Beautiful Omsk of the future and filthy Baikal of today. Siberia in a week
Scientists have revealed the secret of Tuvan throat singing, the newspaper in Khakassia has returned its name in the local native language, and the pollution of Lake Baikal has brought Irkutsk region to the bottom of the ecological rating. Tayga.info recounts the most memorable events of the week in Siberia.
Beautiful Omsk of the future
In 2040, Omsk will be transformed. According to the general plan developers, by then several pedestrian and bicycle bridges across the Irtysh and Om rivers will be built, tram tracks will return to the main streets, and sports facilities will appear in the parks of the city. Gorod55 retells the main dreams of Omsk urbanists.
Terrible ecology in Irkutsk
Irkutsk region was placed on one of the bottom lines of the National Ecological Rating based on the results of the last winter. The environmental problems of the region include the lack of progress in eliminating the accumulated damage by the Baikal Pulp and Paper Mill and mercury pollution in Usolye-Sibirsky, IRK.ru reports.
A house with a difficult history in Tomsk
Over the course of its 120-year history, this Tomsk house has seen a lot: before the revolution, two students killed a hieromonk there, and in Soviet times, an academician lived in it and young technicians were building planes. In addition, the investigation department of the Tomsk People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs was located in the house, and now it hosts the NKVD Investigation Prison museum. The Tomsk Review writes about those who lived, worked, grew up and died in this house.
The native title of the newspaper in Khakassia
The world’s only Khakass-language newspaper has returned its former name Khakas Chiri (Khakass Land). The newspaper was published under this title from 1991 to 2008, and then the publication was renamed Khabar, the Sibnovosti website reports. The native speakers did not appreciate this name, borrowed from the Arabic language, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper notes.
The secret of Tuvan throat singing
Scientists have found out how performers of Tuvan throat singing extract two different notes simultaneously. The authors of the study recorded Tuvan artists in the studio and took MRI images of the singers’ speech organs, Tuva Online reports. Then, scientists built a three-dimensional model of the throat in the process of singing. It turned out that Tuvan singers can simultaneously narrow their vocal tract at two points in a special way: in the oral cavity, using the tongue, and in the back of the throat. This causes the effect of double sounds.
Elia Kabanov