Ноябрь 2024 г.

Российская наука и мир (по материалам зарубежной электронной прессы)

CONTENTS / ОГЛАВЛЕНИЕ


• Arctic ice formation "Mesechev Island" disappears due to climate change
• Soviet scientific publishing and the prehistory of preprints
• We need scientific brainstorming about shared global dangers
• Russia postpones three major science projects
• The inspiring scientists who saved the world’s first seed bank
• Smoking habit affects response to false feedback
• Isolation erodes Russian universities’ rankings standing
• 35,000-year-old saber-toothed kitten with preserved whiskers pulled from permafrost in Siberia
• World’s oldest synagogue found to be part of ancient Jewish quarter
• The ISS has been leaking air for 5 years, and engineers still don’t know why
• When trees "talk": Researchers probe ancient wood for clues about massive solar storms

Русское географическое общество сообщило о полном исчезновении острова Месяцева в архипелаге Земля Франца-Иосифа - ледяное образование растаяло из-за потепления климата. Если в 2015 г. его площадь составляла 53 гектара, а в 2020 году - 15 гектаров, то в августе 2024 г. остров уменьшился до 3 гектаров, полностью растаявших к сентябрю.

On October 31, the Russian Geographical Society reported the complete disappearance of Mesechev Island, an ice formation with an area of 53 hectares, from the Franz Josef Land archipelago in the Arctic due to climate change. The island's disappearance was confirmed through the analysis of satellite images by researchers and attributed to global warming, which has led to increased melting of Arctic ice formations.
Photographs published on the website of the Russian Geographical Society showed the island's gradual reduction in size until it finally vanished. The first photograph, taken on August 19, 2015, showed a small island with an area of approximately 0.53 square kilometers. By August 12, 2024, the island had shrunk to only 3 hectares, and on September 13, 2024, the island was no longer visible in the images. Under one image, it was written: "The island has completely melted."
The disappearance was first noticed by schoolchildren and students from the interregional project group "RIXCAT." They compared old and new photographs of the Franz Josef Land archipelago made by meteorological satellites to track the changes in Mesechev Island. According to satellite imagery data, the island was formed from the peninsula of the same name as a result of the melting of the glacier on Eva-Liv Island until 1995.
Alexey Kucheyko, Associate Professor at the Moscow Aviation Institute and head of the "RISK-SAT" group, stated: "We monitored it from 2020 to 2022. As of August 19, 2015, its area was about 53 hectares, and by August 12, 2024, it was only 3 hectares. Now it has completely melted." He added that this discovery necessitates updating maritime navigation maps to reflect the island's disappearance.
Researchers hypothesize that global warming, leading to rising sea levels, is the cause of the collapse of this ice island. "If the existing trend of climate warming continues, despite the efforts of the world community on climate change, the ice covers will continue to decrease, and the ice islands will melt," said Irina Golovacheva. She noted that we are currently in an interglacial period, and it is unclear what temperature will be the norm in the next hundred years. "Possibly the warming will continue, or possibly the climate on Earth will again head towards a glacial period," she stated.
Additional research is planned to confirm the melting of Mesechev Island and identify possible changes in the seabed relief. The disappearance of such ice formations may have significant implications for navigation. Experts note that it will be necessary to adjust navigation maps to account for the disappeared islands and the changed outline of the land. "The main influence will be on navigation," said experts, emphasizing the need for updates in navigational information due to the changes.
Experts like Vladimir Pinaev have pointed out the broader effects of melting ice formations. He stated that due to the average annual temperature increase, part of the water that is in a solid aggregate state, namely ice, will melt. This process leads to an increase in the level of water in the ocean and may contribute to changing the salinity of the water both locally and in general. "Ice contains fresh water and will desalinate the ocean," he explained.
The rate of ice melting has increased by 65% in recent years, leading to the disappearance of some ice islands. In the 2010s, the planet was losing 1.3 trillion tons of ice per year, compared to 0.8 trillion tons per year in the early 1990s. The area of ice covers worldwide is gradually decreasing, and, as a consequence, some ice islands may disappear.
The problem of disappearing islands has existed for a long time. Starting from 1823, the Vasilyevsky and Semyonovsky islands were marked on maps of Siberia in the Laptev Sea. However, after 100 years, these islands turned into underwater shoals and effectively ceased to exist. Scientists suggest that some islands are highly likely to be flooded in the next 80 years.
Among the islands at risk are the Cook Islands, located off the coast of New Zealand, Micronesia, the Maldives, and the islands of Fiji, Seychelles, French Polynesia, and the Marshall Islands. Micronesia, a group of 607 islands in the Pacific Ocean, has already seen several of its islands disappear, with others at risk. The famous Maldives are under threat and may be completely underwater by 2100.
If only the world's mountain glaciers melt, the sea level will rise by 0.5 meters. If Greenland melts, the sea level will rise by six to seven meters. If Antarctica melts, it will raise the global ocean by 65 meters. Such melting will take hundreds and even thousands of years. Nevertheless, scientists warn that global warming will submerge entire archipelagos of islands in various parts of the planet by the end of the century.
"These phenomena occur slowly and are not catastrophic in nature, but it should be noted that humanity should pay more attention to the changes occurring and not ignore the forecasts, but adapt to the changes and, anticipating changes in the coastline and the rise in the level of the World Ocean, create safe conditions already now," concluded Vladimir Pinaev.

До того, как в начале 1990-х гг. с появлением сервисов наподобие arXiv, сформировалась современная система препринтов, позволяющая ученым делиться результатами своих исследований до официального рецензирования и публикации, в СССР существовал Всесоюзный институт научной и технической информации (ВИНИТИ). Основной целью созданного в июле 1952 г. института было предоставление советским исследователям доступа к зарубежной литературе, однако более примечательной его особенностью была система препринтов под названием «депонирование научных работ». Начиная с 1961 года, эта система позволяла советским ученым подавать в ВИНИТИ научные статьи, монографии и материалы конференций, минуя традиционные публикации в журналах. Эти машинописные тексты каталогизировались, реферировались и предоставлялись широкому научному сообществу.

