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Порталус

OUTPOST OF SCIENCE IN WESTERN URAL

Дата публикации: 14 сентября 2018
Автор(ы): V.N.STRELNIKOV
Публикатор: Научная библиотека Порталус
Рубрика: ВОПРОСЫ НАУКИ
Номер публикации: №1536953395


V.N.STRELNIKOV, (c)

In 1723, near the Yegoshikha village that sprang up in early 17th century at the mouth of the river of the same name where it flows into the Kama, a public copper-smelting plant was built to refine local copper sandstone. And in 1781, by Catherine II's edict, the cornerstone of a new town was laid at the community. It became a vice-generency center, called Perm, deriving from the Finno-Ugric word "perama", or distant land. In 1786, Perm's Main Public College was opened and later transformed into a provincial gymnasium (since 1796, Perm-the capital of the province).

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byV. N. STRELNIKOV, Cand. Sc. (Tech.), chief scientific secretary, Perm Science Center, Ural Branch, RAS

Perm became a bustling commercial hub and major Kama river port in early 19th century. In 1781-1797 and 1807-1831, it was the venue of the Main Ural Mining Department.

Perm got visibly livelier economically after the Kama was opened to regular navigation in 1846. In 1863, the Siberian tract or highway was laid through Perm. In 1878, the Ural railroad was built from Perm to Yekaterinburg through Nizhni Tagil (extended to Tyumen in 1885). And in 1916, Ural's first higher educational establishment-universitywas founded in Perm.

Working in the city at various times were aviation engine designer, Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences P.A. Solovyev, future academicians, mathematician I.M. Vinogradov, historian B.D. Grekov, physiologist V.V. Parin, missile and spacecraft designer M.K. Yangel; organizer of the Russian Seasons in Paris S.P. Dyagilev, and many other outstanding scientists and culture personalities.

Academic science in Perm evolved in 1971, when by a decision of the USSR AS Presidium, the Western Urals first academic branch-a polymer physics department- was organized and transformed into a Continuum Mechanics Institute. And in five years, on the basis of this institution's Chemistry Department, an Organic Chemistry Institute with experimental production was created, subsequently re-named into a Technical Chemistry Institute. But a turning point in the city's academic science development was 1987, when Perm's Scientific

Center of Ural Branch of the USSR AS (now RAS) was organized in keeping with a decision of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party and USSR Council of Ministers. At present, the center unites four scientific research institutes of continuum mechanics, technical chemistry, microorganisms' ecology and genetics and a mining institute, and an affiliate of the Economics Institute of the RAS Ural branch. The center's chairman is Corresponding Member of RAS, director of the Technical Chemistry Institute of RAS Ural branch Yu.S. Klyachkin.

Perm scientists' activity aims at solving the fundamental problems of general biology, ecology, and microorganisms genetics, synthesizing monomers and creating on their basis new polymers and composite materials. They carry out complex research into the laws of geosystem parameters' development and their optimal control under the impact of natural man-induced factors on the bowels of the earth, study deformation processes, defects emergence and development, solid bodies destruction and anomalous behavior, look for ways of understanding the mechanisms of solid body's deformation in liquids, and, last but not least, survey the region's social and economic development.

The center's scientific staff comprises 600 researchers, 48 doctors and 131 candidates of sciences. Research in the key scientific fields is led by immunologist, doctor V.A. Chareshnev and by RAS corresponding members, chemist Yu.S. Klyachkin and mechanic V.P. Matveyenko.

One of the center's main tasks is to coordinate scientific studies in the region. The need for that stems from the fact that apart from the mentioned academic institutions, the Perm region has 15 state higher educational establishments, over 40 industrial scientific research, construction technology, and design institutes and offices, staffed with many experienced specialists, including over 450 doctors and 2,500 candidates of sciences. Analysis shows that a wide range of problems set to them can be successfully resolved through the close interaction of all sciences. At present, higher educational establishments and the academy apply most different forms of cooperation: dual subordination departments, higher educational establishments and academy laboratories, etc. This allows to organize better joint research, students' education and scientific personnel training, and use scientific equipment more rationally. For instance, Perm State University and our Institute of Ecology and Microorganisms Genetics Institute have opened a joint department. For eight years now, a laboratory of the Technical Chemistry Institute and the Natural Science Institute has been working at the university. The Continuum Mechanics Institute and the Perm State Technical University have also organized a joint department. Several years ago, the educational-scientific "Rifei" center was formed at the Mining Institute as part of a Federal State Support for Integrating Higher Education and Fundamental Science program for 1997-2000.

