to include sea expeditions to the Kamchatka Peninsula and the Kuril Islands, as well as to those areas of the water area where there are fish that later come to our waters." He added that he believes it is also necessary to organise monitoring in the atmosphere using laser locators - lidars.

В российском сегменте Международной космической станции произошла третья утечка охлаждающей жидкости за год, на сей раз в модуле «Наука», пристыкованном в 2021 г. Официальные лица заявили, что членам экипажа ничего не угрожает, однако вопросы о надежности российской космической программы остались.

The Russian segment of the International Space Station (ISS) has sprung its third coolant leak in under a year, raising new questions about the reliability of the country’s space programme even as officials said crew members were not in danger.
Flakes of frozen coolant spraying into space were seen in an official live feed of the orbital lab provided by Nasa on Monday, and confirmed in radio chatter between US mission control and astronauts.
"The Nauka module of the Russian segment of the ISS has suffered a coolant leak from the external (backup) radiator circuit, which was delivered to the station in 2012," Russian space agency Roscosmos said on Telegram, adding temperatures remained normal in the affected unit.
Nauka, which means "science" in Russian and is also known as the Multipurpose Laboratory Module-Upgrade (MLM), launched in 2021.
US mission control in Houston could be heard asking astronauts on the American side to investigate.
"Hi, we’re seeing flakes outside, we need a crew to go to the cupola, we think windows five or six, and confirm any visual flakes," an official said to the astronauts.
"There’s a leak coming from the radiator on MLM," Jasmin Moghbeli replied later.
This is the third coolant leak to hit the Russian side of the ISS in less than a year. On 15 December 2022, dramatic Nasa TV images showed white particles resembling snowflakes streaming out of the rear of a docked Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft for several hours.
Speculation about the cause centred on an unlucky strike by a tiny space rock, or micro-meteor.
That spaceship returned to Earth uncrewed, and then another uncrewed Soyuz was sent to replace it a few months later. Two Russians and an American crew member had to stay for a year-long mission as a result, returning home only last month.
A similar leak in mid-February also affected the Russian Progress MS-21 cargo ship, which had been docked to the ISS since October 2022.
The succession of leaks lowers the probability they were caused by meteorites.
Space analyst Jonathan McDowell told AFP: "You’ve got three coolant systems leaking - there’s a common thread there. One is whatever, two is a coincidence, three is something systemic," he said, speculating that a subcontractor company may be at fault.
"It really just emphasises the degrading reliability of Russian space systems. When you add it to the context of their failed moon probe in August, they’re not looking great."
The Russian space sector, which has historically been the pride of the country, has been facing difficulties for years, between lack of funding, failures and corruption scandals.
The ISS is one of the few areas of continuing cooperation between Moscow and Washington since the start of the Russian offensive in Ukraine and the international sanctions that followed.

Биологи из Национального научного центра морской биологии имени А.В.Жирмунского ДВО РАН проанализировали около 200 статей, посвященных составу соединительной ткани иглокожих, которые, как известно, обладают уникальной способностью менять ее жесткость, и сравнили его с составом соединительной ткани позвоночных.

Russian biologists from A.V. Zhirmunsky National Scientific Center of Marine Biology, Far Eastern Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences have analyzed about 200 articles dedicated to composition of connective tissue (Extracellular Matrix) of echinoderms. That has enabled them for the first time to compare the composition of extracellular matrix of echinoderms and vertebrates. The work is published in Marine Drugs journal.
Echinoderms have unique for animals ability to change physical integrity of connective tissue. For example, holothurians (sea cucumbers) thanks to it can make their body hard, or on the contrary, soft. Analysis of genomes of echinoderms showed, that connective tissue of these animals has rather complex organization. It includes a wide range of structural proteins of extracellular matrix, and also various proteases and their inhibitors. The base of the connective tissue form representatives of almost all main groups of collagens, various glycoproteins and proteoglycans. It also has enzymes of synthesis of structural proteins and their modifications by polysaccharides. In that respect the composition of connective tissue of echinoderms and vertebrates in many similar.
Groups of collagens that are present in echinoderms’ organisms are rather diverse. In particular fibril-forming collagens probably constitute the base of extracellular matrix. Other types of collagens (FACIT and multiplexins), as their homologues in vertebrates, can participate in forming of net and give connective tissue different features.
The peculiarity of echinoderms consists in the fact that they don’t have elastin. This is a protein, that together with collagens form the base of connective tissue in vertebrates’ organisms. That’s why there is another structural protein that is very important - fibrillin. More attention should be paid to study of its structure and functions in organisms of vertebrates.
Echinoderms have a wide diversity of proteinases, among which scientists identify serine, cysteine, asparaginic and metallopeptidases. Their active centers have a typical structure and are able to split different molecules of extracellular matrix. Echinoderms are also characterized by a wide range of inhibitors of proteinases.
Scientists suggested that complex structure of extracellular matrix and diversity of intermolecular relations probably explain the complexity of mechanisms that answer for change of mechanic properties of connective tissue of echinoderms. These mechanisms may depend not only on the amount of cross bonds between molecules, but also on composition of connective tissue and properties of its proteins.
Results of their work will be useful for further researches of connective tissue of echinoderms, and particularly of its mechanical properties. The study of mechanical properties of connective tissue enables to create new materials that can find use, for example, in biomedicine.

