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Surface electric potential measurements are widely used in non-destructive inspection and testing of precision surfaces, for example, in the production of semiconductor devices and integrated circuits. Features of the construction and application of devices for measuring the surface electric potential using an immovable reference electrode are considered. Despite the need to increase the area of the probe compared to devices with a vibrating probe, measurement techniques with an immovable probe have a number of advantages and could expand the scope of surface electric potential measurements in the inspection of samples with precise surfaces. Models of the formation of a measuring signal in the presence of a spatial inhomogeneity of surface electric potential are presented and discussed.

Measuring devices and systems containing sensors that require sinusoidal excitation are widely used in information and measurement technology both in production conditions and in research practice. Examples include various types of metal detectors, eddy current flaw detectors, analyzers of liquid media, electrometers with a dynamic capacitor, etc. The aim of the work was to develop the optimal architecture and algorithms for the operation of intelligent sensors intended for use in measuring systems operating according to the sinusoidal excitation – response scheme.This paper describes the approach proposed by the authors to the construction of intelligent sensors based on modern microcontrollers, the distinctive feature of which is the continuous generation of sinusoidal excitation and reading responses in the background, as well as setting the readiness flags for data processing in the main process of the microprocessor, which ensures uninterrupted execution of background processes, the main of which is the generation of a sinusoidal excitatory action.This approach has been tested in the development of charge-sensitive surface mapping systems, such as the Kelvin probe based on a vibrating capacitor, and the surface photo voltage probe for the case of semiconductors.

Goal. To estimate a possibility of correction laboratory abnormalities (increased level of cholesterol and/or triglycerides at blood of HIV-positive children) by switch the boosted PI on HIV integrase inhibitor (Raltegravir). Methods. The retrospective study was conducted in group of 58 HIV-positive children (less 18 yo). Inclusion criteria were increasing level of cholesterol in blood (more than 5,0 mmol/l) and/or the triglyceride (more than 2,3 mmol/l) ART with boosted PI. The ART regime was changed for all children (n=58). Boosted PI was replaced to integrase inhibitor (RAL). RAL formulation (chewable tablets, 25mg and 100mg) used accordingly weight. Time horizon of observation and laboratory control after boosted PI switch was 24 months. Results. Lab abnormalities in study group (n=58) after switch to RAL were changed: reliable decrease in level of cholesterol (p

Saint-Petersburg is among the leaders in medical treatment of HIV-positive pregnant women and their children. The joint efforts of AIDS Center, women’s consultation clinics, and maternity hospitals ensure the low rate of mother-tochild HIV transmission (1.3 % in 2007). The article reviews some advances as well as problems related to the medical treatment of HIV-positive pregnant women. The analysis of those issues will contribute to creation of a better healthcare system for pregnant women, will raise the awarness of how important medical monitroting and preventive care are and will favour further reduction of mother-to child transmission.

The manuscript provides comparative cost assessment of HIV PMTCT and family planning program among HIV infected women.Materials and Methods: calculation is based on the state healthcare system costs of complex/combined 3-stage perinatal HIV prophylaxis, follow up antiretroviral therapy and social costs related to rehabilitation and education HIV infected children. Cost benefit analysis is conducted on utility per 1 RUB of budget investment.Results and discussion: HIV PMTCT cost benefit is 3,33 per 1 RUB of investment in long-term perspective. Analysis stated average family planning expenditure will be 3,69 K RUB despite 21,72 K RUB per patient without family planning service. As result cost benefit family planning program among HIV infected women is 4,89 RUB per 1 RUB of investment.Conclusion. Broad access to reproductive health service is key milestone of quality of life among HIV infected patients and it would be positioning as economically reasonable HIV prevention and cost containment measure.

Involutional hormonal processes characteristic of the postmenopause are accompanied by disorders that deteriorate the quality of life in the female population and lead to an increased risk of developing metabolic diseases of the bones and cardiovascular system. In modern medicine, it is extremely important to understand the pathogenesis of postmenopausal osteoporosis (PMO) in association with cardiovascular diseases, which are the main causes of mortality in the population.This review is devoted to determining the key aspects of the pathogenesis of PMO and identifying their relationships with cardiovascular pathology. Epidemiological data are assessed, the main mechanisms of PMO and vascular pathology development are considered, the fundamental role of hormone deficiency, immune dysregulation disorders, and disorders of macrophage polarization is described, and data on the association between the pathogenesis links of the studied pathological processes are analyzed.The obtained data will form a unified approach to reducing the growing prevalence of cardiovascular diseases and complications of PMO and contribute to the development of new research areas in disease prevention.

