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St Petersburg University’s Associate Professor Nina Shcherbak discusses metamodernism and Tolkien, melody of Nabokov, silence in literature

Posted on by Alina Perevizintsova

Nina Shcherbak, Associate Professor in the Department of English Philology and Cultural Linguistics at St Petersburg University, is a prominent figure in St Petersburg University and beyond.

Her lectures on literature are well and generally known in universities from Finland to Scotland. We have talked to Nina Shcherbak about: her work on the manuscript about Nabokovs’ family and home; the scope of her research; and known why the town of Voronezh is what UK’s students opt for, rather than Moscow or St Petersburg.

In January 2022, there was a conference to mark the 130th anniversary of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. You delivered a report that focused on The Lord of the Rings in metamodernism.

Could you please tell us about your report? How did you come to study this topic?

I have spent much time in England. There is a strong bond between me and England. For me, England is a country where elves live. Of course, I am joking. England is an old country. In London, there are places where you can find traces of druids, members of the learned class who acted as priests. In the city of Lancaster, there are streets with the names featuring the word bashful, which means shy. These streets enabled ‘bashful’ young ladies to avoid the unwanted attention on their way back from the port. There are certain ties between etymology and history. We can enjoy Jeanette Winterson’s gorgeous writing about the River Thames as an old river where shards and stones can be found, the fragments of someone’s life. And Tolkien is incredibly sensitive to the history and word.

The conference that marked the 130th anniversary of J.R. Tolkien was held by the A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Just recently, my article on Scottish and Irish women’s prose has been published in the Institute’s journal. It was interesting to talk with colleagues and hear about different views on the classical tradition. Approaching Tolkien through metamodernism is a bit of joke. I have officially disputed with the concept of metamodernism. Metamodernism is scientifically infantile. Yet an experiment and an appropriate approach towards the topic can generate a creative tension. So, I dared to deliver the report.

Metamodernism is a term that articulates developments in contemporary culture (after the 1990s). As metamodernism is a reaction to modernism that is associated with the aesthetics of destruction, posttraumatic stress disorder, oscillations, it empathises aesthetics and psychology. It is primarily associated with the search for the genuine self, answers to the questions about the essence of our being, and our reflections on where we are moving to after postmodernistic cultural and spiritual shocks.
How Tolkien constructed languages has always aroused great curiosity in me. Yet Tolkien’s paganism and love for magic are far from the orthodox traditions cherished by his friend and a writer C.S. Lewis. For me and Russians, Orthodoxy is something more intimate and close even if the whole world is for magic. Orthodox priests tell that miracles don’t produce or lead you to faith. Quite the opposite, faith produces miracles. This is a deep and vital thought. And it is not about Tolkien at all.

Could you please tell us about the project on preparing a manuscript of the book about the Nabokovs’ home? Could you recall any curious facts or details?

This is an incredibly engrossing project that is headed by Professor Abdulla Daudov, Director of the Institute of History at St Petersburg University.. The project has brought together a highly professional team: Andrei Astvatsaturov, Fedor Dviniatin, Evgeniia Abramova, Tatiana Neuimina, Vladimir Torbik, Evgeny Khodakovsky, Nikolai Shtykov, and others. The working group meets once a month. We are constantly working on the manuscript. I delivered a preliminary report at the conference ‘Power, Society and Archives’, which was held in October 2021 in the main building at the University. The conference and the round table discussed the role of archives in the life of the country and its history. It was a very bright conference with fascinating reports. The book is expected to be both a professional, historical work and a popular book for wider readership.

I am working on two chapters. The one focuses on the Nabokov’s family and how Nabokov’s home is depicted in his works. The other chapter is complex and sophisticated. It mainly concerns the Soviet period and Nabokov’s home.

Nina Shcherbak, Associate Professor at St Petersburg University

‘I am following a literary approach to both chapters, which are almost complete. In other words, I am delving into how this topic is depicted in his works. For example, among what I am exploring is what has happened to the museum artefacts and paintings which were given to the Hermitage after the Revolution’, said Nina Shcherbak.

Apart from your courses and lectures at the University and open lectures, you work with universities across Europe: Portugal, Finland, the University of Zagreb, the Freie Universität Berlin, the University of Edinburgh, and the University of Graz in Austria. Do you think that university cultures across the globe are similar?

I have lectured in the leading European universities that are the University’s partners. I have been a head and a member of projects and grants which I have won in the open competitions. This experience is a special mission, and also a diplomatic one. It was a mission largely due to the fact that I represented the University, took part with our international colleagues in partnership projects, engaged in education and research, academic mobility, and planning.

I do love the University. It is a true pleasure and honour to work for the University. For the previous three years, I had lots of projects. It is entirely unexpected to a degree because the tasks we had to solve assume strenuous efforts and responsibility, yet how we have solved them is maximally effective and successful. What we have gained is to ensure our future collaborations and partnerships in education and research between universities, contacts, a large number of joint publications in the most prestigious journals, new projects, and academic mobility for students.

As part of collaboration with the University of Graz in Austria, I delivered a course of lectures on the Silver Age and the Soviet period in literature and children’s literature. Our Austrian colleagues also visited the University to deliver a course of lectures. Additionally, they visited other universities across Russia. Their lectures on literature were a great success. I was also engaged in a cross-disciplinary project, delivered a report in the wide-ranging conference in Halle (Saale) in Germany. The conference focused on transgenerational trauma in literature. Later, we published a book in one prestigious publishing house in Vienna. The book presents a collection of works of our international colleagues. My publications and research were mostly concerned with Vladimir Nabokov and his works.

The University and European universities have much in common. What they do share is an ‘inner’ tendency that universitarians have is living in their unique world. Once you are at the University, you are on your territory of hopes. This is what many classic books are about. And Tolkien was not accidentally mentioned at the very beginning. The University is more than about gaining practice or acquiring skills. It is a world of mystery and discoveries, a world of how you can gain knowledge.

Studying at the University is absorbing. Teaching at the University even more so.

Nina Shcherbak, Associate Professor at St Petersburg University

Professor Lyudmila Verbitskaya talked much about the universitarians. This is a core concept. It is a union of honour, valour, friendship. The universitarians have always been freedom-loving, critical to what is happening around, yet very close to each other.

What were the topics of your lectures abroad?

My recent lectures focused on hermeneutics, post-colonial literatures in English, women’s narratives, psychoanalysis in literature, so-called superficial reading, transcendence in poetry. These all stem from our discussions with international colleagues and my research endeavours. It was rather unexpected but my lecture on women’s narratives and women’s prose attracted lots of Swedish students in Finland. I was surprised and thought that they must have known a lot more. We had vivid discussions and even lively debates.

On my way to Switzerland, I had an impression that I was once again experiencing the time when I had studied in the UK. I got into the train from Zurich and several hours after I was not far from Montreux, where Vladimir Nabokov had been living during his last 20 years. I was accommodated in a hall of residence, just as in Lancaster in the UK where I had pursued my postgraduate studies in teaching methods and linguistics on the Queen’s scholarship of the British Council and the Foreign Office of the UK.

There was something mythical in this trip to Switzerland. Mystics is a gift and invisible ties with our first teachers. Long ago when I was a second-year student at the Faculty of Philology, we had lectures by Professor Boris Averin, who was a recognised expert in Nobokov studies. Books were not the only thing he would talk about. What he was contemplating about was what the inner world of characters was, what metaphysics was. He told us that life was not only material and there was another world. For people abroad, Russia is mostly associated with the concept of another world and, probably, an ability to gain a deep insight into the life itself. Life is just an incredibly brief period of time, and maintaining good relations with people around you is important as is nurturing and refining your inner ‘self’. And the rest is not as important.

