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Science 28 November 2003:
Vol. 302. no. 5650, p. 1489
DOI: 10.1126/science.302.5650.1489b
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ScienceScope

Russia is throwing an unusual lifeline to one of the highest profile science efforts in the Balkans. Next month, the Russian government is expected to sign a deal that would give Serbia more than $7 million worth of new equipment for the TESLA accelerator facility under construction near Belgrade. The bounty--including a particle injection system--is part of a broader agreement between the two countries to clear more than $300 million in Cold War-era debt.

TESLA, one of the few remaining jewels of Serbia's withered scientific community, will be used for fundamental physics research and for making medical isotopes (Science, 30 August 2002, p. 1456). TESLA's cyclotron is expected to be commissioned in September 2005, along with a beamline for producing the radioisotope fluorine-18 for use in positron emission scanning. And if promised assistance from Belgium, France, and Italy materializes, TESLA could be producing other isotopes by 2006. "We are fighting to make the project stable," says Nebojsa Neskovic, director of the TESLA Centre.

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