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Moscow State University has announced the creation of the "world's second or third most powerful" supercomputer, having purchased components for it through a Chinese firm trading on AliExpress. T-invariant tells us how, under conditions of total sanctions on Sparrow Hills, they managed to assemble a classified computing complex and what Vladimir Putin's daughter Katerina Tikhonova and her Institute of Artificial Intelligence have to do with it.
As of 30 November, Russian scientists will no longer have access to the facilities of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research. This is not the only scientific instrument to which access has been closed due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. T-invariant takes the example of the European XFEL free electron laser to understand what this means for science and what scientists who have lost access to this state-of-the-art research method are doing.
In early September, it became known that Dmitry Repin, who previously held the position of Advisor to the Rector of the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, was appointed Acting Deputy Director of IPPI RAS. The appointment took place against the background of the ongoing public conflict between the scientific staff of the institute and the recently appointed acting director of IPPI Maxim Fedorov. T-invariant tells what is known about the new administrator of the institute.
Students of the "School of District Anti-Corruption" together with Groza and T-Invariant studied the composition of expert councils at the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation. It turned out that more than 10 per cent of the experts who influence decision-making "on the most important issues of the ministry's activities" are plagiarists and violators of academic ethics.
In the Kara Sea, for the second week now, a drama has been developing around the research vessel “Akademik Nikolay Strakhov”, which is stuck there. T-invariant describes the broad context of the problem and tells what role Mikhail Kovalchuk can play in the emergency, who tried in the summer to bring the Institute of Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences into the structure of his Kurchatov Center.
The internal German resistance to the National Socialist dictatorship is a phenomenon that is not well known to anyone other than specialists. Nevertheless, there were many hotbeds of such struggle. T-invariant tells the story of a group of scientists and teachers who united around professors from the University of Freiburg. Its members worked closely with other German resistance groups and, despite the risk of exposure and threats to their lives, remained true to their professional and civic duty.
The harsh sentence for the scientist is not an exception to the rule, but the current norm. It was not by chance that the prosecution asked to give Shiplyuk the maximum possible 20 years: the cruelty of the repressions is directly related to the war in Ukraine. Moreover, in the summer of 2023, amendments were made according to which life imprisonment can be given for high treason.
Over the two and a half years that the war in Ukraine has been going on, more than two thousand scientific articles dedicated to the "special military operation" have been published in Russia. Among them are some that have almost no relation to science, as well as quite professional studies by Russian scientists in the fields of law, psychology, sociology, and military affairs. T-invariant has read these articles and tells us what they are about.
The full-fledged work of the YouTube video service in Russia is gradually ceasing. What do scientists, leading million-viewer channels, and bloggers who popularize science think about this? Astrophysicists Sergey Popov, Vladimir Surdin, historian Mikhail Rodin, popularizers of science Vlad Goncharuk, Evgenia Timonova and Vitaly Egorov answer.
The DEI ideology is diversity, equity, inclusion. What will happen to science if DEI principles win? T-invariant talked about this with one of the authors of the article “Politicizing science funding undermines public trust in science, academic freedom, and the unbiased generation of knowledge”, professor of biomedicine at Northwestern University in Chicago Igor Efimov.
The FSB has been persecuting members of the Russian Academy of Sciences Sergey Abramov and Oleg Kabov for several years now. Their criminal cases are so unprecedented that the American Physical Society, one of the largest in the scientific world, is worried about their fate. Its representatives are sending letters to the President of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Minister of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation.
The twelfth essay in the series "Creators" is dedicated to Pavel Semyonovich Galtsov, an outstanding marine biologist who changed the entire oyster industry in America and became the founder of mollusc biology. Together with RASA (Russian-American Science Association) T-invariant continues publishing a series of biographical essays "Creators" about people from the Russian Empire who made a significant contribution to world science and technology, about those to whom we owe our new reality.
University education is increasingly becoming a hostage to political upheavals. Mass migrations of scientists are the new reality of academic life. What are the main problems of scientists in exile? Do they have a chance to preserve traditions, scientific schools and programs? These and other issues were discussed by participants of the conference Sustainable knowledge: Lessons from Universities, Scholars and Students in Exile, which was recently held in Vilnius.