Aim. To evaluate the prognostic value of pAKT1 expression by tumor cells in patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma.Materials and methods. The study included 90 patients with newly diagnosed diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), who were treated at the clinic of Kirov Research Institute of Hematology and Blood Transfusion from 2014 to 2017 and received standard first-line polychemotherapy according to the R-CHOP regimen. Using immunohistochemical and morphometric methods, the relative number of tumor cells expressing pAKT1 was determined. Using the two-sided Fisher’s exact test, the relationship of different levels of marker expression with clinical and laboratory parameters of patients and long-term treatment results was analyzed. The impact of pAKT1 on the risk of an adverse event was assessed using the Cox regression analysis.Results. Overexpression of pAKT1 is associated with unfavorable clinical characteristics of patients with DLBCL, excessive expression of the BCL2 and c-Myc oncoproteins, as well as with low rates of overall and progressive survival. Overexpression of pAKT1 is an independent prognostic factor and statistically significantly affects the risk of an adverse outcome in DLBCL.Conclusion. The degree of pAKT1 expression is an informative criterion that allows to predict the course of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. It is advisable to use the indicated marker when stratifying patients into risk groups.

Aim. Analysis of epidemic manifestations of natural-foci infections (NFI), clarification of spectrum of their causative agents, determination of epizootic activity of natural foci in the Crimea Federal District (KFD). Materials and methods. Epizootologic examination of 10 administrative districts of KDF was carried out. 291 pools (2705 specimens) of ixodes ticks and 283 samples of organs of small mammals were studied by PCR method for the presence of DNA/RNA of causative agents of a number of NFI. Results. Morbidity by NFI in KFD was registered by 6 nosologies: Lyme borreliosis, Marseilles fever, leptospirosis, tularemia, intestine yersiniosis and tick-borne viral encephalitis, wherein, transmissive infections made up 91.6%. Circulation of causative agents of Crimea hemorrhagic fever, Q fever, group of tick-borne spotted fever, Lyme borreliosis, human granulocytic anaplasmosis, human monocytic ehrlichiosis, hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome, West Nile fever, tularemia and leptospirosis was established. Conclusion. Due to activity of natural foci of NFI further monitoring of epidemiologic and epizootologic manifestations of these infections in the Crimea, including using genetic methods of analysis, is necessary for ensuring sanitary-epidemiologic welfare of KFD population.

The p14ARF-Hdm2-p53 signaling pathway targets tumor growth suppression, inhibits clonal proliferation, and maintains genome stability. It is inactivated in most human malignancies. The p14ARF protein is one of the main participants in the cascade. The aim of the study was to determine the prognostic value of the number of p14ARF-expressing tumor cells in biopsies of patients with diffuse large B cell lymphoma (DLBCL). Material and methods. The formalin-fixed paraffin embedded samples of tumor tissue of 104 patients with newly diagnosed DLBCL were included to the study. The relative number of cells expressing p14ARF was determined by immunohistochemical and morphometric methods. Differences in the content of p14ARF-positive tumor cells between groups of patients divided according to clinical and laboratory parameters were determined using the Mann–Whitney U test. Prediction of an unfavorable response to therapy was carried out using binary logistic regression with calculation of the odds ratio and 95 % confidence interval; variables were selected using Wald backward elimination method. The risk of an event occurring was calculated using Cox regression analysis. Results. The content of p14ARF-positive cells is higher in tumor biopsies of patients with high and high-intermediate risk according to the international prognostic index than in patients with low and lowintermediate risk. A relationship between an increase in the number of p14ARF-positive tumor cells, the absence of a complete response to first-line R-CHOP therapy, and an increased risk of death in patients with DLBCL has been established. Conclusions. The studied marker p14ARF can be used as an additional morphological predictor of the unfavorable course of DLBCL.

