The loss of research in Ukraine during the first half of the second world war: scientists who have fled the country to study genetic testing and medical research livelihoods

Since the war began, his university has lost about one-fifth of its undergraduate and PhD students, says Komarov, who worries about brain drain. (The loss of students is also affecting his university’s funding). There is a lack of scientists in Ukraine at the moment. His staff and students are still working, some of them have gone to the battlefields, where some have died.

“We have seen that researchers don’t want to abandon their Ukrainian employment,” says Iryna Degtyarova, a co-author of the survey report. She works at the Warsaw School of Economics in Poland, a school that has been involved in building links with Ukrainian universities since the war began. They are not like other refugees who burn their bridges. It makes a huge difference that the threat is not from within their country: they have a completely different mindset.”

In March 2022, soon after the full Russian invasion, our new home was completely destroyed, as was the building in which my colleagues and I rented apartments. Some of us managed to escape the city within days. People who couldn’t leave their elderly parents who were with them, stayed back in their basements waiting for help. We were unsure as to what their fate would be.

Once again, we survived all the adversities. Our centre might have gone, but our knowledge and experience wasn’t captured. Some colleagues with children moved abroad and others settled in friendly institutions in western Ukraine to continue their work remotely. Our centre now operates in Kyiv, conducting prenatal screening and other types of genetic testing.

Most of the country’s researchers — who totalled 60,000 before the war, with some 35,000 scientific support staff — have remained in Ukraine. Estimates of the number who have left vary widely, but the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine thinks some 6,000 scientists are currently out of the country because of the war. Some people have died in the front line of combat in Ukraine, while others have lost family members. Many are internally displaced because their workplace is damaged, destroyed or impossible to operate in owing to a lack of power. Some have lost jobs or project funds because of the war effort.

Although foreign institutions have been offering support to Ukrainian scientists who have left the country since the early days of the invasion, they are now tailoring that help so that these scientists can maintain their ties with institutions at home. The foreign institutions are also increasingly targeting funds towards researchers inside the country — for salaries, equipment and infrastructure repairs, as well as for virtual collaboration efforts. In the middle of the tragedies of lost lives, bombed buildings and thwarted careers, many Ukrainian scientists are forging collaborations with institutions outside the country that, some think, are laying a strong foundation for a thriving, Western-facing scientific community after the war.

The courage that the Ukrainian people are showing is more than words. The Ukrainian people are suffering with grief and deprivation because of the lack of heat and light, and living in basement areas with little to no water or food.

Ukraine’s scientists, too, continue our research and are integrated as far as possible into the global scientific community. We received foreign research grants. I was lucky to obtain the Researchers at Risk Fellowship established by the British Academy and the Royal Society with the Council for At-Risk Academics, allowing me to persevere in my work researching the causes of pre-eclampsia. I hope that the results will serve my country after victory.

But the academy (rather than universities) is responsible for organizing and funding most research institutes, which is partly a legacy of how science was organized before Ukrainian independence in 1991, when the country was part of the Soviet Union. Research institutions were part of the state and lacked autonomy to make their own decisions, including which projects to fund, without the say-so of government officials. The National Research Foundation of Ukraine, and an advisory body, the National Council of Ukraine on Science and Technology Development, were some reforms put in place before the war. But these organizations struggle to fulfil their roles.

Women are more likely to be the top of the scientific society than men, according to a study published in The Natural Science Letters in Russia and Belarus

Tools help mathematicians confirm an impenetrable proof and brainstorm solutions to difficult problems. The idea of towing small vessels to quench thirsty cities is controversial and there is more clean burning hydrogen under the ground.

Russian and Belarussian colleagues in Switzerland have decided to no longer include their affiliations on co-authored papers. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russian scientists were allowed to keep working at the LHC, but some researchers said that they did not want to continue sharing authorship with them. Hundreds of manuscripts are stuck in limbo between the preprint stage and formal publication because of the dispute.

