Avasicristal aluminum-palladium-rings. Photo from the site www.stanford.edu 1. The vast majority of substances in the main state (i.e. at fairly low temperatures) has a crystalline structure, which is characterized by translating symmetry, as well as symmetry regarding rotation, reflections, etc. If solid bodies do not have a clearly crystalline look, they consist of small crystals, cut out relative to each other.

Everyone knows Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov as the father of a hydrogen bomb and as a public figure. Much fewer people know about his contribution to fundamental science. This is not to say that this contribution is huge in quantitative terms - he wrote an order of magnitude less scientific articles than, for example, Ya. B. Zeldovich.

Nests of African termites (according to K. Escherich, 1910) The task of fundamental science is to obtain new knowledge about our world. The criterion of novelty is important for any scientific publication. In contrast, for example, politicians, lawyers or preachers, scientists rarely express and publish generally accepted points of view and well -known facts.

On May 20, a press conference “RAS on the way to 2020” was held, in which Vice-President of the RAS Alexander Nekipelov and Chief Scientific Secretary of the RAS Valery Kostyuk 1 took part . The press conference itself was on par with the recent press conference of President Medvedev - practically nothing new, important or interesting. But one thesis expressed, in my opinion, deserves discussion, since it is not the first time it has been voiced.

Dear editors! In the last two weeks, the issue of the RFBR charter, which was supposed to be adopted on May 17, has caused a lot of fuss. After the publication of the draft charter leaked from the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, there was a noise in the newspapers that the end had come for the foundation: science would be financed exclusively in priority areas and critical technologies for economic modernization.

On April 8, 2011, at the Presidium of the Higher Attestation Commission, the expert councils were instructed to discuss the draft decision by the end of April, according to which, from January 1, 2012, to defend a doctoral dissertation, applicants will be required to have at least 15 articles in journals included in the List of the Higher Attestation Commission, and from applicants to candidate's degree - 3 articles.

Dedicated to Ivan Khrenov In the wilderness, right in the middle of Russia, in a certain departure village, consisting mainly of the main street, a cataclysm burst out. Its scale was purely local, and therefore he did not fall into the news feeds, nor on the pages of a large press, or on the TV. Either through the village, or by him, by rail, large people should have passed: the church hierarch of a tall dignity and the regional chiefs accompanying him.

Demographic problems of cities are the most exciting section of urban studies textbooks. It turns out that the population of megacities around the world is maintained at a constant level precisely thanks to migration from small settlements. This happens because in the second or third generation, city residents practically stop having children.

Room announcements RFBR Charter: after the fight (page 1) We describe the chronicle of events around the new charter of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research and summarize some of the results. Another attack on the Russian Federal Property Fund has been repulsed, but we should not relax. Publicity and public reaction one way or another turn out to be effective tools in the fight for a just cause.

Vladislav Panchenko. Photo from the site http://news.kremlin.ru Interview in the newspaper "Search", April 29, 20111 What fruits brought folk intercession funds? What do they, in turn, be able to please scientists? For clarifications, our correspondent went to the chairman of the Council of the Russian Fund for fundamental research to academician Vladislav Panchenko. - Vladislav Yakovlevich, admit: did not expect such super -chip from scientists?

Gulelmo Marconi (Guglielmo Marchese Marconi, 1874-1937). Photo from the library of the US Congress To create devices for wireless transmission of messages using electromagnetic waves, no less than a dozen university professors and self-taught techies in Western Europe, Russia, America and even India were attached.

One reader drew my attention to a slight geographical incongruity in the famous song “Hello, capital!” (Sigismund Katz, words by Anatoly Sofronov): “The firmament burns with clear gold, / The streets are flooded with rays. / The sun rises over the Kremlin towers / And hurries to Mayakovskaya with Muscovites!” Indeed, it is enough to look at the map of Moscow to understand that the sun for the poet Sofronov is moving north (well, perhaps slightly to the northwest).

Gessen M. perfect severity. Grigory Perelman: a genius and the task of the millennium: documentary prose. - M.: Astrel: Corpus, 2011. - 272 p. I admit, I understand little in the highest mathematics. I was lucky to be born with a humanitarian warehouse of the mind. Although I understand something in the quantities. For example, in mathematics, as in any other science, the main value of the scientist is the main value.

Boris Karlovich Stegman (1898-1975) is an outstanding Russian ornithologist and natural scientist, a student of “himself” Peter Petrovich Sweskin, the author of many research, and not only on ornithology. He owns the famous “brief determinant of the birds of the USSR” (together with A.I. Ivanov) and recognized by the classical labor “Fundamentals of the ornithoehegographic division of the Palearctic” (1938).

Parasites: Secret World (Parasite Rex) Karl Zimmer / Carl Zimmer Alpine Non-Fixes, 2011 Parasites possess the world. On the ground, in water and in the air, their eggs ripen, larvae scurry, crawl, swim and fly. In an arbitrarily taken individual of any spinal - from fish and frogs to birds and mammals - a dozen species of various parasites lives. They affect not only physiology, but also on the behavior and the evolution of their owners. Parasical species make up the majority of animals.