Russia restructures physics labs

Science : Four of Russia’s most prominent physics labs are to be merged into a new national research center. The institutes, which have languished in the post-Soviet era, have cautiously welcomed the raised profile the merger will bring.But a different reform aimed at separating basic and applied research at one of the institutes—the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow, Russia’s premier lab for nuclear energy research--has researchers up in arms.The merger, announced in a presidential decree last month, will combine the Institute for High Energy Physics (IHEP) in Protvino, 100 kilometers south of Moscow; the B. P. Konstantinov Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute (PNPI) in St. Petersburg; and two Moscow labs--the Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics (ITEP) and the Kurchatov . The reorganization is aimed at smoothing the path of innovations into industry, says Sergei Kiriyenko , chief of the nuclear energy agency Rosatom and one of the key officials behind the decree.