Март 2024 г.

Российская наука и мир (по материалам зарубежной электронной прессы)

CONTENTS / ОГЛАВЛЕНИЕ


• Russia’s next-generation rocket is a decade old and still flying dummy payloads
• KFU and Kazan Physical-Technical Institute working on thermoelectric technology with Indian partners
• SibFU scientists conduct wolf census among Evenki population, highlighting threats to their survival
• AI unveils psychological traits: Analyzing social media behavior on VK
• La Chine et la Russie vont construire ensemble un réacteur nucléaire sur la Lune d’ici 2035
• La Chine et la Russie lancent un laboratoire commun sur la conservation du tigre de Sibérie au Heilongjiang
• Research unravels the enigma of curly birch and suggests marker to recognize it at the sprout stage
• Russian scientists discover new mud volcanoes in Lake Baikal
• Découverte d’une nouvelle espèce d’écureuil terrestre, unique à la Sibérie occidentale

Российская тяжелая ракета-носитель «Ангара А5» готовится к четвертому испытательному полету, впервые - с космодрома Восточный. Первый пуск был проведен в 2014 г., а сама программа начата еще в 1990-е. В перспективе «Ангара» должна заменить «Протон», который использует высокотоксичное топливо и запускается только с космодрома Байконур в Казахстане.

By some measures, Russia's next-generation flagship rocket program - the Angara - is now three decades old. The Russian government approved the development of the Angara rocket in 1992, soon after the fall of the Soviet Union ushered in a prolonged economic recession.
It has been nearly 10 years since Russia launched the first Angara test flights. The heaviest version of the Angara rocket family - the Angara A5 - is about to make its fourth flight, and like the three launches before, this mission won't carry a real satellite.
This next launch will be a milestone for the beleaguered Angara rocket program because it will be the first Angara flight from the Vostochny Cosmodrome, Russia's newest launch site in the country's far east. The previous Angara launches were based out of the military-run Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia.
All dressed up and nowhere to go
On Wednesday, Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, said technicians at Vostochny have fueled the Angara A5's Orion upper stage and will soon install it on the rest of the rocket. The Angara A5 will roll to its launch pad a few days before liftoff, currently scheduled for next month.
The Angara A5 rocket is supposed to replace Russia's Proton launch vehicle, which uses toxic propellant and only launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Angara's launch pads are on Russian territory. Until a few years ago, the Proton was a competitor in the global commercial launch market, but the rocket lost its position due to reliability problems, competitive pressure from SpaceX, and the fallout of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Russian officials once touted Angara as a successor to Proton on the commercial market. Now, Angara will solely serve the Russian government, but it's doubtful the government has enough demand to fill the Angara A5's heavy launch capacity on a regular basis. According to RussianSpaceWeb.com, a website run by veteran Russian space reporter Anatoly Zak, the Russian government didn't have any functional satellites ready to fly on the upcoming Angara A5 launch from Vostochny.
Eventually, the Angara A5 could take over the launch responsibility of the handful of large satellites that require the capacity of the Proton rocket. But this is a small number of flights. The Proton has launched three times in the last two years, and there are roughly a dozen Proton launch vehicles remaining in Russia's inventory.
Russia plans a next-generation crew spacecraft, Orel, that officials claim will begin launching on the Angara A5 rocket in 2028. There's no evidence Orel could be ready for test flights within four years. So, while the Angara rocket is finally flying, albeit at an anemic rate, there aren't many payloads for Russia to put on it.
Russia's economic woes might explain some of the delays that have befallen the Angara program since 1992, but Russia's space program has long suffered from chronic underfunding, mismanagement, and corruption. Angara is the only rocket Russia has developed from scratch since the 1980s, and the Russian government selected Khrunichev, one of the country's oldest space companies, to oversee the Angara program.
Finally, in 2014, Russia launched the first two Angara test flights, one with a single-booster lightweight version of the rocket, called the Angara 1.2, and another with the heavy-lift Angara A5, made up of five Angara rocket cores combined into one rocket.
The Angara A5 can place up to 24.5 metric tons (about 54,000 pounds) into low-Earth orbit, according to Khrunichev. The expendable rocket has enough power to launch modules for a space station or deploy the Russian military's largest spy satellites, but in 2020, each Angara A5 reportedly cost more than $100 million, significantly more than the Proton.
The smaller Angara 1.2 has flown twice since 2014, but both missions delivered functional satellites into orbit for the Russian military. The much larger Angara A5 has launched three times, all with dummy payloads. The most recent Angara A5 launch in 2021 failed due to a problem with the rocket's Persei upper stage. The Orion upper stage set to fly on the next Angara A5 mission is a modified version of the Persei, which is itself modeled on the Block-DM upper stage, a design with its roots in the 1960s.
Essentially, the Angara A5 flight will allow engineers to test out changes to the upper stage and allow Russia to activate a second launch pad at Vostochny, which itself has been mired in corruption and delays. Medium-lift Soyuz rockets have been flying from Vostochny since 2016.