My lectures were about everything. Yet mostly about Russia: about the Russian heritage, cinematography, literature, and culture. The lectures about Dmitry Merezhkovsky, Ivan Bunin, or Vladimir Nabokov are a hard nut to crack for European students. Dmitry Merezhkovsky wrote numerous works about paganism in its beauty and Christianity, in its incorporeality and self-denial. The Silver Age was an attempt to make incompatibles co-exist. How to talk about this with young people who regard these concepts as purely abstract? This was also among what we had to solve. You are always experiencing or try to experience what you are talking about. This is the only way how to pass your experience on.

Do international students know much about our country?

They know little about Russia. Yet they are open-minded and outgoing. In Edinburgh, I delivered lectures on the Russian classic literature in cinema. During one lecture, there was a son of the famous English writer who originally came from Russia. Her name was Eugenie Fraser. She once stayed at our house and later wrote a book The House by the Dvina about the city of Arkhangelsk and Russian aristocracy. It was a truly amazing happening. Once, a student from the University of Edinburgh was exceptionally precise in how he perceived a Hollywood film based on Leo Tolstoy’s novel War and Peace: ‘Why does the film depict the higher society which Leo Tolstoy was so eager to avoid because something utterly different was more important for him?’ Isn’t it an astonishing fact? The Orthodox path for Pierre Bezukhov is so winding, complicated, yet so evident and lucid for a first-year student from abroad who knows about Russia only from books and films.

When I was working in Sheffield in England, students preferred to study the poets of the Sliver Age. We studied their biographies and poems. My students were more likely to choose a tranquil and peaceful town of Voronezh as a destination town for academic mobility, rather than St Petersburg. It was strange for me. For students from Sheffield, the allure of big cities was too ambitious. Studying in small towns is easier for them. Some of them visit London only when they are 18. A foreign country is always about discovering something new. I have written much about England as I have experienced it from inside when I was studying and working there.

Having completed my postgraduate studies in Lancaster, I worked at the University of Sheffield as a visiting lecturer from St Petersburg University to teach the Russian language and literature. In London, I worked as a newspaper reporter, worked in the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) located in the City of London. This experience was so mesmerising that when I returned to Russia to work in the Department of English Philology and Cultural Linguistics at the University, I wrote a number of scenarios for the TV Channel ‘Kultura’. Our TV programme, whose presenter was People’s Artist Andrei Tolubeyev, won the State Prize of the Russian Federation.

Can you think of a country you love most?

My lectures in Portugal are a whole story. It brought me lots of new discoveries. It is a fabulous country. Portuguese people are incredibly friendly partners and high-calibre diplomats. They taught me international collaboration and engagement. Portugal, largely because it is a modest country with perfect diplomacy, has been neutral in wars over a substantial period of time. It remained neutral both in World War I and World War II.

The air in Lisbon is so fresh that you feel you are on the edge of the world. There are lots of students in universities across Portugal. Study groups are enormous. There are some students from Brazil, they have more traditional values. Some students have European attitudes. They are more open-minded. Lisbon is gorgeous. Yet its beauty is not about what we tend to consider beautiful today. Its beauty is more about primeval beauty. Recently, I have been reading Lawrence Durrell’s The Alexandria Quartet. It is not about Portugal, though. It is about the bygone world of ocean and relationships. Yet in Portugal we can experience this bygone world once again. Students are friendly, enquiring, innerly relaxed and wise. It was just an unforgettable time, when you delivered a lecture that lasted two astronomic hours and then went for a walk in the mountains to take a deep breath of fresh air. They told me about their history and explained what soledad (‘light sadness’) meant. Some of them came to us to study later. We had some bright publications in the serious journals.

My last trip to Portugal was almost during the pandemic. I received so warm welcome, even when we had to wear white gloves. I returned to Moscow by the last plane, having contacted the Embassy and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Yet there was a feeling of joy that we could do what we had planned and signed all documents. Despite gloomy events that awaited us ahead, I had a feeling of hope that future academic mobility would go back to normal.

Many of your publications particularly focus on the topic of silence. Could you please tell us about what writers write about silence and why?

I am not a silent person. Yet sometimes I am prone to silence. I appreciate mathematicians and musicians. When talking with them, you say little. It is just another level. Philologists are more talkative!

Silence is a bright topic. I started to study it together with musicians, or they introduced me to the topic. It is an important topic in contemporary literature: author’s sensitivity, his/her attitude to a language and a word. Among them are my favourite writer Jeanette Winterson, Thomas Stearns Eliot, Jerome David Salinger, and Vladimir Nabokov.

Nina Shcherbak, Associate Professor at St Petersburg University

Quietness and silence are different concepts. Quietness belongs to the world of nature which is imposed on the human world, while silence is a sign with a meaning. The characters of novels are silent when they protest, conceal, or discovering something mysterious. Quietness is usually associated with an inner search which is invisible in the quietness and stillness around. Quietness makes you hear. Interestingly, the lectures in the topic may last two hours!

Pavel Florensky, who was a Russian Orthodox theologian, said that human communication is wordless. Rather, it is mediated through a spirit, that is an inner feeling that creates unity. This is why I talk so much about transcendence in poetry. Much is said about how ‘something’ tells meanings to poets, how they listen to them and recreate. And the related topic is psychoanalysis that distinguishes various meaning through a word and reveals the human unconscious. Seeing through the text is fascinating.

In this regard, another question: recently, in the Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie (New Literary Review), you have published your joint article with the Doctor of Art Studies Svetlana Lavrova that focuses on the melody of Nabokov’s speech. You discuss the novel Ada in the original (English version Ada or Ardour: A Family Chronicle). Why does Nabokov need music? And how does he convey music in writing?

Svatlana Lavrova, who is Doctor of Art Studies and Vice-Rector for Research at the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet, has prepared a brilliant doctoral thesis that focuses on new music and its philosophy. Her thesis is an encyclopaedia of philosophy and music. It sums up a colossal work on music and its possibilities. The article traces what is shared by music and Nabokov’s works and language.

Nabokov wrote that music was not his cup of tea and he preferred chess as a source of joy. Nabokov was experimenting with the language. And the experiment, in its turn, is a music of language, a creative ability. The language of music is abstract, and the meaning of any piece of music is only perceived as a whole, in the context of the piece as a whole. When it comes to literary language, it is different. Yet such writers as James Augustine Aloysius Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, Herman Melville, Joseph Brodsky deliberately experimented with the language to expand its capabilities, gain a deeper insight into the language, and convey what seems to be impossible to convey – to create a world by the language. It is fascinating to uncover.

Professor Tatiana Chernigovskaya at St Petersburg University and Svetlana Lavrova have recently organised a wide-ranging conference on cognition, music, and gesture. There is a work that focuses on this topic where I have published an article on the theory of sign, similarity between the musical language and the literary language. Today, the core tendency is integrating fiction and poetry, poetry and music. Much has been written and said about this topic. Yet sensitivity to the versatility of a word and genuine of a musician who decodes sounds of the Universe and creates new forms are up to date as ever.

Does Nabokov write about the time in Ada?

