The Sverdlovsk region in the mid-Urals is holding a tender for the reimbursement of interest rates on loans for nanotech innovation companies in the area.

The Sverdlovsk region in the mid-Urals is holding a tender for the reimbursement of interest rates on loans for nanotech innovation companies in the area, Delovoi Kvartal ? Yekaterinburg reports, citing regional authorities. The local government reportedly plans to continue with the tender until the end of this month. It is part of its broader innovation and nanotechnology support program, calling for the reimbursement of no more than two-thirds of the Central Bank of Russia?s refinancing rate. According to the source, 47 regional companies are tendering for the benefits for their 60 investment projects worth a reported total of just under $2bn. The companies are expected to invest their own money, covering 21% of the total amount, and also borrow the remaining 79%. As a result of their effort, an estimated $3.3bn worth of end nanotech products is expected, with 4,100 new highly skilled local jobs created. The companies have already gotten a total of $645m in loans to further their projects and can now expect, under the terms of the government tender, to get back as much as $26m...

Russia needs to seek new legislation that would stimulate the commercialization of university technology into industry, the rector of a leading Siberian university said.

Russia needs to seek new legislation that would stimulate the commercialization of university technology into industry and make the process mutually advantageous for both developers and manufacturing companies, said Petr Chubik, the rector of Tomsk Polytechnic University (TPU), one of Siberia?s leading research and educational centers. ?There is a problem in transferring our projects to economic sectors. It is the way the whole world works: universities serve as innovation hubs and transfer their technology to manufacturing companies for commercial introduction. However, [foreign] legislation in the field of IP protection has been designed in such a way that international universities find it lucrative to do so. We do not have such legislation yet? Today, universities are not properly incentivized to give industry their good projects,? Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported Mr. Chubik?s statement. Governor Sergei Zhvachkin of the Tomsk region backed the TPU rector, adding that there must be a ?system? in relations between innovation project developers and production companies[/foreign]...

Irkutsk students in Siberia have developed a new analyzer for manufacturing supervision, which is said to be accurate and speed up measurements by four times.

Irkutsk State Technical University (ISTU) in Siberia announced earlier this week that its undergraduates from the department of chemistry and metallurgy have developed a new analyzer to measure specific surface for disperse and porous materials, which is called Sorbtometer. Alexei Nosenko and Yuri Podkamenny, the developers, are members of ISTU?s Avtomatika scientific and engineering center for students. According to Mr. Podkamenny, specific surface must often be measured for disperse and porous materials during manufacturing supervision. It enables specialists to improve the properties of substances under inspection. ?The device? enhances operational safety because air is used as carrier gas instead of helium, which eliminates the risk of exposure to high-pressure vessels,? he underscored. Mr. Nosenko said that according to most recent prototype Sorbtometer tests, ?its use speeds up measurements by four times? while keeping relative error within ± 5%, and ?the cost of inspection is reduced by five times...

Shell, a petrochemical multinational, and Russian company Antel-Oil have pooled their efforts in developing software to process 3D seismic prospecting data.

Shell, a global group of energy and petrochemical companies present in more than 70 countries, announced earlier this week that its Russian division has inked an agreement with Russian company Antel-Oil on joint research into ways of developing software to process 3D seismic prospecting data. The agreement is reported to be Shell?s investment contribution to a Russian project called ?Creation of supercomputer technologies for seismic prospecting on scattered waves,? which will be realized by Technologies of Inverse Problems, Ltd., an Antel-Oil subsidiary and resident of the Skolkovo innovation hub outside Moscow. The researchers will focus on developing new algorithms and software products designed to isolate a scattered component of seismic waves. The key objective is to create ?new supercomputing methods for processing three-dimensional seismic data,? which provide information contained in such a component, according to Technologies of Inverse Problems, Ltd...

Valentina Matvienko, the chairwoman of Russian Parliament?s upper chamber, has suggested that Russia adopt a government system of medical technologies assessment.

Valentina Matvienko, the chairwoman of the Federation Council, Russian Parliament?s upper chamber, has suggested that Russia adopt a government system of medical technologies assessment, Science and Technologies of Russia reports. The concept of such a system, as perceived by Ms. Matvienko and reported by the source, is that ?only efficient, safe and economically reasonable medical technologies should be screened by the state for further funding from budgetary coffers.? ?Deploying a system of medical technologies assessment would not only help increase the accessibility of modern and effective therapies for a variety of diseases and boost the introduction of innovation to medical practice but would also serve as a serious mechanism of keeping government spending in check,? the Federation Council speaker said...

