This is an interdisciplinary program that will train specialists working at the intersection of IT, medicine, and biology. The first 20 students will be admitted in September 2025 for a 6-year program.
NSU increased its positions two places and is ranked 8th in Russia, the highest rating for a regional university.
.png "NSU Natural Sciences Team Wins Gold at International Chemistry Olympiad")
Participants included 80 students from 23 universities in 12 foreign countries including China, Iran, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.
On December 3, Novosibirsk State University, with the support of the Center for Public Diplomacy’s Russian House in Niger, held the first preparatory classes in the medical and biological fields at the Abdou Moumouni University in Niamey.
180 high school graduates from cities in the Henan Province (Zhengzhou, Kaifeng, Yuncheng, Nanzhao and Luohe) came to test their knowledge.
The main goal of the trip to Harbin was to discuss the further development of the Chinese-Russian Institute (CRI) that was created by NSU and Heilongjiang University 13 years ago.
The main objective of the center will be to coordinate and establish scientific exchanges between the two universities in the fields of mathematics and physics.
NORBI-3, like two previous university satellites, was launched as part of the Roscosmos State Corporation's UniverSat program.
The largest event in the field of information security, the NSU Cryptographic Center was an active participant.
With a computing capacity of 360 teraflops (trillions of floating-point operations per second), it surpasses all similar servers in academic organizations beyond the Urals.
On December 3, Novosibirsk State University, with the support of the Center for Public Diplomacy’s Russian House in Niger, held the first preparatory classes in the medical and biological fields at the Abdou Moumouni University in Niamey.
The main objective of the center will be to coordinate and establish scientific exchanges between the two universities in the fields of mathematics and physics.
Novosibirsk State University took first place among universities in the Siberian Federal District, entered the C++ group, and the TOP-15 best universities in the country in this field.
Priority areas for cooperation include the launch of joint educational programs, student and faculty mobility programs, and scientific exchanges.
In the near future, Russian Houses will open in Mali, Chad, and Guinea. This will make a significant contribution to the development of Russian-African cooperation in the field of education.
The work includes installing ceilings, equipment, and plumbing in common areas and covering the walls with ceramic tiles. The materials used are primarily domestically produced.
. 43 Russian universities and more than 3,500 Chinese schoolchildren took part in the project’s activities.
From May 27 to June 17, NSU is hosting the Interussia Summer Engineering School for young foreign specialists in digital technologies and artificial intelligence.
Participants included 80 students from 23 universities in 12 foreign countries including China, Iran, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.
180 high school graduates from cities in the Henan Province (Zhengzhou, Kaifeng, Yuncheng, Nanzhao and Luohe) came to test their knowledge.
The main goal of the trip to Harbin was to discuss the further development of the Chinese-Russian Institute (CRI) that was created by NSU and Heilongjiang University 13 years ago.
The largest event in the field of information security, the NSU Cryptographic Center was an active participant.
The purpose of the group is to explore the possibilities of opening an NSU branch in Kazakhstan as a public-private partnership. This would be the first public-private University partnership in Russia.
It consists of two independent online rounds: the first round (individual) will be held on October 13, 2024; the second round (team) will be held during October 14 – October 21, 2024.
The NSU team solved six problems landing in the 20-50 place category with such leading universities as ITMO, HSE, Stanford University, University of Cambridge, and others.
The Laboratory will be a universal platform for developing students' professional skills and conducting joint educational and research projects.
NORBI-3, like two previous university satellites, was launched as part of the Roscosmos State Corporation's UniverSat program.
With a computing capacity of 360 teraflops (trillions of floating-point operations per second), it surpasses all similar servers in academic organizations beyond the Urals.
In 2023, it was ranked in the 51-100 category, this year it rose to 50th place.
Novosibirsk State University is in 19th place in the overall ranking, the highest position among Russian regional universities.
This new type of coating has the properties of metasurfaces with special optical properties. They are used in photoelectric converters such as those in solar cells and photodetectors.
The creation of the Center and the formation of its team are the result of work that has been taking place at NSU over the past two years.
.png "New NSU Dormitories Open")
They are distinguished by a fundamentally different level of comfort with built-in equipment, kitchens-living rooms, laundries, and an entrance equipped for people with disabilities.
The patented developments were the result of a project to research the properties of chemical compounds of two rare earth metals - europium and terbium.