The field of math is about to be changed in ways that are beyond just calculations with the use of artificial intelligence. Microsoft’s Lean helped to confirm a mathematical proof so complex that even the author was unsure of it. Google’s chatbot Minerva, which (like OpenAI’s headline-grabbing ChatGPT) is based on machine learning, might eventually be able to converse with mathematicians to brainstorm solutions to difficult problems. Some researchers worry that once computers can judge what is interesting and worth proving, human mathematicians will become obsolete. Others are more sanguine: “An AI system is only as smart as we program it to be,” says computer scientist Erika Abraham.

Women are more likely to be elected to one of the most prestigious US scientific societies than men are. The study didn’t address accomplishments beyond publications and citations, so the boost doesn’t appear to be due to an increase in qualified female candidates. It could be a result of survivorship bias — there is evidence that women face greater barriers in the scientific enterprise, so those who make it to the top of their field are probably more accomplished than are male candidates.

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00522-2

What could we learn from a small iceberg? A case study in Chasing, South Africa, September 19th to March 17th

20% of Cape Town’s water needs could be met with a small, 115-million-tonne iceberg in the middle of the ocean. What not to like? Quite a lot, perhaps, writes Matthew Birkhold in Chasing Icebergs. Birkhold is honest about the possible pitfalls of taking water trapped in ice to a dry area, but he doesn’t explore the alternatives such as recycling wastewater, tapping water for crop irrigation, or fog harvesting.

Female researchers in India face a lot of challenges, from local residents refusing to work with women, to family members not liking the type of work considered appropriate for women, and a lack of role models. It is difficult to measure the effect, but women areunderrepresented in disciplines that require extensive field work such as geology, evolutionary biology and environmental studies. “Changing that image of what a scientist and a field researcher should look like, should be the first step. Let’s start there,” says evolutionary biologist Ashwini Mohan.

There might be vast natural reserves of clean-burning hydrogen gas hidden underground. Researchers at the US Geological Survey estimate that there might be enough to meet rising global demand for thousands of years. An added benefit of underground hydrogen is that it’s renewable, being constantly replenished by reactions between water and rock deep below Earth’s surface. Why wasn’t anyone aware of it before? It’s not found in the same places as oil and gas reservoirs, and no one was looking for it, say proponents.

Ukraine’s nuclear energy infrastructure has been devastated by the Russian bombing of its first university: An open-source research experiment based on solar cells and thermal imaging

Minakova, her colleagues and a few others moved into a smaller space to save their equipment from the rubble. Her US partners at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana — one of whom, Denys Bondar, is Ukrainian-born — sent a support package, including solar cells, a thermal imaging camera and other equipment to Kharkiv. Minakova now has a lab space one- quarter the size of what she lost, but the joint work with Tulane, part of a wider collaboration between the two universities, is under way.

Despite daily, three-hour power outages and air-raid alarms, Minakova continues her research into high-efficiency solar cells, and hopes to visit New Orleans for training later this year. She teaches online to her undergrad students who aren’t allowed on the campus for safety reasons. In her spare time, she volunteers to help older residents find water and medicine, and helps children to embroider goodwill tokens for soldiers. “The best idea for living is to have no free time,” she says.

A total of 93 research and higher education institutes have been damaged, with 4 totally destroyed according to the science ministry. Some 228 remain unharmed. The renowned Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology and the world’s largest decametre-wavelength radio telescope, which belongs to the Institute of Radio Astronomy in Kharkiv, were heavily damaged.

Ukraine has dealt with Russia’s unrelenting destruction of energy infrastructure by putting the country on a schedule of rolling blackouts. Water and heating are disrupted a lot. Generators and fuel are hard to come by. As a result, universities and research institutes have to plan elaborate schedules for experiments and online teaching, because students in different places don’t always have electricity at the same time.

Air-raid sirens, which give 30–60 minute warnings to move to safety, are the other regular interrupters as Russia continues to bomb the country. Each man and woman has found a way to deal with it. “I just keep working, working and working even if things go wrong.”

The first month of the war was particularly difficult due to the struggles to get even basic reagents. A low point was New Year’s Eve, when Russia bombed his university, shattering more than 1,000 windows that needed to be boarded up before temperatures plunged.

