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The article covers revolutionary changes in Egyptian foreign policy after the rise to power of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. The authors note that the new President introduced a multidimensional policy, taking steps away from traditional dependence on the United States of America. To this end Egypt diversified suppliers for armed forces with the assistance of France and the Russian Federation, simultaneously expanding economic ties with China and the EU countries. The focus on the GCC monarchies that provide significant financial assistance to the regime also remains the important component of the Egyptian foreign policy. The article states that the aggravation of water shortages forces Egypt to conduct more active relations with African states, primarily with the Nile basin countries, but those attempts are “too little, too late”. The authors conclude that after exhausting all diplomatic means, Egypt can apply military force to protect its own water security against Ethiopia, but such policy will lead to direct clash with the United States of America and deterioration of Egyptian influence in Africa. Key words: Egypt, multipolar foreign policy, "Sisi doctrine", GCC, USA, China, the Russian Federation, France, water security.

Purpose: Solving environmental problems in agriculture is an important aspect of human activity. One of the ways to overcome these problems is chemicalization, which was used in Russia as early as in the nineteenth–early twentieth centuries. The aim of the study is to cover the history of chemical pest control in the Pskov province at the beginning of the twentieth century and to identify the problems faced by the Pskov department of the Imperial Russian Gardening Society leaders in the course of events. Design/methodology/approach: Using both general scientific and special historical methods, the authors present an objective picture of the agricultural pest control organized by the designated organization, its members and residents of the province. Based on materials from the local periodical press of the beginning of the twentieth century, archival sources and scientific literature, the article discusses organization of the garden crops insect pest control by the Pskov department of the Imperial Russian Gardening Society within the territory of Pskov and its suburbs in 1908–1909 on the example of apple moth (“May worm”). Results: The analysis of the material studied allowed us to draw conclusions about the results and practical significance of the measures taken. In general, the measures had a positive effect, since the goal—the destruction of pests—was achieved. However, it became obvious that the insecticides used in the processing of orchards are dangerous not only for apple moths, but also for the living beings around.

Egypt is the demographic giant of the world with strategic location at the crossroads between different continents. The country was under rule of military generals since 1952 and the first competitive presidential elections in its history took place only in 2012. The latest period of military rule under the President Hosni Mubarak lasted from 1981 till 2011. It was a time of a relative stability and the lack of crucial reforms when Egypt was supported by generous US aid and tourism expenditures. Is this about to change after the ≪Arab Spring≫ and short term of Mohammed Morsi’s presidency? Such issues as demographic explosion and high levels of unemployment, forced military conscription, the lack of affordable housing and scarcity of water resources are examined. The author makes an attempt to analyze how Egypt is trying to cope with those challenges under the rule of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. To this end he looks into the development of different spheres of economic activity like tourism, the transit via Suez Canal, remittances and cotton agriculture.

The possibility to use the laser interference microscopy in order to assess the RBCs morphology in normal state and in interaction with cortisol and adrenalin as stress hormones was studied. It was established that the laser interference microscopy represented an important instrument permitting to receive the information about physiological state of the RBCs as well as of the organism in the whole in extreme condition. New aspects of cortisol and adrenalin impact on the RBC morphology are defined

The SPIRIT telescope aboard the CORONAS-F satellite (in orbit from 26 July 2001 to 5 December 2005), observed the off-limb solar corona in the 175 Å (Fe IX, X and XI lines) and 304 Å (He II and Si XI lines) bands. In the coronagraphic mode the mirror was tilted to image the corona at the distance of 1.1...5 Rsun from the solar center, the outer occulter blocked the disk radiation and the detector sensitivity was enhanced. This intermediate region between the fields of view of ordinary extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) telescopes and most of the white-light (WL) coronagraphs is responsible for forming the streamer belt, acceleration of ejected matter and emergence of slow and fast solar wind. We present here the results of continuous coronagraphic EUV observations of the solar corona carried out during two weeks in June and December 2002. The images showed a "diffuse" (unresolved) component of the corona seen in both bands, and non-radial, ray-like structures seen only in the 175 Å band, which can be associated with a streamer base. The correlations between latitudinal distributions of the EUV brightness in the corona and at the limb were found to be high in 304 Å at all distances and in 175 Å only below 1.5 Rsun. The temporal correlation of the coronal brightness along the west radial line, with the brightness at the underlying limb region was significant in both bands, independent of the distance. On 2 February 2003 SPIRIT observed an expansion of a transient associated with a prominence eruption seen only in the 304 Å band. The SPIRIT data have been compared with the corresponding data of the SOHO LASCO, EIT and UVCS instruments.

TESIS is a set of solar imaging instruments in development by the Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Science, to be launched aboard the Russian spacecraft CORONAS-PHOTON in December 2008. The main goal of TESIS is to provide complex observations of solar active phenomena from the transition region to the inner and outer solar corona with high spatial, spectral and temporal resolution in the EUV and Soft X-ray spectral bands. TESIS includes five unique space instruments: the MgXII Imaging Spectroheliometer (MISH) with spherical bent crystal mirror, for observations of the Sun in the monochromatic MgXII 8.42 A line; the EUV Spectoheliometer (EUSH) with grazing incidence difraction grating, for the registration of the full solar disc in monochromatic lines of the spectral band 280–330 A; two Full-disk EUV Telescopes (FET) with multilayer mirrors covering the band 130–136 and 290–320 A; and the Solar EUV Coronagraph (SEC), based on the Ritchey–Chretien scheme, to observe the inner and outer solar corona from 0.2 to 4 solar radii in spectral band 290–320 A. TESIS experiment will start at the rising phase of the 24th cycle of solar activity. With the advanced capabilities of its instruments, TESIS will help better understand the physics of solar flares and high-energy phenomena and provide new data on parameters of solar plasma in the temperature range 10 5 - 10 7 K . This paper gives a brief description of the experiment, its equipment, and its scientific objectives.

During the experiment with a polarimeter SPR-N onboard the CORONAS-F satellite, polarization of the X-ray of solar flares within the energy ranges of 20–40, 40–60, and 60–100 keV was measured according to Thomson scattering of X-ray photons in Beryllium plates with the following registration of the scattered photons by means of a system of six scintillation detectors based on Cs I(Na). As a result of observations for the period from August 2001 till December 2005, hard X-ray radiation was registered for 128 solar flares. During the event of 29 October 2003 degree of polarization of the radiation within the channels 40–60 and 60–100 keV exceeded 70 %, and within the channel 20–40 keV—50 %. Time profiles of the part of polarized radiation, orientation of the maximum polarization on the solar disc were obtained. The upper limit of the polarized radiation part for 25 events was estimated at the level of 8–40 %. For all registered flares time profiles (with resolution of up to 4 s) were registered, hard X-ray fluxes were determined, and spectrum factor was estimated. For the most powerful events which were observed during October–November 2003 and on January 20, 2005, the data on the dynamics of the characteristics of thermal and non-thermal components of X-radiation were obtained.