Publicity, USSR

Public opposition to commercial nuclear power plants began with the misperception that the plants could explode like nuclear weapons. The nuclear industi-y made progress in dispelling this misperception, but suffered major setbacks when an accident occurred at the Three-Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania and at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the USSR. 

Fundamental research in pyrotechnics is published in the US in Combustion and Flame by the Combustion Institute, and in the UK in Combustion Science and Technology and in Fuel . Germany has the new, journal, Propellants and Explosives (German Chemical Society), which is the successor to the discontinued Explosivstoffe . A necessary caveat is that these journals are strongly oriented toward combustion or propulsion so that only rarely do they yield pyrotechnic information. Likewise, the various publications of the learned societies contain much data on thermodynamics, spectroscopy, and instrumental analysis which are useful in the study of pyrotechnics. In the USSR the situation is somewhat better as Physics of Combustion and Explosion (Fizika Gorenia i Vzryva) of the Siberian Branch Academy of Sciences USSR is exclusively oriented toward subjects of interest, as several scientific institutes are primarily devoted to research in pyrotechnics. The same authors do publish also, however, in the journals of the Academy of Science USSR (of which there are several) as well as in the corresponding journals of the academies of the various republics, so that the impression is created of a high level of activity... 

UNESCO (1978). "World Water Balance and Water Resources of the Earth." UNESCO Press, Paris. (Translation of 1974 USSR publication.)... 

Further, the authors have carefully examined and documented the public health and environmental impacts of pesticide use in the USSR. The USSR was the largest country by territory in the world and the use of pesticide here was enormous. As the authors have shown, this happened mostly because the USSR s Communistic rulers decided at the end of the 1960 s — to turn all chemical weaponry plants (constructed in the beginning of the cold war) to pesticide production. With rich government subsidies, pesticides were distributed through all collective farms The Soviet official policy, the chemicalisation of agriculture, was an attempt to overcome its prominent ineffectiveness in crop production. 

Post-WWII. After WWII most LP R D shifted from Germany to the USA and the USSR. Technical progress since 1945 in LP for rockets can be characterized by a host of minor improvements rather than major advances, and some spectacular applications of LP in rockets for military use and for space exploration, eg, in ICBM s (Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles) and in USA USSR Moon, Mars Venus shots . Thus the major developments since WWII have been primarily in the application of existing, though improved, propulsion systems to such highly publicized rockets as Sputnik, Vanguard, Soyuz, Saturn, Vostok, Apollo, Explorer, etc... 

Professor P. W.M. Jacobs is Emeritus Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Western Ontario, where he taught widely in the area of physical chemistry, particularly group theory. He has lectured extensively on his research in North America, Europe, and the former USSR. He has authored more than 315 publications, mainly in solid state chemistry and physics, and he was awarded the Solid State Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry. 

The content of this book reviews the latest developments in the characterization and chemical modification of silica surfaces. No attempt has been made to survey exhaustively the literature of any topic. The material has been collected from recent publications and own research work in this field. Also, recent disclosures of research activities in the former USSR are documented in detail in the text. 

As early as 1940 the American chemist F. Stitt demonstrated that in B2H0 the barrier hindering the internal rotation about the hypothetical B—B bond is much higher as compared to ethane. Then some more experimental data appeared to promote the hydrogen bridge structure. Dilthey s model was again taken up in the publications by B. V. Nekrasov, Ya. K. Syrkin, M. E. Dyatkina in the USSR, and some foreign chemists. 

Brekman, I. and Y. A. Sam. 1967. Ethnopharmacological investigation of some psychoactive drugs used by Siberians and far Eastern minor nationalities of the USSR. In Ethnopharmacological Search for Psychoactive Drugs, ed. David H. Efron, 415. United States Public Health Services no. 1645. 

Interesting publications of work undertaken in this field of reactivity by a research group in (what at that time was part of) the USSR, unfortunately, was published mainly in rather inaccessible journals. The rates of reaction of phenylacetylene with ethyl- and phenylmagnesium bromide were measured in diethyl ether and in tetrahydrofuran, respectively [32]. The results, presented in Table 8, clearly show the dramatic change in the second-order rate constants, when diethyl ether is replaced by tetrahydrofuran as the solvent. The same effect had been found in 1968 by others [33] for the reaction of benzylmagnesium chloride with phenylacetylene at 0°C the second-order rate constant (/c2 X 10 L mol sec ) was 0.008 in diethyl ether and 84 in tetrahydrofuran, a change by a factor of (more than) 10 thousand. 

Even as the organization of the republic academies is fashioned after that of the USSR Academy of Sciences, so is their publication program, but on a much reduced scale. 

Significance of Titles. The name or title of a periodical publication is indicative of its sponsor. Zhurnal is reserved for regular periodicals published by the USSR Academy and the Ukrainian Academy. Doklady and Vestnik are used for the main publications of the various academies Izvestiya is used for publications of academy departments. Institute publications of academies and industrial bodies are called Trudy. Uchenye Zapiski, Nauchnye Zapiski, and Nauchnyi Byulleten are used for university publications. The titles of trade journals are highly specific —Ugol (Coal), Stal (Steel), Khimicheskaya Promyshlennost (Chemical Industry), Spirtovaya Promyshlennosf (Alcohol Industry), Tsement (Cement), Steklo i Keramika (Glass and Ceramics), and so on. 

To obtain USSR publications you have to know what you want and know it well. This is one of the reasons for the present paper. 

In 1948 I compiled a list of USSR publications of possible interest to chemists. The list contained approximately 500 titles. That list was amended in 1950 and again recently. If brought up to date, it would contain between 700 and 800 titles, possibly even more. The number of items would be vastly increased if it were to include other sciences and engineering. 

Recently, 715 USSR scientific and technical periodical publications falling within the three above-mentioned groups—i.e., containing material of interest to chemists—were examined to ascertain their sponsoring bodies and fields of interest. 

---