There is a long history of attempts to unify and rationalise academic research. Taking the example of VINITI, the Soviet Union’s centralised approach to organising global research, Björn Hammarfelt and Johanna Dahlin explore how an organisation that at its height employed tens of thousands, provides a parallel and precursor to contemporary challenges in scholarly communication.
The modern preprint system, which allows researchers to share their findings before formal peer review, took shape in the early 1990s with the establishment of services such as arXiv. However, attempts to share research quickly and effectively, have a longer history. Among them, the Soviet Union’s All-Union Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (VINITI) stands out as a major, but under-explored, precursor to today’s preprint repositories. Its story also serves to demonstrate longstanding challenges and issues in recording and sharing global academic knowledge. Launched in 1952, VINITI’s ambitious mission was to centralise scientific knowledge on an unprecedented scale, with the Soviet government recognising the strategic value of controlling and disseminating scientific information. It employed over 26,000 people by the 1980s and dealt with millions of articles from across the globe.
The news of this large, centralised information centre was greeted with both curiosity and concern by American scientists and policymakers. While Sputnik might have been more spectacular, the establishment of VINITI - "the world largest scientific library" - was by some commentators perceived to have greater impact on science. Giving Soviet scientists access to foreign literature was the primary goal of the institute, but its ambitions were much grander.
The founder of the institute was the chemist and president of the Soviet Academy of Sciences Alexander Nesmeyanov. He envisioned VINITI as a "colossal enrichment plant" whose raw material was "all the scientific periodicals of the world". The process of concentration would result in abstract journals providing scientists with easy and fast access to the latest advances in their fields globally. This would be done through extensive translations, abstracting and the publication of a series of large abstract journals, referativnyi zhurnaly, that would report major findings in a condensed and accessible way. Moreover, the institute contributed significantly to advances in the emerging information science field, for example through research in "naukometri" or "Scientometrics" as it later was labelled.
One of VINITI’s most innovative features was its system of preprints, referred to as the "deposition of scientific works." Starting in 1961, this system enabled Soviet researchers to submit scientific papers, monographs, and conference proceedings to the institute, bypassing traditional journals. These "typescripts" were catalogued, abstracted, and made accessible to the broader scientific community. As deposition became an established method, the procedure became quite elaborate. Papers deposited with VINITI would eventually be counted as publications when an abstract of the paper was printed in the referativnyi zhurnal relevant to the paper’s subject area.
To handle the manuscript deposited with VINITI, a new department was created. This department would go through all submitted manuscripts, and then evaluate their scientific quality in conversation with the corresponding scientific branch of the institute where science editors matched the manuscripts with the relevant abstract journal. The rationale behind this system was partly practical: Soviet scientific journals were overburdened with submissions, particularly from narrow, specialised fields. By allowing researchers to deposit their work directly, VINITI provided a faster route to dissemination. The deposited works could be referenced and cited in future research, giving Soviet scientists a platform to share their findings without the delays of formal publication.
In many ways, the preprint system aligned with the Soviet belief in centralised control, planning, and state ownership of intellectual property. VINITI’s preprint system can be seen as an early attempt to implement what British scientist J.D. Bernal had envisioned in The Social Function of Science (1939). Bernal who claimed that traditional journals existed for "purely sentimental reasons" advocated for the creation of centralised "clearing houses" for scientific papers that would provide fast and open access to research findings. The Soviet system, with its focus on rapid dissemination and centralised control, was perhaps the most significant realisation of this vision. By 1977, the system contained over 26,500 typescripts spread across 49 depository centres, a testament to its popularity among Soviet scientists.
However, VINITI’s centralised approach had limitations. While the system, in theory, facilitated faster access to research, it lacked rigorous peer review. This led to now familiar concerns about the quality and reliability of the deposited works. Moreover, as the system grew, it became increasingly bureaucratic, and thus slow. Western scientists who visited VINITI often remarked on the institute’s inefficiencies, particularly the large workforce required to manage its operations.
VINITI was created to solve the concrete and crucial problem of accessing up-to-date scientific information in Soviet society. At the same time, the visions of VINITI echo of a European tradition of grand projects to unify knowledge. The institute, which was intended to serve Soviet needs, had global ambitions and the socialist view of universalism on which it was based was evident in the truly global coverage of scientific literature. However, scientific universalist ideals were always threatened by tendencies towards isolationism and repression. and the needs of scientists were balanced by ideological motives and political campaigns.
This is still true. VINITI continues to exist on a much smaller scale. In 2022, VINITI celebrated its 70th anniversary in a political atmosphere where Russian science is again isolated, international contacts and cooperation are hard to maintain and the authorities are very cautious of all things foreign. This in many ways resemble the political atmosphere of its founding in 1952, although, of course, the information environment at the time was radically different.
The history of VINITI is largely forgotten. Yet, during the 1950s and 1960s it offered a radical alternative, which attracted considerable attention from foreign colleagues, for how to organise an effective system for handling the problem of "the information flood" or "information explosion". During its early years, VINITI stood for both a vision and a practical example of a truly centralised system. Hence, by suggesting an alternative history, it provokes reflections regarding the historical, as well as contemporary, attempts to manage scientific information. What becomes obvious, from studying the history of the institute, is that the Soviet solution was not an isolated experiment, but an integrated effort which was perused in dialogue with Western initiatives. In conclusion, then, the ambitions and operations of VINITI may today appear as both old fashioned (in focusing on abstracts), bordering on the utopian (in the idea of total coverage), and as visionary and modern in its abandonment of journals and traditional forms of peer review.
This post draws on the authors’ article, Abstracting It All: The Soviet Institute of Scientific Information (VINITI) and the Promise of Centralisation, 1952-1977, published in Minerva.

Международное научное сотрудничество необходимо для решения многих глобальных проблем, таких как ядерное оружие, пандемии, потепление климата, использование искусственного интеллекта. Особую роль в этом процессе играет то, что автор статьи называет «научный мозговой штурм» - свободный обмен мнениями между учеными из разных стран в ходе дискуссий и совместного анализа проблем на стыке науки, политики и международных отношений.

With Russia and the West adversaries again, their scientific cooperation has been drastically cut back. And as tensions also build between the U.S. and China, the U.S. has agreed to only short-term extensions of the two countries’ 1979 Agreement on Cooperation in Science and Technology and is likely to trim its coverage in the longer term.
International scientific organizations are also under stress. For example, CERN, the European laboratory for particle physics near Geneva, was created after World War II to help bind Europe by bringing together physicists from countries that were formerly adversaries to build and conduct experiments with the world’s most powerful proton accelerator. But CERN recently announced that it will cut ties with Russia’s government because of its continuing conflict with Ukraine. Russian scientists currently working at CERN will be allowed to stay only if they change their affiliations to institutions outside Russia.
CERN is attempting to distinguish between Russia’s current government and Russia’s scientists, many of whom support the internationalism that nuclear physicist and dissident Andrei Sakharov promoted in his remarkable 1968 essay "Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom."
Another international organization, ITER, is building an experimental fusion reactor in southern France. Unlike CERN, however, ITER has no plans to cut its ties with Russia’s government. The basic design for the reactor was proposed by Sakharov and physicist Igor Tamm in 1951; the international project was proposed by the late Mikhail Gorbachev, then general secretary of the Soviet Union, at the suggestion of one of his physicist advisers. And Russia is providing key components for the power supply and for protection of ITER’s superconducting magnets.
It is difficult to disentangle international science. That is a good thing. International scientific cooperation is key to dealing with global problems such as nuclear weapons, pandemics, climate warming and misuses of artificial intelligence. It also creates opportunities for scientists to brainstorm about how we can deal with those problems. Governments have long recognized this. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is only one of the international organizations founded to facilitate agreement on the scope of various global problems and analyze possible mitigation strategies.
During the cold war, the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, an international organization of scientists that was created in response to the 1955 Russell-Einstein manifesto against nuclear weapons, brainstormed ideas that facilitated nuclear arms control, bans on chemical and biological weapons and deep cuts in the massive military confrontation along the border between what was then East and West Germany.
In the 1980s I was among the U.S. scientists who brainstormed with Gorbachev’s physicist advisers on steps to end the nuclear arms race, starting with the underground testing of new nuclear warhead designs. Evgeny Velikhov and Roald Sagdeev, two of Gorbachev’s advisers, were fusion scientists who had collaborated with foreign counterparts for decades. Indeed, on my first visit to the Soviet Union, when the ebullient Velikhov welcomed me at Sheremetyevo International Airport near Moscow, he was wearing a Princeton University tie from one of his many visits to the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.
A decade later, when I worked in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the legacy of openness fostered by Gorbachev was so strong that then president of Russia Boris Yeltsin allowed experts from the U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories to cooperate with experts from Russia’s nuclear laboratories to increase the security of the country’s huge stocks of nuclear materials and warheads.
Chinese nuclear weapons physicists were also inspired to join in the international brainstorming. Starting in 1988, under the auspices of the International School on Disarmament and Research on Conflicts, the Italian Pugwash group, they organized a biennial seminar in Beijing (now called the PIIC Beijing Seminar on International Security) with European and U.S physicists. These physical meetings have ended under China’s president Xi Jinping, but brainstorming continues by Zoom.
Between the two world wars, Niels Bohr, Albert Einstein and other leading members of the physics community engaged in the cooperative international effort to develop modern physics. Bohr never lost faith that the path to salvation for human civilization lies through an "open world." He made repeated efforts to persuade world leaders and finally, in 1950, wrote in his Open Letter to the United Nations, "Every initiative from any side towards the removal of obstacles for free mutual information and intercourse would be of the greatest importance in breaking the present deadlock [the cold war] and encouraging others to take steps in the same direction."
Gorbachev embraced what he called the "new thinking" and used "glasnost" ("openness") to open the Soviet Union internally and to the world. This enabled him to work with U.S. presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush to end the cold war and start a process that slashed the combined Soviet/Russian and U.S. nuclear arsenals by almost a factor of 10.
The authoritarian regimes that Russian president Vladimir Putin and President Xi have built make international cooperation more difficult, but the West needs to consider the costs and benefits of proposals to build additional walls. We do have secrets that must be protected, but unnecessary barriers will weaken us at least as much as our adversaries - especially where they make it more difficult for scientists to share ideas about how to make the world more safe and livable.
Frank N. von Hippel is a senior research physicist and professor of public and international affairs emeritus with Princeton's Program on Science and Global Security. He is a member of the Steering Committee of the Physicists Coalition for Nuclear Threat Reduction.