Казанские физики совместно с индийскими коллегами получили экспериментальные данные по магнетизму двойных перовскитов и разработали новый метод их синтеза.

A grant for a joint research of niobium oxide and strontium oxide synthesis together with Indian colleagues has been allocated by the Russian Science Foundation; a paper saw light in Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials.
The subject of the research - double perovskite, according to the members of the research team, was not chosen by chance. Today, energy is a key condition for progress. People's demand for energy is met by fossil fuel supplies. Interestingly, only one-third of the primary energy consumed is used efficiently, while two-thirds is wasted by turning it into heat. Physicists from KPTI and KFU are engaged in the search for opportunities to transfer useless and even harmful heating of the environment to the creation of new energy sources.
KPTI and Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (head of Indian team is Professor Tanmoy Maiti) study materials for electricity generation. The energy is planned to be obtained from the processed heat of automobile exhaust pipes, industrial objects, and residential heating. The materials they plan to use are double oxides like perovskite, which exhibits a large Seebeck coefficient at temperatures well above room temperature, which will allow waste heat to be converted into electrical energy.
"The experiment is based on the classical Seebeck effect, when we observe temperature differences on different sides of the working body. Our research differs in that it does not take place in the range of room temperatures. We are working with very high values - around 600 degrees Kelvin. Where temperatures reach the order of hundreds and thousands of degrees Kelvin, that is, where there are hot shops and heated furnaces, in the future it will be possible to use double perovskites to store energy, which is enough, for example, to operate lighting devices," comments Professor of the Department of General Physics of KFU, Lead Research Associate of KPTI Rushana Yeryomina. "We intend to exploit two paradigms, the first is the fundamental aspect related to the unusual magnetic properties in double perovskites leading to low-dimensional magnetism, and to use the Mott transition in these oxides to maximize the energy conversion efficiency, which has so far been elusive."
Experimental data on the magnetism of double perovskites has been obtained under the leadership of Lead Research Associate Ruslan Batulin (Laboratory of Quantum Simulators). The joint Russian-Indian project will provide new knowledge on fundamental magnetic, dielectric, and transport properties of double perovskites of the composition (CaBaSr)2B'B"O6 (B'; B" = Fe, Co, Ni, Cr, Mn, Mo, Ti, Nb), as well as construct a model of 3D-ion exchange bonds and determine the type of magnetic ordering.

Красноярские экологи провели «перепись» волков в Эвенкии - впервые с 1990-х гг. Ученые уточнили численность и половозрастную структуру популяции, исследовали места обитания и пути сезонных миграций животных.