In this late Nabokov’s novel, there is a passage where Ada, who is the main female character of the book and a girl-demon, comments that it is the main character Van who writes about the time. She comments on his research endeavours in a simple way. She tells that we cannot know time (We can know a time. We can know the time. We can never know time. It is like). She responds to his treatise in an easy manner: ‘It is not worth stained glass, time is like…’ What does the ellipsis mean? We cannot convey some things – they are shrouded in mystery and out of reach. Even Nabokov knew it. Words can wound us, they conceal the essence which is abandoning us if too much has been said.

Lecture of Nina Shcherbak ‘Labyrinths of Meanings and the Reversibility of Time in Vladimir Nabokov’s Novel “Ada”’ is available on the webpage of the Nabokov Museum at St Petersburg University.
Could you please tell us about a series of open lectures in the Nabokov Museum and Russian Christian Humanitarian Academy posted on YouTube? How did it start?

Lecturing in the Nabokov Museum is a unique opportunity. I have delivered a lecture on the contemporary Scottish and Irish prose, then on the Nabokov’s novel Despair. Usually, there are approximately up to 20,000 viewers.

Nabokov was born in Bolshaya Morskaya Street. In his Drugie Berega (Other Shores), he remarkably depicts how he was ill and his mother went to Nevsky Prospekt by a sledge to buy a giant Faber pencil that was as tall as a human and was displayed on the English shop window. The graphite was as long as the pencil itself as a pure evidence of art is for art, with no practical application. When I walk along Bolshaya Morskaya Street, the border between the world of literature and the real world is so blurred.

The topic of lectures for the Russian Christian Humanitarian Academy is a result of a year-round sitting at the computer online. My lectures were recorded by a professional operator Natalia Rumiantseva. I have taught two courses in the Academy. The first one was rather brief. It was Psychoanalysis and Literature. The other one was more wide-ranging. It was Contemporary Foreign Literature. I tried to talk about literature, concepts, cinema, my experience in research, education, and life. I spoke much about England, its history. ‘Linguoculturology’ and ‘British and US Studies Through Language’ are among the courses I teach students in philology.

My wonderful colleagues in one industrial enterprise where I have been working have inspired me to turn to the topic of psychoanalysis and literature. They are people who always inspire me. Five years ago, I for the first time met an incredible humanness, deep humanity, sensitivity and ability to inspire. It made me interested in psychology. It was a unique happening, once in a lifetime.

Additionally, I studied psychoanalysis in literature studies in a university in Berlin where I taught. Our colleagues are to visit St Petersburg in June. Among them is an expert in works by Gertrude Stein. Psychoanalysis is a German and Austrian tradition. Largely due to Sigmund Freud it became popular among American experts in literature studies and literary critics. My aim was to recreate my experience in delivering lectures and seminars that I have had in Berlin and during my other trips.

Could you please tell us about your current projects that you are working on? Do you plan something interesting for 2022?

One of our wonderful teachers used to say that ‘if you have lost your pin or a plane has crashed, these tragedies are all the same to a women’s brain’. In this regard, a large-scale project and a single lecture can be equally important. The conference ‘Current Issues in Linguistics’ at St Petersburg Electrotechnical University ‘LETI’, where I have presented plenary reports for several years in a row, is important and interesting. We are big friends with St Petersburg Electrotechnical University ‘LETI’ and very proud of our collaborations. I am very grateful to my colleagues: Andrei Shumkov, Tatiana Shulzhenko and all colleagues at the Department of Foreign Languages.

The world is so volatile. We should approach what is happening to us as it is. Today, it is vital. I wanted, as usual, to tell you about the countries and continents which I was planning to visit. Mexico was on the list of countries where I was supposed to go to deliver lectures, yet due to the pandemic I could not.

To tell you the truth, the most important discovery is a feeling that you ought to give way to life. Generating ideas is important. Even more important is to see and catch what life has for you. In this regard, I am a believer or thrive to be a believer. Admitting your errors is more important than accepting your opportunities. I will try to understand how I can do it by perceiving what is around me. To this end, silence is vital.

GSOM SPbU graduate among world’s top 50 best marketers by The Drum

Posted on by Alina Perevizintsova

Mariia Merzliakova, who received a bachelor’s degree from St Petersburg University’s Graduate School of Management (GSOM) in 2017, is now the brand manager of SexyHair at Henkel.

She has been tapped as one of the top 50 emerging marketers in the world by The Drum, a global media platform and the largest marketing website in Europe.

“For me,” Ms Merzliakova commented, “inclusion in this ranking was an important event, since it served as something of a long hoped-for validation of all the efforts that I had put into my career and my move to the USA.”

“After I had just arrived here, it was hard for me to appraise myself and to understand how good a professional I was in the local market, and this certainly gave me a boost of confidence. Besides, companies really like to talk about the success of their employees. So the news spread rather quickly, and I received congratulations from Henkel’s president in North America. It’s still hard for me to say what good will come of this in the long run, but I’ve sure got a lot more attention.’

The St Petersburg University alumna noted that it was GSOM that had taught her to set the bar high, and that always helps if you want to achieve good results.

An interview has been published on the business school’s website, in which Mariia Merzliakova talks about her move to the United States, her decision to carve out a career in beauty care and much more.

St Petersburg University scientists synthesize new reagents for attaching fluorescent dyes to molecules

Posted on by Alina Perevizintsova

Chemists and biologists from St Petersburg University have developed new reagents based on heterocycloalkynes for reliable and safe attachment of fluorescent tags to biomolecules. The created compounds will help to visualise the processes occurring in cells and tissues of living organisms and to study their dynamics in real time.

Application of cyclononyne containing green fluorescent tag to modify and visualise with fluorescence microscopy HEK293 cancer cells metabolically-labeled by Azido-Glycans (A) and Azido-DNA (B).

The research results were published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Modern scientists can investigate composition and changes in living cells using fluorescent bioimaging. This is a technique in which the molecules of interest in a living organism, such as proteins or DNA, are ‘illuminated’ with fluorescent dyes and made visible to screening systems by exposure to light of a particular wavelength.

The fluorescent tags and selected molecules need to be securely ‘cross-linked’ for bioimaging to be successful. Special chemical reactions are used for this purpose. In the opinion of Natalia Danilkina, Associate Professor in the Department of Organic Chemistry of St Petersburg University, the most demanded and balanced today are SPAAC reactions (strain-promoted azide-alkyne cycloaddition). They enable direct attachment of special reagents in cells to biopolymer molecules modified with azido groups, cycloalkanes containing a dye tag.

SPAAC is a biorthogonal click reaction, that is, a reaction capable of occurring in living cells but which is neither detrimental to them nor affected by living systems as such.

‘No toxic copper catalysts are required in these reactions and no by-products are involved. SPAAC reactions are extremely important for conducting biological experiments. The physiology of living cells and the processes occurring in them can be studied in this way, while also establishing the propensity of cells to transform into tumor cells,’ explained Natalia Danilkina, Associate Professor in the Department of Organic Chemistry of St Petersburg University.

As Natalia Danilkina noted, there are already several types of reagents based on cycloalkynes (molecules that have a closed cycle of carbon atoms with a triple carbon-carbon bond inside the cycle) on the market. However, scientists at St Petersburg University under the leadership of Irina Balova, Director of the Institute of Chemistry and Doctor of Chemistry, have succeeded in synthesising fundamentally new reagents. They are characterised by high availability and an optimum balance between reactivity in SPAAC and stability to the environment and other reagents.

Work on the new reagents took place in several stages. At first, the researchers developed a synthetic method for producing cycloalkynes. It allowed easy design and synthesis of a series of molecules with different cycle size (from eight to ten atoms) and special structural elements – heterocyclic ring and heteroatom (any atom except carbon or hydrogen) in cycloalkynes. These elements are important in regulating balance between activity in SPAAC and stability.