Из-за санкций и нехватки финансирования России пришлось отложить три крупных научных проекта. Сибирский кольцевой источник фотонов (СКИФ) планировалось ввести в эксплуатацию в конце этого года, но, вероятно, придется подождать до конца следующего. Модернизация Курчатовского специализированного источника синхротронного излучения (КИСИ) в Москве, которую планировалось завершить в 2026 году, будет отложена минимум до 2028 года. Наконец, третий «зависший» проект - расширение Международного центра нейтронных исследований на базе высокопоточного реактора ПИК (Гатчина).

Russia’s plans for building or improving major research facilities where its scientists can probe the structure of molecules and materials have hit a snag. Officials announced late last month that they have postponed efforts to build a new synchrotron light source, modernize another, and expand a neutron research center.
"The reasons for the delay of each project are different," said Denis Sekirinsky, Russia’s deputy minister of science and higher education, in a statement. But he said one major obstacle has been international trade sanctions related to the war in Ukraine that have made it difficult for Russia to import specialized equipment.
Many researchers fear the delays will make it harder for Russian scientists to keep pace with the rest of the world. And they are skeptical the delays will be the last, given Russia’s struggling wartime economy. "These plans are big … [and] there are serious doubts that they could be implemented in even in the middle term due to the lack of funding," says Sergey Vitebsky, an independent researcher and author who writes about Russian science.
The three postponed projects are part of a group of eight "megaprojects" approved by the science ministry in 2018. One, the $900 million Siberian Ring Photon Source (SKIF), is a new state-of-the-art fourth-generation synchrotron light source. It would produce beams of high-intensity s-rays for a wide array of studies, including efforts to develop new materials and decipher protein structures. The Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics began constructing the facility in Novosibirsk in 2021, and it was supposed to begin preliminary operations this year.
Now, researchers will have to wait until at least the end of 2025, Sekirinsky said. Trade sanctions have scrambled plans to import more than 30 kinds of specialized parts needed for the facility, including powerful radio-wave generators known as klystrons made only in Japan, the United States, and France. Russian engineers are now producing some of those parts themselves or seeking to acquire them from nations, such as China, that do not recognize some of the economic sanctions that the U.S., the European Union, and other nations imposed on Russia.
That delay has led to another, in a project to modernize an older light source, the Kurchatov synchrotron radiation source (KISI) in Moscow. The work was scheduled to be completed in 2026 but will now be delayed until at least 2028, so Russia will still have an operating x-ray synchrotron while SKIF is being built.
The third delayed project is an expansion of the International Center for Neutron Research in Gatchina, where a high-flux nuclear reactor produces neutron beams used to analyze various materials in ways x-rays cannot. The $1.2 billion project aimed to expand the number of stations available to researchers from five to 14.
All three facilities have the "highest degree of relevance for the development of modern science" in Russia, said Andrey Rogachev, director of the Landau Phystech School of Physics and Research, during a recent briefing.
Alexander Mazhuga, the first deputy chair of the State Duma Committee on Science and Higher Education, is optimistic that the projects will meet their new deadlines. Russia "remains the world’s leading country in terms of building megascience installations and has colossal ambitions in this field," he said in a statement.
Others are less optimistic, noting this is not the first time several of these projects have faced delays. The modernization of KISI was initially scheduled to be completed in 2022, for example, and SKIF was supposed to be finished in 2023.

Фрагмент книги Саймона Паркина «Заповедный сад Ленинграда» (The Forbidden Garden of Leningrad) о собранной по всему миру советским ботаником Н.И.Вавиловым уникальной коллекции семян культурных растений и сотрудниках Всесоюзного института растениеводства (ВИР), сумевших сохранить коллекцию в блокадном Ленинграде.
Книга издана в Великобритании издательством Sceptre в ноябре этого года.