For the first time since the 1990s, scientists from the School of Ecology and Geography of Siberian Federal University conducted a comprehensive study of the wolf population living in the north of Krasnoyarsk Territory in Evenkia. To obtain accurate data on the number of predators, their sex and age structure and geographical variability, the scientists studied 242 wolves, 676 skulls and wolf fangs.
It was confirmed that the subspecies of the East Siberian Evenkia forest wolf (Sapis lupus orientalis Dybowski, 1922) is represented by two geographical populations. They differ in the peculiarities of biology and ecology. The boundaries in which the forest wolf of Evenkia lives are determined by its food supply - the North taiga wolf is influenced by the range of deer of the Taimyr tundra population, and for the middle taiga wolf it is forest reindeer and moose.
"An analysis of the characteristics of forest wolves has shown that the size and body weight of these animals increase towards the north and decrease towards the south. In the middle taiga of Evenkia, record - breaking heavy forest wolves were harvested - up to 80-90 and even up to 112 and 118 kg. We have compiled new and redesigned existing maps of the indigenous wolf habitat in the municipal area. It is obvious that seasonal migrations of non-territorial wolves, not tied to their lairs, are caused by the migration of wild ungulates from summer pastures to winter pastures and vice versa. The specialization of the nutrition of the Evenk Middle Taiga wolves with wild forest deer and moose is clearly traced. The Putoran wolf hunts tundra deer, removing up to 2-5% of the population. The Middle Taiga wolf eats up to 16% of the resources of the forest deer and 7% of the moose," said Anatoly Suvorov, head of the study, senior researcher at the School of Ecology and Geography of Siberian Federal University.
Scientists have clarified the important issue of the number of gray predators. Official data from the winter route surveys (WRS) show an increase in the number of wolves in Krasnoyarsk Territory from 6.4 thousand in 2017 to 10.9 thousand (8.8 thousand in Evenkia) in 2020. However, this is not consistent with the dynamics of its production and the number of wild reindeer and moose. The SibFU scientists believe that these data are significantly overestimated (by about 3.4 times).
"The calculation of the wolf population in Evenkia according to the brood sites where the lairs of territorial wolves are located showed that its population is 2,600. The North Taiga has 790 individuals (on 80 indigenous sites), and the Middle Taiga Evenki has 1,810 individuals (on 131 sites). Unfortunately, the root areas of the wolf’s stay in Evenkia are not currently being identified. Their counting and mapping are not carried out. Wolf harvesting does not come down to real regulation of its numbers (this requires a clear system of government measures and financing of regular work), but only to the spontaneous extermination of the wolf as a harmful predator. This approach seems to us irrational and even dangerous for both deer and wolf populations, this animal is important for the ecosystems of Yenisey Siberia," said Alexander Savchenko, Head of the Department of Hunting Resource Studies and Conservation at SibFU.

Ученые из Института психологии РАН и Института системного программирования им. В.П.Иванникова РАН использовали методы искусственного интеллекта для анализа поведения пользователей соцсети «Вконтакте» с целью проследить взаимосвязь между активностью в соцсетях, психологическими особенностями и когнитивными способностями. В исследовании приняли участие 1358 пользователей, которые прошли тесты на личностные качества «Большой пятерки» (экстраверсия, доброжелательность, добросовестность, невротизм, открытость опыту) и согласились предоставить доступ к своим профилям.

