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In the article the results of investigations of the Sokolniy VIII settlement located in the Zvenigovskiy district, Mari El Republic are presented. The topography of site, the history of its study, information about stratigraphy and spatial structure of archaeological material are considered. The characteristics of ceramic complex of site and technology of pottery making are discussed. The detail description of the stone inventory and the main types of tools are presented. At the Sokolniy VIII settlement any constructive components of the cultural layer except for one fireplace were not determined. This fact allows the authors to interpret the settlement as short time site. The most of the pottery shards belong to the Krasny Most ceramic type of the Late Neolithic in the forest Middle Volga basin and have the direct analogy in the materials of the reference site such as Krasniy Most II-III, Sosnovaya Gora III, Dubovskoe VIII. The technology of ceramics is characterized by the stablility of the main components. The silt organic clay was used as main raw source. As a temper grog and organic solution were added. The stone tool collection is impressive. The nuclei and morphological tools total consist of 45 items. The most of typological types of inventory have analogies to the artifacts from earlier studied assemblages. On the base of radiocarbon dating the period of the settlement exiting can be concerned to the last quarter of 5th millennium BC.

The paper presents study the 11-year dynamics of solar activity on the basis of new observational material on coronal holes (CHs) and sunspots in the period from May 13, 2010 to May 13, 2021. We used the Heliophysics Event Knowledgebase (HEK) to obtain information on CHs areas. For 11 years of observations, we processed about 18000 CHs. Slightly more than 8000 are polar, the rest are nonpolar CHs. The statistical volume of the presented material is quite extensive and gives grounds for the study of the dynamics of different types of CHs during the cycle. Our research has shown: in the 24th solar activity cycle, the South led for polar CHs and the North led for nonpolar ones. We established a relationship between the number and area of CHs and the phase of the solar cycle. The number and daily total area of polar CHs increases at the minima of solar activity and decreases at the maximum of the cycle. This is consistent with the general concept of polar CHs as the main source of the solar dipole magnetic field. An asymmetry in both the number and areas of polar coronal holes in the northern and southern hemispheres is observed. It is shown that the areas of nonpolar CHs change quasi-synchronously with sunspot activity, which suggests a physical connection between these two phenomena.

Observations in the near-infrared wavelength range have been regularly carried out at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory (CrAO) on the Tower Solar Telescope (TST-2). It began in the late 1990s by putting into operation the Universal Spectrophotometer (USPh) at the TST-2 and it continues up to the present time. In 2020 the observation process was modernized - the mirror control electronics and software were replaced. Work is currently underway to create a catalog of solar disk images obtained before the modernization of TST-2. Here we present fragments of the catalog - several examples of a full solar disk in He i 1083 nm from the USPh/TST-2 instrument and a brief description of the future catalog.

