n084  2102  26 Aug 75
SOV-SCIENCE
By WALTER SULLIVAN
c. 1975 New York Times News Service.
    VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA - A science center with the world's
only institute devoted entirely to the study of volcanoes and
another institute performing the Soviet Union's most extensive
marine biology research has been created in Siberia.
    The new Far East Science Center in Vladivostok, with 15
institutes, including those at three satellite centers, has a
combined staff of almost 5,500 and is steadily growing. Despite
its remoteness near the eastern terminus of the Trans-Siberian
Railroad, applicants outnumber vacancies three to one.
    From an interview with the center's founder and director,
Dr. Andrei P. Kapitsa, it appears that its attraction arises
in part from a variety of innovations including a geographical
institute that is attempting a new form of computer-based
regional planning.
    Kapitsa is the son of Peter Kapitsa, probably the Soviet Union's
most widely known physicist.
    Kapitsa was interviewed while attending the Pacific Science
Congress held this week and last at the University of British
Columbia here. He is on the council of the 46-nation Pacific
Science Association, which sponsored the congress. His invitation
that its next meeting be held in Novosibirsk in 1979 has been
accepted.
    Kapitsa believes that through the techniques of systems analysis
it should be possible to develop regions, particularly the virgin
areas of the Soviet Far East, with minimal injury to the 
environment. This would involve describing the present state of
the environment and the effects of possible development
programs - such as various kinds of new industry, mining or
lumbering - in a manner capable of computer digestion and 
forecasting.
    In Moscow, however, geographers of the older generation
were unenthusiastic about such an approach, Kapitsa said. Hence,
he said, when he was invited by Mstislav V. Keldysh, president
of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, to form the new science center,
he accepted on condition that he could set up his own geographical
institute there.
    Before doing so consulted Dr. Mikhail A. Lavrentyev,
founder of the prototype science center at Novosibirsk. The 
;latter had been created on the premise that institutes devoted
to basic rather than applied research enrich the ''scientific
culture'' of the region. Researchers and staff at the science
center or Akademogorodok in Novosibirsk now number 25,000.
    In 1969 it was decided to create two more such centers,
though not on so large a scale: one in the Urals at Sverdlovsky
and the Far East Science Center in Vladivostok. The latter comes
directly under the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow and thus
ranks on the same level as the regional academies of science.
    When it was established in 1970 the five institutes already
there plus others in Magadan, Khabarovsk, Sakhalin and Kamchatka
formed its nucleus. In addition to the 15 institutes that now
exist, another in economics is planned, plus a computer
facility in Khabarovsk additional to those now in Magadan,
SAKHALIN AND Vladvistok. The emphasis is on automation and
artifical intelligence.
    Among 10 ships to be assigned to the center is the Vulcanolok,
to be launched next year, for research on submarine volcanic
activity. In a paper prepared for the conference here, Dr. Kapitsa
points out that one of the world's most active volcanic regions
lies where the largest ocean and the largest land mass
confront one another.
    It is marked by the belt of volcanoes that extends from 
Kamchatka through the Kurile Islands to Japan. Unlike some of
the more conservative Soviet earth sicentists, Kapitsa has
accepted the new view that the earth's surface is formed of
gigantic plates whose motion relative to one another is 
responsible for earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other
pehnomena.
    According to this concept the volcanoes along the western rim
of the Pacific rise where the Pacific floor is being carried
down beneaththe Eurasian plate. To study this process in all
its manifestations the Institute of Volcanology has a staff of
500.
    The Pacific Institute of Bio-Organic Chemistry has won
worldwide reputation, according to Kapitsa, in particular for
its sutdies of marine organisms. A root substance called 
elesterakok with medicinal properties similar to those of ginseng
but without its side effects has been extracted and $2 million
worth of it sold to the United States, he said.
    In establishing the Pacific Institute of Geography Kaptsa
took along 30 of his former colleagues from Moscow. Under the
Institute's control are several large wilderness areas where
baseline data on the virgin environment are being collected.
 
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