In a paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers utilized advanced AI techniques to analyze the social media behavior of 1358 users on Vkontakte (VK), the largest Russian online social networking service. They examined 753,252 posts and reposts alongside Big Five personality traits and intelligence assessments to understand how psychological attributes manifested in users' behavior.
The study identified that emotional tone strongly influenced traits like extraversion and agreeableness, while social engagement metrics correlated with logical thinking. Users with high neuroticism levels tended to share provocative content, and religion showed complex links with consciousness and agreeableness. The findings shed light on the intricate relationship between social media behavior and psychological traits, advocating a shift toward behavior-based diagnostic models.
Related Work
In previous research, psychologists aimed to diagnose personality traits by analyzing long-term human behavior. Traditional methods like lab experiments and imaging had limitations. Studies on Facebook showed links between personality traits and online behavior, particularly for extroverts. However, differences between online and offline contexts meant expressions of traits varied.
Advances in big data and machine learning enabled predictive models for personality traits using social media data, some achieving high accuracy. VKontakte analyses similarly found correlations between user activity and personal characteristics. As technology evolves, explainable AI becomes crucial for understanding complex relations and reducing biases in mental health research.
Psychological Trait Prediction Study
In terms of data, the study involved a sample of 1358 Russian-speaking users from the VK social network, with 46.7% male participants and an average age of 31.1 years. These users underwent psychological testing and consented to provide access to their VK profiles, resulting in a dataset comprising 753,252 posts and reposts. Data collection was facilitated through a web service, adhering to ethical standards set by the Russian Psychological Society and the Helsinki Declaration, with approval from the Ethics Committee of the Institute of Psychology of the Russian Academy of Science.
Researchers conducted psychological diagnostics using the Big Five model to measure traits like Openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. They additionally administered crystallized and fluid intelligence tests, assessing users' verbal abilities and reasoning skills. VK's API allowed access to various profile characteristics such as friend count, subscribers, and engagement metrics like likes and comments. Researchers employed natural language analysis models to evaluate text characteristics, including sentiment, emotional tone, and thematic analysis of posts.
Feature generation involved aggregating estimates for sentiment, emotional tone, and thematic content of posts and reposts alongside activity indicators like post frequency and word count. Researchers selected profiles based on criteria ensuring sufficient activity for analysis. They employed feature selection techniques to identify relevant characteristics, followed by data augmentation to enhance model generalization and mitigate overfitting. Researchers formed separate datasets for training, testing, and control purposes.
Modeling involved constructing neural network models for predicting psychological traits, with input vectors representing user activity features. Researchers utilized fully connected linear layers with activation functions in the model architecture, and they conducted training using Stochastic Gradient Descent optimization. They evaluated learning outcomes based on the coefficient of determination (R2) and mean squared error (MSE).
Researchers utilized explainable AI methods to interpret model predictions, employing algorithms based on gradients to determine feature importance and evaluate model performance. Tools like Captum and Shapley additive explanations (SHAP) provided insights into feature influence on predictions, enabling analysis across user profiles and trait scales. The integration of these methods facilitated a comprehensive understanding of model behavior and feature significance.
Analyzing Feature Influence in Models
The study involved an in-depth examination of the influence of various user profile characteristics on neural network models predicting personality traits and intelligence levels. Utilizing explainable artificial intelligence methods, particularly the integrated gradient method, researchers assessed the significance of features across different categories, including activity, frequency, text characteristics, sentiment, emotional evaluation, topic, and personal characteristics.
Through this comprehensive analysis, features related to user activity in social networks, emotional content of posts, and issues emerged as the most influential across all models predicting Big Five traits, verbal intelligence, and logical thinking. These findings underscored the importance of considering diverse user behaviors and content in understanding predictive models' outcomes.
Further exploration using the Partial Dependence Plot method provided insights into the direction and magnitude of feature category influences on prediction outcomes. The results revealed nuanced relationships between feature categories and psychological traits or cognitive abilities. For instance, correlations between activity signs and characteristics such as Extraversion and Consciousness highlighted distinct behavioral patterns among users. Similarly, sentiment and emotional evaluation features showed multifaceted associations with traits like Extraversion and Neuroticism, reflecting varied emotional expressions and responses within social network interactions.
An in-depth examination of individual cases using Shapley values elucidated the stability of trait assessments within neural network models across different severity categories. Clustering of Shapley values provided insights into feature impact consistency and revealed patterns aligning with trait severity levels. While traits like extraversion and consciousness displayed merged clusters for higher severity levels, models assessing verbal intelligence demonstrated less distinct clustering, possibly due to the complex nature of verbal abilities' prediction. Nonetheless, the clustering results reflected the models' accuracy and highlighted vital features driving predictive outcomes effectively.
Conclusion
In summary, the study elucidated how user profile characteristics influenced neural network predictions of personality traits and intelligence levels. By employing explainable AI methods, researchers uncovered the pivotal role of features like user activity and emotional content in shaping predictive outcomes.
Analyzing individual cases using Shapley values provided further insights into trait stability within the models. Overall, this research enhanced the understanding of predictive mechanisms and offered valuable insights for refining neural network models in psychological research and beyond.

Роскосмос заявил о планах совместно с Китайским национальным космическим управлением (CNSA) построить ядерный реактор на Луне к 2035 г. Реактор должен будет снабжать энергией предполагаемую совместную лунную базу.