The framework of land degradation neutrality (LDN) and the concept of sustainable land management (SLM) are ways to instigate action required to address land degradation. Although land and water management approaches supporting SLM and the achievement of LDN exist, the transition to sustainable agricultural systems is hindered by various factors and the achievement of LDN is lagging behind. More information on such approaches is needed to sensitize decision-makers for fostering their implementation. The framework of land degradation neutrality (LDN) and the concept of sustainable land management (SLM) are ways to instigate action required to address land degradation. Although land and water management approaches supporting SLM and the achievement of LDN exist, the transition to sustainable agricultural systems is hindered by various factors and the achievement of LDN is lagging behind. More information on such approaches is needed to sensitize decision-makers for fostering their implementation. This study responds to this need by examining the alignment of the following land and water management approaches with SLM and LDN: agroecology, climate-smart agriculture, conservation agriculture, forest landscape restoration, integrated agriculture, regenerative agriculture, and rewilding. The alignment assessment used a formative methodological approach combining literature review and extensive expert consultations, and is structured along the SLM and LDN pillars of ecosystem health, food security, and human-wellbeing, each comprised by several criteria, as well as selected cross-cutting socioeconomic criteria that span all pillars. The results indicate that each of the approaches contributes to SLM and the achievement of LDN in different ways and to varying degrees, with none of the approaches embracing principles or practices that directly conflict with the criteria of SLM and LDN. A higher degree of alignment was identified for the ecosystem health and food security pillars, while most gaps in alignment concern criteria of the human wellbeing pillar along with certain cross-cutting criteria. The results of the assessment led to the identification of entry points for addressing gaps in alignment via supplementary activities that directly target the gaps during project planning and implementation, as well as through adhering to principles and established guidelines. Importantly, conclusions about the degree of alignment or about gaps in alignment of an approach with SLM and LDN criteria are conceptually indicative, but may change in actual practice depending on where and how projects are implemented. Notwithstanding, clarifying the approaches' contribution to SLM and the achievement of LDN can help overcome the lack of formal intergovernmental recognition of the approaches, prevent misinterpretation, and ensure their strategic inclusion in broader efforts to remedy land degradation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the scope of this research, patterns of changes in the fatigue life and limit of metals under cyclic stress were identified and the most informative parameters were determined as the basis for developing a method for the universal transformation of experimental data on the fatigue of metals and alloys for their subsequent generalization. Experimental data on metal fatigue, obtained by a large number of authors for a wide range of grades of steels and alloys, under the influence of various combinations of factors, were systematized. A generalized dependence of the recalculated parameters of fatigue life and limit was obtained, its characteristics were assessed, and a sensitivity analysis was performed, confirming the universal nature of the obtained dependence. A system of parameters has been proposed making it possible to consider and forecast high-cycle fatigue processes for a wide range of metals and alloys, under the conditions of various combinations of operating factors, from unified positions and a more general point of view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the possible ways to increase the efficiency of cleaning separation could be the grain fortification of the heap feeding to chaffer sieve and intensification of grain sifting through this sieve. This direction makes it possible to develop the air-sieve cleaning with the pneumatic and inertia separator for high-producing combine harvester. Cleaning improvement will provide agricultural production with the equipment with higher agrotechnical capabilities and lower material expenses.

The process of possible automation of developing control actions is considered and presented in the article as the mathematical model that shows the economic mechanism of one or more business processes along with the formalized description of management accounting and controlling procedures. As a result, the information space model of the economic management system is obtained which is filled with a set of possible states created.

The article is devoted to the assessment of technologies, tools and methods for ensuring financial security of the banking system in modern conditions of business digitalization and informational transformation. Relevance of the topic is caused by the fact that financial security of the banking business entirely depends not only on digital tools of provision, financial sovereignty, state of economy, but also on force of geopolitical risks. Growing risks and threats in the finance sector heighten objectively the research interest in this issue when external sanction pressure on domestic banking system from the part of global market players increases. Imbalances in the global financial system, severe consequences of pandemic crisis, slowdown in the economy growth rate, decline in employment and inflation growth, as well as other factors determine the need to apply more rigid regulatory tools aimed at blocking negative trends.

The aim of the study is to formulate a methodological education strategy that is adequate to the modern socio-cultural situation, which will allow, when using the achievements of digital technologies, to maintain the humanistic dimension of the student’s consciousness. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the proposed methodological educational strategy – meta convergence. Metaconvergence is a way of realizing an educational co-being that initiates the reproduction of cultural matrices in the “sphere of one’s own” subject of education. Metaconvergence, forming the ontological prerequisites of knowledge, makes it possible to organize pedagogical communication in a special way, which is capable of synthesizing educational, personal and cultural dimensions into a single tissue. The research methods were phenomenological and systemic approaches. The phenomenological method made it possible to structure the problem of the methodology of education in the context of the premiselessness, as well as to thematize education in terms of the ability to form meaning within the boundaries of the subject knowledge. The use of the procedures of the systemic method made it possible to build the realizable tasks of the educational process into a system, the core of which is the concept of metaconvergence as a methodological educational strategy. As a result the use of the declared methodological educational strategy, educational tasks of the humanitarian, communicative, motivational and axiological spectrum are solved. It is shown that meta convergence makes it possible to overcome the boundaries of disciplinary paradigms and to approve the need for a humanitarian attitude at an interdisciplinary level.