Проведя гистологический анализ костей одного из мелких динозавров Parvicursor remotus позднего мелового периода, найденного в Монголии в 1996 году, палеонтологи Санкт-Петербургского университета пришли к выводу, что останки принадлежат не взрослой особи, как считалось ранее, а детенышу не старше года.

Scientists from St Petersburg University have conducted a palaeohistological analysis, that is, they have studied the microanatomical structure of the bones of Parvicursor remotus, found in Mongolia in 1996. As a result of the study of the Parvicursor specimen, palaeontologists revealed its juvenile age and made a conclusion about the main ways of evolution of the size of alvarezsaurids.
The Alvarezsauridae family, whose representatives lived at the end of the Cretaceous period (99.6 to 66.0 million years ago), are theropod dinosaurs whose forelimbs were reduced to one finger. There is an ongoing debate in the scientific community about the reasons for the decrease in the forelimbs of these dinosaurs and whether that happened in all members of the family. At some point, there was even an assumption that the forelimbs of these dinosaurs had decreased due to the fact that they made it easier for them to feed on social insects.
The research findings are published in Biological Communications, a journal published by St Petersburg University.
It has been scientifically proven that some species of theropod dinosaurs in the course of their evolution went through miniaturisation, i.e. became smaller, which enabled them to avoid competition among their larger relatives and occupy free ecological niches. Birds are an example of such evolution. They are a group of dinosaurs that emerged due to miniaturisation. Miniaturisation was an element of the evolution of many theropod dinosaurs, including alvarezsaurids.
The smallest representative of the alvarezsaurids, Parvicursor remotus, lived at the end of the Cretaceous period on the territory of modern Mongolia. Its remains were first described in 1996 by scientists from the Borissiak Palaeontological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. For a long time, it was believed that the remains of Parvicursor belonged to a very small adult, about 40 cm long. However, St Petersburg University palaeontologists, together with their colleagues from the Palaeontological Institute, conducted a detailed study of the remains of this species and made an opposite conclusion.
"We took the remains of a Parvicursor holotype specimen, which are kept at the Palaeontological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and applied palaeohistological methods to study them. We believe that if this dinosaur were an adult one, the bones would have annual rings similar to the rings of trees, but they were not found in the sample studied. In addition, if that dinosaur were an adult, dense bone tissue with a small number of vessels would pass along the outer side of the bones, because bones must have blood supply for their growth, and it is this "nutrition" that vessels carry," reported Pavel Skutschas, Head of the Department of Vertebrate Zoology at St Petersburg University.

Экономист из РУДН Дмитрий Кочетков разработал новую двухуровневую типологию теоретических подходов к исследованию инноваций, выделив наиболее перспективные направления. Первое из них - роль инноваций и предпринимательства в развитии общественных институтов и повышении уровня жизни для достижения целей устойчивого развития. Второе - экономический, политический и социальный контексты и их влияние на инновации.