Somewhere in the sky above, the mosquito drone of a plane’s propeller neared. Since Abram Kameraz had begun to commute by train from Leningrad (now St Petersburg) to the suburban town of Pavlovsk earlier in the summer of 1941, attacks by enemy planes had become a frequent cause of delay. Through the carriage window, Kameraz saw the road was littered with bodies. These men, women and children had been killed by German planes which had strafed and bombed the crowds of refugees as they fled towards the city. As Kameraz caught the silhouette of a German Stuka cresting the horizon, the driver stopped the train and ordered the passengers to run to a nearby ditch for cover.
Kameraz, 36, was a potato specialist, one of about 50 botanists who worked at the Plant Institute, the world’s first seed bank, situated off St Isaac’s Square in the centre of Leningrad. The institute’s potato collection contained 6,000 varieties, including many rare cultivars - the largest, most diverse potato collection yet gathered in history, a crop of inestimable scientific importance. And right now, hundreds of delicate South American specimens were planted in sheds in the fields on the outskirts of the city, in the path of the advancing German army.
Throughout August, Kameraz and his colleague Olga Voskresenskaya had made regular trips back and forth between Leningrad and Pavlovsk. But after the enemy planes fired on the trucks carrying potatoes near the Pulkovo Heights, the military drivers had refused to take them. So, Kameraz had decided to stage today’s reckless final rescue attempt alone. Every potato he could save and return to the seed bank in the city centre increased the chances of preserving his important work.
It was evening by the time Kameraz reached the Red Ploughman, one of dozens of field stations operated by the main seed bank. He found it abandoned. The lab technicians and farm workers had all fled, leaving the potatoes untended inside cubicles that could be wheeled into place on wooden rails, to encourage growth among varieties used to different climes.
Kameraz opened the sliding doors on one of the sheds housing Chilean samples, to allow the light in. Then, one by one, he took each plant from its pot and gently tapped the soil free, checking to see which specimens were sufficiently mature to bear the stress of transport. He wrapped a potato in parcel paper, and placed it into a sack, ready to be slung on his shoulder for the return journey to Leningrad.
Kameraz heard the shudder of nearby artillery fire. The forward edge of the battle was now just a 10-minute walk from Pavlovsk’s town centre. Kameraz took cover inside one of the plywood sheds. As the sound of explosions drew closer, he wondered if these were to be his last moments. After a while, however, he grew accustomed to the noise. He tuned out the sound, opened the shed door, then gingerly resumed his work.
He moved carefully from shed to shed, checking and bagging the plants. Then there was a sudden flash, followed by black silence.
The Plant Institute had been established in a former palace in Leningrad’s Herzen Street nearly 20 years earlier by the renowned scientist and explorer Nikolai Vavilov. In the 1920s, Vavilov and his young staff began to travel the world. They collected rare seeds, tubers, roots and bulbs and brought them to the seed bank to be sorted, catalogued and stored.
The mission was urgent. Everywhere conflict, natural disaster and the destruction of habitat threatened to make certain types of plant extinct. Once destroyed, these specimens and their unique characteristics would be irretrievably lost. The extinction of unexamined plant varieties could mean the loss of world-changing medicines, or super-crops that could provide security against famine.
The idea of a seed bank was novel, and the long-term value of a repository of genetic plant material yet to be fully understood. Some viewed Vavilov’s project as an eccentric waste of time and money. But by 1933, the botanists had collected at least 148,000 live seeds and tubers.
The seed bank had become world-famous. As a journalist for the Times wrote that same year, it was a "living museum … unrivalled in completeness by any other collection in the world". Scientists had started to refer to the project simply as "the world collection of plants". Vavilov’s pioneering work was recognised internationally, and he was elected a member of the Royal Society of London. But fame brought Vavilov into the spotlight of Stalin’s regime: the Soviet leader was wary of his collaboration with westerners. His research came under attack, and he eventually decided to resign from his post as the seed bank’s director.
This decision, however, was not enough to save him. During a seed-collecting expedition to Ukraine in August 1940, Vavilov was bundled into a black sedan by four agents for the NKVD, the precursor to the KGB. He was imprisoned in Moscow, where he underwent a gruelling series of interrogations. Eventually, he was forced to make a false confession. On 9 July 1941, Vavilov was found guilty of spying for the British government and sentenced to death.
In June 1941, a few weeks before Vavilov’s trial, Germany had invaded the Soviet Union. After Vavilov’s arrest, much of the work of running the seed bank had been assumed by Dr Nikolai Ivanov, a 39-year-old botanist who supervised Kameraz’s potato rescue attempt. On the morning of the invasion, Ivanov set out from his home and headed the seed bank to which he had dedicated his career. He strode through the tall wooden doors at the entrance to 44 Herzen Street, a rabbit warren of shadowy corridors.
Inside the institute, time appeared to flow differently. This was a place of profound stillness. Something of the essence of life had been captured and stored in these rooms, genetic material that had outlasted generations of human conflict, cycles of politicians, successions of tsars and recurring battles for territory and resources.
For all the magnificence and history held within these walls, the institute’s rooms were poky. Shelving units clad the walls, laden with identical-sized metal containers - about 120,000 in total - each labelled with a string of numbers used to identify the specimens held within. The tins sat like miniature bunkers. They contained treasures that had been carried hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles to Leningrad. There was naked-grained barley found on the plateau that borders Turkestan, India and Afghanistan; wild perennial flax picked from Iran; orange and lemon pips collected on the road to Kabul; radishes, burdock, edible lilies and chrysanthemums from Tokyo, and sweet potatoes from Taiwan.
Ivanov was not immediately concerned for the collection. He could not imagine the Nazi invaders would ever make it as far as the outskirts of Leningrad, let alone here to the heart of the city. And even if an army were to storm these rooms, what soldier would understand the value of the little packets?
Across St Isaac’s Square, Ivanov’s friend Prof Iosif Orbeli, curator of the Hermitage Museum, had already acted. Moscow had failed to return his calls, so he had made an executive decision. The evacuation of the museum would begin at once. He ordered every employee to begin removing the most precious paintings from the walls, ready to be placed in the steel-lined vaults that housed the museum’s collection of Scythian gold. Researchers, security personnel and technical employees all helped with the packing.
Two weeks after the invasion began, the first trainload of the Hermitage’s treasures left the city. The train comprised 22 freight wagons. The most valuable items were stowed in an armoured carriage, guarded at either end by anti-aircraft guns. Ivanov watched the evacuation of the Hermitage treasures with dismay. Leaderless and all but abandoned by the state, the botanists at the Plant Institute did not know what they were supposed to do with their own treasures.
In the middle of July, the city’s leaders introduced the first ration cards for bread, butter and other essentials: about six slices of bread per day, and a pound of butter per month. Soon, such meagre rations would seem like riches.
In Berlin, Hitler had told his military chief of staff that Leningrad was not merely to be attacked but was to be rendered "uninhabitable". By razing the city, the German army would eliminate the symbolic centre of Bolshevism and nationalism. But there was a practical benefit to Hitler’s scheme, too: by reducing the number of people living in Leningrad, the German army would be spared "the necessity of having to feed the populations through the winter". The plan was simple: surround the city and starve its population into submission.
At the end of August, Ivanov finally received word that the Plant Institute was to be included in what would be the final set of industrial enterprises and institutes to be evacuated from the city. About 100 institute staff and their families would be taken by train along with the seed collection to a small town in the central Urals, close to the Hermitage’s safely stowed artwork.
Any sense of elation was soon tempered, however, when staff learned they had been allocated just two standard carriages and an open-top freight car. The staff felt anger and disappointment: after they’d patiently waited for weeks, the carriage would only provide enough room to evacuate a fragment of the institute’s 120 tonnes of seeds.
To increase the number of seeds they could evacuate, the group devised a plan: each passenger would take an allocation of seeds in their hand luggage, a soft parcel weighing no more than 2kg and containing as many as 100 different seed varieties.
On the morning of 25 August, Ivanov and the other staff who had elected to remain in the city made their farewells to those who had chosen to flee.
The direct Moscow-Leningrad railway track was blocked, so all trains had been re-routed to the east, through the station town of Mga. The botanists felt the sway of the carriage as the driver periodically accelerated then braked for unknown reasons, while following the Neva river eastwards. On the outskirts of Leningrad, the countryside already bore the pock marks of war: craters either side of the tracks filled with water, splintered telegraph lines, earth scorched by explosives, trees snapped and uprooted.
On 30 August, German forces captured Mga, and closed the final rail link from Leningrad. At dawn, evacuees from the seed bank, whose journey had been slow and faltering, were awoken by a sharp jolt. Some passengers opened the carriage doors and began to walk along the track towards the front of the train to find out what was happening. There they found a wounded Red Army sergeant, his bandage soaked with blood, addressing the driver.
"The Nazis have taken Mga," the man said. "The track is blocked. Turn around and take us with you."
More than 2,000 goods vans and cars loaded with the property of many of the city’s enterprises and offices now cluttered the tracks. The evacuation had failed. The institute staff and their families would have to return to Leningrad, leaving the double-walled boxes of seed samples and important documents forsaken on the sidings.
By the time Abram Kameraz regained consciousness, in the field where he had been collecting potatoes, German forces had reached Leningrad’s suburbs. He checked his body for injury, then looked over the spilled sack to ensure the potato specimens had not been damaged in the blast. Finally, he got to his feet, hoisted the sack on to his shoulders and made his way to the railway station, hoping there might still be a train to return him and his final haul to the city centre.
When Kameraz finally reached the Plant Institute, he received a hero’s welcome from Ivanov and his colleagues. Kameraz had succeeded in saving at least one specimen of every variety of potato held in the institute’s collection. Now, the botanists divided the potatoes into three duplicate sets. One tuber of each variety was placed into a drawer in the building at 44 Herzen Street; another two were moved into the cellar of 42 Herzen Street. If bombs or fire destroyed one crop, perhaps the remainder would survive.
In early September 1941, Hitler’s troops began to shell and bombard Leningrad. Young musicians from the Leningrad Conservatory would stand among the columns at St Isaac’s Cathedral, close to the seed bank, to listen for the approach of engines. At night a pilot would drop a parachute flare that illuminated the roofs of the Plant Institute and the other buildings around St Isaac’s Square. Shortly thereafter, the waves of Junkers bombers would begin their approach towards the light.
At the sound of an impending attack, the on-duty manager at the seed bank would open the logbook, ready to record the time. Whenever an incendiary bomb landed on the institute roof, four on-duty staff members would be ready to race out. Using a pair of pincers, they would grab the smoking cylinder and fling it down into the courtyard below, where another staff member was stationed by a pile of sand. The incendiary would hit the asphalt with a cloud of sparks, and the colleague at ground level would roll it across the yard and bury it in the sand, which would boil from the 1,000-degree heat.