He became the gold medalist in his weight category and also won the youth championship.
Three teams of Russian and foreign students got prizes.
Competition was held from March 1 to March 6 in Spain. It's the second win for Anna Pushkarevskaya on the international arena.
This year InterGames became a part of the NSU Interweek youth festival. More than 2500 students from NSU and other universities attended the large-scale sporting event. Participants competed in internationally popular sports as well as national sports that some of the competitors had never heard of.
«Sport is the best way to find friends» according to participants in the first international basketball game between the Russian student team and students at the Sino-Russian Institute (3rd year, Physics and Natural Sciences Departments) that took place at the NSU Sports Complex.
Even though the Chinese team lost to its Russian rivals, the SRI students are sure that the match was a success, because friendship won.
A resource class for children with autism will be opened at the Gornostay Educational Center (Gymnasium No. 6 in Novosibirsk)
Back to NSU Day invited everyone to become a student at Novosibirsk State University
Last weekend, the annual NSURBANIA youth culture festival was held at Novosibirsk State University. More than fifteen activities including master classes, dance battles, street food and creative collectives helped bring a hip street atmosphere to the courtyard of the new building
A specialist of the NSU Observatory "Vega" Mikhail Maslov shot Perseids, the most brilliant meteor shower, in Krasnozersk, Ordinsk and Kolivan districts. This year during the peak, which occurred on the night of August 11 and August 12, zenithal hourly rate of shower was approximately 250 meteors compared with 90-100 meteors in the last few years.
The Perseids shower, taken on August 11-12. Sogornoe village, Krasnozyorsk district, Novosibirsk Region. The animation of the bright meteors’ tracesAccording to the International Meteor Organization during the period of maximum activity of Perseids on August 11 in 2016 zenithal hourly rate (ZHR) amounted to 250 meteors compared with 90-100 meteors in the last few years. According to the engineer of the NSU Observatory "Vega" Mikhail Maslov, one of the reasons for such activity is that the Earth passes through the tails of the Perseids parent comet Swift-Tuttle in 1862 and 1479.
- These tails were the dusty material ejected by Comet 109R / Swift-Tuttle when it was passing perihelions (Note: the point of the orbit closest to the Sun) in 1862 and 1479, respectively. Every time when the comet passes perihelion, it emits a certain amount of dust and larger particles, which begin to move further in their orbits, and due to radiation pressure from the Sun these particles line up in a very extensive and narrow tails. Tails are the areas of increased density of the particles in the flow structure, and if they approach the Earth, the increased activity bursts occur.The specialist of the NSU observatory notes that on the basis of the calculation of the tails’ orbital evolution scientists make meteor forecasts.
On the night of August 10 and August 11 in the area near Verkh-Irmen village of the Ordinsk district Mikhail Maslov managed to shoot 32 meteors. On August 13-14 in the area near the Tropino village (the Kolyvan district) there were 55 meteors and bolides shot, on August 14-15 in the same area there were 15 meteors shot.
The photos were taken with the camera Pentax K-3, Samyang lens 16 mm, F / 2.0, mount AZ-EQ6. Single frame settings are the following: 6 seconds shutter speed F / 2.0 ISO 12800
Current in-service training at NSU is devoted to creating MOOCs along with studying their principles and instruments and going through practical training.
Online education has been a popular trend at NSU since September 2015, and first MOOCs were launched in January 2016 on the Coursera platform. In a few monthsб the NSU’s courses “Genetics” and “Basic Virology” were viewed by more than 10,000 people from 70+ countries, who highly appreciated the opportunity.
A good result of developing MOOCs at NSU is that now we have a professional and dedicated team of video operators, which includes experts in the field. The staff was trained by leading Russian and foreign professionals and skilled workers through events provided by Digital October, the first Coursera Learning Hub in Russia operating via the Digital October center, programs on the Russian platform Lektorium and those provided by the Higher School of Economics. Now Novosibirsk State University has accumulated substantial practical experience in developing online courses and going through typical and not quite typical challenges. In addition, the University’s team is capable of creating its own successful MOOCs and can share the experience and best practices.
The first session of the training on creating MOOCs gathered participants from Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, Omsk and Chelyabinsk universities. They spent two days studying and practicing how to develop, launch, support and promote MOOC projects.