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In 1996-1998, the Perm Scientific Center scientists carried out research on 16 international projects, two federal purpose-oriented programs, and four republican scientific-technical Ural program grants. Six studies were financed by RF Ministry of Science and Technology. At the same time, our institutions have been actively promoting foreign contacts. Suffice it to say that the Center's institutes co-organize one or two international conferences a year. For instance, in 1999 the Mining Institute held one such meeting on the problems of safer and more advanced mining, devoted to 275 years ofRAS and to 300 years since the foundation of the Mining Department in Russia.

Close cooperation is under way with scientific research organizations of Spain, France, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Britain, other European countries and U.S.. Perm scientists' development projects have been repeatedly featured at international and Russian exhibitions. Over the last years, our researchers have merited a number of prizes, including the Ural Mining award for "Work on the Study of Gas Dynamics Phenomena, the Implementation of Ventilation Designs, and the Guarantee of Safe Working Conditions", (Yekaterinburg, 1995), the 1997 Demidov prize for young scientists, the 1998 Russian government's prize for science and technology.

What are the Perm researchers' scientific interests?

At the Continuum Mechanics Institute, attention is focussed on the physical and mechanical properties of polymers and composite materials in products and during their manufacture (by mathematical and physical modelling) as well as on the development of methods of optimizing components from these materials. Under way there are comprehensive fundamental studies of complex media in the conditions of thermal convection, turbulence, lost hydrodynamic resistance, and mechanical effects.

During a study of sunspots, the mathematical models designed there showed that as spots get active, the pulsations of the sun weaken in diameter. The results of appropriate measurements, received from observatories across the world, have been processed at this institute. Also developed there has been a mathematical model of the tropical atmosphere with phenomena like cyclones taken into account. During this research, Perm scientists drew up such a detailed picture of what happens when a typhoon forms in the tropical zone of the Pacific Ocean that the first international symposium "The Generation of Large-Scale Structures in Continuum Media" was held in their city (1990). "We are not a supercomputer

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center, of course, but when we began to exchange astrophysical observation data with foreign partners, they were surprised and said that they lacked such computer resources that would allow to carry out such computations," Director of the Institute, RAS Corresponding Member V.P. Matveyenko said. Incidentally, these resources have become even more imposing and at the same time more economical in the last years.

Alongside world-level research on magnetic liquids, for instance, the Institute carries out local orders on mechanics of fluids or deformed solid body. And it has learned that such a body, regrettably, is the Kama bridge, Perm's strategic transport artery, linking two halves of the city, stretching along the river for 60 km. Micro-cracks were discovered in the bridge's concrete supports.

The Technical Chemistry Institute researches in three scientific fields: the creation of composite materials on the basis of organic polymers, the synthesis of active reagents, extra-agents and biologically active agents, the development of catalysts of deep and partial oxidation of organic substances. Over its actually short history, this institution has been the source of unique and remarkably diverse products and technologies, from the now widely used anilocaine local anesthetic, whose qualities make it much superior to its well-known novocaine and lidocaine twins, to an effective and low-cost liquid for lowering friction coefficient in metal working. This liquid is made from wastes remaining after oil refining. Its basis is water in contrast to its predecessors, which were made from kerosene, which, obviously, is uneconomical. Oilmen also use the new preparation for well drilling.

Or take the instant wood compaction technology, developed at the institute. Usually, builders avoid birch since it is porous and is greatly exposed to rot. The institute developed a substance, which in a special installation under pressure causes a chemical reaction in wood, making birch firmer than beech as a result.

And what can be done with used up tyres: burn, sink, or bury them? By the end of the 20th century this problem has become virtually global. But, if, let's assume, we burn tyres, the soot will cover huge territories. The most rational would be to separate rubber from cord in tyre processing. Technical Chemistry Institute scientists were the first to solve this task. Now, the essential technology exists, and a plant has already been built on its basis.