Staff at the seed bank recorded the attacks, which could last as long as 18 hours at a time, in a logbook. In total, 108 incendiaries landed on the seed bank roof. The intensity of the bombing and shelling exerted a severe psychological strain on the Plant Institute’s staff, some of whom began to question the wisdom of guarding a collection of seeds when so many human lives were at stake.
After a particularly intense raid, one staff member implored Ivanov to destroy the collection, research papers and archives to prevent them from falling into enemy hands. "We should mix the seeds together, then burn our papers in the stoker," she begged.
"The rest of the institute gave short shrift to such faintheartedness," Ivanov recorded.
The winter of 1941 proved especially brutal. Temperatures began to drop to below -40C, at which point the hairs in your nostrils freeze and your breath turns to a cloud of crystals that tinkles to the ground with a sound Siberians call "the whispering of the stars". The army was at the gates, but in no hurry to invade a place that with each passing day became weaker and more desperate.
War now left its mark not only as craters beside the road, but as intimate bruises, blotches and hollows on the skin. Malnourishment robbed Leningrad’s citizens of bodily form and sex, turning men and women into androgynous spectres, their limbs protruding as bones, every gaunt face a stranger in the mirror. Mothers began to divide their daily ration into smaller portions, giving it to their children throughout the day to create the illusion of plenty. Others stole food and hunted stray animals. In the most extreme cases, desperate people resorted to cannibalism.
The siege wiped out any sentimentality towards animals. At the Physiological Institute, famished researchers ate Pavlov’s renowned dogs. Police officers butchered their service animals. Pigeons disappeared from St Isaac’s Square. Families, unable to survive on the crumbs salvaged from the grooves of their dining tables, ate beloved pets.
For Ivanov and his colleagues, the loss of Leningrad’s domestic animals had secondary effects. The seed specimens stowed in their tin containers and arranged in orderly rows in the buildings’ secure rooms could withstand the cold. But a different sort of threat arrived. Each day, Ivanov and Rudolf Kordon would unlock the doors, open the cabinets where the tins were stacked and check the condition of the boxes. During one routine inspection, Ivanov was examining the containers when a rat jumped from a shelf on to the floor in front of him. Cornered, it threw itself at Ivanov and bit his leg. The scientist hurled the rodent off himself, afraid he might catch hepatitis. If vermin could enter the locked rooms containing the priceless collection, the seed bank had a major problem.
The mice and rats came in their thousands. The closure of grocery stores and canteens had made the animals desperate, while the absence of cats and dogs had made them bold. Ivanov and his colleagues built rudimentary traps - large cages baited with scraps - and filled any holes in the walls and skirting with shards of broken glass and dustings of arsenic powder. Each day the cages would be filled with writhing, starving rodents, which they removed from the building to bludgeon, unable to eat the meat lest the animals had touched the poison.
The lids and sides of the seed containers had two round holes, and the insides were covered with thin gauze to allow the seeds to breathe. The rodents chewed at the meshing, widening the openings until they could reach the specimens inside. Rudolph Kordon, the institute’s apple expert and chief keeper of the collection, suggested removing the seed containers from the shelves and tying them into bundles, so the meshes were pressed against one another to prevent access. The tied bundles could be hidden under metal roofing sheets, through which even the most determined animal would be unable to chew.
Preparing the seeds for long-term, vermin-proof storage proved laborious. In cold rooms, with swollen fingers, the work was painstaking. "After the war is over, our country will need these seeds more than ever," Ivanov would often say, to inspire his colleagues.
The team prioritised the wheat collection, stowed across more than 20,000 boxes, which would be critical for making flour in the future. Then they worked their way through the rye, oat and barley collections, followed by maize, millet, sorghum, buckwheat, peas, and 1,500 other boxes containing assorted varieties of legumes. Finally, the staff tied up the tins of vegetable seeds and of industrial and forage crops. Seeds gathered from unsorted drawers were put into some 2,500 metal boxes.
"The entire job was carried out in semi-darkness in cold rooms with broken windows," Ivanov recorded. On damp, frosty days, the columns of St Isaac’s Cathedral would gleam with hoarfrost, which also coated the metal boxes in the seed bank. When the task was complete, the staff had tied together 100,000 boxes, spread across 40 of the institute’s rooms. Lastly, they locked the rooms and sealed the doors.
Unable to reach the seeds, the rats began to chew loose documents to shreds, and gnaw at the wooden legs of the scientists’ desks. Slowly, their numbers began to decline.
Throughout the autumn of 1941, a few dozen Soviet aircraft succeeded in delivering food supplies each day, but these provisions fell far short of the requirements to feed even a fraction of the 3 million people trapped in the city. As trams began to run more infrequently, then not at all, some of the department heads moved into the building to avoid having to expend valuable calories traipsing through snow from their homes.
By December, the health of Ivanov’s colleague Aleksandr Shchukin was failing. The botanist’s skin had dried and blackened, his nose sharpened. When his hands became swollen and clumsy, he no longer shaved, fearing he might cut himself and never stop bleeding. Twice Shchukin fell while climbing the steps to the front doors of the institute.
Fifty-eight, shy and polite, Shchukin had studied, lived and worked in Leningrad his entire life, becoming an associate researcher of the collection of industrial and forage crops at the seed bank, and an expert in groundnuts. Since the invasion, he had steadied himself with ritual and routine. He would arrive at the seed bank promptly each day, five minutes before he was due to start work. He would hang his overcoat and galoshes in the cloakroom, then disappear into his study until lunchtime.
Vadim Lekhnovich, the botanist charged with keeping alive the potato collection stowed in the seed bank’s basement, found hope in his responsibility. "During the blockade, people died not only from shells and hunger but also because of the aimlessness of their existence," he later reflected. "In the most direct way, our work saved us. It invested us in living."
The seed bank’s staff held on to the importance of their task: to guarantee food security, if not for themselves then for those who followed them. Still, in the depths of winter it had become almost impossible for Shchukin and the other botanists to maintain their work schedules.
Herzen Street was a strategic route along which Red Army troops and munitions required constant access, and responsibility for maintaining the road outside the building fell to the seed bank’s staff. Each day those with the strength to do so cleared snow and garbage, collected meltwater and broke up and removed ice.
On 25 December, as news of an increased ration spread through the city, Ivanov went to check on Shchukin, whom he had not seen for several hours. He opened the door and found Shchukin seated motionless in his desk chair. Ivanov ran to his friend and shook his shoulders. But Shchukin’s body was already stiffened and cold, one hand locked in place on his chest. As Ivanov attempted to loosen Shchukin’s arms, a packet of almonds fell on to the desk. The botanist had died while clutching specimens that, had he eaten them, could have saved his life.
Throughout December and January, more than a dozen of the botanists succumbed to starvation. Weeks earlier they had collectively decided they would not consume any of the seeds. Now, everyone’s commitment to the plan and resolve to uphold it was privately tested to the extreme. In thousands of tins sat packets of nuts and seeds that could be tapped into open palms and consumed by the handful. Almost everything was edible, and the quarter of a million seeds could have been eked out to sustain the botanists for months.
And yet to consume these specimens would, for the scientists, feel like a betrayal of the past two decades’ worth of effort, and the thousands of miles that their imprisoned leader, Vavilov - who like many his colleagues would starve to death before the war ended, his death sentence having been commuted to two decades’ hard labour - had travelled around the world. The botanists had been faced with this ultimate and fundamental dilemma: to save a collection built to eradicate collective famine, or to use the collection to save themselves.
"It wasn’t difficult not to eat the collection," Lekhnovich later said. "It was impossible to eat this, your life’s work, the work of the lives of your colleagues."
In the new year the remaining staff received a telegram from the acting director of the seed bank, who had left Leningrad several months earlier. The telegram read, simply: "Spare nothing to support people."
The message was clear: nobody would begrudge the scientists if they chose to consume the remaining stocks of seeds. Spring, with its new shoots and revived hopes, was close; some of the collection could be spared to ensure the survival of the faithful few, so that, come its arrival, they might oversee the planting and help revive the city. The remaining staff rejected the notion, however. "The war will be over one day and that’s when we’ll be held to account," Ivanov told his colleagues. "They’ll ask what right we had not to protect the collection."
Eat or abstain? A simple choice that masked a clutch of complex, even taboo questions: is any sacrifice justifiable in the name of scientific progress, or to protect one’s research? What responsibility did the botanists hold to the survival of future generations? What was the correct course of action when that responsibility plainly sat at odds with their obligation to the living?
There is no doubt that the 250,000 seeds, nuts and vegetables in the building - some of which, by Ivanov’s own admission, were probably no longer viable to germinate - could have prolonged the lives of the botanists and, beyond that, the public. Equally, every scientist in the building understood that the seed bank’s purpose was in part to provide a buffer against famine caused by plague, pestilence, floods or, most pressingly, war.
Even if the surviving scientists weighed their options together, or brokered disagreements about the ethical course, none recorded these conflicts or later recalled them. Dissent was either a personal matter or a private debate.
This much is certain: one of the botanists composed a response to the director that made plain the scientists’ final choice: "All our efforts are being directed towards preserving the collection. Any other questions are of secondary importance."
The story of the Plant Institute is a tragedy. At least 19 staff members gave their lives to save the collection. But it is also a tale of triumph. In the spring of 1942, the scientists helped organise the city’s mass growing programme, where every inch of public green space was used to cultivate food. They helped produce posters to aid citizens in identifying which wild plants were edible, and Kameraz’s colleague, Olga Voskresenskaya, gave lectures to amateur growers, instructing them on how to propagate potatoes from seedlings, cuttings, grafts, sprouts, potato eyes and even peelings.
The sacrifice of those botanists who died was meaningful. The siege ended, and then the war. By 1967, 40m hectares of Russian agricultural land had been planted with seeds derived from the institute’s collection. By 1979, that area had almost doubled. Today, 90% of the seeds and planted crops held in St Petersburg are found in no other scientific collections in the world.
After the war ended, the British scientists Sydney Harland and Cyril Darlington co-wrote an affectionate obituary for Vavilov. "When Leningrad came to be besieged," they wrote, "the residue of his collections was eaten by the famished people." This dismissive aside wounded and infuriated the botanists who had survived the siege. To see their efforts and those of their perished friends misrepresented was indescribably painful. Ivanov issued an invitation for Darlington to visit Leningrad and see for himself the evidence. When Darlington arrived, Ivanov led him through the dark corridors and into the rooms where the collection was held. Embarrassed, Darlington apologised. Nobody in England, he explained, could have believed the collection had survived while its custodians and their city starved.