The program included information about the MOOC market dynamics in the local and global market, positioning strategies, how to prepare educational materials, what to do with the copyright, how to develop evaluation tests, locate, test and support courses on different platforms.
One of the participants, the Head of the E-learning Center at Irkutsk National Research Technical University, Nikita D. Luk’yanov shares his impressions. “MOOC is a promising trend in education which allows us to address modern challenges. No matter how technically skilled the participants are, this course acquainted us with the whole process of creating a MOOC from preparing a lecture to laying out and positioning the content on different grounds. I would definitely recommend the course to the heads of e-learning departments at colleges and universities.”
Practical aspects of developing a MOOC included arranging a team and allocating tasks; estimating the financial aspects under different circumstances; identifying the main stages and what typical mistakes MOOC developers should be aware of; technical support after launching the course. There were a number of master classes organized on filming and editing the lectures prepared.
“A certain advantage of the lectures was that they were based on the experience rather than pure theory. We learnt lots of interesting and useful information,” says Vilena G. Bavskaya, a marketing expert from the Center for further education and marketing communications at the Siberian State University of Geosystems and Technologies. “We are grateful to NSU for such experience and are looking forward to new courses.”
“The course is compact, informative, unique and systematic. Thanks a lot,” says Svetlana V. Sharybar, the Chairperson of the Chair of distant and combined educational technologies at Novosibirsk State Agricultural University.
NSU is planning a series of courses on creating MOOCs. For more details about this and other programs see the ippk page on the site.
According to the website of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, russian physicists have awarded the Dirac Medal, which is the prestigious prize in theoretical physics. Among these physicists there are such graduates as Arkady Vainstein (Novosibirsk State University), Mikhail Shifman (University of Minnesota in the USA) and their colleague Nathan Seiberg from the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University.
The researchers have earned a high reward due to their important contribution to a better understanding of the theory of nonperturbative effect of strong interactions and, above all, due to their accurate results obtained in the framework of supersymmetric field theories.
Mikhail Shifman and Arcadiy Weinstein began their scientific collaboration in Moscow more than 40 years ago. In a series of papers on the theory of strong interactions, they introduced the concept of the gluon condensate (the vacuum’s property in quantum chromodynamics) and offered the Shifman-Weinstein-Zakharov sum rules (SVZ sum rules). These rules explain the observed properties of hadrons with the help of concepts of the gluon and other condensates, avoiding the need to calculate all perturbatively using the principles of the quantum field theory. Arkady I. Weinstein is a theoretical physicist. He was born in Stalinsk. He graduated from Novosibirsk State University in 1964, then worked at the Institute of Nuclear Physics by G.I. Budker. Since 1990 he has been working at the University of Minnesota and at the Institute of Theoretical Physics by William I. Fine.
Since 1985 the Dirac Medal is given annually by the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste in honor of Paul Dirac, who is an outstanding physicist of the XX century. Names of the laureates are announced every year on August 8, the day of the Dirac's birthday. They are scientists who have made significant contributions to theoretical physics.
It is worth to add that among the NSU graduates there is another winner of the Dirac medal, who is an outstanding theoretical physicist associated with occurance and further development of modern nonlinear physics. His name is Vladimir Zakharov. He was awarded the Dirac Medal in 2003.
Researchers from Novosibirsk State University, Laboratory of Theoretical and Applied Functional Genomics at the Department of Natural Sciences, Alexander Kurilschikov and Yuriy Aulchenko have been collaborating with the Department of Genetics at the University Medical Centre Groningen (UMCG) to study the human microbiome. Having studied more than 1000 microbiomes, the team concluded that there are at least 60 categories of food and diets that influence the person’s microbiota and genes. Those who consume high energy food and sugar-sweetened soda tend to lower their microbiome diversity, which in turn affects their health. There is also evident correlation between taking vitamins and such medicines as antibiotics and antidepressants and changes in the human’s “inner ecosystem”.
The human microbiome has been studied extensively. It can be compared to a separate “organ” which helps the whole organism function normally. However, we still know little about the microbiome as its structure may vary a lot depending on a number of factors.
The Department of Genetics at the University Medical Centre Groningen functions in one of the oldest universities in the Netherlands. The researchers aim at finding correlations between the person’s microbiome and his or her health. The scaled research was undertaken in collaboration with their colleagues from many scientific centers, including experts from Novosibirsk State University, when the scientists studied microbiomes of 1000+ people living as a consistent population in the northern Netherlands. Apart from the microbiome data itself, the team gathered a lot of additional information on the people’s diets, their illnesses and treatment, different medical parameters. The results of this research were published in the special issue of the journal Science devoted to Microbiome, on 29 April, 2016.