Chemists at St Petersburg University followed up by studying reactivity and stability of the synthesised compounds using kinetic investigations and quantum chemical calculations. The work was carried out at the St Petersburg University Research Park at: the Computing Centre; as well as at the resource centres ‘Chemical Analysis and Materials Research Centre’, ‘Magnetic Resonance Research Centre’, and ‘Centre for X-ray Diffraction Studies’.

According to Natalia Danilkina, experiments and calculations were instrumental in revealing non-classical reactivity of compounds with the cycles of nine atoms.

Usually, the larger the cycle, the lower the reactivity and the greater the stability of the compounds. In our case the stability really contrasted: eight-membered cycles were impossible to work with due to their instability, while nine-membered ones turned out to be stable.

Natalia Danilkina, Associate Professor at the Department of Organic Chemistry of St Petersburg University

‘However, the reactivity of eight-membered and nine-membered cycles was almost identical,’ explained Natalia Danilkina.

Based on these data, the scientists at St Petersburg University have found that heterocyclic heterocycloalkynes of nine atoms (cyclononines) are the most suitable for SPAAC. As Natalia Danilkina said, these compounds have the best balance between stability and reactivity. Whereas compounds with cycles of eight atoms (cyclooctines) are too unstable, and substances with ten atoms (cyclodecines) are nonreactive.

In the final stage, the researchers at St Petersburg University developed a method for attaching fluorescent dyes to a new group of reagents and conducted experiments to introduce the resulting compounds into cancer cell biomolecules. The research took place in the Laboratory of Biomedical Chemistry at St Petersburg University. The experiments confirmed the effectiveness of cycloalkynes with a nine-membered cycle for SPAAC. As Natalia Danilkina stated, St Petersburg University scientists can already use the new reagents for research in various areas.

The research team is currently working on refining the resulting substances. ‘Right now, it takes eight hours for a reaction to take place in a cell using our reagents. We aim to get that reactivity down as low as 15 minutes. We are testing all possible options for the structures with improved reactivity while maintaining stability. We are searching for the most efficient molecule. We are also selecting optimal ways to bind the reagents with fluorescent dyes and other groups,’ concluded Natalia Danilkina. She adds that the researchers plan to patent the technology in the future.

Our work is fully in line with the priority areas of the Strategy for Scientific and Technological Development of the Russian Federation and the St Petersburg University Strategic Plan, related to the transition to personalised medicine and high-tech healthcare.

‘The molecules we invent and synthesise are molecular tools for biologists and medical specialists. They enable them to investigate the molecular mechanisms of diseases and find effective methods of treating them,’ said Professor Irina Balova, Research Team Leader, Director of the Institute of Chemistry at St Petersburg University, Doctor of Chemistry.

The research was supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (project No 20-03-00117) and the Russian Science Foundation (project No 21-13-00218 and project No 19-73-10077).

St Petersburg University’s Pirogov Clinic doctors save lives of patients with rare vascular pathologies

Posted on by Alina Perevizintsova

Surgeons at St Petersburg University’s Pirogov Clinic of High Medical Technologies have carried out yet another complex operation on the aorta – the largest blood vessel in the human circulatory system.

Because of the size and length of what is the main artery in the body, such operations are classified as highly complex, high-risk surgery, but they are often the only way to save a patient. The primary indication for such an operation is an aneurysm of the ascending aorta and the aortic arch – a vascular distension of more than twofold – or its dissection.

These malformations are very rare – they are encountered in no more than 15 people out of 100,000, but they are very dangerous. In such cases, a sharp rise in blood pressure or overly strenuous exercise can be fatal.

In order to perform aortic surgery, doctors at the University Clinic bring cardiac function and circulation of the blood throughout the body to a full stop. This manipulation is called circulatory arrest. They then cool the patient’s body down to a deep hypothermia, ranging from 18-24 ⁰С, and they constantly provide blood supply to the brain and make sure that it is getting enough oxygen. Only after they have completed the main stage of this surgery do they reactivate the circulation of blood and the functioning of the heart.

A whole team of doctors works with a patient at all stages of diagnosis and treatment: cardiovascular surgeons, X-ray endovascular surgeons, cardiologists, anaesthesiologists and critical care physicians, perfusionists, specialists in functional and diagnostic radiology, and pathomorphologists.

‘Each of them has several hundred successful operations and diagnostic procedures behind them,’ commented cardiovascular surgeon Dmitrii Shmatov, who is the head of the Centre for Cardiac Surgery and Interventional Cardiology.

‘What’s more, our treatment methods are continually being improved through regular advanced training of clinicians and exchange of experience with world-class specialists.’

Aortic surgery has been performed at the Centre for Cardiac Surgery and Interventional Cardiology at St Petersburg University’s Pirogov Clinic of High Medical Technologies since 2015. In the past six years, more than 100 thoracic aorta operations have been carried out with zero mortality, and, with each passing year, they have grown in number and complexity.

Depending on the extent of changes to the aorta and its branches, clinicians develop several treatment strategies and draw up a basic pre-operation plan.

‘Our doctors need to take a host of factors into account: the age and clinical condition of the patient, the presence of serious concomitant pathologies, and the degree of changes to the aorta and heart, the blood vessels in the head, arms and legs, and also other internal organs. Whenever possible, surgeons try to preserve the natural anatomy of the heart, but not to the detriment of the operation they are performing,’ noted Dmitrii Shmatov.

Aortic surgery can be performed free of charge at the St Petersburg University Clinic on any citizen of the Russian Federation in keeping with the federal quotas for high-technology medical care.

St Petersburg University presents a project on investment arbitration institute for BRICS countries

Posted on by Alina Perevizintsova

St Petersburg University has presented the BRICS international arbitration project that should simplify the resolution of disputes between a foreign investor and a host state. It shall respect the balance of interests of investors and states and increase the investment attractiveness of the BRICS countries.

The announcement was made during the 3rd International Municipal BRICS Forum by Sergei Belov, Dean of the Faculty of Law at St Petersburg University. The discussion of the initiative was also attended by: Ivan Liubin, a faculty member of St Petersburg University; Sergey Salikov, Head of the Legal Department of the Russian Direct Investment Fund; Evgenii Evseev, a lawyer at E&Y; and Dmitry Kaysin, a lawyer at Rybalkin Gortsunyan & Partners.

‘St Petersburg University constantly monitors the field of international commercial and investment arbitration. Today, international investment arbitration is undergoing a crisis. It has ceased to be an effective tool for resolving disputes between investors and investment recipient states, and it is crucial to restore its credibility,’ said Sergei Belov.

According to experts, one of the main problems with arbitration today is the inequality between the parties to a dispute. The balance of interests in current international arbitration institutions favours investors as the ‘weaker’ party. For example, investment arbitration does not necessarily require the exhaustion of national remedies.

Unfortunately, this often discourages states from participating in international agreements regulating investment arbitration, as arbitral decisions substantially limit the sovereignty of states.

Ivan Liubin, a faculty member of St Petersburg University

Sergey Salikov, Head of the Legal Department of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, said that the fund, acting as a catalyst for attracting direct investment to Russia, has been raising questions about investors and states defending their rights. However, currently there is no adequate legal instrument, an independent arbitration institution that could resolve potential disputes impartially and without reservations between the BRICS countries.