A RUDN University economist has developed a new typology of theoretical approaches to innovations study, expanding theoretical knowledge in this field of science. Based on the new typology, the scientist named the most promising areas for further research on innovation. The results were published in the International Journal of Innovation Studies.
Innovation is the object of interdisciplinary research in behavioral economics, management, sociology, and psychology. The diversity of approaches and concepts gave rise to the need for classification. The typology proposed by Jon Sundbo in 1998 has been the common system, and it identified three different aspects of innovation. However, since then many new concepts have appeared that can no longer be unambiguously classified into one of the three types. The new study updates and expands the diagram to include new theoretical directions.
"In this conceptual framework, many theoretical directions are at the intersection of different aspects. Many of the directions appeared after 1998. So, we created a development of this scheme, adding concepts that appeared already in the 21st century," said Dmitry Kochetkov, Ph.D., Associate Professor of the Department of Probability Theory and Cybersecurity at RUDN University.
In the classical system, there are three theoretical directions. First-type theories consider innovation in an inextricable connection with entrepreneurship; such an understanding of the innovation process goes back to the "father of innovation theory" Joseph Schumpeter. The second type is based on the technological and economic aspects of innovation. The third one views innovation as a social process and addresses strategic aspects.
The economist systematized new concepts and identified those that do not fit into the classical typology, being at the intersection of different perspectives. These are, for example, "spiral models," "entrepreneurial university" and others. Then he supplemented the classical model, added a second level of hierarchy to the diagram and highlighted the intersections of various aspects.
The result is a new two-level typology of theoretical approaches to the study of innovation. In the entrepreneurial aspect, the author highlighted the concept of entrepreneurial universities; in our time, they are becoming key players in creating a knowledge economy. At the intersection of several aspects - entrepreneurial, technological and economic, and strategic - there are models of the triple, quadruple, and quintuple helix, which describe the interactions between universities, business, and government in the social and natural environment.
Having described and systematized these concepts, the researcher also named the most promising areas for further research. The first promising direction is the role of innovation and entrepreneurship in the development of public institutions and raising the standard of living achieving sustainable development goals. The second is to examine the national economic, political, and social context and its impact on innovation.
"The digital transformation of economies and societies has significantly changed the innovation landscape. Innovation research goes far beyond economic, technological, and management studies. Another problem is that most, if not all, innovation theories and concepts were formulated in developed countries. Therefore, studies of the national context and its impact on innovation and entrepreneurship, especially in developing countries, are an important part of academic and political discourse," said Kochetkov.

Экологи из Алжира, Греции, Египта и России определили причины и масштабы опустынивания земель на севере Алжира. С помощью образцов почвы и спутниковых снимков в разных диапазонах за 2013 и 2019 гг. ученые построили модель, определяющую состав почвы с точностью до 89%. Оказалось, что с 2013 по 2019 гг. доля земель, пригодных для сельского хозяйства, сократилась с 31% до 4%, а площадь пастбищ - с 21% до 13%. Основной причиной были названы ветровая эрозия почвы и перенос песка ветром, усилившиеся в том числе из-за слишком интенсивного скотоводства и земледелия.

RUDN University ecologists and colleagues from Algeria, Greece, Egypt, and Russia have determined the scale and causes of desertification in northern Algeria. The analysis was carried out using satellite images in different ranges. Over six years, the area of usable land has decreased by 1.5-9 times. The results were published in the Egyptian Journal of Remote Sensing and Space Science.
The loss of the biological function of land is called desertification. The composition of the soil changes, the sand content increases, and the vegetation becomes poorer. Such lands can no longer be cultivated; livestock cannot graze on them. There are several regions on Earth with a high risk of desertification. One of them is North Africa. Remote monitoring using satellite images helps track desertification. However, different soil types may be difficult to distinguish by satellite data if they have high sand content. It is important to interpret the images correctly. RUDN University ecologists and colleagues from Algeria, Greece, Egypt, and Russia determined which satellite data is best suited for determining soil composition.
"There is a problem with the similarity of reflectivity between different soils with high sand content. These are, for example, sand, loamy sand and clay. Therefore, it is necessary to develop more accurate spectral indicators to distinguish soil structures easily," said Dmitry Kucher, Ph.D., head of the Scientific Center for Research, Integrated Design and Development of Urban and Agricultural Development of the RUDN University.
Ecologists conducted the study in the Nemamcha region in northern Algeria. This region has undergone rapid desertification. To trace spatiotemporal changes in the topsoil, RUDN University ecologists used satellite images from 2013 and 2019 and soil samples. Then they calculated the correlation between these data and analyzed the possible causes of desertification.
It turned out that blue and near-infrared images are best suited for determining the proportion of sand and clay. Using them, RUDN University ecologists built a regression model determining the composition of the soil with sufficient accuracy - the coefficient of determination (an indicator of model quality) reached 89%.
Changes in soil composition between 2013 and 2019 indicate noticeable desertification: The share of land suitable for agriculture in the region fell from 31% in 2013 to 4% in 2019, and the grazing area fell from 21% to 13%. Ecologists also named the main cause of desertification in this area - aeolian processes, that is, wind erosion and the application of sand by the wind. They turn out to be strong, among other things, because of human activity - too intensive cattle breeding and agriculture.
"We found a dominant role for aeolian processes, which are exacerbated by low topography, overgrazing, climate change, and over-intensive agriculture. We recommend investigating the protective role of dry grasslands and desert shrublands against erosion and restoring degraded lands. We urge legislators to implement remote monitoring strategies and restore vegetation to combat desertification," said Dmitry Kucher, Ph.D., Head of the Scientific Center for Research, Integrated Design and Development of Urban and Agriculture at RUDN University.