The article discusses the question of how the participation of technology startups in the corporate accelerator affects their survival. We compare the activity of technological projects over 3 years according to the Startup Barometer and the results of the work of the corporate accelerator “Big Exploration” for 2018-2020. The survival rate of accelerator projects interacting with the UEC corporation is by 20% higher than that of projects developed independently. This research was partially supported by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation to Perm National Research Polytechnic University (topic No. FSNM-2020-0026).

The paper is dedicated to the innovative analytical research in the field of pneumatic separation concerning the issues of grain heap feed for harvester-thresher cleaning, composition of tailings and the amount of grain. The problem of improving the separation of air-sieve cleaning of modern combines is of great current interest. The cleaning design with the use of pneumatic and inertia separator of small grain heaps for high-producing harvester-thresher is developed. The engineering study is conducted for the installation of the 8-bladed rotor above the chaffer sieve for experimental cleaning taking into account dimensional limitations and minimal alteration of the current air-sieve cleaning. The results of the study show the opportunity of better operation of the design of small grain heap cleaning with the application of pneumatic and inertia separator. The developed solutions make it possible to reduce grain losses and increase the harvester-thresher productivity level, as a result of which it is expected to achieve the economic effect assessed in the study.

In this paper, a systematic study of the microstructure damage process of metals and alloys was carried out. The main elements of the microstructure surface image, as well as the rules for the formation and interaction of rough slip traces and cracks to determine the model of damage accumulation on the image of the microstructure surface under cyclic loading are determined. A classifier that allows to determine the number of loading cycles before a sample goes out of service is proposed. A modernized structure of the convolutional neural network was developed to classify images of the damaged microstructure of the metals and alloys surface. The proposed classifier for determining the number of loading cycles made it possible to achieve a classification accuracy of 78.43%.