The BRICS international arbitration project, developed by specialists from St Petersburg University, could serve as such an instrument. An important feature of the new arbitration institution will be its delocalisation. It will be independent of the country where the dispute is heard and its procedural laws. It will ensure the predictability of its rulings, and thus increase the credibility of the institution.

Other novel features of the new arbitration proposed by the experts from St Petersburg University include: a mandatory mediation procedure before each dispute is heard; internal appeal mechanisms; electronic document management; and an online format for proceedings. The latter is aimed at: reducing the cost of dispute resolution, which today averages about 10 million dollars per dispute; and speeding up the process, which in today’s practice may take several years. In-person dispute resolution should only be considered in exceptional cases.

The experts also suggest introducing a new mechanism for selecting and appointing arbitrators and considerably increasing their number. ‘It is necessary to ensure the independence of all arbitrators and to prevent this community from becoming a private club excluding outsiders,’ said Evgenii Evseev, a lawyer at E&Y.

The project of a new arbitration institution developed by lawyers from St Petersburg University was presented at the St Petersburg International Legal Forum and the St Petersburg International Economic Forum in the spring of 2021. The proposal was supported by: the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation; the Russian Direct Investment Fund; and representatives of higher education institutions.

The new arbitration institution is particularly relevant today when, despite globalisation, the idea of large associations more and more often proves unsuccessful. According to the lawyers, it is now more difficult than ever to regulate disputes on the basis of just one legal system because none of them is universal. The lawyers suggest reaching a consensus and implementing a revolutionary arbitration institution that would specialise in investment disputes on the basis of BRICS because the BRICS member countries already have close economic ties. At the same time, investors from other countries will be able to join international arbitration. To do so they will have to adopt two conventions: on the mutual protection of investments and on the establishment of an arbitration institution.

Work on the project shall continue. The experts believe that the new arbitration will be able to develop a positive practice of dispute resolution and thus increase the investment attractiveness of states.

St Petersburg University doctors first to prove the safety of COVID-19 vaccine for patients with chronic kidney disease

Posted on by Alina Perevizintsova

Nephrologists and geneticists from the Pirogov Clinic of High Medical Technologies at St Petersburg University have conducted a study on patients on haemodialysis for renal replacement therapy. They have also found out that vaccination against coronavirus disease (COVID-19) with the Sputnik V vaccine is effective and safe for patients with chronic kidney disease.

The study population consisted of 21 patients, aged 39 to 84, who had been receiving haemodialysis therapy for five and a half years. Before vaccine administration, none of them had had COVID-19 (confirmed or suspected). The study did not include patients who had: been on corticosteroid or immunosuppressive therapy; malignant neoplasms; or secondary immunodeficiency.

The first phase of the study was to monitor adverse reactions following the vaccine administration. According to the study findings, adverse reactions were reported in 30% of the subjects. After the second dose of vaccine was administered, pain at the injection site was reported in four patients, fever – in one patient, general weakness – in two patients, joint pain – in one patient, and muscle pain – in one patient. No allergic reactions to Sputnik V vaccine were reported in the study population.

The aim of the second stage was to determine the effectiveness of vaccination. Four weeks after the second dose of the vaccine was administered, two blood tests were performed on all patients: a COVID-19 Spike Protein IgG Antibody test – to determine the number of antibodies as a response to vaccination; and a test for COVID-19 T cells immunity – to determine the number of specific T cells responsible for the long-term immune response of the body – the so-called cellular memory. The efficacy of Sputnik V vaccine in haemodialysis patients was similar to its efficacy in the general population. In 20 of the 21 participants, either a humoral (antibody production) or cellular immune response to the vaccine was reported. Most importantly, the participants were closely monitored for five months after the vaccination. During this period, none of the patients developed SARS-CoV-2 infection.

The authors of the study are: Aleksei Tolkach, Ekaterina Parshina, Andrei Ivanov, and Pavel Kislyi, doctors from the Pirogov Clinic of High Medical Technologies at St Petersburg University. The study findings are published in the journal Nephrology and Dialysis.

‘The study findings suggest that the prevention of SARS-CoV-2 infection by full vaccination with the Gam-COVID-Vac, or Sputnik V, vaccine can be effective and safe for patients on haemodialysis for renal replacement therapy. It should be recommended for all patients when there are no contraindications to vaccination,’ said Dr Ekaterina Parshina, a co-author of the study. Dr Parshina is nephrologist and transfusiologist, Head of the Nephrology and Dialysis Department at the Pirogov Clinic of High Medical Technologies, St Petersburg University.

The doctors from the Pirogov Clinic of High Medical Technologies expressed hope that this study will help nephrologists and general practitioners who make decisions regarding the vaccination of dialysis patients. Dr Parshina noted: ‘We would like to assist patients in decision-making about the need for vaccination. Indeed, it is a difficult decision to make in the absence of a reliable evidence base, on the one hand, and an active anti-vaccination campaign, on the other.’

Looking for the Earth’s twin

Posted on by Alina Perevizintsova

What is a hot Jupiter? How can an Earth-like planet be discovered? How can it help us learn more about our planetary system? Roman Baluev, Candidate of Physics and Mathematics, Senior Research Associate in the Department of Astronomy at St Petersburg University, answers these and other questions about modern astronomy.

Mr Baluev, could you please explain what exoplanets are? What are they like?

Exoplanets are planets that orbit around stars other than the Sun, i.e. outside the solar system. Among the first planets to be discovered since 1995 were the so-called hot Jupiters.

Scientists have discovered a whole class of celestial bodies that are similar in mass to our Jupiter, but are much closer to their star, at a distance of less than 0.1 astronomical unit. As a result of such a short distance, their atmospheres are heated to enormous temperatures of about 1,000 K. The Solar system has no such planets.

An astronomical unit is a traditional unit of measurement in astronomy that amounts to the average distance from the Earth to the Sun. For example, the distance from Mercury (the closest planet to the Sun) to the Sun is about 0.3-0.4 astronomical units.

At first, it seemed to be the dominant class of extrasolar planets as other types were very rarely found. It can be explained by the fact that hot Jupiters were much easier to detect given the accuracy of the measuring instruments that existed at the time. Later on, however, from the year 2000 or so, when the equipment became more advanced, more distant planets, including those similar to our Jupiter, have been discovered. It became clear that the class of hot Jupiters is not that numerous.

Moreover, among the extrasolar planets, there were also discovered hot earths, which are located very close to their stars. As a result of the high temperatures, there is no life on them, nor can there be any. There are also hot Neptunes (or hot super-Earths).

Why are scientists searching for new planets? What does it help to understand?

For a long time, researchers have built theories about the formation of planetary systems and based them only on the data from the solar system. However, planet Earth is quite special – we and other living organisms emerged here. Apparently, this is a rare occurrence in the Universe: we know of no other such examples. One could study our planetary system in detail down to its chemical composition and the origins, but this would not answer the question of whether it is unique or whether it is a universal standard?

The first discoveries of exoplanets provided additional statistics which were enough to develop a new theory of planet formation. Hot Jupiters, for example, shattered existing beliefs, as their origin cannot be explained by the old theories. Our planetary system has only one Jupiter at a distance of about five astronomical units from the Sun, and it has a substantial mass. The inner region of the solar system has only small planets: Mercury, Venus, the Earth and Mars. The first exoplanets that have been discovered have a mass comparable to that of Jupiter. However, they are 20 times closer to their star than the Earth is to the Sun. Their origins are unclear: located so close to a star, they simply could not have had the material to form a planet of such mass.

