Russian science: What the scientists say

24hoursnews
:ATTITUDES OF RUSSIAN SCIENTISTS TO FOREIGN SUPPORT
SOURCE. Iurevich and Tsapenko (as item 2), pp. 54-69 (chapter written together with I. Dezhina)

While only a small minority of Russian scientists receive support from abroad, (1) most have sought such support at one time or another. Almost every scientific collective, the authors remark, now has its "experts on foundations" who bombard potential foreign sponsors with appeals for money.

To explore the attitudes of Russian scientists to foreign support, the Central Institute for the Study of Public Opinion (TsIOM) surveyed 250 natural and social scientists from the main regional scientific centers, including Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Tomsk, Saratov, and Chelyabinsk. (2)

(a) Benefits and drawbacks of foreign support

"With regard to the general influence of foreign support on Russian science, moderately positive assessments predominate." Thus 13 percent of respondents consider foreign support of Russian science absolutely essential; two-thirds think it useful but not essential; and 13 percent regard it as humiliating or harmful.

In what ways does foreign support benefit Russian science and Russian scientists?

* In the view of 49 percent of respondents, foreign support increases the QUANTITY of scientific output.

* In the view of 35 percent of respondents, foreign support improves the QUALITY of scientific output.

* In the view of 52 percent of respondents, foreign support facilitates the creation of new scientific research programs.

* In the view of 62 percent of respondents, foreign support makes its recipients more independent of the directors of their institutes.

* In the view of 37 percent of respondents, foreign support revives the interest of Russian scientists in such traditional attributes of a scientific career as the publication of articles and monographs and the acquisition of academic degrees, inasmuch as these increase one's chance of getting a grant.

* In the view of 60 percent of respondents, grants from foreign foundations are a very substantial supplement to the income of Russian scientists (typically $100-200 per month). However, 65 percent of respondents note that grants are not large enough to cover trips abroad or the purchase of new equipment. They get "eaten up" by their recipients without changing the situation of Russian science as a whole. The system is "oriented toward growing vegetables not fruit trees."

* Many respondents also stress the moral dimension of foreign support, which makes the beneficiaries feel that they are a part of world science and that at least someone values their work.

The two most commonly mentioned negative effects of foreign support are:

* that -- in the opinion of 43 percent of respondents -- it undermines good relations among scientists by sowing divisions between the envied recipients of grants and their less fortunate colleagues, and

* that the hunt for grants takes up a large part of scientists' time, distracting them from their research.

The authors note some differences in the attitudes expressed by various categories of respondents:

* Men tend to be more skeptical about the benefits of foreign support than women are.

* Older and senior scientists, especially institute directors, tend to be more skeptical than their junior colleagues.

* Natural scientists, who are unable even with foreign support to buy the equipment they need, feel that social scientists receive a disproportionate share of the available funds.

* Contrary to expectations, no significant difference was found between the views of scientists who received foreign support and the views of scientists who did not.

(b) Attitudes to different forms of foreign support

The basic form of foreign support is the award of individual (or less often collective) grants on a competitive basis. Most respondents -- 86 percent -- approve of this practice. But a number of criticisms were also frequently voiced:

* Some grants should be awarded on the basis of nomination.

* More joint research projects with foreign collaborators should be funded.

* Some areas of science that are seen as politically relevant get disproportionate support at the expense of other less politicized but no less important areas.

* More support should be given to new scientific directions and open-ended exploratory research.

(c) Motives attributed to foreign sponsors

Only 12 percent attribute purely altruistic motives to foreign sponsors, seeing them as "Santa Claus," while 40 percent believe they "are trying to buy up our ideas on the cheap" and 14 percent suggest that their goal is to protect Western scientists from competition by stemming the emigration of Russian scientists. Only a few attribute to foreign sponsors the motive of preventing Russian scientists from working for "rogue states" like Iran and Iraq or long-term strategic motives like turning Russia into a "civilized neighbor" of the West.

16 percent suspect that Western secret services may be involved in foreign funding of Russian science, but they do not regard this as such a terrible thing. Some argue that the West has an interest not in undermining but in stabilizing the Russian state.

(d) Perceptions of foreign foundations

Although most Russian scientists are interested in obtaining foreign support for their work, they are poorly informed about foreign foundations. Few respondents were able to name more than two or three foreign foundations. (3) By far the best known and most highly regarded is the Soros Foundation, which is mentioned by 83 percent of respondents. The Ford and MacArthur Foundations are quite widely known. German and other non-American foreign foundations are rarely mentioned.