Команда ученых НИУ ВШЭ совместно с Институтом высшей нервной деятельности и нейрофизиологии РАН изучила, как люди реагируют на ложные убеждения в условиях стресса и возрастающей когнитивной нагрузки. Исследование показало, что курящие участники эксперимента допускали больше ошибок, были менее устойчивы к стрессу и демонстрировали сниженную самооценку при получении ложной обратной связи.

In today’s world of information overload, one must remain vigilant and quickly adapt to changing circumstances to avoid deception or falling into the trap of fake information. Understanding individuals' ability to cope with stress and detect deception in challenging situations, alongside the related response of their body and brain, has become an important scientific objective today.
A group of researchers at HSE University and the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences analysed people's responses to stress induced by cognitive engagement and examined their ability to detect deception attempts. The study findings have been published in Frontiers in Neuroscience.
Seventy people participated in the experiment, completing memory and attention tasks of increasing complexity. Participants were instructed to view images of coloured balloons and compare each with the preceding one to identify colour matches. As the difficulty level increased, participants had to memorise more balloons and colours. Immediate feedback was provided after each response. Midway through the experiment, participants were given deceptive feedback, such as being told they made a mistake when their answer was actually correct.
Throughout the experiment, the researchers recorded participants' physiological responses and pupil dilation. Pupils respond to changes in the sympathetic ('fight or flight') and parasympathetic (relaxation) systems and are directly linked to cognitive processes; during cognitive stress, pupils dilate. Machine learning algorithms were used to classify participants into two clusters based on how their pupils reacted to increasingly complex tasks.
Next, the authors used machine learning to analyse a variety of physiological and behavioural parameters to identify differences between the two clusters of participants. The analysis considered individual data on health, the presence of chronic conditions, lifestyle factors, harmful habits (including smoking), and tendencies toward depression and anxiety disorders. During task performance, participants had their heart rate, skin conductance, and breathing monitored as polygraph parameters. In addition, the analysis included the speed of task completion, the number of errors made, and participants' self-esteem levels after completing the experiment.
'We were the first to employ dynamic pupillometry, which measures pupil dilation, to simultaneously analyse a wide range of physiological and neurological parameters, along with psychological factors. Changes in pupil size directly indicate how a person adapts to a stressful situation, revealing when they are relaxed and when they are mobilised. Thanks to advanced technology, we were able to process the entire dataset and identify patterns that would have been impossible to detect manually,' according to Evgeniia Alshanskaia, co-author of the study and Junior Research Fellow at the Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience.
The researchers obtained interesting results: in one of the clusters, participants exhibited a less pronounced response to stress, along with differing heart rate parameters and oculomotor behaviour, compared to the other cluster. At the same time, the former cluster answered the questions more quickly but made more mistakes, resulting in a lower self-assessment of their performance. This cluster included a higher number of smokers and individuals prone to excessive daytime sleepiness. These two parameters were found to differ significantly between the two clusters of participants. The researchers attribute the differences to the effects of nicotine on the body.
'Nicotine affects acetylcholine receptors throughout the body and the brain. Acetylcholine is the first neurotransmitter ever discovered. It helps control muscle movement, regulates heartbeat and breathing, and modulates pupil response, while also playing a crucial role in cognitive processes. It affects how we respond to and process information. When a person smokes, nicotine "tricks" these receptors into functioning improperly. On one hand, nicotine induces a relaxed state; on the other hand, it alters the connection between the brain and the body, making it more difficult to respond appropriately to stressful situations. Attention does not require relaxation and calmness; instead, it relies on optimal levels of stress and alertness,' explains Alshanskaia.
According to the authors, daytime sleepiness may also be linked to the exposure of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors to nicotine. These receptors regulate the activation and inhibition of neurons, modulate dopamine release, and influence the functions of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for planning and executive functions. 'Acetylcholine and its receptors represent one of the most significant areas of contemporary neurobiological research,' the authors emphasise.
The study's findings further highlight the serious impact of smoking on human health. These findings are also important for developing individualised strategies to enhance cognitive resilience under conditions of stress and information overload. Additionally, they can be valuable for educational purposes and learning tasks, as they contribute to a better understanding of the optimal levels of stress and cognitive load necessary for successful learning, performance, and resilience in an unpredictable world.

Ведущие российские университеты теряют свои позиции в мировых рейтингах. Так, в последнем рейтинге, опубликованном Times Higher Education в прошлом месяце, Московский государственный университет выбыл из топ-100, опустившись с 95-го на 107-е место. МФТИ остался в группе 251-300, а НИЯУ МИФИ из группы 401-500 перешел в группу 501-600. В рейтинг лучших университетов мира Quacquarelli Symonds вошли 47 российских вузов, но ни один не попал в топ-50. МГУ опустился с 87-го места на 94-е, а СПбГУ - с 315-го на 365-е.

Leading Russian universities are losing their positions in global university world rankings due to ever-tightening sanctions’ pressure on Russia and isolation in the international arena.
In the latest World University Rankings 2025 from Times Higher Education (THE) released last month, Lomonosov, the Moscow State University, Russia’s most prestigious university, dropped out of the top 100 universities, falling more than 10 places from 95th to 107th place. There were no other Russian universities in the top 100 of this ranking either. The Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) remained in the 251-300 group, while the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI dropped into the 500-600 group (previously it was at 401-500).
This was the second major university ranking released this year that shows a decline in the prestige and image of Russian higher education in the international arena.
In July, Quacquarelli Symonds published its list of the world's best universities, which included more than 1,500 universities from 105 countries. The ranking included 47 Russian universities, and while the fact that none of them entered the top 50 remains the same as the previous year, that masked a deterioration in position for some of them. For example, Moscow State University fell from equal 87th last year to equal 94th, while St Petersburg State University dropped from equal 315th to equal 365th.
Representatives of the Russian university community and local analysts in the field of higher education believe one of the reasons for the decline is the suspension of publication of Russian scientists and university professors in leading international journals.
According to associate professor in the physics department of MSU, Andrey Larichev, besides the lack of access to publishing in scientific journals, the absence of Nobel laureates and poor connections with leading foreign universities also affected the positions of Russian universities in global rankings. He said MSU’s drop in the THE ranking by 12 places was highly significant - more so than any of the other institutions.
Alternative BRICS ranking
As current connections between Russian universities and the West weaken, an alternative university ranking of universities in BRICS countries has emerged, produced by the Russian Association of Rating Compilers. The agreement for the design of such a ranking was reached last year at a meeting in Mpumalanga (a province in South Africa) by the BRICS education ministers. The BRICS Universities’ Ranking is headed by Peking University, with Moscow State University being the second.
According to the authors of the ranking, it is based on three key indicators: educational, scientific, and social. They claim that the absence of subjective expert assessments and the use of objective indicators are the most important advantages of the new list.
According to the Russian TASS newswire, the shortlist of the ranking included 825, and the final list included 600 higher educational institutions from Brazil, Egypt, India, Iran, China, the United Arab Emirates, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and South Africa.
When compiling the ranking, experts relied on data from the official websites of educational institutions and national authorities, as well as independent online sources. Seventeen criteria were taken into account, such as the number of victories in international student Olympiads, the share of international students, the number of scientific publications and awards, global and national citations, and openness of information.
Differing developmental goals
In the meantime, according to Deputy Head of Educational Work at Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology of Russia Alexander Makurenkov, poor performance of Russian universities in Western rankings is not a catastrophe for the Russian system of higher education. According to Makurenkov, there are a lot of university rankings, and each has its own parameters. Since 2014 Russia has had its own national university ranking system, the initiator of which became head of the Moscow State University, Viktor Sadovnichy. The ranking is known as Three University Missions and is annually compiled by the Russian Union of Universities’ Heads.
As for Western rankings, according to Dmitry Grishankov, CEO of the RAEX rating agency, they do not correspond to the characteristics of many countries, particularly BRICS states, which led Russia in particular to the design of its own rankings. Grishankov said: "It has become absolutely clear: Western university rankings do not correspond to specifics of the BRICS countries, nor to their historical characteristics, nor, most importantly, to their development goals."
Grishankov cited the Quacquarelli Symonds ranking as an example. According to him, the universities in this ranking are ranked (in part) on international job opportunities for their students.
"But we are in Russia. We ourselves do not have enough specialists, and the goal of educating students who will go to work in New York or London is not relevant for us. The Chinese do not have such a goal either," Grishankov said. As Grishankov and other analysts believe, South Africa, which put forward the idea of its own BRICS university ranking, needs to position new universities created after the fall of apartheid.
However, according to Russian analysts, a university without a reputation and without any history cannot break into existing rankings, which is why South Africa and other BRICS states proposed to create their own ranking. According to Grishankov, a South African ranking is needed to strengthen the positions of new universities in the republic.
In the meantime, an official spokesman of the Russian Ministry of Science and Education said in the current geopolitical situation, Western university rankings cannot be considered objective. According to him, Russian universities need a fair system of external evaluation that would not depend on the market situation and would contribute to their development.
In addition to the new ranking, Russia is currently promoting the idea of creating a mechanism for recognising qualifications and educational diplomas between BRICS countries.