A scientific approach to the assessment of trends in land changes based on the novel concept of Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) was applied to monitor the sustainability of irrigated farmlands in test areas in Uzbekistan (the Andijan, Namangan, Fergana, and Syrdarya regions). The tool "Trends.Earth", which was recommended by the UN Convention to Combat Desertification and developed as a special plugin for the Quantum GIS platform, was used to describe the dynamics of land degradation in the period 2001–2020. This study demonstrates the results of monitoring land productivity dynamics that reflect the investments in irrigation improvement during the last 10–15 years. A comparison between changes in land productivity measured via Normalized Difference Vegetation Index and its average value for the entire observation period is more informative than comparison with the initial 5-year period. More details could be noted through application of the "moving average" calculation method. The described trends demonstrate that the use of sustainable land management practices in the last decade led to a decreasing proportion of degraded lands compared to the average figure for the period 2001–2020 (from 25–40% to 10–20%). This trend is confirmed by reviewing state statistics and indicates the success of national policies and approaches to adaptation. However, the dynamics of land productivity in the study areas is diverse and includes "dry" and "humid" extremes, depending on climate fluctuations. Despite the generally positive trends identified across regions, the high dynamics of degraded hotspots and improved lands within certain areas confirm the instability of ongoing changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Resistance to chemotherapy and/ or irradiation remains one of the key features of malignant tumors, which largely limits the efficiency of antitumor therapy. In this work, we studied the progression mechanism of breast cancer cell resistance to target drugs, including mTOR blockers, and in particular, we studied the exosome function in intercellular resistance transfer. Methods: The cell viability was assessed by the MTT assay, exosomes were purified by successive centrifugations, immunoblotting was used to evaluate protein expression, AP-1 activity was analyzed using reporter assay. Results: In experiments on the MCF-7 cell line (breast cancer) and the MCF-7/Rap subline that is resistant to rapamycin, the capability of resistant cell exosomes to trigger a similar rapamycin resistance in the parent MCF-7 cells was demonstrated. Exosome-induced resistance reproduces the changes revealed in MCF-7/Rap resistant cells, including the activation of ERK/AP-1 signaling, and it remains for a long time, for at least several months, after exosome withdrawal. We have shown that both the MCF-7 subline resistant to rapamycin and cells having exosome-triggered resistance demonstrate a stable decrease in the expression of DNMT3A, the key enzyme responsible for DNA methylation. Knockdown of DNMT3A in MCF-7 cells by siRNA leads to partial cell resistance to rapamycin; thus, the DNMT3A suppression is regarded as one of the necessary elements for the development of acquired rapamycin resistance. Conclusion: We propose that DNA demethylation followed by increased expression of key genes may be one of the factors responsible for the progression and maintenance of the resistant cell phenotype that includes exosome-induced resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chiral plasmonic nanostructures have emerged as promising objects for numerous applications in nanophotonics, optoelectronics, biosensing, chemistry, and pharmacy. Here, we propose a novel method to induce strong chirality in achiral ensembles of gold nanoparticles via irradiation with circularly-polarized light of a picosecond Nd:YAG laser. Embedding of gold nanoparticles into a nanoporous silicate matrix leads to the formation of a racemic mixture of metal nanoparticles of different chirality that is enhanced by highly asymmetric dielectric environment of the nanoporous matrix. Then, illumination with intense circularly-polarized light selectively modifies the particles with the chirality defined by the handedness of the laser light, while their "enantiomers" survive the laser action almost unaffected. This novel modification of the spectral hole burning technique leads to the formation of an ensemble of plasmonic metal nanoparticles that demonstrates circular dichroism up to 100 mdeg. An unforeseen peculiarity of the chiral nanostructures obtained in this way is that 2D and 3D nanostructures contribute almost equally to the observed circular dichroism signals. Thus, the circular dichroism is neither even nor odd under reversal of direction of light propagation. These findings will help guide the development of a passive optical modulator and nanoplatform for enhanced chiral sensing and catalysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper provides an overview of the—evolving methodology for the land degradation neutrality (LDN) assessment based on studies at national, regional, and local levels in Russia. A review of more than one hundred publications in Russian language over the past 6–7 years allowed for analysis of the following areas: LDN terminology, LDN assessment at different levels, adapting a transition matrix; using the LDN concept for economic valuation of land, estimating LDN baseline, and using LDN as an integral indicator for sustainable land management. With the LDN concept, a global approach to monitoring land degradation has become applicable beyond the limited geographic scope of the drylands. The paper observes how the LDN concept has been broadened with the introduction of the LDN Index proposed to evaluate the rate of LDN achievement; a proposal on reconstructing transition matrices and adding land cover sub‐categories; approach of integrating traditional national sectoral systems for assessing land quality with an LDN add‐on. The