Only 35 percent of respondents think that they have an adequate understanding of the mechanism by which grants are allocated; 54 percent say they have a vague idea, and 7 percent admit that they have no idea whatsoever. Many confess that they find the allocation of grants by the MacArthur Foundation in particular "a complete enigma." This ignorance, the authors comment, is "fertile ground for the circulation of all sorts of rumors and the attribution to foreign foundations of dubious aims."

What, in the opinion of respondents, are the main factors influencing a scientist's chances of obtaining a grant?

* the personal connections of applicants (68 percent)

* their skill in writing applications (55 percent)

* their objective scientific achievements (29 percent)

* their formal status, i.e. post occupied and academic degree (27 percent)

* their informal authority (22 percent)

The majority of respondents see the process by which grants are awarded as subjective, chaotic, and corrupt. Here are some typical statements:

-- "The main thing here is the administrative apparatus of distribution, which keeps part of the money for itself."

-- "This sphere is quite corrupt."

-- "Our grant bureaucrats have concentrated in their hands power that Soviet bureaucrats never dreamed of."

-- "I do not exactly know this mechanism, but I have the a priori opinion that it's a mafia grouping."

Resentment is directed especially at the many employees of foreign foundations who are Russian emigres or people from specific politicized institutions such as the Institute for the Study of the USA and Canada. Respondents say that the emigres left Russia a long time ago and have a poor knowledge of the contemporary state of Russian science.

Thus the appreciation that respondents feel for the support offered by foreign foundations is marred by their acute dissatisfaction with the way that the foundations operate.

NOTES

(1) The authors' estimate is 4 percent, but it is not clear whether this refers to all those who have ever received foreign support or to those receiving such support at a particular moment in time. "Scientist" is used in the broad sense of the Russian "uchenyi" to include not only natural and social scientists but also scholars in the humanities.

(2) Of the 250, 200 completed questionnaires while 50 were interviewed in depth. The time of the survey is not specified, but appears to have been some time in the early 1990s.

(3) Curiously, some respondents thought that purely Russian foundations such as the Russian Foundation for Fundamental Research were foreign foundations. Perhaps they were not aware that Russian foundations actually exist.

Toshiba plans to begin selling TVs with OLED screens as soon as panels are ready.

Toshiba Corp. plans to begin selling televisions with OLED (organic light-emitting diodes) screens as soon as panels are ready, according to a company spokeswoman.

The first Toshiba OLED television sets should hit the market in 2009, said Yuko Sugahara [CQ], a company spokeswoman.

OLED screens offer higher contrast and faster response times than LCD (liquid crystal display) screens. OLED screens can also be thinner since no backlight is required. The carbon-based materials used to make OLEDs illuminate themselves when an electrical current is applied.

However, OLEDs are difficult to manufacture and degrade over time. Manufacturers are therefore working on ways to improve production yields and increase the lifespan of the screens.

Sony Corp. became the first company to introduce an OLED television on Monday, with the release of its XEL-1. The television, which goes on sale in December, has an 11-inch screen and has an estimated of lifespan of around 30,000 hours. That's enough time to watch eight hours of television per day for 10 years, Sony said.

While Sony was first to market with an OLED television, a lot of work remains to be done before the screens are ready for widespread adoption. The XEL-1 will be available in limited quantities, with Sony expecting to produce just 2,000 sets per month.

OLED
An organic light-emitting diode (OLED) is any light-emitting diode (LED) whose emissive electroluminescent layer comprises a film of organic compounds. The layer usually contains a polymer substance that allows suitable organic compounds to be deposited. They are deposited in rows and columns onto a flat carrier by a simple "printing" process. The resulting matrix of pixels can emit light of different colors.

Such systems can be used in television screens, computer displays, portable system screens, advertising, information and indication. OLEDs can also be used in light sources for general space illumination, and large-area light-emitting elements. OLEDs typically emit less light per area than inorganic solid-state based LEDs which are usually designed for use as point-light sources.

A great benefit of OLED displays over traditional liquid crystal displays (LCDs) is that OLEDs do not require a backlight to function. Thus they draw far less power and, when powered from a battery, can operate longer on the same charge. OLED-based display devices also can be more effectively manufactured than LCDs and plasma displays. But degradation of OLED materials has limited the use of these materials. See Drawbacks.