Denmark?s Danfoss and the Skolkovo Foundation have agreed to jointly open a Danfoss RandD center in the Skolkovo innovation hub outside Moscow.

Denmark?s Danfoss, a leading global provider of energy-efficient and climate-friendly solutions for a range of sectors, and the Skolkovo Foundation have agreed to jointly open a Danfoss R&D center in the Skolkovo innovation hub outside Moscow, Cnews.ru reports. Under plans, the Danfoss R&D center will focus on research and development in the following areas: ? smart energy systems for central heating, deployment of the SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) solution; ? individual heat consumption metering solutions for new and existing residential buildings; ? reduction of energy consumption and increase in the yield of heavy crude by using frequency converters; ? methods of assessing and comparing efficiency for centralized heat supply networks; ? optimization solutions for systems that control thermal energy distribution; ? new heat transfer technologies for heat exchangers...

Physicians in Novosibirsk, in Siberia, have successfully completed their first-ever surgery on a female fetus, extracting fluids from the fetus? lungs through special punctures.

Physicians in Novosibirsk, in Siberia, have successfully completed their first-ever surgery on a female fetus, extracting fluids from the fetus? lungs through special punctures in the mother?s abdomen and the child?s chest, news agency RIA Novosti reports, citing a source in the Novosibirsk Regional Healthcare Ministry. The specialists of Novosibirsk?s Regional Perinatal Center are said to have performed the surgery in March 2013; but the results were only reported earlier this week. ?Late in her pregnancy, [the woman] was down with a viral infection? That caused a complication, with fluids accumulating in the fetus? lungs. The surgery was done in the last week of her pregnancy,? the source said. According to the Ministry representative, surgeons punctured the woman?s abdomen and uterus, followed by the child?s chest, and pumped out some of the fluids from the pleural cavity[/the]...

Laser-generated 3D holograms of pedestrians may be installed by crosswalks in Moscow and its region to enhance traffic safety.

Laser-generated 3D holograms of pedestrians may be installed by crosswalks in Moscow and its region to enhance traffic safety, M24.ru reported earlier this week, citing Mekhti Gadzhiev from the Moscow region?s road authorities. According to Natalia Kirpa, one of the project initiators and the head of an innovation lab at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), the laser projector would be mounted above traffic lights. Under plans, each crosswalk will be equipped with movement sensors, and a ?3D pedestrian? will only appear when a real pedestrian approaches the road. It is expected that a driver will be able to see a red hologram from the same distance as he normally sees conventional road signs, and the hologram will be much brighter in the dusk and at night...

Tomsk Polytechnic University in Siberia is pushing its IT project aimed at creating technologies for intelligent development of oil and gas fields.

Tomsk Polytechnic University (TPU) in Siberia told Marchmont last week that scientists of its Institute of Cybernetics are pushing an IT project aimed at creating technologies for intelligent development of oil and gas fields. The effort was reported to have already received $155,000 government support. The project is tapping into modern information and communications technologies to design a system to monitor production processes and ensure adaptive management of oil and gas field development based on a permanent simulator model for geological production planning. The TPU researchers reportedly focus on what they refer to as intelligent field development with ?smart? wells and ?smart? multiple well platforms. The effort is expected to result in creating a ground and underground well engineering complex capable of collecting and processing operational data on geological horizons, wells and pumping installations on an ongoing basis, and making the whole process fully automated. The scientists want to use in their project an array of up-to-date methodologies in IT and communications, such as 3D modeling, semantic techniques, distributed data acquisition, advanced data storage and transfer, high-speed distributed-parallel data processing with the use of TPU?s Skif-Polytech supercomputer, and others...

An innovation system for molecular detection of pathogenic microorganisms developed by Moscow-based 3M Russia is a silver medalist of this year?s international Edison Awards.

An innovation system for molecular detection of pathogenic microorganisms developed by Moscow-based 3M Russia is a silver medalist of this year?s international Edison Awards, Ruscable.ru reports. The 3M Molecular Detection System is said to be a new ?simple and easy-to-use? tool that can identify on a DNA level such pathogens in food as salmonella, colon bacillus and listeria. At the heart of the system are complex patented isothermic DNA amplification and bioluminescent pathogen detection technologies. The innovation is meant to help address the global problem of food safety. It is believed to make testing of foodstuffs much faster, decreasing the number of operations standard in today?s testing techniques, and enabling researchers to watch results on a real-time basis, thus boosting the overall accuracy of testing. Edison Awards winners were announced in Chicago in late April, picked by a respectable panel of a reported 3,000+ experts from among corporate top managers, renowned scientists and developers, designers, engineers, and other specialists in science in medicine...