В 1940 г. при строительстве дороги Абакан-Аскиз в междуречье рек Абакан и Ташеба были найдены остатки обширного сооружения, оказавшегося центральной усадьбой довольно крупного поселения. Здание было построено в китайском стиле, типичном для эпохи Ханьской династии, но неожиданном для территории племен хунну, с которыми империя Хань вела активные войны. Вопросы о дате постройки, строителях и владельцах Ташебинского дворца занимают археологов и историков по сей день.

Located in the majestic Altai-Sayan Mountains in the south of Siberia, the city of Abakan has a long and rich history going back thousands of years. But in the 1940s, archaeologists found something near Abakan, that was entirely unexpected - the 2,000-year-old remains of a Chinese palace typical of the Han Dynasty in China. What was so unusual about this discovery was the fact that not only was the palace hundreds of miles away from the region of the Han Empire, it was also located in territory that belonged to their arch-enemy, the Xiongnu.
Discovery of the Han Empire Palace in Khakassia
The Xiongnu were a nomadic pastoral people who formed a great tribal league that came to dominate much of Central Asia from the 3rd century BC until the 2nd century AD. The Xiongnu were a constant threat to China’s northern borders. In fact, it was their repeated invasions that prompted the small kingdoms of North China to begin erecting barriers, in what later became the Great Wall of China.
The discovery of the palace was first made in 1940 when Russian construction workers were clearing a track from Abakan, the capital city of Russia’s Khakassia Republic, to the village of Askyz, and found the buried foundations of a ruined building. When the site was excavated by archaeologists over the following four years, they found something highly unusual - the remains of a large palace typical of the Han Empire (206 BC - 220 AD).
The building was found to be oriented precisely to the cardinal directions from East to West. Its length was 45 meters (148 ft) from north to south and its width, 35 meters (115 ft). In the center of the palace was a large square room, 12 by 12 meters (39 by 39 ft).
The palace consisted of twenty rooms and one hall. The floor and walls of the palace were made of mud. In the central part, the walls reached up to 2.2 meters (7.2 ft) in thickness, while the walls of the side chambers were somewhat thinner. Another feature of the building was the heating system located under the floor of the rooms. This whole system of branched channels made from stone slabs allowed heat to be distributed throughout the palace via the hot air from the furnace.
Artifacts Unearthed: From Jade Vases to Construction Tools
Archaeologists found the remains of many Chinese style roof tiles, some of which bore inscriptions typical of the era of the Han Dynasty. On all these tiles was written the same text: "Son of Heaven (the Chinese emperor), 10,000 years of peace, and one of which (i.e. the empress), we wish 1,000 autumns of joy without sorrow."
The doors of the central hall were decorated with massive bronze cast mascarons in the form of a sculpted face, with handles in the form of horned rams. The ringed handle passed through the nose of the ram.
Among the other excavated artifacts at the palace, archaeologists found jade vase fragments, gold earrings, bronze ware, pottery, knives, belt buckles, plow lines, stone carvings of elephants and animal heads, and a range of tools that would have been used in its construction. It is unclear where these artifacts are now located.
The discovery of the palace sparked a lively debate regarding how the palace and its high-ranking occupants came to live not only far away from the Han homeland, but also in enemy territory.
Russian scholars like S. V. Kiselev and L. R. Kyzlasov have proposed that the palace belonged to ancient Chinese General Li Ling, who had been defeated by the Xiongnu and possibly defected to them as a result. Li Ling had led a force of 30,000 Han warriors against Xiongnu raiders in 99 BC, leading to the complete decimation of his army. Only 400 of Li Ling’s troops made it back alive to Han territory.
It was initially believed that Li Ling had died on the battlefield, which would have been the most noble end for a defeated general. However, it was later discovered that Li Ling had surrendered to the Xiongnu, and rumor quickly spread that he was a traitor and had defected, although there is little evidence to support this claim.
When news reached the ruler of the Han Dynasty, Emperor Wu, he ordered the Li family to be severely punished. The theory goes that news of the harsh treatment of his family reached an imprisoned Li Ling, who then did defect and, in an act of revenge against the Emperor, began training Xiongnu warriors in Han battle techniques. Presumably, Li Ling was eventually accepted by the Xiongnu, allowing him to construct his palace in their territory.
The Mystery of the Chinese Palace: An Unresolved Historical Debate
While this opinion has remained popular, other views have been expressed as well. More recently, for example, it was claimed by A. A. Kovalyov, that the palace was the residence of Lu Fang, a Han throne pretender from the Guangwu era in the first century AD. According to records, Lu Fang claimed he was a descendant of a Han Emperor and fought to become legal Emperor of China. However, he later raised a revolt and defected to Xiongnu. According to the Hou Han Shu, the official records of the Later Han Dynasty compiled by Fan Ye (5 AD), he lived with his family in Xiongnu for ten years until his death. This theory is supported by Chinese scholar Chen Zhi, who claims a character used in the tile inscriptions can be dated to the period 9-23 AD, much too late to have been Li Ling.
While both theories are plausible, the fact remains that scholars still cannot say within any certainty, who the Chinese palace belonged to, and what it was doing in the land of the Xiongnu.

