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BACKGROUND: The registry is the main source of information about patients with acromegaly for assessing the quality of medical care, effectiveness of treatment, determining the compliance of real clinical practice with existing standards and patient management protocols. AIMS: To evaluate epidemiological, demographic and clinical characteristics of acromegaly in Russian Federation and effectiveness of treatment modalities. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The object of the study was the database of the united Russian registry of patients with pituitary tumors with specific analysis of patients with acromegaly only. We analyzed the data of 4114 patients with acromegaly stored on the online system in February 2019. RESULTS: Based on the data 32% of patients had complete clinical and laboratory remission of acromegaly; the percentage of patients with no remission was 68%, among them 22.5% had significant improvements in clinical symptoms and a decrease in growth hormone (GH) and insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) without IGF-1 normalization. The average age of patients at the onset of the disease was 42.7 years and at diagnosis 45.8 years. The ratio of men to women was 1:2.6. In patients with acromegaly hypopituitarism was registered in 14.7% of cases and among them hypothyroidism (66%) and hypogonadism (52%) were registered more often. Among other complications the leading were diabetes mellitus (15.7%) and acromegalic arthropathy (15%). The proportion of patients receiving neurosurgical treatment increased from 35.7% to 49.6% in 20122019; the portion of patients undergoing radiation therapy decreased significantly from 17.7% in 2012 to 0.8% in 2019. Remission was achieved in 40.47% after neurosurgery and 28.95% after medical treatment as a first line therapy p0.01. The number of patients receiving medical treatment at the time of the study was 1209. Among them 51% of patients treated with long-acting lanreotide and 24% receiving long-acting octreotide achieved remission (p0.0001) CONCLUSIONS: The remission rate of acromegaly remains suboptimal despite increased surgical activity, which corresponds to global trends. Long-acting lanreotide was significantly superior versus long-acting octreotide in the rate of acromegaly remission, which does not correspond with clinical trials.

Revision of herbarium collections and analysis of rps4 and trnL-F molecular sequence data supports the recognition in Russia of four species of Polytrichum sect. Aporotheca. Most specimens from the territory of Russia previously named as P. formosum are transferred to P. densifolium. The species status of the latter is resurrected and the distinction of P. formosum and P. densifolium is discussed. The four species are described based on the material from Russia, their distributions are summarised, diagnostic characters are illustrated, and a key to identification is provided.

Unregistered marriages are becoming increasingly frequent in Russia. Such marriages (cohabitation, free unions) have always existed, but in recent decades they have become more frequent and in many Western countries are now a statistically significant alternative to the official family based on a registered marriage. According to the Russian microcensus of 1994, 6.5 percent of men and 6.7 percent of women were living together without registration and regarded themselves as married. The prevalence of unregistered marriages among the adult population of Russia is approximately the same as the rate in the United States1 in 1993 or in Great Britain, France, and the Netherlands in the mid-1980s—distinctly lower than the rate, even then, in Sweden (20 percent) or Norway and Finland (11 percent each) but higher than in Italy (1 percent), Germany (5 percent), Austria (4 percent), and Hungary (3 percent).2

SUMMARY A swarm sequence is an earthquake sequence where no single event is dominant in size. In this paper we define a ‘swarm’as an earthquake sequence where the energy difference between the largest shocks of the sequence is ΔKF 0.5 (KF is an energy class of earthquake and represents an estimate of the energy of earthquakes in Log units of Joules for the frequency range 0.5–2.0 Hz. the relation between KF and magnitude MLH is KF= 0.85 MLH + 8.3. Magnitude MLH = 1.3 Ms-1.3 for the Kamchatkan earthquakes.) We analysed swarm sequences if they contained five or more events of the energy class KF 8.5 (MLH 1.0) occurring three days either side of the largest event (or, when more than one event happened with the same magnitude as the largest, the first of these)—termed a ‘clue’ event—and were located not further than 50 km from this clue event. These criteria allowed us to select 32 swarms with clue events of KF 11.5 (MLH 4.0) in the period 1962–1989 in the Kamchatka-Commander Region. the majority of swarms (86 per cent) were located within structures subject to horizontal tension (mainly on the slopes of the Aleutian and Kurile-Kamchatka trenches and in zones of modern volcanism). At the same time the appearance of earthquake swarms did not depend on the fault nature of the clue event in that swarm. We studied the relationships between the swarm characteristics (swarm area, duration and number of events) and the clue-event parameters (energy class, magnitude and stress drop). the regression equations were computed for parameters with significant correlation (at 95 per cent confidence level). All three swarm characteristics depend on the energy class of the clue-event. Magnitudes MLH are correlated with swarm area and duration. the clue-event stress drop gives a negative correlation with the number of events in a swarm.

SUMMARY We considered aftershock sequences of earthquakes with magnitude M = 4.0-7.8 recorded near the Kamchatka Peninsula coast at depths of 0-59 km in 1962-1987. The events of magnitude M > 1.0 that occurred in the 3 days following the main shock and located not further than 50km from the main shock epicentre were recognized as aftershocks. Two types of aftershock sequences were distinguished: quakes with one to four aftershocks and quakes having more numerous aftershocks. Aftershock sequences of the first type comprise the majority of the considered events (more than 80 per cent). They are distributed within the overall seismic zone. Aftershock sequences of the second type tend to cluster in space. This type of aftershock sequence zoning can be a useful supplement to standard seismic zoning. The space distribution of the second type of aftershock was used to estimate the dimensions of the source of the main shock. A correlational dependence of source length and area upon energy, magnitude and seismic moment was obtained. Comparison of these estimates of source dimensions with those obtained from P-wave spectra corner frequencies shows good agreement. It has been shown that there exists a linear dependence between energy of the main shock and energetic difference between the main shock and the largest aftershock.

The Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) is situated in the north-east of Siberia. The area of Yakutia (3 103 200 km2) occupies one-fifth of the Russian Federation’s territory. In total 1984 species of vascular plants, 523 of mosses, 199 of liverworts, 703 of lichens, 911 of fungi and 2476 of algae are known in Yakutia. Among them 19 species of vascular plants, 6 of mosses, 8 of liverworts, 2 of lichens, and 2 species of fungi are included in the Red Data Book of the Russian Federation (2008). In this study all currently available information about locations of red-listed mosses, hepatics, lichens, and fungi on the territory of the Sakha Republic, is provided. Diverse climatic and edaphic conditions of Yakutia provide a wide range of ecological niches for the growth of species of different ecological requirements. Most of the rare species included in the Red Data Book of Russian Federation have narrow ecological amplitude. Majority of the species was recorded in mountain ecosystems on rocky outcrops, especially on limestone, at the banks of rivers and streams, and in old-growth boreal forests.