The Russian Academy of Sciences' Ural Branch had to reduce the number of staff considerably. Only 59 people are now employed with the institution instead of the 180 they had before, the Branch's Learned Secretary Evgeniy Popov told UrBC.

This shrinkage has to do with the adoption of Federal Act 253 relating to reorganization of the Russian Academy of Sciences; under this bill, the scientific organizations that used to report to the Academy will now be supervised by the Federal Agency of Russian Scientific Organizations. This means the Russian Academy of Sciences is delivered of some of its responsibilities.

'We used to manage 55 legal entities, including 41 scientific organizations, that is, 7,000 employees. Now all of them are handed over to the Federal Agency of Russian Scientific Organizations, and the only duties we have are those of conducting independent expert examinations but not those relating to financing. This is why we no longer need a large pool of workers, so all the laid-off employees are now on Sverdlovsk Region job market. Perhaps when the the Federal Agency of Russian Scientific Organizations sets up its Ural division, some of these workers will find positions there,' Popov said.

According to the Learned Secretary, these changes might have a bad impact on the progress of science and make a number of researches, primarily the younger ones, to move abroad.