Роскосмос анонсировал начало производства в 2024 году спутников связи «Скиф» для обеспечения высокоскоростного подключения к Интернету на средней орбите. К концу этого года предполагается закончить разработку эскизного проекта.

La Russie a annoncé son projet de lancement de satellites analogues à ceux de Starlink, visant à offrir un accès à Internet à haut débit. Les satellites russes, nommés Skif, entreront en production en 2024, avec des prévisions de mise en orbite en 2026 et 2027, selon l'agence spatiale Roscosmos. Le premier prototype de ces satellites, Skif-D, a été lancé depuis le cosmodrome de Vostotchny en octobre de l'année précédente, dans le cadre du projet fédéral "Sphère". Le lancement s'est déroulé à bord d'une fusée Soyouz-2.1b, accompagné de trois autres appareils Gonets-M.
Le géant spatial russe Roscosmos a fait savoir que Skif serait composé de six satellites offrant une connectivité Internet haut débit en orbite moyenne. La société a expliqué que le premier groupe de satellites est actuellement en phase de développement et de tests en vue de leur future mise en orbite. Lors des essais expérimentaux en vol du satellite Skif-D, il a été rapporté que de nombreuses tâches qui lui avaient été assignées il y a un an avaient été en grande partie résolues.
Notamment, une vitesse de transfert de données de 6,5 Mbit/s a été atteinte pendant ces tests. La constellation complète de Skif sera constituée de douze satellites, répartis en quatre unités sur chacun des trois niveaux de l'orbite. Chacun de ces satellites aura une masse de 1 750 kg et une durée de vie active estimée à 12 ans. Il convient de noter que le projet Skif semble être en concurrence avec des initiatives similaires telles que Starlink et OneWeb, qui cherchent à fournir un accès Internet mondial à partir de l'espace.
Starlink, un acteur clé
Starlink, une filiale de SpaceX dirigée par Elon Musk, est rapidement devenue un des acteurs majeurs dans le domaine des satellites. Cette entreprise révolutionnaire se consacre à la création d'une constellation de satellites en orbite basse de la Terre pour fournir un accès Internet mondial à haut débit. Avec des milliers de satellites déjà en orbite et des milliers de plus prévus, Starlink a réussi à étendre sa portée à des régions éloignées du globe qui étaient autrefois dépourvues de connectivité Internet fiable.
L'un des atouts majeurs de Starlink réside dans sa capacité à offrir une connexion Internet rapide et stable, même dans des zones rurales ou isolées, ce qui en fait un véritable acteur du changement pour l'accès à l'information et aux opportunités économiques. Le succès de Starlink est également dû à sa vision à long terme, à ses technologies innovantes et à son engagement envers la connectivité mondiale.

