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Abstract From the evolutionary point of view, the priority problem for an individual is not longevity, but adaptation to the environment associated with the need for survival, food supply, and reproduction. We see two main vectors in the evolution of mammals. One is a short lifespan and numerous offspring ensuring reproductive success (r-strategy). The other one is development of valuable skills in order compete successfully (K-strategy). Species with the K-strategy should develop and enhance specific systems (anti-aging programs) aimed at increasing the reliability and adaptability, including lifespan. These systems are signaling cascades that provide cell repair and antioxidant defense. Hence, any arbitrarily selected long-living species should be characterized by manifestation to a different extent of the longevity-favoring traits (e.g., body size, brain development, sociality, activity of body repair and antioxidant defense systems, resistance to xenobiotics and tumor formation, presence of neotenic traits). Hereafter, we will call a set of such traits as the gerontological success of a species. Longevity is not equivalent to the evolutionary or reproductive success. This difference between these phenomena reaches its peak in mammals due to the development of endothermy and cephalization associated with the cerebral cortex expansion, which leads to the upregulated production of oxidative radicals by the mitochondria (and, consequently, accelerated aging), increase in the number of non-dividing differentiated cells, accumulation of the age-related damage in these cells, and development of neurodegenerative diseases. The article presents mathematical indicators used to assess the predisposition to longevity in different species (including the standard mortality rate and basal metabolic rate, as well as their derivatives). The properties of the evolution of mammals (including the differences between modern mammals and their ancestral forms) are also discussed.

O. Mandelstam's poem Like chiaroscuro Martyr Rembrandt combines ekphrasis, testament of the poet, and declaration of social position: this combination has posed difficulties for interpreters. A number of obscure images, such as imprisonment, wealth, or a tribe of associates, are convincingly interpreted as Mandelstams deduction of his own biography from the circumstances of Rembrandts life, but this explain neither the expressive poetics nor the place of the Calvary plot among other life-plots. I suggest that one of the poems by the French Romanticist Aloysius Bertrand, Gaspard de la nuit, which is a synopsis of the images of Gothic novels, should be considered a key to the poem. Bertrands poem in prose contains the main images of Mandelstams poem in a short, and it may well be considered, if not a pretext of Mandelstams text, then one of the keys that clarify its plot. Thus, Bertrand understands the dark light of the crucifixion as an impression of the window frame at night, the searing pain as the onset of midnight, the guards and warriors as the presence of the ancestors and the curse associated with them, and the treasure as a hint of hell and incest. Thus the plot of Mandelstams poem is not to be reduced to a willingness to give up earthly goods and accept martyrdom in imitation of Christ, nor to a willingness to share noble poverty with friends. This plot, from Bertrands key, is reconstructed as follows: midnight threatens with nightmares, and the chief of these nightmares is the sensation of burning pain, the pain of conscience or the pain of the unfulfilled, with the onset of midnight. After this reflection on time passes into a dreamlike experience of what is happening, into a series of fantasies pointing to former treasures of life and to former impressions of art. In this dream experience, human brotherhood can only be experienced as a communion with shadows and therefore an inevitable bodily martyrdom. In the poem, Mandelstam reassembled Gothic Romantic symbols and emotional modes to distinguish between the subjective relationship to martyrdom and the objective martyrdom defined by the autonomies of art, soul, and body.

I reconstruct the general concept of hermeneutics of two prominent Russian thinkers: while diverging in their methods of cultural research, they both applied hermeneutics as an instrument of primary study of non-classical philosophy and science. Since non-classical knowledge requires special strategies of presentation that differ from conventional ones, they implicitly distinguished literary hermeneutics, which explores the boundaries of genres of presentation, and linguistic hermeneutics, which clarifies the minimal speech conditions for the creation of new knowledge. This did introduce the audience to the achievements of recent rationalism, but evaluating both projects required me to find out how hermeneutics has evolved from a tool in these authors into a field of discussions about contemporary rational knowledge.