broader relevance of the paper includes the justification that it provides for using the LDN concept by policy‐makers at national and subnational levels, in particular in Russian‐speaking countries. It includes the application of additional indicators to capture soil erosion, salinity, soil depletion, aridity, etc., and using different site‐specific LDN baselines, not only those time‐based but also factoring natural background trends like climate change, natural succession cycles linked with geological and geomorphological processes. Approaches for LDN‐based economic valuation of lands and typology of sustainable land management practices and models were also fruitful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We demonstrate the possibility of applying surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) combined with machine learning technology to detect and differentiate influenza type A and B viruses in a buffer environment. The SERS spectra of the influenza viruses do not possess specific peaks that allow for their straight classification and detection. Machine learning technologies (particularly, the support vector machine method) enabled the differentiation of samples containing influenza A and B viruses using SERS with an accuracy of 93% at a concentration of 200 μg/mL. The minimum detectable concentration of the virus in the sample using the proposed approach was ~0.05 μg/mL of protein (according to the Lowry protein assay), and the detection accuracy of a sample with this pathogen concentration was 84%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A series of 5′-phosphorylated (dialkyl phosphates, diaryl phosphates, phosphoramidates, H-phosphonates, phosphates) 1,2,3-triazolyl nucleoside analogues in which the 1,2,3-triazole-4-yl-β-D-ribofuranose fragment is attached via a methylene group or a butylene chain to the N-1 atom of the heterocycle moiety (uracil or quinazoline-2,4-dione) was synthesized. All compounds were evaluated for antiviral activity against influenza virus A/PR/8/34/(H1N1). Antiviral assays revealed three compounds, 13b, 14b, and 17a, which showed moderate activity against influenza virus A (H1N1) with IC50 values of 17.9 μM, 51 μM, and 25 μM, respectively. In the first two compounds, the quinazoline-2,4-dione moiety is attached via a methylene or a butylene linker, respectively, to the 1,2,3-triazole-4-yl-β-D-ribofuranosyl fragment possessing a 5′-diphenyl phosphate substituent. In compound 17a, the uracil moiety is attached via the methylene unit to the 1,2,3-triazole-4-yl-β-D-ribofuranosyl fragment possessing a 5′-(phenyl methoxy-L-alaninyl)phosphate substituent. The remaining compounds appeared to be inactive against influenza virus A/PR/8/34/(H1N1). The results of molecular docking simulations indirectly confirmed the literature data that the inhibition of viral replication is carried out not by nucleoside analogues themselves, but by their 5′-triphosphate derivatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With frequent reports of biased outcomes of AI systems, fairness rightfully becomes an active area of current ML research. However, while progress has been made on theoretical analysis and formulation of fairness as constraints on error probabilities, our ability to design and train modern deep learning models that reach the targeted fairness goals in practice is still limited. In this work, we focus on an interesting yet common fairness setting, where multiple samples are collected from each individual, and the goal is to maximally reduce performance disparity among individuals while maintaining overall model performance. To obtain such fair deep learning models, we use mode connectivity combined with multiobjective optimization to select the best model out of an identified feasible set of model weight configurations with similar overall performance but different distributions of performance over individuals. Our method is model-agnostic and effectively bridges fairness theory and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbocyclic steroids D-annulated at 16α and 17α positions with a 5-membered ring E are easily accessible via the interrupted Nazarov cyclization. Three steroid series have been structurally studied: chlorine-containing D-annulated pentacyclic steroids 2, their reduced derivatives 3 and their synthetic precursors – benzylidines of tetracyclic steroids 1. The presence of two conformers for pentacyclic steroids 2 and 3 have been found in crystals, where formation is evidently caused by the conformational flexibility of the ring E. Geometries obtained from X-ray diffraction experiments have been used as the initial ones for semi-empirical and ab initio quantum chemical calculations to confirm the reproducibility of the steroids' geometries by these methods and further used for docking studies against the human androgen receptor ligand-binding domain. The docking results have confirmed that the geometries of the studied D-annulated pentacyclic steroids perfectly match the human androgen receptor active site. Geometry analysis of docking results allowed us to explain the influence of subtle structural differences in series 2 and 3 on the ligand binding energy. Compounds with the highest binding energies have been studied in experiments on AR-positive 22Rv1 prostate cancer cells. Selected steroids revealed antiproliferative potency and inhibited AR pathways in 22Rv1 prostate cancer cells, including downregulation in NKX3.1 and PSA expression. A combination of pentacyclic steroid 2d with non-steroidal antiandrogen bicalutamide exhibited significant antiproliferative effects in 22Rv1 cells. The obtained results for this family of pentacyclic steroids provides insights for further structure–activity relationship studies towards novel drugs targeting nuclear receptors in cancer cells. Pentacyclic steroids are of great interest for the development of innovative therapeutic approaches in the treatment of prostate cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]