It makes it possible to utilize worn out tyres with metal cord in a destructive chamber. The novelty's essence is "the pseudo-liquefaction"

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of rubber under high pressures and its subsequent flow out through a special chamber's holes. Besides, the rubber and the textile cord are separated from the metal cord and board rings, ground down, and taken out through the holes as rubber-fibre crumb. Then, the product is subjected to separation and still greater grinding. As for the metal cord, it is retrieved from the chamber in the form of a pressed briquet.

An operational conveyor line processes car and truck tyres alike. It annually utilizes up to 6,000 tons of tyres, receiving 4,000 tons of rubber crumb, 1,100 tons of metal and 900 tons of textile cord. The plant can also process other rubber-containing materials: tubes, pneumatic springs, footwear factory wastes, etc.

Institute staffers have also developed a theory of mechanodiffusive process of multi- component liquids' transfer in highly elastic materials. The theory is the natural summation of the classical theory of diffusion and nonlinear elasticity, helping to derive a system of equations and the defining correlations of the nonlinear mechanodiffusion theory. This explained the essence of the process of the free swelling (at high degrees) of a polymeric body in liquid. Tasks were formulated for equating the parabolic type of transfer with nonlinear and nonlocal boundary conditions, which is of interest for the common theory of equations in partial derivatives.

Organized in 1987, the Mining Institute studies the problems of geo-mechanics and the processes of minerals' extraction from Ural deposits, prognosticates geo-dynamic and man-made processes in geologic media, and assesses their effects in natural resources' development.

How can the destruction of underground mass, and consequently, a disaster on the ground be prevented? What should be done to keep a mine from being flooded?

How can a mine be properly ventilated? These are not merely technical questions. Each question can be rightfully answered only by combining the efforts of researchers in different sciences. At the Verkhnekamsky basin mines, work without Mining Institute experts no longer seems to make sense. They have been one of the first to accept a state program on emergency situations.

The point is that the Perm region has a high degree of the so-called integral risk. For instance, the cities of Solikamsk and Berezniki, having a population of hundreds of thousands, spread on a territory, where huge voids have formed at a small depth underground as a result of minerals extraction. Any accident may spell a disaster: powerful chemical works are in place at Berezniki. At Perm itself, there are hundreds of abandoned mines 30-60 meters underground. They were developed in the 18th centuries, and the houses built above them started falling apart at the end of the 20th century since no feasibility construction site deeper than 15m underground had been "buried" by then. The methods suggested by Mining Institute scientists allow to compute all possible situations in such cases and prevent all kinds of accidents, from mine collapses to a break of the Kama HPS dam.

One of the Mining Institute's field of research is mining aerology, the science that has led to the discovery of the curative salts, lying deep underground. These salts help to cure asthma, bronchitis, rhinitis, and allergic patients at facilities set up near abandoned mines in the region. The Uralkaly joint-stock company at Berezniki even organized a special Klimat therapeutic department. Of the 20,000 patients, suffering from bronchitis, nearly 18,000 recuperated completely. Subsequently, saline services begun to be opened with help from Mining Institute specialists at standard clinics on the ground. The walls and ceilings of the rooms provided for saline therapy are sheathed with piles of salt, sawn out of rock. Such services have been spreading all over Russia.

The Ecology and Microorganisms' Genetics Institute is an age-mate of the Mining Institute and Perm's Science Center. It deals mainly with the fundamental issues of immunology and microorganisms' development regulation in extreme conditions and natural ecological systems. It studies the role of microorganisms as genetic indicators of the state of environment and develops the ecological basis of their use for the preservation of nature and guided re-cultivation under anthropogenic effects.

The Institute had 15 science subdivisions until recently. 14 have remained: Orenburg's branch has grown into an independent Cellular and Intercellular Symbiosis Institute. Among the Perm scientists' achievements, mention should be made of the unique, Russia's first really existing collection of alkanatrophic mircoorganisms, representing the functional diversity of these microorganisms, extremely important for biotechnologies' development and protection. This collection can be used for both research and industrial purposes, especially, in oil extraction. The regional target- oriented collection makes it possible to promptly identify microorganisms, search for and separate those with the properties set in advance, and ensure stable scientific and information service.

In short, Western Ural scientists are questing in the right direction, bringing worthy fruit.

 

Опубликовано на Порталусе 14 сентября 2018 года

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