The article examines the development of Joyce’s collage-editing technique of the collection “Dubliners” in M. Shishkin’s novel “Maidenhair”. The aim of the work is to investigate the rules of the transition of Joyce’s surrealist collage into Shishkin’s collage-editing principle, where a new type of collage, as an intellectual concernment, made it possible to comprehend editing, avant-garde and the destinies of culture in a situation of intercultural communication. The subject of this research is the specificity of Shishkin’s collage-editing technique in its dynamic development. The study required not only a comparatively-comparable method, but also a constant consideration of the general context of the evolution of the terms “collage” and “editing” in the 20th-21st centuries. And the approval of their standard literary significance. The analysis made it possible to reveal Joyce’s technique, that was close to surrealistic collage, in describing the general paralysis of Dublin at the beginning of the 20th century, is reinterpreted by Shishkin into a postmodern collage, where Russian reality was presented as initially non-integral, which had been in a state of paralyzed consciousness for a long time. And only love, according to both authors, serves to overcome such disunity. It turns out that true love on earth is unattainable, therefore, to form a general impression of its loss, Joyce turns to the editing technique that allows various love stories to collide each other, increasing the effect of alienation at the boundaries of their touch. Shishkin, rethinking Joyce’s type of editing into a postmodern editing principle, declares the hope of finding eternal love on earth, equal to vital energy. In the collection “Dubliners” and the novel “Maidenhair”, the theme of death represents a combination of collage and editing techniques at the same time. Where Joyce’s longing for a departed ideal is supplemented by the significance of the birth of something new (organization, idea etc.), but in Joyce’s world, death completes the life cycle of a person; and in Shishkin’s work, the boundaries between life and death have already been fundamentally erased, which allows the heroes, more precisely the stories as their embodiments after their death, to continue their existence.

Humans possess a number of traits that are rare or absent in other primates, including large brain size, culture, language, extended lifespan (LS), and long post-reproductive period. Here, we use a computer model, TribeSim, originally designed to explore the autocatalytic coevolution of the hominin brain and culture within the framework of the "cultural drive" theory, to find out how culture and brain could coevolve with LS (or aging rate). We show that in the absence of culture, the evolution of LS depends on the intensity of the between-group competition (BGC): strong BGC results in shorter LS. Culture, however, favors genetic evolution of longer LS even if the BGC is strong. Extended LS, in turn, enhances cultural development, thus creating positive feedback. Cultural evolution of LS (accumulation of survival-enhancing or survival-impairing knowledge) differs from the genetic evolution of the same trait, partially because "memes" (ideas, skills, and behaviors) that reduce the risk of death tend to spread in the meme pool even if it is not beneficial to genes. Consequently, cultural evolution of aging tends to result in longer LS than genetic evolution of the same trait. If LS evolves both genetically and culturally, the typical result is a society in which young individuals, due to their genetic predisposition, lead a riskier lifestyle in exchange for a chance to gain additional resources, but accumulate survival-enhancing knowledge with age. Simulations also showed that cultural evolution of adaptive behaviors can contribute to the genetic evolution of a long post-reproductive period, e.g., if the presence of knowledgeable long-livers increases the competitiveness of the group.

The word “distance” itself is ambiguous: it means both the gap between two things, and the very ability of a thing to be at some distance from another, to stand at a distance. In the first case, we are simply talking about the impossibility of things to interact in the usual mode, while in the second about the thing’s own position, its individuation, which does not allow confusions. The superposition of these two meanings is productive for thought: from Plato’s reasoning about the causes of civil disorder through Nietzsche’s melancholic concept of elitism to 20th century theories proceeding from “social distance” (R. Park) as one of the starting points for constructing social reality. Although the translation of this word into different languages is not a problem, since the visual metaphor suggested by the geometry course (segment of a line) is clear, in all cases it is necessary to take into account rather explosive potential of its semantics.

Phenoptosis is a programmed death that has emerged in the process of evolution, sometimes taking the form of an altruistic program. In particular, it is believed to be a weapon against the spread of pandemics in the past and an obstacle in fighting pandemics in the present (COVID). However, on the evolutionary scale, deterministic death is not associated with random relationships (for example, bacteria with a particular mutation), but is a product of higher nervous activity or a consequence of established hierarchy that reaches its maximal expression in eusocial communities of Hymenoptera and highly social communities of mammals. Unlike a simple association of individuals, eusociality is characterized by the appearance of non-reproductive individuals as the highest form of altruism. In contrast to primitive programs for unicellular organisms, higher multicellular organisms are characterized by the development of behavior-based phenoptotic programs, especially in the case of reproduction-associated limitation of lifespan. Therefore, we can say that the development of altruism in the course of evolution of sociality leads in its extreme manifestation to phenoptosis. Development of mathematical models for the emergence of altruism and programmed death contributes to our understanding of mechanisms underlying these paradoxical counterproductive (harmful) programs. In theory, this model can be applied not only to insects, but also to other social animals and even to the human society. Adaptive death is an extreme form of altruism. We consider altruism and programmed death as programmed processes in the mechanistic and adaptive sense, respectively. Mechanistically, this is a program existing as a predetermined chain of certain responses, regardless of its adaptive value. As to its adaptive value (regardless of the degree of "phenoptoticity"), this is a characteristic of organisms that demonstrate high levels of kinship, social organization, and physical association typical for higher-order individuals, e.g., unicellular organisms forming colonies with some characteristics of multicellular animals or colonies of multicellular animals displaying features of supraorganisms.

