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Research on cholinesterases and effects of their inhibition in the USSR and Russia since 1930-1940s till present is exposed in historical aspects. The first physiological and toxicological effects of cholinesterase inhibition were reported by Alexander Ginetsinsky during World War II, when academic institutions were evacuated from Leningrad to Kazan. The main scientific schools that initiated research on chemistry, enzymology and physiology of cholinesterases and their inhibitors were leaded by Alexandr and Boris Arbuzovs, Victor Rozengart, Viktor Yakovlev, Michael Michelson, Martin Kabachnik, Mikhail Voronkov, Ivan Knunyants, Alexandr Bretskin and others. They investigated the main physiological effects of cholinesterase inhibitors, and analyzed the catalytic mechanisms of cholinesterases and related enzymes. Their contributions are landmarks in the history of cholinesterase research. At the present time revival of research on cholinesterases in different universities and institutes is vivid, in particular at the Moscow State University, research institutes of Russian Academy of Sciences and Kazan Scientific Center.

The EMU01 Collaboration has employed emulsion chamber and pellicle detectors to accumulate a large database of heavy nucleus interactions. Samples include both minimum bias and central collisions, analyzed in a uniform manner to extract multiplicities and angular distributions of charged particles and nuclear fragments. We find that the main features of these distribution are well represented by geometrical superposition models. A unique feature of EMU01 is the use of emulsion chambers with thin foil targets to observe produced particle angular distributions with exceptionally high precision, permitting extension of fluctuations and correlations analyses beyond the resolution limits imposed by other experimental techniques. The data are generally well reproduced by interaction simulations such as FRITIOF (the Lund monte carlo for nuclear collisons) which include only conventional physics effects. However, the analysis of fluctuations and correlations via factorial moment and cumulant techniques yields some suggestive results which require further investigation, both by continued analysis of existing data and from Au and Pb beam exposures scheduled for the next few years.

The pseudo-rapidity density distributions of shower particles (n s ) are measured in central inelastic S + Au and S + Ag,Br inter-actions. The extracted maximum energy densities, while being higher for Au than for Ag.Br interactions, were found to be similar to those obtained for oxygen emulsion interactions. The correlation between rapidity density and shower particle multiplicity shows a small deviation from the Lund Model Fritiof for the highest energy densities in S + Au interactions, whereas the bulk of the data yields satisfactory agreement.