*The Eridan One science and technology center in Obninsk (100 kilometers south of Moscow) has developed a trace gas analyzer for monitoring toxic gas and pollutant levels.
Ordinary gas analyzers are used to monitor urban air quality. They monitor industrial emissions and analyze the atmosphere's basic components and the results are used in scientific research. For precision, these analyzers use expensive and highly pure chemicals, however fully automated gas analyzers are not very accurate.
The more sophisticated trace gas analyzers for monitoring atmospheric pollution levels utilize a method based on the atmospheric electromagnetic radiation absorption effect. Several Western companies tried unsuccessfully to develop trace gas analyzers in the 1990s. Sweden's Opsis Co. managed to produce a trace gas analyzer in 1993.
A group of Russian experts working under the supervision of professor Sergei Khmelevtsov developed a trace gas analyzer that is much better than its Swedish equivalent, which weighs 160 kilograms and costs $95,000. The Russian gas analyzer weighs 70 kilograms and costs $37,000. The unique specifications of the Russian gas analyzer allow it to measure the amount of pollutants drifting over industrial enterprise boundaries, as well as aggregate highway pollution levels.
* The Accord innovation and technology center opened in the Academic Town in Tomsk, Siberia. The center has already examined several dozen research and development projects and chosen the most promising ones. Independent experts have already looked at two of these projects. One project was for developing a pen to entering text and instructions into a computer. This pen could replace the keyboard and the mouse. The other project is a self-heating electric pan with unique multi-layer film heaters.
* Yevgeny Sverdlov, director of the Molecular Genetics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said Russian scientists should play a greater role in future genetic research programs. "In the previous years, important breakthroughs in genetics required large grants," he said, "and now we need not only money, but also ideas, while Russian scientists have always been renowned for their impressive creative potential." Today Russian scientists have received super-computers that are part of the Grid network (international computer research network that comprises R&D centers and their electronic data). Consequently, Russian scientists have a good chance of defining a place for themselves in global genetics.
* Scientists at the Biodiversity Conservation Center have analyzed the state of pristine forest territories, which play an important role in regulating the global climate. They studied natural ecosystems in an area of more than 50,000 hectares. The areas studied were not populated, had no operational lines of communication, and were not affected by intensive economic activity over the last 60 years.
Pristine forests cover 280 million hectares of Russia, or 26% of Russia's entire area. They are spread unevenly in Russia, as five Siberian regions -the Sakha-Yakutia republic, the Evenk autonomous area, the Krasnoyarsk territory, the Khanty-Mansi autonomous area and the Irkutsk region - account for nearly 50% of such forests. Only 5% of all pristine forests are listed as federal nature preserves.