Probably the most “obscure” poet of Samizdat, Alexander Mironov, in his poem «Journey» created a cultural model that includes the spaces of Dante and Rimbaud, Tarot cards reading and epics about Sadko. The hermeneutical analysis and the search for the subtexts (e.g. allusions to Khodasevich and to Nabokov) allow to reconstruct the hidden plot of the poem: the dispute with Thomas Eliot and his poem “The Waste Land” about personal resurrection in culture. Using the same images of various religious and philosophical systems, Mironov, in contrast to Eliot, who proclaimed the main character’s «death from water» along with inability of culture to embody the idea of Christian resurrection, made his hero a wanderer and witness to the resurrection. Moreover, repeating the same scene of Tarot cards reading, Mironov clarified the puzzling scenario of fortune-telling in Eliot’s work.

The famous graphic image of Pushkin, made by V.A. Favorsky, is considered as a concept for the development of Pushkin’s talent, and may be considered polemical in relation to the interpretation of the Pushkin lyceum-student by Bryusov. Based on the analysis of Favorsky’s illustrations to the works of Pushkin, offered by E. Babaev and A. Korolev, I argue that Favorsky opposed the sociological and psychological consideration of early Pushkin with the concept of Pushkin as convincingly defending the independence of poetic ideas from the socio-historical context in all periods of his activity. Favorsky was in a dialogue with the Russian avant-garde, joining it in denying theatricalization as a key to Pushkin’s work, and supporting the radical gestures of the avant-garde as fit for a better remodelling of the independence of Pushkin’s early work. Favorsky’s graphics can be viewed as a metatext showing exactly how Pushkin defends the autonomy of poetry as a separate area, which should be thought not as a world of private aesthetic solutions, but as a variant of self-control, as opposed to theatrical provocations from the public.

Female mate choice copying is a form of social learning wherein females preferentially mate with partners similar to those they had previously observed mating with other females. The phenomenon is well established in many vertebrate species and some arthropods. Among insects, only one species, the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, has been shown to perform female mate choice copying under experimental conditions using two artificial male phenotypes (males dusted with powders of different colours). Moreover, this species has been shown to be capable of maintaining mate choice traditions, at least in laboratory conditions. In the present study, however, we failed to obtain unambiguous support for the claim that virgin female Drosophila (‘observers’) tend to prefer males of the same artificial phenotype as that chosen by another female (‘demonstrator’). The discrepancy is probably because our experiments differed in a number of seemingly minor details from the published experimental procedures. The results indicate that female mate choice copying in Drosophila is probably less robust than the present body of literature suggests, and that more research is needed to assess the prevalence of this phenomenon in different laboratory lines and natural populations of fruit flies.

In this work, computer modeling was used to study the influence of the polymorphism, specialization, cooperation, and unity of a population on its dynamics in an unstable environment. Monomorphic and polymorphic populations, specialization, and the generalization of individuals in relation to resource niches, as well as the possibility of the redistribution of resources between individuals, are considered. The dynamics of the population size was studied in stable and unstable conditions with different amplitudes of fluctuations in the amount of available resources. It is shown that a single generalized (polymorphic) population in an unstable environment occupying all resource niches gains an advantage over a set of independent populations that are individually specialized for their own niches. There is a discussion of the social and economic analogs of the results, which indicate the effectiveness of unity and cooperation among community members in unstable environments.