L’installation d’une base lunaire permanente nécessite d’avoir à disposition une source d’énergie qui puisse fournir l’énergie nécessaire pour faire face aux conditions extrêmes de la Lune. Actuellement, de nombreux scientifiques penchent pour l’utilisation d’un réacteur nucléaire qui est bien plus efficace que les panneaux solaires, surtout pendant la nuit solaire. Dans ce contexte, l’agence spatiale russe Roscosmos vient d’annoncer son projet de travailler avec la Chine pour construire un réacteur nucléaire lunaire automatisé d’ici 2035.
En 2021, Roscosmos et la CNSA ou China National Space Administration avaient annoncé leur projet de construire une base commune sur la Lune. Cette base s’appellerait International Lunar Research Station (ILRS). A l’époque, cette station était censée être ouverte à tous les pays intéressés et les partenaires internationaux. Maintenant, on sait que les astronautes de la NASA ne pourront pas visiter cette base à cause de la mauvaise relation entre l’agence américaine et la CNSA. De plus, Roscosmos prévoit aussi de quitter le projet Station Spatiale Internationale d’ici 2025.
Ce qu’on sait du réacteur nucléaire lunaire
D’après Yury Borisov, l’actuel directeur général de Roscosmos, ils considèrent aujourd’hui un projet de livrer et d’installer une source d’énergie sur la surface de la Lune avec leurs collègues chinois. Ce réacteur alimentera la base permanente, et sa mise en place se fera entre 2033 et 2035. Borisov a ajouté que la construction se fera automatiquement, sans la présence d’humains. Les solutions technologiques nécessaires pour réaliser ce projet seraient déjà « presque prêtes ».
A part cela, l’agence Roscosmos prévoirait d’utiliser de grosses fusées fonctionnant à l’énergie nucléaire pour transporter les matériels de construction sur la Lune. Mais pour le moment, la construction de ces fusées reste encore un défi pour l’agence russe.
La Russie et la Chine sur la Lune
Ces dernières années, il y a eu un regain d’intérêt pour la Lune parmi de nombreux pays et entreprises dans le Monde. La Russie et la Chine font partie des pays qui ont déjà envoyé des sondes explorer la Lune dans le cadre de cette « nouvelle course pour l’espace ». Le succès n’était toutefois pas le même des deux côtés.
L’année dernière, la Russie a lancé sa première mission lunaire depuis 47 ans. La mission Luna-25 a bien commencé, mais l’alunisseur a fini par s’écraser sur la surface de la Lune à cause d’un problème technique.
De son côté, la Chine a pu atteindre ses objectifs. En 2013, la mission Chang’e 3 a pu poser un alunisseur et un rover sur la Lune. Cela a aussi été le cas pour les missions suivantes Chang’e 4 et Chang’e 5 en 2019 et 2020 respectivement. La mission Chang’e 5 a d’ailleurs réussi à ramener des échantillons lunaires sur Terre.
Pour le moment, les Etats-Unis sont le seul pays à voir pu envoyer des astronautes sur la Lune. Le pays compte d’ailleurs y retourner au cours de cette décennie grâce au programme Artemis. La première mission qui ramènera des astronautes de la NASA sur la surface de la Lune sera la mission Artemis 3. Elle est prévue être lancée en 2026.

Северо-Восточный университет лесного хозяйства (Китай) и Институт проблем экологии и эволюции имени А.Н.Северцова РАН создали совместную исследовательскую лабораторию по сохранению и восстановлению популяции амурских тигров.

Un laboratoire de recherche commun sino-russe sur la conservation du tigre de Sibérie a été établi jeudi à l'Université forestière du nord-est dans la province chinoise du Heilongjiang.
Le laboratoire, qui compte plus de 20 experts des deux pays, est développé conjointement par le Centre de recherche sur les félins de l'Administration d'Etat des forêts et des prairies de Chine et l'Institut d'écologie et d'évolution A.N. Severtsov de l'Académie des sciences de Russie.
Le laboratoire couvre des domaines de recherche tels que l'écologie et la gestion de la faune, l'alimentation et l'élevage des tigres de Sibérie et la génétique de la faune.
Les tigres de Sibérie, également connus sous le nom de tigres de l'Amour, vivent principalement dans l'Extrême-Orient russe et le nord-est de la Chine. Il s'agit de l'une des espèces les plus menacées au monde. Selon des estimations, seule une dizaine de tigres de Sibérie vivaient à l'état sauvage en Chine à la fin du 20e siècle.
Les tigres se déplaçant fréquemment entre la Chine et la Russie, la coopération entre les deux parties est d'une importance vitale, a déclaré Liu Ming, chercheur associé de la Société internationale des sciences zoologiques.
En 2010, les deux pays ont signé un accord de coopération visant à protéger les tigres de Sibérie et les léopards de l'Amour, qui comptent parmi les félins les plus menacés au monde.
Le laboratoire formera une équipe de recherche scientifique internationale engagée dans la conservation des animaux menacés, approfondira les échanges théoriques et techniques sur la protection du tigre de Sibérie et renforcera le partage des données, a déclaré Jiang Guangshun, directeur du comité d'experts du laboratoire.

