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Risk management has reduced vulnerability to floods and droughts globally1,2, yet their impacts are still increasing3. An improved understanding of the causes of changing impacts is therefore needed, but has been hampered by a lack of empirical data4,5. On the basis of a global dataset of 45 pairs of events that occurred within the same area, we show that risk management generally reduces the impacts of floods and droughts but faces difficulties in reducing the impacts of unprecedented events of a magnitude not previously experienced. If the second event was much more hazardous than the first, its impact was almost always higher. This is because management was not designed to deal with such extreme events: for example, they exceeded the design levels of levees and reservoirs. In two success stories, the impact of the second, more hazardous, event was lower, as a result of improved risk management governance and high investment in integrated management. The observed difficulty of managing unprecedented events is alarming, given that more extreme hydrological events are projected owing to climate change3.

Distribution of tritium between vapor and lithium chloride aqueous solutions at 30–80 °C has been studied with the aid of vacuum distillation technique. “Positive” H/T VPIE (separation ratio increases with solute concentration) was observed. This ratio depends linearly on the salt molality and decreases with temperature. The results are in agreement with theoretical estimates of “free” water – hydrate shell H/T isotope equilibrium constants done with DFT force field calculations and harmonic oscillator quantum statistics. Found growth of the separation ratio may be practically important for developing extractive distillation process to remove tritium from technological solutions and liquid wastes of nuclear industry.

Methylglyoxal (MG) – is a high reactive α- oxoaldehyde, which can be synthesized through various biochemical processes in vivo. MG is capable of interacting with nucleophilic groups of proteins, lipids and nucleic acids which leads to their glycation. Covalent compounds that formed in this process were named advanced glycation end products. Advanced glycation end products play an important role in the pathogenesis of diabetes, chronic inflammation, cancer and Alzheimer's disease. One of the most stable compounds, which is formed by reacting of methylglyoxal with the nitrogenous bases of the DNA molecule is N2- carboxyethyl -2' - deoxyguanosine (CEdG). This compound can be used as a marker for monitoring of various diseases, investigation of the role of glycation end products in their pathogenesis, as well as to search for the therapeutic targets. To perform our molecular-biological investigations by mass spectrometry, we synthesized N2- carboxyethyl -2' - deoxyguanosine, and have proposed a new method for purifying compounds by reverse - phase HPLC. As a result, we achieved the optimal purity of the sample, while substantially reducing the cost of the purification procedure.

Nowadays, the question about the negative impacts of liver fluke on the host organism and mechanisms of this damage is open. The bio-concentration of some heavy and toxic metals in tissue of adult forms of Opisthorchis felineus and its accumulation in liver tissue and cardiac muscle in the Syrian Golden Hamster (Mesocricetus auratus) model was analyzed. It is outlined, that Opisthorchis felineus infection leads to accumulating aluminum in a liver tissue of the host. It was also found, that adult fluke bio-concentrates iron and aluminum in their tissue. The shortage of such essential elements as Mn, Zn and Сu in infected organism is discussed.