This review discusses genetic and molecular pathways that link circadian timing with metabolism, resulting in the emergence of positive and negative regulatory feedback loops. The Nrf2 pathway is believed to be a component of the anti-aging program responsible for the healthspan and longevity. Nrf2 enables stress adaptation by activating cell antioxidant defense and other metabolic processes via control of expression of over 200 target genes in response to various types of stress. The GSK3 system represents a “regulating valve” that controls fine oscillations in the Nrf2 level, unlike Keap1, which prevents significant changes in the Nrf2 content in the absence of oxidative stress and which is inactivated by the oxidative stress. Furthermore, GSK3 modifies core circadian clock proteins (Bmal1, Clock, Per, Cry, and Rev-erbα). Phosphorylation by GSK3 leads to the inactivation and degradation of circadian rhythm-activating proteins (Bmal1 and Clock) and vice versa to the activation and nuclear translocation of proteins suppressing circadian rhythms (Per and Rev-erbα) with the exception of Cry protein, which is likely to be implicated in the fine tuning of biological clock. Functionally, GSK3 appears to be one of the hubs in the cross-regulation of circadian rhythms and antioxidant defense. Here, we present the data on the crosstalk between the most powerful cell antioxidant mechanism, the Nrf2 system, and the biorhythm-regulating system in mammals, including the impact of GSK3 overexpression and knockout on the Nrf2 signaling. Understanding the interactions between the regulatory cascades linking homeostasis maintenance and cell response to oxidative stress will help in elucidating molecular mechanisms that underlie aging and longevity.

Drosophila melanogaster fruit flies are an important model for studying the multifaceted interactions between a multicellular organism and its microbiome. The nature of these interactions is largely determined by the regular changes in abundance and composition of the microbiome that occur during the host’s life. The currently available data on age- and life cycle stage-related changes in the Drosophila microbiome relate mainly to its bacterial component, while little is known about such changes in the equally important yeast component. The present work describes the quantitative and qualitative composition of the yeast component of the D. melanogaster microbiome in three laboratory lines, reared under different conditions, at four developmental stages: late larvae and adults aged 1, 7, and 14 days after eclosion. In all three lines, the total yeast abundance changed similarly with the age of insects, with the highest and lowest yeast counts in 7- and 1-day adults, respectively. In the fly lines reared on moderately unfavorable substrates supplemented with 2 and 4% NaCl, the abundance and species diversity of yeasts at all four developmental stages was higher than in the flies reared on a standard (favorable) food substrate. Our results indicate the inconstancy of the yeast component of the D. melanogaster microbiome and its regular changes with the insect’s age, which must be taken into account when studying the relationships between symbiotic yeasts and their hosts.

The article discusses the possibility of making hauntology one of the methods of studying screen arts at the stage of their formation, which might make it possible to correctly interpret the use of early screen arts techniques in later cinema and television broadcasts. Hauntology is a method backed by a program of research into social life and the role of associations in maintaining stable communicative structures, which program is based on the assumption of “ghosts” as cultural actors inherently belonging to the cultural order. Based on the ideas of Jacques Derrida and Mark Fischer, going back to Sigmund Freud’s methods of studying the “uncanny” and “effect of reality”, hauntology claims that ghosts determine the modes of nostalgia and user orientation of a number of screen and visual arts, in particular, the visual principles of modern musical culture. Although hauntology researchers focus extensively on the world of ghosts in the culture of the 19th century, they limit themselves to private remarks and often optimistically presume the fact that the plot rationality ultimately triumphs over the power of ghosts. However, this contradicts both the actual history of the culture then, and the basic principles of hauntology, which asserts that ghosts cannot be fully rationalized. Therefore, the article proposes a visual-critical hauntology, which allows us to explain how visualization techniques contributed to the rationalization of ghostly existence, and how, to create the effect of reality, a screen was required as the basic method of this visualization. Vladimir Toporov’s work on the mystical prose of Turgenev provides the main source of visual-critical hauntology thus proving the need for screen projection to express the author’s position in the era under consideration. The article establishes a connection between the ghostly statuses and the need for a screen reflection mode, which provides a consistent description of psychological reality. It is pointed out that a number of literary experiments of the Victorian era require a screen medium as a basis for understanding the independent sequence of events, from the plot of internal psychological transformation in Dickens’s A Christmas Carol to the “unreliable storyteller” technique in Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw. Visual-critical hauntology, referring to the history of psychology, the decisions of directors, especially Hitchcock, indisputably proves that it is possible to cope with ghosts and rationalize them not with the help of everyday life staging, as it is usually considered, but with the help of its adaptation, which allows to apply emerging technology for creation long-term effect of reality.