Российские палеонтологи описали найденного в Якутии в 2020 г. мумифицированного детеныша саблезубой кошки гомотерия. Котенок, которому на момент смерти было примерно 3 недели, жил 35-37 тысяч лет назад и анатомически походил на современных львят, за исключением ряда деталей. Например, у него были широкие лапы без запястных подушечек, мощная шея, маленькие уши, увеличенная предчелюстная кость и большая пасть - в расчете на будущие саблевидные клыки.

Researchers have pulled the mummy of a newborn saber-toothed cat that died at least 35,000 years ago from Siberia's permafrost - and the kitten still has its whiskers and claws attached.
A new analysis of the kitten's stunningly-preserved head and upper body shows it was just 3 weeks old when it died in what is now Russia's northeastern Sakha Republic, also known as Yakutia. Scientists found pelvic bones, a femur and shin bones encased in a block of ice together with the mummy. The circumstances of the animal's death are unknown.
It is extremely rare to find well-preserved remains of saber-toothed cats, and this one belongs to the species Homotherium latidens, according to a study published Thursday (Nov. 14) in the journal Scientific Reports. Saber-toothed cats of the extinct genus Homotherium lived across the globe during the Pliocene (5.3 million to 2.6 million years ago) and early Pleistocene (2.6 million to 11,700 years ago) epochs, but evidence suggests this group became less widespread toward the end of the Pleistocene (also known as the last ice age).
"For a long time, the latest presence of Homotherium in Eurasia was recorded in the Middle Pleistocene [770,000 to 126,000 years ago]," researchers wrote in the study. "The discovery of H. latidens mummy in Yakutia radically expands the understanding of distribution of the genus and confirms its presence in the Late Pleistocene [126,000 to 11,700 years ago] of Asia."
The small, deep-frozen mummy shows H. latidens was well-adapted to ice age conditions, according to the study. The researchers compared the carcass to that of a modern 3-week-old lion (Panthera leo) cub and found the saber-toothed kitten had wider paws and no carpal pads - pads on the wrist joint that act as shock absorbers in today's felines. These adaptations enabled saber-toothed cats to walk with ease in snow, while thick, soft fur observed on the mummy shielded the predators against polar temperatures.
The comparison with the lion revealed that saber-toothed cats had a larger mouth, smaller ears, longer forelimbs, darker hair and a much thicker neck. Researchers already knew from studying the skeletons of adult Holotherium that these saber-toothed cats had short bodies and elongated limbs, but the new research shows these features were already present at the age of 3 weeks.
Radiocarbon dating of the mummy's fur suggested the kitten has been buried in permafrost for at least 35,000 years, and possibly 37,000 years. The carcass was pulled from the banks of Yakutia's Badyarikha River in 2020, and its discovery has enabled researchers to describe, for the first time, physical characteristics of H. latidens, including the texture of these cats' fur, the shape of their muzzle and the distribution of their muscle mass.
Remarkably, the mummy still had sharp claws and whiskers (or vibrissae) attached to it. However, "the mummy eyelashes were not preserved," the researchers noted in the study.
The new analysis identified the species the mummy belongs to and its most striking features, but its authors are already working on a new paper. "The anatomical features of the find will be discussed in more detail in a subsequent paper," they wrote.

Древняя синагога в Фанагории, руины которой обнаружила Фанагорийская археологическая экспедиция в прошлом году, оказалась частью еврейского квартала. Кроме жилых домов, в нем были винодельня, сад и система водоснабжения.

Oleg Deripaska’s Volnoe Delo Foundation has announced the findings from the latest excavation season by the Phanagoria Archaeological Expedition. Continuing their research of the ancient synagogue unearthed last year, the archaeologists concluded it was part of a larger Jewish quarter, which included a winery, garden, residential houses, and public buildings.
The ancient Phanagoria synagogue was built no later than the early 1st century AD and was destroyed by barbarian tribes in the 6th century. It was located in the city’s most affluent neighborhood, at the junction of two main streets. It featured opulent architectural features, with the columns, a table for Torah readings, menorahs and bas-reliefs all crafted from imported marble. The synagogue was part of Phanagoria’s Jewish quarter, which also included a vineyard, a garden with clay pithoi used for irrigation, various buildings, and a water distribution network.
The eastern section of the synagogue housed the Torah ark, while the western area served as a space for ceremonial feasts and receptions of foreign guests. Among the remains of the floor, cracked open by the invaders back in the day, 58 copper coins were discovered. Some were found near the bimah, benches, and the threshold, in line with the Jewish tradition to protect the synagogue against the evil eye (ayin ha-ra). A few more were located near the lid of the alms receptacle (tzedakah).
The Jewish community in Phanagoria was one of the largest in the Mediterranean region, as evidenced by numerous tombstones bearing Jewish symbols. These often depict a seven-branched candlestick (menorah), a horn (shofar) and a palm branch. A unique find by the Phanagoria expedition was an amphora with a Hebrew inscription on its seal, translating to ‘God:justice‘. It is believed that such amphorae were used by wandering Jewish merchants, the Radhanites, to import kosher food to Phanagoria.
Several Jewish manumissions dating back to the 1st and 2nd centuries AD were also discovered in the Jewish quarter. These documents granted freedom to slaves on the condition that they continue serving at the synagogue. This missionary work allowed the Jewish community to ensure safety during times of persecution against Jews. "The Jewish community of that time adhered to all the laws and traditions of the Jewish people, while also respecting local customs and striving to create comfortable lives for everyone," noted Menachem Mendel Lazar, Chief Rabbi of Krasnodar and the Krasnodar Territory. "This reflects the wisdom of our sacred Talmud: ‘When you come to a city, do as the locals do.’"
In the 6th century, Phanagoria was raided by a neighboring barbarian tribe. During the attack, the invaders used palintonon-type throwing machines to hurl stone balls at the city. Most of the projectiles were discovered near the synagogue, suggesting that the Phanagorians sought refuge behind from the relentless bombardment. The city was completely destroyed and remained in ruins for 130 years before being restored. From the 7th to 9th centuries, until the city’s eventual decline, Judaism was one of the state religions of the Bosporan Kingdom, to which Phanagoria belonged.

Представители НАСА и Роскосмоса по-прежнему не могут прийти к единому мнению по поводу причин и уровня риска небольших, но постоянных утечек воздуха на Международной космической станции, в переходном тоннеле, соединяющем российский модуль «Звезда» со стыковочным портом. Утечки происходят с сентября 2019 года, ремонт на некоторое время снижает их интенсивность, но потом все начинается снова.