Уровень солености вод Азовского моря нестабилен и зависит от ряда факторов, а полевые исследования дороги и проводятся нерегулярно. Российские гидрофизики разработали метод дистанционного определения солености Азова, сравнив спутниковые снимки и реальные пробы воды в разные годы. Построенная на этой основе математическая модель позволяет делать прогнозы с точностью 95%.

Russian hydrophysicists elaborated a method for research of salinity of the Azov Sea with the help of data from the remote sensing. Scientists matched satellite images of water surface with field measurements and discovered that they can prognose salinity of water with an accuracy to 95%. The obtained magnitudes of salinity from 1 to 18 % turned out to be realistic with the consideration of average values (10-12%), obtained during fieldworks. The new method will enable to reduce the price of works concerning estimation of salinity in direct process, to fill the gaps in hydro chemical research of the Azov Sea in the previous years, and also to widen views about processes of circulation of water masses, that influence the development of biological resources and inshore infrastructure of the Azov Sea. Results of the research are published in International Journal of Remote Sensing.
The Azov Sea (Azov) - is a continental sea in the eastern Europe. This is the shallowest sea in the world with average depth of less than 7 meters. Its chemical characteristics, for example, salinity, are very changeable, especially in the inshore part of the sea. It is connected with the fact that rivers flowing into the Azov bring sometimes more, sometimes less water depending on the season. Besides this, waters of the Azov Sea are mixed with waters of the Black Sea and lake Sivash, and also are subjected to pollution near coasts. It also influences instable dynamics of sea salinity.
Scientists from Marine Hydrophysical Institute (Sevastopol) found the way to define the level of salinity of the Azov Sea distantly. Taking into account that field researches are expensive and conducted irregularly, satellite observations can become a beneficial alternative. Authors used free data from the base "OceanColor" in order to get images of surface of the Azov Sea of high resolution. However, these images themselves, that present water spaces of different colors, tell nothing about salinity of water. Moreover, measurement of salinity, in contrast to changes in temperature of water, are principally impossible only using satellite observations.
In order to interpret satellite photos of sea surface researchers used data of full-scale examination of water, obtained during expeditions from 1913 to 2018. Classical definition of salinity is carried with the help of chemical method after scientists selected water and brought it to the laboratory. Comparison of real and satellite information enabled to make regressive dependances between obtained figures in order to use in future only satellite images for estimating of water salinity of the Azov Sea. Mainly it is concerned those parts of the reservoir and that time, when field researches hadn’t been conducted in the Azov.
"Our researches showed that chosen mathematical model for measurement of salinity of the Azov Sea enables to prognose with a probability of 95%. This method gives realistic figures of salinity in diapason from 1 to 18% with average field figures 10-12%. Truly speaking, it concerns only summer and spring, because there are enough researches from a ship during expeditions. However in future we are planning to do the same works for autumn and winter seasons", - tells one of authors of the work Tatyana Shulga, Senior Researcher of department of hydrophysics of shelf of Marine Hydrophysical Institute RAS.
The conducted researches open an opportunity for further estimation of circulation of water masses of the Azov Sea. This process directly depends on changes of water density, that are defined by temperature and salinity. If earlier with the help of satellites it was possible to study only thermal regime of the Azov, now distant sounding enables to estimate also salinity of the sea. From the practical point of view a new method and its usage will help scientists to understand influence of circulation of water masses on biological resources, ecology and inshore infrastructure of Azov Sea better. Besides this in future thanks to new opportunities scientists can reconstruct hydrologic parameters of the Azov Sea in protosatellite epoch.