Scientists have therefore developed a theory of planetary migration. It suggests that a planet is formed far away from the star but, through interaction with the protoplanetary disk, it gradually moves closer to the star and migrates towards the central regions. We can detect the planet now by observing the scattering of material from the protoplanetary disk.

A protoplanetary disk, or proplyd, is a disk of dense gas, which subsequently forms planets, that rotates around a young star.

This raises the question of why our Jupiter has not migrated. It can be down to the parameters of the protoplanetary disk: the amount of matter that was initially there; its viscosity; and its chemical composition. There is a whole field of research in mathematics, hydrodynamics, and even magnetic hydrodynamics to explain this.

There has also been further development of the theory of gravitational instability in the protoplanetary disk, which has explained the presence of such planets in the central regions around the star without migration. The discovery of exoplanets gave a good impetus to this research and formed an entire branch of astronomy.

What can astronomers learn about exoplanets staying so far away from them on Earth?

The planets that revolve close to the star are so hot that they emit their own light in the infrared band and this light can be detected as they drift behind the star’s disk. As the planet emerges from behind the disk, it slightly contaminates the star’s light. If we look at the spectrum, we see that the planet adds its own lines which can be registered and interpreted.

This is how we get information about the general composition of the planet’s atmosphere. This is useful as since we know the chemical composition of the gas giants in the solar system, we can tell the differences in the chemical composition of exoplanets. This has become a branch of science in itself.

Another field involves the study of the atmospheric dynamics of planets. When a planet passes behind the disk of a star, this effect can be recorded and the asymmetry of this phenomenon in the infrared region of the spectrum can also be measured. This provides information about the scattered light surface brightness distribution of the visible disc of the planet. After all, the star heats the planet unevenly – the atmosphere is always hotter in the centre (at the equator). Moreover, the planet rotates and, due to various hydrodynamic effects, there are strong winds. The hot spot may shift and take some non-trivial forms. This is how we can get information about the hydrodynamics and thermal profile of the planet.

As there are many types of exoplanets, they become a kind of experimental cauldron, an experimental laboratory created by nature.

What methods are used to detect planets?

There are several ways of detecting extrasolar planets. One of the principal methods is the radial velocity method, or Doppler spectroscopy. Earth-based telescopes enable us to observe the star ‘wobble’ as a result of gravitational disturbance from the planet. What we can see is not even the ‘wobble’ itself but variations in the star’s radial velocity. It is the speed at which the object moves away and towards the observer, which can be measured by spectroscopy. In other words, we find an exoplanet by the change in the subtle characteristics of the star’s light, or, more precisely, by the periodic shift of spectral lines due to the Doppler effect.

The Doppler effect, named after the Austrian physicist Christian Doppler, explains the change in frequency and length of waves caused by the movement of their source and receiver in space.

There is also the astrometric method, when scientists measure the direct oscillation of a star around the centre of mass of the planet, rather than the spectral parameters of the star’s luminescence. This is a rather exotic method because such an effect is very difficult to capture. It was for this kind of measurement that the Gaia astrometric spacecraft was launched in 2013. It has been flying for some time now and may be able to discover many new planets in the future. However, the data it has collected so far is insufficient as such precise measurements require the full amount of information from the entire expedition, and it still needs to be processed by special algorithms.

Another method is microlensing, which makes it possible to discover planets orbiting very distant stars. From the Earth, clusters of such distant and dull stars merge to form the Milky Way. Sometimes two unrelated stars can be at different distances from the Earth but happen to align in the same line of sight for us. At this point, the closer star will use its gravity to focus the light of the background star onto the observer. At this point, the background star will have brightened for a period ranging from a few hours to several days. If there are planets rotating around the nearest lensing star, each of them will also play the role of a small lens. On the light curve, we will see the anomalies caused by these planets.

Everything has to be right: the stars should align on the same line; and the plane of the planets’ orbits and the planets themselves should take the right position. This is a very rare and unlikely event. This method, nevertheless, was popular at the time of the OGLE project on microlensing, during which there was discovered a considerable number of planets in our galaxy. However, this method had an important drawback as microlensing happens only once for each object.

The OGLE (Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment) is a Polish-American project to study dark matter using the method of gravitational microlensing.
One of the current methods of detecting exoplanets, which competes with the radial velocity method, is the transit method. It uses photometry and is primarily aimed at the planets orbiting close to the star. At such a distance, the planet’s plane of rotation is likely to pass through the Earth and we will periodically see the celestial body projected onto the star’s disk. The planet in this case remains invisible to us, but we do observe that it slightly dims the star’s light by about 1% in recurring periods. To spot this, we need precise photometry, which is simpler than the radial velocity method. The Doppler method requires special highprecision spectrographs. In the case of the transit method, such precision is not required.

The transit method, however, has another drawback: the planet’s orbit has to be oriented towards the Earth for the transits to occur periodically. If its orbit is flat, the transit will not be detected. The probability of such a plane orientation is quite low. If a planet is as far away from a star as the Earth is from the Sun, the probability of detecting it is very small. It increases if the planet orbits close to the star, but is still low.

What method do you use in your research?

The transit method has a spin-off, namely the transit-timing variation. Suppose there is a planet orbiting a star, and due to a certain plane of its orbit it periodically passes in front of the disk of that star. If there is one planet, the transit repeats with the planet’s orbital period.

However, if there is another planet that remains invisible, it will gravitationally affect the first planet and perturb its motion, thus disturbing the strict periodicity. So, one transit event will be a little delayed or ahead of the projected moment. Such deviations might suggest that there is another object in the system. Celestial mechanics can tell us a lot about an object and even help to calculate and construct its orbit.

Such deviations in timing can also occur because of the tidal interaction of the planet with the star. Over time, a planet loses energy and spirals slowly towards the star due to the small distance between them. The tidal force causes them to affect each other in the same way that the Moon causes the Earth’s tides. The planet is flattened and this deformation causes a continuous change of direction so the planet always faces the star with one side. Due to this effect, there is a loss of energy in the planet’s core. This means that the orbital velocity of the celestial body gradually increases. According to Kepler’s law, the closer an object to the star is, the faster its companion should move. It is a microscopic effect: in the case of the Earth, for example, the accumulated deviation in timing turns out to be only about a couple of minutes over a 10-year observation period.

There are two such planets known today: WASP-12 and WASP-4. The latter is being observed in South America by amateur astronomers at our request as part of the EXPANSION project, which I will talk about a little later. The study was carried out in parallel with another international team and they happened to publish the results first as they had observed the accelerating moments of the transits. We were more cautious and noted some complications in interpreting the data.

The observed effect could have been the result of systematic errors, in particular the impact of stellar spots. If a star has homogeneous brightness over its entire disk, the transit will look beautifully smooth, just like in the textbook. Stars, however, almost always have spots and it may happen that a planet will take a ‘splash’ over the top of this spot during its passage. Then the photometric curve would show an anomaly, which would distort the result. In the end, we did confirm the timing acceleration effect, but the amplitude of the systematic acceleration was half what the second scientific team had claimed.

How do astronomers acquire data on exoplanets?

A colleague of mine, Evgenii Sokov, has organised an international network of telescopes among amateur astronomers, which also includes professional observatories. The network is made up of several dozen telescopes that conduct regular observations of the transits of various exoplanets across the sky. There are now just over 20 such planets, and WASP-4 was one of them. These planets have long been known and described, and we continue to accumulate data on their timings, thanks to the project.