Studying gross sample of microbiomes, researchers usually sequence (read the nucleotide sequence of) one small sample of bacteria genomes. As a rule, it is analyzed with 16S rRNA gene sequencing, which provides a reconstruction of only the taxonomic structure of the population studied. It identifies which bacterial families and genera are represented in the microbiome and to what extent.
In this particular research, scholars used a more sophisticated method, mass parallel sequencing of the whole DNA pool in the sample. Due to this method, they both “increased the resolution” of the research by estimating the presence of species and genera as well as particular bacterial strains, and were able to characterize the functional structure of the microbiomes under study, which showed genes of particular metabolic processes and ontological groups present in particular samples.
The studies revealed that at least 60 categories of food and types of diet have a profound effect on the diversity of gut bacteria and the microbiome.
Foods like fruits, vegetables, coffee, tea, wine, yogurt and buttermilk can increase the diversity of bacteria in a person's intestines as they contain a greater variety of bacterial genera. Such a diversity can help ward off illness. On the other hand, the scientists found out, foods containing simple carbohydrates and high in calories appear to reduce bacterial diversity in the gut. These include high-fat whole milk and sugar-sweetened soda.
Apart from the diet, the microbiome is influenced by at least 19 types of medications such as PPI (acidity regulators), statins (cholesterol regulators), laxatives (treating constipation), antibiotics, the diabetes drug metformin, antacids, antistiffness factor, beta-blocking agents (for arrhythmia), beta-sympathomimetic agents (for treating asthmatic episodes), opiate-based pain management medications, antiplatelet drugs, oral contraceptives, ACE inhibitors, biophosphonates (for osteoporosis), calcium-based medications, SSRI anti-depressants and other anti-depressant drugs, folates (vitamin M), etc.
Negative effects of antibiotics and mediations decreasing stomach acidity seem to be obvious, but researchers also found the effect of antidepressant drugs and ACE inhibitors, which are used for cardiac decompensation and lowering blood pressure, on gut bacteria leading to the decrease of their diversity.
The structure of the human microbiome is known to depend on geography. Not without interest for the scholars were the possibilities to spread these findings to other population samples. The Groningen team compared their results with those of the Flemish Gut Flora Project group, who performed a similar analysis on samples taken from 5,000 volunteers in Belgium and published their results in the same issue of Science. The findings from the two groups overlapped about 80%, indicating that they are on the right track, the researchers said, which is a very high indicator in studying microbiomes. Both sets of researchers emphasized that their studies only help explain a fraction of gut bacteria variation.
There is a big globe with a great amount of stick flags which stands in the lobby of the first floor of Novosibirsk State University. It is really impossible to count all of them. These stick flags mark the research centers located in different parts of the world where the NSU graduates work. At the same time our graduates have close relations with their Alma Mater. Some of them teach our students. There are also those who come to give public lectures. Some graduates even decided to arrive. It is not even surprising, because Novosibirsk State University has been historically considered as one of the best universities in the world. Many people say that Novosibirsk State University is forever. The NSU rector Mikhail Petrovich Fedoruk has told how to maintain the prestige of science among young people at our difficult time.
Mikhail Petrovich, did you study at Novosibirsk state University too?
“I graduated from NSU in 1982 studying at the Faculty of Physics. Now I am a part-time worker at the Institute of Computational Technologies of Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a head of its Department of Computer Technologies. In 1995 I started teaching at the university, first as an assistant, and later when I got post-doctoral degree I became a professor of the Mechanical and Mathematical Department. In 1997 I became a Deputy Dean of the Mechanical and Mathematical Department. Since 2012 I have been a rector of Novosibirsk State University, probably due to the fact that my candidature has been approved by the two largest faculties which are the Faculty of Physics and the Mechanical and Mathematical Faculty”.
Are there any features that characterize Novosibirsk State University in particular and set it apart from the rest of our universities?
“I am the tenth rector of our university, and all the people, who were its rectors, were the outstanding scientists as well. All of them sat on this chair due to their academic career. There was not a rector, who got this job only due to managerial qualities. All of them worked as scientists before and after becoming the rectors. And this is a very important feature of our university. I also try to pursue science”.