OLED technology was also called Organic Electro-Luminescence (OEL), before the term "OLED" became standard.

Happy Birthday Google 9th

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Md moshiur Rahman
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Midnight mania - Halo Nation

24hoursnewsunder a dusty ol' Atari 2600 console, you know what happens at 12:01 a.m. this Tuesday. At more than 10,000 shops across North America, salespeople will face a late-night onslaught of twitchy-thumbed gamers for a moment of commercial frenzy – the release of Halo 3.

The final instalment in the hugely successful Halo video game series launches Sept. 25 for the Xbox 360. More than 500 retailers in Canada will open at midnight for the launch of Halo 3, which already has one million preorders in North America – making it the fastest-selling preordered game in history.

IGN's GamerMetrics analyst Nick Williams predicts Halo 3, made by Microsoft's Bungie Studios, will sell more than 4 million copies in the U.S. alone in the next two months.

This is a franchise with such tremendous buzz, consumer tech bible Wired magazine – which has Halo's protagonist Master Chief on its cover this month – is calling it "a cultural touchstone, a Star Wars for the thumbstick generation."

"It's a game series you could really rally behind because they're easy to get into, yet difficult to master," says Jeff Gerstmann, editorial director for GameSpot.com, an online video game magazine. "Plus they have a good story, a likeable main character and multiplayer gaming over the Internet."

Sharma McCarthy, a 31-year-old project manager for a Toronto telecommunications company, says his passion for the series derives from its "super-involved story."

"No other game plays like it, in terms of look and feel. Bungie has an amazing level of detail."

For the uninitiated, Halo 3 continues Master Chief's fight against relentless alien races bent on destruction, concluding the story arc that began with 2001's Halo: Combat Evolved. Halo 3 offers new features including a four-player co-operative mode (letting gamers run through the single-player campaign with up to three friends, either on the same TV or over the Xbox Live online service); the ability to record game highlights; and new multiplayer maps.

"We know we have a pop-culture phenomenon on our hands here," says Ryan Bidan, product manager of games at Microsoft Canada.

"But despite its epic story and scope, our goal with Halo 3 is to make the game as accessible to as many people."

The Halo games have spawned comic books, novels, action figures, live-action short films and an undisclosed project involving the Academy Award-winning director of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Peter Jackson.

To ensure the continued commercial success of this billion-dollar franchise, Microsoft has spent an estimated $10 million on its marketing campaign, says BrandWeek magazine, including TV spots during Monday Night Football, summer concert sponsorships and promotional deals inked with PepsiCo, 7-Eleven, Burger King, Pontiac, NASCAR and others.

Developed at Kirkland, Wash.,-based Bungie Studios, Halo 3 was created by 120 full-time employees – double the number that developed Halo 2 – as well as an "army" of part-time contractors, says Microsoft.

To tweak the multiplayer component of Halo 3, Microsoft held a widely publicized beta test this past spring, allowing more than 820,000 gamers to join online multiplayer matches for free.

Mike Zak, a B.C.-born designer at Bungie, says the pressure from the outside world to produce a game that lives up to the hype is nothing compared to what the team puts upon itself.

"We're our own worst critics," says Zak. "We're fortunate our fans are so appreciative but, truthfully, the real pressure comes from within our walls to create the best possible interactive entertainment experience possible. We're anxious to hear if we delivered."

The video game industry is facing a lot of "sequelitis" this coming season, says Gerstmann, with Guitar Hero 3 and the fourth Grand Theft Auto, which shouldn't make fans of the originals nervous.

"(Games) are one of the few forms of entertainment where the sequels are usually better than the originals."

That's what McCarthy is hoping he'll get on Tuesday – and he's not taking any chances.

"I have bought a couple of preorders ($70 apiece) to make sure I'm not that guy who doesn't get one. "On Monday night, me and my friends are having a farewell to Halo 2 party where we'll be playing it one last time. I've been online every day downloading podcasts, watching videos, reading articles, I even made my own Halo 3 T-shirts ... My friends are even more nuts than me ... (one) stocked up a wine fridge with Red Bull and PowerBars and we're all going online in the middle of the night (after picking up the Halo 3 preorder), and promised not to go to sleep until we all finished campaign in co-op mode."