This project sprang from the Czech Exoplanet Transit Database. For some time, observations of varying quality have been accumulated in this database, but most of them are not of very high quality as they were taken by amateurs. Such data should be carefully selected and include only the objects whose data quality is more or less adequate. On the basis of this database Evgenii Sokov has founded the EXPANSION project and brought together people who are willing to conduct observations of exoplanets on a regular basis.

We also cooperate with the Special Astrophysical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences. They have recently commissioned a new spectrograph with the level of precision that enables observations via the radial velocity method.

Is there any chance of finding an Earth twin?

Astronomers around the world would certainly wish to discover such a planet. This is the cutting edge of exoplanet research and the most intensive studies are being conducted in this field. However, the task is not easy: you need to find a planet with the same mass and at the same distance from the star as the Earth. There is no point in finding a white-hot Earth where no life can exist.

A full twin to the Earth has not yet been found. However, similar planets have been discovered near low-mass red dwarfs. Due to their low mass, these stars are more sensitive to planetary disturbances, making it easier to discover lower-mass exoplanets near them. Red dwarfs also have a life zone closer to the star because they produce a fainter light than the Sun. Their exoplanets can orbit closer to the star without getting as hot as hot Jupiters.

The habitable zone or life zone is the area around a star with the most favourable conditions for Earth-like life.

Looking for a complete analogue of the Earth requires a high precision spectrograph with a radial velocity measurement accuracy of 10 centimetres per second. The best spectrograph available today only allows an accuracy of 30 centimetres per second. The search for twin Earths is therefore a great challenge for engineers in many ways. High precision instruments need ultra-high stability. To achieve this, they are installed in a special protective case that maintains constant pressure and temperature.

High precision instruments are not enough. It is important to remember about spots and other unstable phenomena, such as flares, granulation and so on, in the photosphere of a star. Roughly speaking, the surface of a star is turbulent and this causes additional noise and distortion in the measurable radiant velocity. As a physical object, a star’s radial velocity doesn’t change. However, the problem is that it is not measured directly – we use a spectrograph based on the Doppler effect. The spectra of a star reflect its unstable outer envelope. This instability varies by one metre per second.

In short, to minimise the natural astrophysical noise of a star, it is necessary to create special algorithms that will process and filter it. This is the only way to achieve the accuracy needed to discover an Earth-like planet. No matter how difficult it is, I think it will happen sooner or later.

SPbU scholar on amending Criminal Code on abduction

Posted on by Alina Perevizintsova

According to official statistics, about 350 people are kidnapped in Russia every year. However, this number does not include the abduction of a child by relatives, because law enforcement authorities generally avoid initiating such criminal cases. Evgeniia Ivanova, a scholar from St Petersburg University, explains the cases when father and mother have the right to decide where and with whom a child lives, and when the law prohibits it.

In her dissertation ‘Abduction: Qualification and Liability’, Evgeniia Ivanova studied more than 1,300 cases of abduction and formulated recommendations on improving legislation in this area.

Ms Ivanova, why have you chosen abduction as the subject of your research?

There were a number of reasons. First and foremost, it was the wording of the Article, which is not ideal. The law provides only a name for the crime without defining it, so it is not very clear what the offender has to commit for it to be called abduction. Is it necessary to keep a kidnapped person in captivity for a long time or just a few hours? Is it necessary to have the abducted person removed somewhere, and does the distance matter? Is the motive and purpose of the abductor important? The law does not provide answers to these questions. Secondly, abduction is a crime that infringes on a person’s physical freedom. However, the law does not give us a clear definition of what freedom in general and physical freedom in particular is. Moreover, in reality not all people can exercise such freedom fully at their discretion. The insufficient research into these issues has piqued my interest and led to such research.

What kind of people do not have full control over their physical freedom?

There are three categories. First, there are those whose sentence involves the deprivation or restriction of physical liberty. Obviously, people held in correctional institutions are not free to move around. Secondly, there are people who have been appointed custody because of their incapacity. The place of residence of such people is determined by their guardians. Thirdly, there are children, who are underage.

Is this why you focus so much on the liability of parents and relatives for abducting children? Is it because the physical freedom of children is of specific nature?

Absolutely. It is also a pressing social issue. I think each of us has heard of scandals involving the kidnapping of children by their parents or other relatives. Foreign countries have the practice of prosecuting such people. However, Russian law enforcement agencies are reluctant to initiate criminal proceedings, citing that the Criminal Code does not stipulate such liability.

Is there no provision for it?

Parents are not liable because under the law (the Constitution and the Family Code) they are the ones who are responsible for where and with whom the child lives. The conflict between the parents over the removal of a child is therefore a matter of family law, not criminal law. The situation is quite the opposite if one of the parents is deprived of parental rights. If there are no parental rights, there is no right to determine the child’s place of residence. The person is legally a stranger to the child, so he/she becomes liable for kidnapping. The same applies to grandparents and other relatives of the child. They do not have the right to dispose of the physical freedom of the child, so they shall be held liable.

What if a child wants to live with a relative or a parent who has been deprived of parental rights? Should this be taken into account?

All things are considered, but only if the issue is resolved by legal means, whether it is a grandmother trying to get custody of a child or a parent trying to recover parental rights. Simply removing a child bypassing the legal procedure is a crime, and the opinion of a child, whatever age he or she may be, is legally irrelevant. However absurd it may seem, but a direct interpretation of the norms of the Constitution of the Russian Federation and the Family Code of the Russian Federation implies that for any minors the decision concerning their residence is made by parents. It is rather strange when a person aged sixteen can take care of their own medical matters, can get a job, can be held criminally liable, and at the same time is dependent on parents to determine the place of residence and spending leisure time.

What happens if living with parents endangers the life and health of a child, and a grandmother has to remove the child? Is it right to charge her with a criminal offence?

It is certainly wrong. That is why the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation provides for an exemption from liability for a person acting in cases of extreme necessity. If a child may be harmed and a person saves him or her, it is an act of extreme necessity.

Are there any changes that you could suggest to the Criminal Code that would allow improvement of the criminal legislation, in particular concerning the issue of criminal liability of child’s relatives?

My dissertation includes such proposals. However, it is a social problem and such problems cannot be solved solely by the norms of the most repressive branch of law, criminal law being the most repressive of all. It is necessary to develop comprehensive mechanisms that involve both family and civil law to ensure that the course of action of individuals in a given situation is clear.

The text of the dissertation and a video of the defence are available on the website of St Petersburg University.

Speaking about abduction in general, rather than just children, is it possible to solve the problem with legal instruments?

We can take measures to improve legislation and adopt acts at the level of the global community. However, crime is a social phenomenon, and in my opinion, the most effective way to reduce it is through social mechanisms.

Are there examples of countries where the problem of abduction has been, if not completely solved, then minimised?

Since 1 September 2016, St Petersburg University has been entitled to form its own dissertation councils to award the degrees of St Petersburg University.

In the course of my research, I have not come across a country that does not have provisions for abduction in its legislation. In my opinion, this shows that this offence is common to any state and is ‘normal’, insofar as one can speak of normality in relation to destructive behaviour. Of course, the specific nature of abduction varies from country to country. For example, in China, women are often kidnapped for the purpose of marriage, which is a result of the demographic situation (there are considerably more men than women in the country). The problem of abduction is unlikely to be completely solved.

Could you please tell us about the defence of your dissertation?

My defence was held in a mixed format: the members of the council who were in other countries and cities were present remotely. Of course, this was rather unconventional, but everything went well, largely thanks to my long experience of distance working at the University. The entire procedure took about 2.5 hours and I received a lot of very different questions from the members of the dissertation council. It was certainly an interesting experience.