Do you have enough time for this?
“At night, on weekends. I have a large group of young people, who have come to me being bachelors and then gradually have got the undergraduate degree under my supervising. Now some of them have started to write their doctoral dissertations. The second distinguishing feature is the tight integration with the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. I must say that this problem was initially stated by the academician Lavrentyev when he founded Akademgorodok. NSU was built as a new type of university, where all educational and scientific activity was organized on the basis of research institutes and industrial enterprises. The Open University model represented an unprecedented phenomenon in education. Even after 56 years we can say that this model continues to be a phenomenon of NSU. We still do not have such universities in Russia”.
But Novosibirsk State University was founded according to the model of Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and there were all the "founding fathers" of Akademgorodok involved in this process.
“Yes, it is. In particular, an academician Khristianovich made a decisive contribution to the foundation of Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and legendary Solonoutz became the first dean and founder of the only faculty existed at that time, which was organized in 1959. It was the Faculty of Natural Sciences. But unlike the Institute of Physics and Technology NSU was a classic university from the very beginning. In 1962 there was the Faculty of Humanities appeared, and in 1967 NSU had already got the Economics Department. There is also another important component. Unlike the Institute of Physics and Technology Novosibirsk State University had its own physical and mathematical school from the very beginning. Today this school continues to invite smart students from all areas of Siberia and the Far East. Previously, the academic competitions helped the school to get such students from all areas of the Urals, Siberia and the Far East. Then these guys graduated from NSU and became the prominent scientists. Until now, about 60% of the physical and mathematical school's graduates enter Novosibirsk State University. The idea paid off itself. After their graduation, the students start working either in the institutes of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences or in high-tech companies where they become captains of business. Today the system is the same. 80% of our teachers work in the institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences and teach students in our university at the same time”.
I know that your students also visit the research institutes.
“85 basic departments of the 116 are located on the territory of the institutes. If we turn to the famous Lavrentyev's triangle (science - staff - production), it becomes clear what our competitive advantage is. And of course we must not lose the important components of the model that has been introduced by the "founding fathers".
Is there a risk of losing?
“Now serious transformation, reforms in the Russian Academy of Sciences and also in the education system are taking place. But if we lose this tradition our descendants will not forgive us for sure. We are de facto integrated. For example, now the building of our physical and mathematical school is the property of the Russian Academy of Sciences. But we can not even do repairing work in our structural unit (Specialized Center of Education and Science at NSU), because it is considered as a misuse of funds”.
Do you have a plan to avoid all these problems?
“We had a lot of plans: from global, such as the legal joint with the Academy, to soft integration. I think that the latter is the surest way, and we decided to follow it. It is exactly the model of Open University, when the best scientists of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences teach students at the university; educate the youth in order to train workers for the institutes, technology business and high-tech companies. We have already 23 directors of the various institutes who are the NSU graduates. They are the directors of such big and brand institutes as the Institute of Catalysis (Valery Bukhtiyarov), Institute of Nuclear Physics (Pavel Logatchev), Institute of Semiconductor Physics (Alexander Latyshev) etc. Even a chairman of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, an academician Alexander Leonidovich Aseev is the NSU graduate a well”.
Do you have any graduates, whose results of work are known around the world?
“We have not got Nobel Prize winners yet, because the university is very young. It has been existing for only 56 years. I think we will have them in the future. However, among the graduates to be proud of is Vladimir E. Zakharov, who has become a winner of the Dirac Medal. This award is given for achievements in the field of theoretical physics. By the way, the scientists who win the Nobel Prize can not be the winners of the Dirac Medal too. Yefim Isaakovich Zelmanov is a winner of the Fields Medal, which is like Nobel Prize but in mathematics. Besides, we have a lot of winners of various prestigious international awards. So, I think we will have our own Nobel Prize winner, and it will be someone who I know. For example, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology got its Nobel laureates only after 70 years of existence. Andrey Geym and Konstantin Novoselov live in Manchester, where, by the way, our graduates work as well”.
Which faculties are you the most proud of?