“Most of my time and that of my colleagues — the deans and directors — is spent on adjusting the working schedule to the power cut-offs and alarms, and organizing logistics, especially for reagents coming from abroad,” he says. Komarov raises funds for the war and works on proposals for the construction of a new science hub when the war is over.

“I make a major effort to continue doing science. It’s difficult not only physically but also because of this psychological pressure. You need a peaceful time to do something creative. Even writing papers became quite a challenge.”

International support for Ukrainian scientists left in Ukraine during the first half of the World War II. Ivan Brusak, a geodesy specialist in Ukraine

A number of international aid schemes support scientists. The Swiss National Science Foundation gave remote funding for Ukrainian scientists who have moved to Switzerland in a bid to assist them. And the Dutch Research Council (NWO) is discussing a €250,000 scheme under which Ukrainian researchers can remotely join existing NWO-financed projects. Last December, the University of Cambridge, UK, and the NRFU launched a scheme under which the university will fund up to 15 grants for individual researchers from Ukraine who have been displaced by the war and are still living in Ukraine.

In January, the Simons Foundation in New York City, which supports research in mathematics and basic science, announced more than $1.2 million of funding for 405 scientists in Ukraine, including doctoral candidates. Each will receive a $100 or $200 monthly stipend with some leaders of research teams receiving larger, lump sums.

SfU is also experimenting with a website on which more than 80 Ukrainian research institutes have posted requests to the international community. Rose says the responses to the requests have been disappointing.

Polotska believes support doesn’t need to be financial. There have been many bottom up initiatives, like the workshops on grant management. Lack of communication, lack of access to the international community are some of the difficulties that people are experiencing.

Young academics need equipment and remote international collaborations, says Ivan Brusak, a 28-year-old specialist in geodesy.

When the war began, Brusak took months off work to organize student support for the effort. A huge weaving operation was carried out at over 100 venues around Lviv, turning tons of fabrics and threads into camouflage nets. It supplied the military with binoculars and thermalimaging cameras.

Brusak would volunteer from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., writing scientific papers in the evenings. He says he doesn’t know how he managed it. He successfully defended his thesis in December after volunteering less in the summer.

He values the partnership he has with the Polish scientists. “The understanding that despite the war we continue to cooperate gives motivation.”

A survey of over 600 Ukrainian scientists that were left their country after the invasion was released last December by Polish and Ukrainian scientists working with SfU. With the help of networks such as SfU, the organizers were able to get as many respondents as they could, but they probably missed some scientists who are not associated with the groups. Still, the results suggest that those outside Ukraine are mostly women (largely because it’s harder for men to leave: those aged 18–60 are not supposed to leave the country, although special dispensation can be granted, such as to single parents). Many of the researchers have children with them.

For some, ties have already loosened. Olena Prysiazhna, a 35-year-old specialist in plasma physics who was at the National University of Kyiv, left Ukrainian science, at least for currently, because she couldn’t get back to work in time. The missile that landed in the neighbour’s back garden had caused her mother and younger sister to flee with their dog. Prysiazhna told Nature that the family were in the Netherlands recovering from the situation, and the two sisters were looking for work.

Prysiazhna assumes she will eventually return to her home in Ukranian, even though her mother found a damaged home after a brief return visit. Prysiazhna’s mother and sister, and the dog, now share a room in a converted holiday camp in the Netherlands. Her sister, who had almost finished her PhD when she left Ukraine, is trying to find a way to defend her thesis and is working for a logistics company.

Young and with few ties, Prysiazhna scientists might never return to their positions. Rose studies phenomena such as brain drain.

He says that the fears of brain drain are not substantiated because people are not refugees even if they are. Most people bring back new ideas once they return. Even when they don’t come back, they continue to give information to people who are still there. This is not the only way in which knowledge can be shared.

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00508-0

Energy: The key to resolving the world’s warped problem in the age of the epoch of development, in the early 21st century

“The war will stop and then we will need to be good specialists in alternative energy,” she says. I hope that the world will help us rebuild our country and campuses.