Officials from NASA and Russia’s space agency don’t see eye to eye on the causes and risks of small but persistent air leaks on the International Space Station.
That was the word from the new chair of NASA's International Space Station Advisory Committee last week. The air leaks are located in the transfer tunnel of the space station's Russian Zvezda service module, one of the oldest elements of the complex.
US and Russian officials "don't have a common understanding of what the likely root cause is, or the severity of the consequences of these leaks," said Bob Cabana, a retired NASA astronaut who took the helm of the advisory committee earlier this year. Cabana replaced former Apollo astronaut Tom Stafford, who chaired the committee before he died in March.
The transfer tunnel, known by the Russian acronym PrK, connects the Zvezda module with a docking port where Soyuz crew and Progress resupply spacecraft attach to the station.
Air has been leaking from the transfer tunnel since September 2019. On several occasions, Russian cosmonauts have repaired the cracks and temporarily reduced the leak rate. In February, the leak rate jumped up again to 2.4 pounds per day, then increased to 3.7 pounds per day in April.
This prompted managers to elevate the transfer tunnel leak to the highest level of risk in the space station program's risk management system. This 5×5 "risk matrix" classifies the likelihood and consequence of risks. Ars reported in June that the leaks are now classified as a "5" both in terms of high likelihood and high consequence.
NASA reported in September that the latest round of repairs cut the leak rate by a third, but it did not eliminate the problem.
An engineering problem
"The Russian position is that the most probable cause of the PrK cracks is high cyclic fatigue caused by micro-vibrations," Cabana said on November 13. "NASA believes the PrK cracks are likely multi-causal, including pressure and mechanical stress, residual stress, material properties, and environmental exposures."
The ISS is aging. Zvezda and the PrK launched in July 2000 and will mark a quarter-century in orbit next year. NASA wants to keep the space station operating until at least 2030, while Roscosmos, Russia's space agency, has committed only through 2028.
Roscosmos has shared sample metals, welds, and investigation reports with NASA to assist in the study of the cracks and leaks. In a report published in September, NASA's inspector general said NASA's ISS Vehicle Office at Johnson Space Center in Houston said the leaks are "not an immediate risk to the structural integrity of the station."
This is because managers have implemented mitigations to protect the entire station in the event of a structural failure of the PrK.
Crew members aboard the space station are keeping the hatch leading to the PrK closed when they don't need to access the Progress cargo freighter docked at the other end of the transfer tunnel. Russian cosmonauts must open the hatch to unpack supplies from the Progress or load trash into the ship for disposal.
But NASA and Roscosmos disagree on when the leak rate would become untenable. When that happens, the space station crew will have to permanently close the hatch to seal off the PrK and prevent a major failure from affecting the rest of the complex.
"The station is not young," said Michael Barratt, a NASA astronaut who returned from the space station last month. "It's been up there for quite a while, and you expect some wear and tear, and we're seeing that."
"The Russians believe that continued operations are safe, but they can't prove to our satisfaction that they are," said Cabana, who was the senior civil servant at NASA until his retirement in 2023. "And the US believes that it's not safe, but we can't prove that to the Russian satisfaction that that's the case.
"So while the Russian team continues to search for and seal the leaks, it does not believe catastrophic disintegration of the PrK is realistic," Cabana said. "And NASA has expressed concerns about the structural integrity of the PrK and the possibility of a catastrophic failure."
Closing the PrK hatch permanently would eliminate the use of one of the space station's four Russian docking ports.
NASA has chartered a team of independent experts to assess the cracks and leaks and help determine the root cause, Cabana said. "This is an engineering problem, and good engineers should be able to agree on it."
As a precaution, Barratt said space station crews are also closing the hatch separating the US and Russian sections of the space station when cosmonauts are working in the PrK.
"The way it's affected us, mostly, is as they go in and open that to unload a cargo vehicle that's docked to it, they've also taken time to inspect and try to repair when they can," Barratt said. "We've taken a very conservative approach to closing the hatch between the US side and the Russian side for those time periods.
"It's not a comfortable thing, but it is the best agreement between all the smart people on both sides, and it's something that we as a crew live with and adapt."

За последние 14500 лет случилось 6 экстремально мощных солнечных бурь, приводивших, в свою очередь, к резким всплескам уровня радиоактивного изотопа углерода (углерод-14) в атмосфере Земли. Вскоре после этого радиоуглерод спускался в нижние слои атмосферы, где поглощался деревьями, оставляя свой след в годичных кольцах древесины. В 2012 г. эту закономерность обнаружила японский физик Фуса Мияке, после чего выявленные с использованием методов дендрохронологии солнечные вспышки получили название «события Мияке». Последнее такое событие случилось примерно 2700 лет назад. Проанализировав годичные кольца ископаемых образцов древесины из Центральной Европы и Северной Евразии на предмет содержания углерода-14, ученые из США, Венгрии, Словакии, России и Великобритании установили более точное время - между 664 и 663 годами до н. э.

The Northern Lights were visible much farther south than usual this year, and pictures of the colorful hues filled social media. Now, imagine an aurora hundreds of times brighter - except no one would be able to snap a photo of it, as the onslaught of particles rushing in from the sun would instantly turn smartphones into bricks.
Such extreme solar storms are rare - only six are known to have left their traces on Earth in the past 14,500 years, and none have been witnessed since the height of the Assyrian Empire nearly 2,700 years ago. A research team led by Irina Panyushkina of the University of Arizona Laboratory for Tree-Ring Research and Timothy Jull at U of A Department of Geosciences has now pinpointed the last time there was a burst of cosmic radiation so powerful that if it happened today, it would wreak havoc on power grids, satellites and communication networks around the globe.
The team published its findings in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.
Analyzing tree-rings for carbon-14, a naturally occurring radioactive variant of carbon, the team discovered a spike dating to the year 664 B.C., pinpointing the only extreme solar storm event whose timing had long eluded researchers.
Panyushkina, lead study author and a research associate professor of dendrochronology at the Laboratory for Tree-Ring Research said determining the precise timing of a massive solar eruption event provides important data for scientists who study and develop models of the sun's activity over time.
Carbon-14 continually forms in the atmosphere as a result of cosmic radiation, Panyushkina said. Eventually, carbon-14 reacts with oxygen to form carbon dioxide.
"After a few months, carbon-14 will have traveled from the stratosphere to the lower atmosphere, where it is taken up by trees and becomes part of the wood as they grow," Panyushkina said.
It wasn't until 2012 that extreme solar storms, known as Miyake events, were known to exist. That year, Fusa Miyake, a Japanese physicist and collaborator of Panyushkina's team, published a paper reporting the storms' telltale signature: spikes in radioactive carbon isotopes in the growth rings of trees.
Miyake events happen when the sun's electromagnetic field weakens, allowing plasma from the sun's surface to escape into space. With the increased solar activity, protons bombard Earth's atmosphere and trigger chemical reactions leading to a spike in radioactive isotopes.
"Thanks to radiocarbon in tree-rings, we now know that six Miyake events happened over the last 14,500 years," Panyushkina said. "If they happened today, they would have cataclysmic effects on communication technology."
Panyushkina and her team used surgical knives to dissect individual tree rings from ancient wood samples, including samples from dead trees buried in riverbanks and timbers excavated during archeological digs. The researchers then burned the cellulose - the main component of wood - to determine the radiocarbon content.
To pinpoint whether solar storms caused the radiocarbon spikes, the researchers compared the tree-ring data to spikes other researchers found in a different isotope, beryllium-10, locked in ice cores taken from glaciers and ice sheets. Much like carbon-14, beryllium-10 forms in the atmosphere due to an onslaught of particles from the sun. Rain and snow capture the isotope and lock it into ice sheets similar to how trees absorb carbon-14.
"If ice cores from both the North Pole and South Pole show a spike in the isotope beryllium-10 for a particular year corresponding to increased radiocarbon in tree-rings, we know there was a solar storm," Panyushkina said.
Although tree-rings can act like 'archivists' recording Miyake events, researchers so far have not been able to find evidence of a pattern in the events, Panyushkina said.
"Tree-rings give us an idea of the magnitude of these massive storms, but we can't detect any type of pattern, so it is unlikely we'll ever be able to predict when such an event is going to happen," she said. "Still, we believe our paper will transform how we search and understand the carbon-14 spike signal of extreme solar proton events in tree rings."
"The energy from this type of event not only changes the atmosphere's radiocarbon content but also the atmosphere's chemistry," she added. "We are trying to figure out how those short-lived and powerful events affect the Earth system as a whole."

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