“The greatest pride, of course, is my own faculty that is the Faculty of Physics. We are in the top 100 of the best universities in the world due to our Physics Department. The Department of Physics, the Department of Sciences and the Mechanical and Mathematical Department get the talented students traditionally due to academic competitions. Of course, we have also the Department of Geophysics, which is one of the oldest faculties in our University. There are two perfect institutes that are the Institute of Petroleum Geology and Geophysics and the Institute of Geology and Mineralogy. These institutes have the basic NSU departments which give us the perfect specialists. There are excellent Departments of Humanities, which are also based on the scientific schools existing in Akademgorodok. Now we are combining the Faculty of Medicine with the Faculty of Psychology. There will be the Institute of Philosophy and Law and more other new institutes in the future”.
It is not a secret that today the prestige of science is falling. At the time of founding the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences by the smart academicians, to be a scientist was the most prestigious desire of each teenager, as well as to become an astronaut. But now the priorities have changed.
“It is absolutely true. My first dream was to be an astronaut, later I wanted to become a scientist”.
But now very few people have such dreams. Could you tell me whether it is felt here in Akademgorodok or not?
“We feel the same here, but to a lesser extent, because the Siberian Branch is the best branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. And these are not my words, it is the general opinion. Due to the simple and ingenious educational system, established here and integrated into the academic science, the prestige of being a scientist was able to be maintained, specifically among our youth. To be a scientist is still fashionable, although there is a certain bias towards economic and legal education. It is these departments that have the majority of fee-paying places now. At the same time just a few people want to get a fee-paying place at the Department of Physics or the Mechanical and Mathematical Department”.
Are there any examples of some graduates who return from abroad to work here?
“Yes, there are such examples. However, what is even more important, those graduates, who live abroad, continue to contact with their alma mater. We have a lot of close scientific relations. For example, there was a competition of mega-grants and my group mate Sergey K. Turitsyn received the grant for his work in nonlinear photonics. And now he is here and there. I have given him even an office because he works here four months a year, and at other time he is in Birmingham, in Aston University, where he holds the position of Director of the Institute of Photonic Technology. If we talk about the United States, there are several hundreds of our graduates there. Almost all of them have contacts with our university. Some of them have arrived. For example, Dmitry V. Churkin, the NSU graduate, has worked at Aston University for five years, and now he works here as the vice-rector for scientific work”.
You have a lot of foreign students.
“Yes, we have 10% of such students. We have a Russian-Chinese Institute jointly with Heilongjiang University in Harbin, and annually 180 Chinese students enter our university on the Russian-language programs in six areas. They study according the "3 + 1" system, that is three years of studying in China, and one year in our university. We also have a very good relationship with the Higher Polytechnic Schools of France, therefore many French students hold internships in our university”.
You continue to teach as well. Are there some kind of "star" students that you are proud of?
“Yes, there are always such guys there. However, there are not many of them, just 10-15%”.
Wow, 10-15%... And you say “just”...
“Now it is accepted that modern youth is not the same as the youth of some years ago. And I see that my students moved further than me. They are very talented and brainy guys, and they do the work, that is really amazing. In their age they are able to do much more than me in the same age”.
You may just forget...
“Maybe I taught them so well ... If to take it seriously, these guys give us confidence that our science is in good hands. They are wonderful and I believe in them. They are interested in learning, they want to work, and looking at them, I want to do as much as possible too so that our university will be the best”.
Note: Mikhail Petrovich Fedoruk is the rector of Novosibirsk State University, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Professor. He was born on the 18th of February in 1956 in Duplenskiy of the Kochenyovsky District in Novosibirsk Region. He graduated from the Faculty of Physics at Novosibirsk State University (1982). The spectrum of his scientific interests is the following: numerical simulation of nonlinear problems of mathematical and computational physics; the study of cooperative processes in collisionless plasma; the study of the dynamics of nonlinear waves in dispersive medium; the study of high-speed fiber-optic communication lines with dispersion management.
Interviewed by Natalia Leskova, In the World of Science
The Yamal authorities have been struggling with an outbreak of anthrax also known as “Siberian plague”. This dangerous disease was last seen in the region 75 years ago, and experts believe it has been triggered by unusually warm weather in the Arctic region. Experts also warn that global warming might not only unleash long-forgotten diseases of the 18th-19th centuries but also cause some new so-called paleo-infections, which a modern man has not encountered yet. The warmer climate has begun thawing the permafrost soil, and some lurking bacteria can be unlocked.