Background. Diffuse large B cell lymphoma (DLBCL) is one of the most common non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas. The effectiveness of R-CHOP (rituximab, cyclophosphamide, hydroxydaunorubicin, oncovin, prednisone) therapy was observed in about 60 % of patients, in 20–30 % of cases DLBCL is characterized by a refractory course. Standard clinical prognostic criteria do not accurately determine the prognosis of the disease. In this regard, the problem of developing additional predictors of DLBCL course remains relevant today and is directly related to the molecular pathogenesis of the disease.The objective: to determine the relationship of pSTAT3, pSyk with c-Myc, p53, BCL2 oncoproteins expression and survival of DLBCL patients.Materials and methods. Biopsy specimens of lymph nodes and other organs and tissues obtained from 100 patients with newly diagnosed DLBCL were used for the study. All patients received standard first-line immunochemotherapy according to the R-CHOP regimen. Determination of the relative amount of tumor cells expressing pSTAT3, pSyk was carried out using immunohistochemical and morphometric methods. The threshold value of proteins expression was calculated using the ROC analysis: for pSTAT3 it was 68 % of positive tumor cells, for pSyk – 28 %. The relationship of pSTAT3, pSyk with c-Myc, p53, BCL2 expression was determined using the Pearson χ2 test. Overall (OS) and progression-free (PFS) survival were calculated using the Kaplan–Meier method (log-rank test).Results. The suprathreshold pSTAT3 expression was found to be associated with a high content of c-Myc and p53 transcription factors in tumor cells (p = 0.015 and p = 0.010, respectively). In the group of patients with isolated overexpression of pSTAT3, the 5-year OS and PFS were lower, and the risk of death and disease progression was almost 1.5 times higher than in patients with low protein expression (p = 0.015 and p = 0.011, respectively). When studying the co-expression of pSTAT3 and pSyk, the lowest OS and PFS were recorded in the subjects with a simultaneous high expression of these proteins. With this combination of markers, the probability of an adverse event in patients when calculating OS increased by 2.9 times (p = 0.003; hazard ratio 2.9; 95 % confidence interval 1.43–5.85), and when analyzing PFS – by 2.3 times (p = 0.021; hazard ratio 2.3; 95 % confidence interval 1.14–4.87) compared with other variants of their simultaneous expression.Conclusion. Overexpression of pSTAT3 is associated with unfavorable biological tumor characteristics and poor patient survival. The combined suprathreshold expression of the pSTAT3 and pSyk proteins is associated with lower OS and PFS values compared to their isolated expression.

The aim of the study was to evaluate the prognostic value of pSTAT3 expression in diffuse B-large cell lymphoma (DLBCL) in a Russian sample of patients. Material and methods. Retrospectively, the results of an examination of 50 patients with newly diagnosed DLBCL in the period from 2014 to 2017 were evaluated. Using immunohistochemical and morphometric methods, the relative number of tumor cells expressing pSTAT3 was determined. The relationship of various levels of marker expression with clinical and laboratory parameters was analyzed, and long-term results of patient therapy were evaluated. Results and discussion. The overexpression of pSTAT3 protein is associated with a non-GCB subtype of the disease, an advanced stage, the patients of 60 years and older age, as well as with a lower frequency of achieving complete remissions with DLBCL. Patients with a high degree of marker expression in tumor cells had lower rates of overall (OS) and progressive survival (PFS). It was revealed that the marker under study has good predictive ability, but is not an independent prognosis factor for DLBCL. Conclusions. The level of expression of pSTAT3 is an informative factor that allows predicting the response to standard therapy for diffuse B-large cell lymphoma. The indicated marker may be useful for identifying patients who need individualization of therapeutic tactics for this disease.

The territory of the Crimean Peninsula is an endemic one as regards various natural-focal infections. The paper contains the data on epizootiological survey of 8 administrative regions of the Crimean Federal District (CFD). Carried out has been small mammals and Ixodidae ticks census. Identified is their species composition. Performed have been the field samples collection and laboratory studies for the presence of bacterial and viral infection agents. Established is the fact that H. marginatum is a dominating species among the ticks, collected during the spring season, while the house mouse prevails among the small mammals. As for the autumn collection of samples, the dominating species are H. punctata and common vole, respectively. Laboratory investigation results indicate the circulation of the agents of Ku fever, tick-borne spotty fever, Ixodidae tick-borne borreliosis, human granulocytic anaplasmosis, monocytic ehrlichiosis, hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome and leptospirosis.

The article analyzes the main scientific approaches that determine the need for and the prospects of including psychological components into the theoretical model of mid-career managers’ activities success. Various working conditions and subject-object evaluation of labor outcomes should also be included. The result of the analysis is the refinement of the concept “the success of mid-level managers”, as well as the improvement of the theoretical model of mid-career managers’ activities success.