The article examines the applicability of new interdisciplinary methods to the artistic process in Russia using the example of three new books exploring the problems of contemporary art. These books prove the applicability of the achievements of intellectual magazine criticism (Kira Dolinina), institutional criticism (Stanislav Savitsky), and gender criticism (Olesya Avramenko) to the local artistic life of recent decades. What unites these books is criticism of criticism: an articulated metaposition to the critical strategies that have developed in the art community. Each of the three books is written by a professional and addresses several audiences at once: artists, art researchers, and the general public. Although all three books differ in genre and way of presentation, they have a lot in common: way from works or examples of artistic activity familiar to the public to problematization of the institutional side of contemporary Russian art. We consider in detail the context of the origin of these books, presentation features, correlation with academic research. We made a general conclusion about the importance of institutional research for the further development of Russian art criticism.

The reliability of evolutionary reconstructions based on the fossil record critically depends on our knowledge of the factors affecting the fossilization of soft‐bodied organisms. Despite considerable research effort, these factors are still poorly understood. In order to elucidate the main prerequisites for the preservation of soft‐bodied organisms, we conducted long‐term (1–5 years) taphonomic experiments with the model crustacean Artemia salina buried in five different sediments. The subsequent analysis of the carcasses and sediments revealed that, in our experimental settings, better preservation was associated with the fast deposition of aluminum and silicon on organic tissues. Other elements such as calcium, magnesium, and iron, which can also accumulate quickly on the carcasses, appear to be much less efficient in preventing decay. Next, we asked if the carcasses of uni‐ and multicellular organisms differ in their ability to accumulate aluminum ions on their surface. The experiments with the flagellate Euglena gracilis and the sponge Spongilla lacustris showed that aluminum ions are more readily deposited onto a multicellular body. This was further confirmed by the experiments with uni‐ and multicellular stages of the social ameba Dictyostelium discoideum. The results lead us to speculate that the evolution of cell adhesion molecules, which provide efficient cell–cell and cell–substrate binding, probably can explain the rich fossil record of soft‐bodied animals, the comparatively poor fossil record of nonskeletal unicellular eukaryotes, and the explosive emergence of the Cambrian diversity of soft‐bodied fossils., We present the results of long‐term (1–5 years) taphonomic experiments with Artemia salina buried in different sediments. The results imply that fossil preservation of soft‐bodied organisms depends critically on fast deposition of Al and Si ions and that the evolution of cell adhesion molecules in the early multicellular organisms probably played an important role in the sudden appearance of diverse fossil record of multicellular soft‐bodied organisms around the Precambrian/Cambrian boundary.

The article discusses the possible influence of the optical effects of the painting by F. Matveyev “Imatra Falls in Finland” on the imagery of Russian poetry from I. Annensky to B. Pasternak. It is shown that although Imatra was the closest natural landmark to St. Petersburg, the imagery associated with it could be not just an ekphrasis of the picture, but a “complex ekphrasis”, which included the features of the museum hall in which the picture was exhibited. The focus is on how the poetics of ekphrasis changes when other types of movement are taken into account, apart from the simple revitalization of still images. The analysis of the movement in this picture and the use of sources relevant to Russian Symbolist and world classic poetry, primarily Ovid and Verlaine, make it possible to clarify the specifics of some futuristic images of Russian poetry, such as a comparison of sea and beer in B. Pasternak’s “Themes and Variations”.

The online prose of Alexander Ilyanen, recognized as one of the most significant experiments of Russian literature today, is not only a reflection on the possibilities of writing and utterance, but also an experience of rewriting of written forms. Recent prose of Ilyanen is a kind of philological observation of the usability of different types of writing to assemble a meaningful statement about the current quarantine situation. Correlation of these types of writing with the usual genres is not relevant, even introducing general framework of the novel and drama. Renaissance Italian epistolography as a way of producing situations, rather than roman à clef, clarifies Ilyanen’s prose strategies. A detailed analysis of the Renaissance letters by Poggio proves that he did not affirm the new model of language use, reviving the Cicero ideal, but he controlled effects of writing and biography, to improve official policy. The irony, intrigues, hints, social designing in these letters anticipate the tactics of professional blogging by eminent writers, but differ in responsibility for political decisions of both authors and persons mentioned.