Петербургские и карельские ученые установили, что красивый и необычный рисунок древесины карельской березы - ее отличительная особенность - является результатом мутации одного гена, связанного с формированием водопроводящей ткани в стволе.

Curly - or Karelian - birch is a mysterious tree with a patterned wood texture and a bizarre trunk shape. Unlike the elegant white-stemmed traditional birch, the Karelian one may seem unsightly at first glance: It is a low-growing, sinuous tree with bumps and bubbles. But the Karelian birch is famous for its wood. With its beautiful shade, patterns, and durability, the material has been used since the XVIII century in the manufacture of furniture, even for the royal chambers. For this reason, the Karelian birch was called the "royal tree" and "wooden marble."
For more than a hundred years, there have been many debates on how the birch acquired such properties. A team of scientists from Skoltech, Saint Petersburg State Forestry University, and Forest Research Institute of the Karelian Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences (FRI KarRC RAS) managed to solve the mystery of the Karelian birch and found that its wood pattern results from a mutation of one gene. The study is published in Scientific Reports.
"Most likely, this is a mutation in one gene, and we know on which chromosome this gene is located. We assume that the breakdown of this locus causes the disruption of normal xylem formation - the main water-carrying tissue in the plant - and the manifestation of Karelian birch's pattern in its appearance," said Elena Potokina, the head of the study and a professor at the Agro Center.
What complicates the research and cultivation of Karelian birch is the problem of determining this variety. There are two ways to "recognize" a Karelian birch: either to see the pattern on the cut or to determine the features of the trunk by sight - the second method is often used by experienced foresters. Karelian birch's signs only become visible after eight to 15 years of growth. Even if getting seeds by crossing two Karelian birches, only 60% of all birches may turn out to be Karelian ten years later.
"We were lucky to cooperate with the Saint Petersburg State Forestry University and FRI KarRC RAS. We received a list of phenotypes from colleagues - about 200 trees in total - and leaves of the Karelian birch, from which we obtained DNA. The specialists of FRI KarRC RAS managed to protect two populations of offspring from crossing Karelian birches," continued Potokina.
"One population was raised to the age of 16, and the other to the age of 35 years. Each tree received a professional assessment from the famous curly birch specialist Lidiia Vetchinnikova regarding which birch trees are Karelian and which are not."
"We generated DNA libraries and sequenced them using GBS technology, which entails sequencing random regions of the genome. After sequencing, we received information throughout the population about those mutations (Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms) that fell into the pool of random sequences," said Rim Gubaev, the first author of the study, a Skoltech graduate of the Life Sciences program.
"After that, we evaluated the population structure based on these mutations and showed that the curly phenotype is evenly distributed within two populations: this means that the foresters didn't make a mistake and that this phenotype has nothing to do with the population structure. Our study demonstrates that there are no specific subspecies of the Karelian birch in a broad sense. There is a locus in the genome that is responsible for this trait."
The team proposed a molecular marker that can be used to identify Karelian birch in just three hours of laboratory procedures (PCR). The 10th chromosome, where the candidate gene is located, was found to have a significant amount of insertions and deletions.
"We compared this region of the genome in Karelian and European silver birch and found that the Karelian one differs in numerous deletions. Colleagues suggest that this is caused by the high activity of 'mobile DNA elements or transposons - they move through the genome and are activated by various factors," Gubaev added.
"This region is long for non-Karelian birches, and short for Karelian ones because of numerous deletions. This difference is easy to reveal with a simple PCR. Now, to determine the Karelian birch, it is sufficient to isolate DNA, conduct a PCR test with the primers that we found, and get a result within just three hours. In our sample, the test showed a 92% accuracy."
"The industry receives an instrument that aids in understanding whether a tree will have a Karelian phenotype at any stage of the plant development - even on a monthly sprout - and thus in choosing a sprout for the plantation. We offer a powerful tool to establish and manage Karelian birch tree plantations for industrial production," concluded Potokina.
The researchers are optimistic that this method will also enable the protection of this valuable and rare red-book variety of birch from being illegally logged in its natural habitat.