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One of Russian leading experts in virology Sergey Netesov, Doctor of Biology, Professor, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Head of the Laboratory of Bionanotechnologies at Novosibirsk National Research University (Novosibirsk, Russia) took part in the satellite TV link-up between Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Yakutsk and Novosibirsk organized by TASS. Specialists discussed possibilities of new infection threats caused by climate change. Sergey Netesov tells us about anthrax and ways of fighting it.
“We have several dozens of anthrax-like infections fixed with animals around the world – in France, Australia, Sweden and some countries of Africa and Asia. However, the outbreak of the disease in Russia is the biggest in the number of the dead animals and people infected. Any infection outbreak should be dealt with very seriously, with precautionary measures taken such as vaccination of the animals and the people who contacted them, utilizing the infected animals, burning their corpses at high temperatures in order to kill the bacteria, disinfecting the places where the animals were kept and, of course, warning people about the ways how the infection can spread and informing them on safety precautions.”
Anthrax is a rare infection spread by spores of the Bacillus anthracis bacteria, which occurs naturally and can be ingested by livestock and passed to humans, usually through skin contact, causing black lesions. If left untreated, it can be fatal. The recent outbreak of the disease in Yamal is considered to be caused by abnormally high temperatures in the region reaching +35C (95F). The warmer climate has begun thawing the permafrost soil and unleashing the bacteria spores, which infected the reindeer while grazing. The infection could spread from the corpses of long-buried infected reindeer that were uncovered as the permafrost melted. So far, 2,349 infected reindeer are reported to have been burned in the special operation to halt the spread of the outbreak, and about 160 people have been evacuated from the quarantine area. Ninety nomadic herders, including 53 children, were hospitalized in the town of Salekhard. So far 23 adults and children have been diagnosed with the disease with one 12-year-old boy having died. According to the Federal Service on Surveillance for Consumer rights protection and human well-being, the situation is under strict control.
Being a natural focal infectious disease, anthrax is sporadically fixed on the territories of more than 90% countries all over the world. It is spread not only through infected food and contacts with infected animals. One sheep collector from Scotland, for instance, got infected from the mort bought at an open-air market in Africa in order to use it for his musical instrument.
“About 15 years ago,” says Sergey Netesov, “a shepherd from Novosibirsk region had his cow grazing on the territory of an old anthrax burial site, where his cow got infected and died. The shepherd decided to sell the meat, and the slaughterer got infected with a cutaneous anthrax. Fortunately, it was diagnosed very quickly and the person recovered. Serious measures were taken in time. All the cattle were vaccinated and all the old burial sites were mapped again. Anthrax has not been fixed on those territories any longer.”
The disease is quite rare but very dangerous. The expert points out that people should have some kind of a behavior reflex. If they notice some symptoms of anthrax in their cattle, they should immediately call for a vet or an epidemiologist rather than trying to utilize the animal by themselves.
“Global warming can bring us some new diseases as well,” warns Sergey Netesov. “West Nile encephalitis is just one of the examples. It is at the door.”
His colleagues from Moscow share this view. Sergey Semenov, director of Russia’s Rosgidromet Institute of Global Climate and Ecology, relates this outbreak to the warmest spring and summer in the Arctic ever since systematic weather observations began. “Temperatures on Yamal climbed above 30 degrees Celsius, which was 8 degrees higher than normal. It differs a lot from previous years.”
Viktor Maleyev, deputy chief of Russia’s Central Research Institute of Epidemiology, considers the number of the people infected with anthrax exceptionally high. The usual number does not exceed one or two people per year. “Anyway, climate change causes the spread of diseases such as Zika fever, dengue, chikungunya fever and other exotic virus infections. Why does it happen? The main factor is the El Niño Southern Oscillation (commonly called ENSO), which is associated with a band of warm ocean water in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific. It causes global changes of both temperatures and rainfall and influences the number of mosquitoes which carry viruses around. By the way, the outbreaks of cholera that we witness from time to time are also caused by climate change.”
The recent trend in research done by specialists from the Central Research Institute of Epidemiology of the Federal Service on Customers' Rights Protection and Human Well-being Surveillance (Moscow) and other research institutes is to study not only human infections, but also infections spread among animals, insects, etc. Ticks or mosquitoes, for example, can carry several diseases at the same time. The expert says that before sending Russian sportsmen to the Olympic Games in Rio, scientists visited the site to check the insects for infections.