In the spring of 2022, major publishers of scientific periodicals stopped collaborating with Russian organizations. In response, the Russian authorities initiated a “white list” of publications in which publication would be the basis for grant reporting. About 500 journals recently disappeared from the list - and returned with a recommendation to refrain from paying for open access in journals of the publishing house Elsevier, which announced that payments would be sent to support Ukraine. Scientists who do not follow this advice risk facing criminal charges article about treason.
At the end of June, acting Rector of the Russian State University for the Humanities named Andrey Loginov, ex-Deputy Minister of Justice of Russia. This happened against the backdrop of a public scandal around the “Higher Political School” named after Ivan Ilyin, headed by Alexander Dugin, created at the university. T-invariant analyzed Loginov’s biography and found that he has no less importance than Ilyin and Dugin, grounds to claim the title of the main ideologist of the “Russian world”.
At the beginning of March 2022, graduate students of the European University in Florence Emil Kamalov and Ivetta Sergeeva, political scientist Margarita Zavadskaya and sociologist Nika Kostenko launched a sociological project OutRush, during which they surveyed three waves of those who left. Who are these people, what do they do, what do they think about returning home, what do they hope for? Nika Kostenko, a researcher at Tel Aviv University, talks about the results of the T-invariant study.
Even before the war with Ukraine, about 150 young Russian scientists became Fulbright scholarsand got the opportunity to study at American universities. In March of this year, the IIE and Cultural Vistas organizations sponsoring the program were declared undesirable in Russia. T-invariant looked into what awaits fellows in their home countries and what alternatives young scientists see for themselves.
Academicians turned to Vladimir Putin with a proposal to head a new body of the Russian Academy of Sciences - the Board of Trustees. But not everyone was able to vote for this decision. FSO employees blacklisted more than twenty scientists and did not allow them to attend the General Meeting of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Censorship has actually returned to Russian book publishing, and the state’s special attention today is connected with LGBT issues. Some books are withdrawn from sale, others are removed from the school curriculum, and others are published with pages painted over. In an interview with T-invariant, cultural historian, candidate of philological sciences Mikhail Edelshtein explained what these measures are connected with, how the current situation differs from military censorship of the last century, and what role “offended graphomaniacs” play in all this.
In Novosibirsk, they are considering the criminal case of corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Oleg Kabov, which was initiated by the FSB. This is the first case in Russia when a scientist is being tried for his allegedly unsatisfactory work, and scientific and technical expertise forms the basic part of the charge. The very fact that you can go to prison for poorly conducted research is a new page both in the history of Russian science and in the history of domestic jurisprudence. Kabov's case is a challenge to the entire scientific community. It will show whether science in Russia can defend its right to exist.
February 24, 2022 is a date that divided the lives of millions of people into before and after. Millions of Ukrainians became refugees, hundreds of thousands of Russians were forced to leave the country, thousands of people became political prisoners. Schools and universities have been invaded by Z-ideology. This gave rise to a new Russian reality, which more than 75 sociologists, historians, demographers and economists studying Russian society tried to comprehend.
The FSB completed investigative actions in the case of corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Sergei Abramov a year later: the materials were transferred to the court, which must set a date for the hearing. According to T-invariant, Abramov’s case involves seven donations of 1,000 rubles each. The scientist himself has repeatedly denied his guilt, including denying that he made these translations.
The eighth essay in the “Creators” series is dedicated to Stepan Timoshenko, one of the founders of modern applied mechanics. In the “Creators” project T-invariant in collaboration with RASA (Russian-American Science Association) continues to publish a series of biographical essays about people from the Russian Empire who made significant contributions to world science and technology.
University Transparency Laboratory (Lupa), with the help of the free online community Dissernet, analyzed the activities of expert councils of the upper house of the Russian parliament. It turned out that 10% of experts advising senators on the laws they pass have violations of academic ethics.