РХТУ им. Д.И.Менделеева при поддержке Министерства науки РФ стал оператором и ключевым организатором проекта по популяризации русского языка и российского образования в странах Африки.

In 2023, RKHTU named after D.I. Mendeleev, with the support of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation, acts as the operator and key organizer of the project to popularize the Russian language and Russian education in African countries. As part of the implementation of Decree of the President of the Russian Federation of March 31, 2023 No. 229 on strengthening Russia’s position in the global humanitarian space, forming its positive perception abroad, strengthening the position of the Russian language in the world and its position as a language of international communication, Mendeleev University will provide organizational, information and methodological support of the program.
The goal of the large-scale project is to strengthen partnerships between the Russian Federation and educational organizations on the African continent. In the coming months, visits of teachers from educational organizations in the Republic of South Africa, Namibia, Tanzania, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Senegal, Mali, Ethiopia and Egypt to Russia are planned, as well as the implementation of joint cultural projects and educational programs. It is planned that more than 100 teachers from African countries will undergo advanced training courses, update their knowledge of the history and culture of Russia, and also visit different regions and universities in the Russian Federation.
Partner of the Russian Chemical Technical University named after D.I. Mendeleev in the implementation of the project "Popularization of the Russian language and Russian education in African countries" is the Institute of African Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
On October 18, a business breakfast was held at the Mendeleev Center Children’s Technopark with the participation of representatives of Mendeleev University, the Institute of African Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, representatives of the Namibian Embassy in the Russian Federation, as well as teachers from African countries and their colleagues from RKhTU.
The guests were greeted by the acting Rector of the Russian Chemical Technology University Ilya Vorotyntsev, Vice-Rector for Economics and Innovation Dmitry Sakharov, First Secretary of the Namibian Embassy in the Russian Federation Mweneni Shiveda. The moderator of the gala meeting was Daria Zelenova, senior researcher at the Center for Southern African Studies at the Institute of African Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. She noted that a large number of representatives of African countries, including many professors, doctors of science and world-famous scientists, graduated from Mendeleev University and proudly bear the title of Mendeleevites. Daria Zelenova emphasized that it is RKHTU named after D.I. Mendeleev University, a university with centuries-old scientific and cultural traditions, is an important platform for interethnic dialogue and strengthening Russian-African interaction in various fields, primarily within the framework of the African Union and the Russia-Africa Partnership Forum.
A deputy of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Science and Higher Education, scientific director of the Russian Chemical Technical University named after D.I. Mendeleev Alexander Mazhuga.
"For more than 60 years, we have been productively interacting with African countries in the field of education. Russia is the country of choice for young people from African countries to receive high-quality education. The development of Russian-African educational cooperation became an important topic at the II International Parliamentary Conference "Russia - Africa", held in Moscow. Education and science are the main areas on which the scientific, technological and economic sovereignty of our countries depends. The Russian language is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world today. It is one of the five most widely spoken languages in the world, along with English, Spanish, Chinese and Hindi. Today the Russian language is studied in universities and schools in more than 140 countries around the world. And the new configuration of forces and the multipolarity of the world will undoubtedly be accompanied by a significant increase in the meaning and sound of the Russian language," noted Alexander Mazhuga.
"Dear colleagues, we are pleased to welcome you to Russia, within the walls of the historical building of the Russian Chemical Technology University, which has been training chemists and chemical technologists for our country and the whole world for more than a hundred years. Of course, many are interested in why the University of Chemical Technology was chosen to implement the program. We often say that chemistry is a metascience, without which the development of modern civilization is impossible. The same applies to the development of international cooperation in the scientific, educational and technological fields. Historically, great Russian scientists have almost always exemplified high culture, broad-mindedness, erudition and love for their country. Our distinguished guests and colleagues will have to visit many cities of our wonderful country, to better know and love its culture and history. In the future, it is with your help that we will develop fruitful and interesting cooperation with scientific and educational centers of African countries," Ilya Vorotyntsev, acting director, addressed the guests. Rector of Mendeleev University.
"As the leader of this project, implemented on the Russian side with the support and active participation of the Russian Ministry of Education and Science, I welcome you to our university, which is named after the great Russian scientist, chemist, engineer Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev. Dear teachers! Strengthening friendly ties between our states is an important task. Over the next few weeks, you will not only take advanced training courses, but also plunge into the hospitality and cordiality of the Russian land. I am sure that this experience will benefit your professional competencies, and RKhTU will make every effort to make your visit to Russia memorable and allow you to build long-term communications between our teachers and research groups," emphasized Dmitry Sakharov, Vice-Rector for Economics and Innovation of RKHTU D.I. Mendeleev.
The Institute of African Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences was represented at the business breakfast by the head of the Center for Southern African Studies Andrei Tokarev, researcher at the Center for Global and Strategic Studies, chairman of the Council of Young Scientists Gleb Sugakov, and researcher at the Center for Sociological and Political Science Research Daria Turyanitsa.
Colleagues spoke about the work of the institute in terms of strengthening international cooperation. Today, the Institute for African Studies includes more than 10 research centers, and the institute itself has been working in Russia for more than 60 years.
At the end of the meeting, the guests were given a tour of the Mendeleev Center Children’s Technology Park, and university volunteers presented the guests with souvenirs.
Earlier, on October 17, an excursion to the Prosveshcheniye Publishing House was organized for teachers from African countries as part of the project. They attended the session "Evolution of the textbook: from printed to multibook format," at which the guests were told about electronic forms of textbooks and their advantages. Electronic textbooks allow children to always have a textbook with them and complete assignments without having to carry a heavy briefcase, and also allow them to watch video lectures and take interactive self-tests. In addition, the teachers got acquainted with the history of the publishing house on an excursion specially organized for them, and examined the exhibition of historical publications, in particular, ancient primers.