Victor Maleyev adds that infections spreading in the south may well move northwards, due to the climate change, and “settle” on new territories. “Apart from permafrost degradation, which seems to have caused the present outbreak, some other dangers are waiting to attack. There are some graveyards with people who died of smallpox or burial sites of mammoths with unknown diseases. Climate change is likely to surprise us in different ways, and we should be ready to face the challenge.”
Mikhail Grigoriev, Deputy Director of the Permafrost Studies Institute, SB RAS, blames the practices of burying infected animals as the main cause of the Yamal tragedy. “They didn’t bury deep because it’s hard to dig deep in permafrost,” he explained. He also suggested that an expert commission should be organized, which would investigate the case and try to minimize the consequences and the damage.
Boris Kershengoltz, chief of research at the Institute for Biological Problems of Permafrost Zone, SB RAS, warns that some very dangerous infections from the 18th-19th centuries may return with permafrost thawing. Sites where animals are buried are of special danger. Mammoths’ viruses’ pathology has not been studied yet, and nobody knows how those microorganisms can behave in new conditions.
He also emphasized that climate change and warming in the Arctic region as well as permafrost thawing are self-simulating processes. It is accompanied by methane outbursts, a strong greenhouse gas, with methane hydrate released not only in the north shelf but also in the Tundra. “What is going on Yamal is just a bell,” says the researcher.
Professor Valery Malinin, an oceanologist from Russia’s Hydrometeorological Institute, adds that it is the unbalanced climate that causes dangerous hydrometeorological processes. “The Arctic region is considered as the kitchen of global weather. I would say, the northern polar area is the kitchen of our climate. During the recent 20 years we can estimate the number of disasters causing great economic losses to increase twofold (e.g., floods in Krymsk in Krasnodar Krai, on the Amur River, in the Altai Mountains, as well as droughts in other areas).”
Summing the talk up, Sergey Netesov linked the success of fighting such outbreaks with financing science. “I hope, the situation on Yamal will make our authorities finance research of highly infectious diseases. In order to develop effective prevention, we should find out the real causes of the outbreak. We should be aware of tropical infections as well, as they will come sooner or later, and we should have diagnostic agents for them developed and proven.”
Text and photo prepared by Marina Moskalenko.
It is the first time when Novosibirsk State University has entered a prestigious Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) having become the third Russian university (after Moscow State University and Saint Petersburg State University) and ranked in the group of 401-500 out of 1200 universities all over the world.
The ranking is prepared annually by the Center for World-Class Universities (CWCU), Graduate School of Education of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China. Since 2009 the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) has been published and copyrighted by ShanghaiRanking Consultancy, a fully independent organization on higher education intelligence and not legally subordinated to any universities or government agencies. In total, more than 1200 universities are ranked by indicators of academic or research performance, including alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, highly cited researchers, papers published in Nature and Science, papers indexed in major citation indices, and the per capita academic performance of an institution. The list of best 500 is published on the web. This ranking is recognized as one of the oldest and most reputable ones.
Top-500 of ARWU 2016 features only three Russian universities with MSU taking the 87th position, SPbSU in the band 301-400 and NSU 401-500.
“Entering top-500 of this highly regarded ranking has become a result of continuous effort of a dedicated community of the whole university team working toward increasing the international recognition of Novosibirsk State University according to the Project 5-100,” says the Rector, Prof. Mikhail Fedoruk. “The Shanghai Academic Ranking is one of most conservative among international rankings. I am not exaggerating if I say that the basis of our present success was founded tens of years ago, together with founding Akademgorodok. Close ties between science and education have become a signature of NSU. Our mission at the stage that we are going through at present is to keep these ties and together with our partners — research institutes and the Technopark — to increase the number of qualified specialists for high-tech and innovative industries in Russia.”
We are glad to announce the 7th International Symposium and School for Young Scientists “Modern Problems of Laser Physics” (MPLP-2016) that will be held in Novosibirsk, Russia, on August 22-28, 2016.
The main objective of MPLP-2016 which is held with the active participation of Center for Nonlinear Photonics and Quantum Technologies is to present the frontiers of modern laser physics and its numerous applications, as well as bring together scientists from all regions of the world to establish fruitful scientific collaboration. School for Young Scientists will be also organized during the symposium.
The Symposium language will be English.