Ученые Института земной коры СО РАН и Лимнологического института СО РАН обнаружили новые грязевые вулканы в акватории озера Байкал. Предположительно, они появились в результате активности Северобайкальского разлома.

Scientists of the Institute of Earth's Crust of the Russian Academy of Sciences together with colleagues from the Limnological Institute have discovered new mud volcanoes in Lake Baikal.
The magazine "Science in Siberia" reported on Tuesday that this discovery helps to obtain additional information on the structure of the topography of the lake bed, which has not been studied in detail and complete.
Scientists from the Earth's Crust Institute and the Limnological Institute have discovered new mud volcanoes in Lake Baikal, which researchers believe were caused by the activity of the Severbaikalsky fault, which is located along the northwest coast of the lake."
She pointed out that these data obtained will form the basis for the interpretation of new information about the structure of the terrain and the processes occurring at the bottom of Lake Baikal, which are still not sufficiently studied.
The scientists conducted a study of the bottom using remote-controlled unmanned submarines, which are robots equipped with a video camera, photography, and an underwater voice navigation system.
Dr Oksana Lunina, a researcher at the institute, said: "We decided to study several underwater places versus the Severbaikalsky fault. We discovered mud volcanoes here, although we only expected to see cracks. Because the bottom of Lake Baikal near the shore is usually composed of rocky gravel material and deeper silt deposits. As we discovered here, porous clay, different from the usual."
"Mud volcanoes must be studied, because they indicate cracks parallel to the Severbaikalsky fault, this is evidence that the rift is active and effective, and in the Severobaikal depression, which is bounded by this fault, strong earthquakes have occurred in the past, and biological studies of living organisms are of particular importance, because it is important for biologists to know the specificity of the evolution of life in different conditions - outside mud volcanoes and where their appearance is observed," added Lunina.

Российские ученые впервые реконструировали эволюционную историю палеарктических сусликов рода Spermophilus и установили, что их предки разделились на четыре филогенетические ветви 6,2 млн лет назад. Кроме того, зоологи обнаружили и описали ранее неизвестный вид сусликов, обитающих на небольшой территории между восточным берегом реки Обь и западными склонами Кузнецкого Алатау.

Une équipe de scientifiques russes a découvert une nouvelle espèce d’écureuil terrestre qui ne vit que dans une petite zone de la Sibérie occidentale, a annoncé, mardi, le Centre fédéral de recherche de Krasnoïarsk, une ville située à 3.352 à l’est de Moscou.
"Une équipe de scientifiques russes a reconstitué pour la première fois l’histoire évolutive des spermophiles paléarctiques et a découvert une nouvelle espèce unique à la Sibérie occidentale", selon un communiqué du centre.
La nouvelle espèce qui se distingue par une couleur plus foncée, une grande taille et d’autres caractéristiques physiques est endémique à une région située entre la rive orientale du fleuve Ob et les pentes occidentales du Alataou de Kouznetsk, un massif de montagnes en Sibérie, précise-t-on.
Les scientifiques ont également découvert que les anciens spermophiles se sont séparés d’un ancêtre commun en quatre groupes principaux il y a environ 6,2 millions d’années. "Le premier groupe comprend des espèces d’Asie de l’Est, le deuxième comprend celles d’Europe de l’Est et du nord-ouest de l’Asie centrale, le troisième regroupe les espèces d’Europe centrale et orientale et d’Asie Mineure, tandis que le quatrième groupe est constitué des écureuils terrestres vivant en Asie centrale et dans les régions voisines", a détaillé le Centre qui relève de la Branche sibérienne de l’Académie des sciences de Russie.
Selon Natalya Orechkova, directrice du laboratoire de recherche génomique et de biotechnologie du Centre fédéral de recherche, les données obtenues aident à mieux comprendre les relations évolutives entre les espèces de spermophiles et peuvent servir de base à l’élaboration de stratégies de conservation et de contrôle des populations de ces animaux.
Depuis la fin du XXe siècle, la Sibérie a connu une forte diminution des populations de spermophiles. Certaines de ces populations figurent dans les livres rouges des espèces menacées des régions russes et sont menacées d’extinction.

предыдущий месяц

1998-2024

следующий месяц