Результаты экспериментов зарубежных ученых подтвердили предсказанное советским физиком Львом Ландау поведение квазичастиц - электронов, двигающихся через твердое тело. Десять лет назад физики Инсбрукского университета (Австрия) доказали само существование квазичастиц, а теперь им удалось создать в сверххолодном квантовом газе несколько таких частиц одновременно и наблюдать их взаимодействие друг с другом.

Physicists, building on Lev Landau’s theory of quasiparticles, used ultracold quantum gases to simulate electron behavior in solids. Their recent experiment revealed that these quasiparticles can have both attractive and repulsive interactions, underscoring the significance of quantum statistics.
An electron moving through a solid generates a polarization in its environment due to its electric charge. In his theoretical considerations, the Russian physicist Lev Landau extended the description of such particles by their interaction with the environment and spoke of quasiparticles. More than ten years ago, the team led by Rudolf Grimm at the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQQOI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) and the Department of Experimental Physics of the University of Innsbruck succeeded in generating such quasiparticles for both attractive and repulsive interactions with the environment.
For this purpose, the scientists use an ultracold quantum gas consisting of lithium and potassium atoms in a vacuum chamber. With the help of magnetic fields, they control the interactions between the particles, and by means of radio-frequency pulses push the potassium atoms into a state in which they attract or repel the lithium atoms surrounding them. In this way, the researchers simulate a complex state similar to the one produced in the solid state by a free electron.
A Closer Look at Solids
Now, the scientists led by Rudolf Grimm have been able to generate several such quasiparticles simultaneously in the quantum gas and observe their interactions with each other. "In a naive notion, one would assume that polarons always attract each other, regardless of whether their interaction with the environment is attractive or repulsive," says the experimental physicist. "However, this is not the case. We see attractive interaction in bosonic polarons, repulsive interaction in fermionic polarons. Here, quantum statistics plays a crucial role."
The researchers have now been able to demonstrate this behavior, which in principle already follows as a consequence of Landau’s theory, in an experiment for the first time. The theoretical calculations for this were done by colleagues from Mexico, Spain, and Denmark. "High experimental skills were required to implement this in the laboratory," explains Cosetta Baroni, first author of the study, "because even the smallest deviations could have skewed the measurements."
"Such investigations provide us with insights into very fundamental mechanisms of nature and offer us excellent opportunities to study them in detail," says Rudolf Grimm excitedly.
Reference: "Mediated interactions between Fermi polarons and the role of impurity quantum statistics" 26 October 2023, Nature Physics. DOI: 10.1038/s41567-023-02248-4

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