Is the defence procedure under the rules of St Petersburg University difficult?

The defence does not seem very complicated. All the requirements for candidates are justified and the mechanism for submitting and verifying documents is well established. I personally had difficulties in selecting a foreign expert, but I admit that this is related to the topic of my research. What is unusual is the absence of opponents: the members of the dissertation council act as both evaluators and critics of the work. In my view, it is not therefore the candidate, but the members of the dissertation council who may find it most challenging.

What do you think of the requirement to publish the research in two languages?

Publication of research in a foreign language is necessary, in my point of view. This solves a number of problems in popularising the research abroad, since not every foreign specialist has a sufficient command of Russian to study scientific works.

What are your plans now, after the defence? Does a PhD degree open new doors for you?

Of course, having a PhD degree is very important. It will contribute to my teaching career at St Petersburg University.

Furthermore, I have already submitted a proposal to St Petersburg University Publishing House for the publication of my monograph. I would like to see it published this year. There are not many monographs on abduction, so my research might be useful.

 

GSOM SPbU first Russian business school to receive ‘triple crown’

Posted on by Alina Perevizintsova

The Graduate School of Management at St Petersburg University is the first school in Russia to receive accreditation by the three most influential international associations: EQUIS, AMBA and AACSB. According to statistics, only one of 100 business schools in the world is afforded such honour.

In November 2021, the accreditation by the AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business) was granted. This accreditation confirms that the business school is committed to transforming the education in view of international market demands integrating cutting edge technologies and best practices into the teaching and learning process.

Commitment to success in the global academic environment has been in the core of the School’s strategy since its foundation in 1993. The Graduate School of Management has been gradually moving towards the established goal. In 2008, the School’s progress was distinguished by the AMBA (the Association of MBAs) and in 2012 – by the EQUIS (the European Quality Improvement System). The AACSB accreditation allowed for the Graduate School of Management to receive the status of a Business School with a ‘triple crown’ accreditation.

Today, only about 100 universities out of 18,000 universities worldwide have all three accreditations. In the academic environment, a ‘triple crown’ accreditation confirms the highest standard of the education quality.

‘The Graduate School of Management at St Petersburg University is the first in Russia to receive the highest international status in the form of a “triple crown” accreditation. It establishes Russia in the map of the best business schools in the world enabling Russian business education to compete with international universities. In 2006, President of Russia Vladimir Putin set the task to create a Russian business school of a global level to train leaders capable of solving global economic problems and increasing the competitiveness of specific economic sectors as well as the country as a whole. We have successfully completed this task. The diploma of St Petersburg University becomes even more valuable both for the graduates and for the employers in Russia and beyond,’ said Sergey Ivanov, Special Representative of the President of the Russian Federation for Environmental Protection, Ecology and Transport, Chairman of the Advisory Board for the Graduate School of Management at St Petersburg University.

‘Acclaim of this level is a result of many years of work by the staff at the Graduate School of Management and the whole team of St Petersburg University on the development of business education. We introduce advanced approaches to education, invite the best experts and opinion leaders, implement innovative projects on the basis of the Graduate School of Management at the University. I am confident that this achievement will inspire our students and teachers to reach new academic and scientific summits and will become a new seal of excellence for employers that have always regarded St Petersburg University’s diplomas as a guarantee of excellent training,’ remarked Nikolay Kropachev, Rector of St Petersburg University, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

‘Receiving a “triple crown” accreditation by the Graduate School of Management is the highest recognition on the part of the global academic community. Sustainable implementation of the proper development strategy and active support on the part of the trustees, which enabled the Graduate School of Management at St Petersburg University to be one of the first in Russia to incorporate cutting edge digital technologies and best practices into the teaching and learning process, made this success possible. This achievement is a well-deserved result of the hard work by the whole staff of the Graduate School of Management as well as all graduates and partners of the business school,’ underscored Olga Dergunova, Deputy President and Chairman of VTB Bank Management Board, Director of the Graduate School of Management at St Petersburg University.

St Petersburg University chemists synthesise the smallest nano-sized particles to detect heavy metal ions in water

Posted on by Alina Perevizintsova

Scientists at St Petersburg University, Sirius University of Science and Technology, and St Petersburg Academic University have synthesised the smallest nano-sized metal-organic frameworks to detect heavy metal ions in water. The results and outcomes of the experiments and description of the properties of the crystals are published in Nanomaterials.

Metal-organic polymers, or metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), are crystals composed of metal ions interconnected by organic molecules, i.e. organic linkers. Various concentrations of the metal ions and organic linkers can be used to synthesise materials with different structures and properties. MOFs are widely used to design electrochemical sensors as reaction catalysts in the chemical industry or propellant additives.

Some of the MOFs are luminescent MOFs. They emit light caused by UV rays, electromagnetic fields, or other disturbances. Luminescent MOFs are actively used as LED components and luminescent thermometers. Additionally, they are used in the diagnosis of cancer. Luminescent MOFs are also used as luminescent sensors for pollutants.

St Petersburg University chemists synthesised the smallest nano-sized crystals by the ultrasound-assisted wet-chemical method. They were synthesised by a slow mixing of sodium terephthalate and europium chloride aqueous solutions by using the ultrasound-assisted wet-chemical method, precipitated in the form of a polycrystalline solid. Ultrasonication ensured a better mixing of solution, slowed growth of particles, prevented the aggregation of the microparticles, and resulted in the formation of individual microparticles.

The scientists synthesised particles of various sizes. The average particle size can be equal 8 nm up to hundreds of micrometres. Today, the reported europium(III) terephthalate tetrahydrate (Eu2bdc3·4H2O) metal-organic frameworks nanoparticles are the smallest nano-sized rare-earth-based MOF crystals.

‘We did not expect that a twofold decrease in the concentration of reagents could lead to size reduction for several orders. Presumably, this effect may be due to europium-terephthalate 1:1 complex. This can accelerate the growth process of the particles. Earlier, scientists could synthesise nano-sized particles of terephthalate that were equal to 40 nm or even more. We managed to synthesise particles with the fivefold smaller size,’ said the head of the research, Associate Professor in the Department of Laser Chemistry at St Petersburg University and Doctor of Chemistry Andrey Mereshchenko.

The developed method to synthesise nanoparticles can make a positive contribution to nanotechnology and coordination chemistry. By using this method, we can synthesise nanoparticles from other MOFs. The experiments also reported the selective luminescence quenching by heavy metal ions. As a result, the synthesised nanoparticles can be used as sensors to detect heavy metal ions in water.

‘This discovery has the potential to develop efficient sensors to monitor heavy metal ions in drinking water. Our luminescent MOFs demonstrate significantly lower limits of detection on heavy metal ions. This will ensure more accurate measurements of pollutants in water, even in small concentrations’, said Viktor Nosov, a co-author of the article and a student in Chemistry at St Petersburg University.

The reported nanoparticles can also be used as luminescent sensors to detect Cu2+, Cr3+, and Fe3+ ions in water. The presence of these metals in water poses a threat to human beings and animals. Heavy metal accumulation in the body can effect human metabolism and lead to nervous system diseases, vascular diseases, and digestive disorders. The chemists are planning to continue the research and develop an express test to detect heavy metal ions in drinking water and waste.

The research is supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (project No 20-33-70025 ‘Effect of the solvent on the growth dynamics and structure of the metal-organic frameworks’). The research was carried out at the Department of Laser Chemistry at St Petersburg University using the resources and infrastructure of the University’s Research Park and Sirius University of Science and Technology.