Homo sapiens and naked mole rats (Heterocephalus glaber) are vivid examples of social mammals that differ from their relatives in particular by an increased lifespan and a large number of neotenic features. An important fact for biogerontology is that the mortality rate of H. glaber (a maximal lifespan of more than 32 years, which is very large for such a small rodent) negligibly grows with age. The same is true for modern people in developed countries below the age of 60. It is important that the juvenilization of traits that separate humans from chimpanzees evolved over thousands of generations and millions of years. Rapid advances in technology resulted in a sharp increase in the life expectancy of human beings during the past 100 years. Currently, the human life expectancy has exceeded 80 years in developed countries. It cannot be excluded that the potential for increasing life expectancy by an improvement in living conditions will be exhausted after a certain period of time. New types of geroprotectors should be developed that protect not only from chronic phenoptosis gradual poisoning of the body with reactive oxygen species (ROS) but also from acute phenoptosis, where strong increase in the level of ROS immediately kills an already aged individual. Geroprotectors might be another anti-aging strategy along with neoteny (a natural physiological phenomenon) and technical progress.

Relationship between symbiotic yeast and Diptera insects are studied mainly on fruit flies (Drosophilidae). Evolutionary experiments showed that changes in the composition of the yeast microbiota vectored by flies in their gut and on the body surface contributes to the adaptation of laboratory Drosophila populations to the high-salt growth medium. Although saline substrates are not commonly used by Drosophilidae in nature, species adapted to such substrates are known in other families of Diptera. Yeast communities associated with these species are studied insufficiently. This is the first report on the yeast communities associated with two Diptera species living near the White Sea, Paracoenia fumosa (Stenhammar, 1844) (Ephydridae) and Fucellia fucorum (Fallen, 1819) (Anthomyiidae). Their larvae develop in the coastal saline lagoons and in algae driven ashore. The P. fumosa yeast microbiota includes opportunistic species Pichia kluyveri Bedford ex Kudryavtsev, 1960 and P. kudriavzevii Boidin, Pignal, Besson, 1965 and is characterized by its highly variable abundance (the number of colony-forming units varies widely in different individuals). F. fucorum is characterized by a more stable yeast community, including species common in White Sea algae and coastal waters (Debaryomyces hansenii (Zopf) Lodder, Kreger-van Rij, 1952, Metschnikowia zobellii (van Uden, Castelo-Branco) van Uden, 1962, and M. bicuspidata (Metschnikoff) Kamienski, 1899). These two species of littoral flies shared no common yeast species. Moreover, none of the yeast species found in the littoral flies was detected in the evolutionary experiment on the adaptation of Drosophila to the high-salt growth medium (the similarity is limited only to the Pichia genus level). Contrasting differences in the yeast microbiome of two ecologically similar littoral species of Diptera may indicate, on the one hand, specificity, and, on the other, evolutionary plasticity of the relationship between salt-tolerant flies and yeast.

The perception of Giotto’s heritage in Russian literature and culture has always been directly linked not only with the concept of the Renaissance and the development of Western culture, but with a special interest in writing practice and in the ambition of the narrative presented as innovative style to create communities. The main topic of the poetic thought was the transition from community to society, in other words, from community to church, so Giotto's status as a genius was always supported with statements about other geniuses who directly, but rather indirectly, made this transition. Despite the scarcity of references to the name Giotto, Russian poetry did not so much reflect the current art history conception, but anticipates or correctsconclusions of art historians. My careful analysis of the statements about Giotto in Russian poetry (V.Komarovsky, S.Soloviev, A.Voznesensky) in comparison with the conclusions of Russian philosophy and humanities (P.Florensky, P.Muratov, P.Bitsilli, V.Lazarev)explains plots of the poems related to picturesque impressions. The technique of chiaroscuro in Giotto, who first began to convey plausible depth through the illusory distribution of light, was understood as a technique primarily of hint and reflection, anegative, in comparison with which later Italian painting looks like a colorful positive. Such concept did not correspond to Giotto's real place in the history of art, but it did make it possible to correlate Giotto with Byzantine and Old Russian art using a golden background, emphasizing in the legacy of the Italian artist not credibility, but ability to create own art project relevant other projects.

The article examines the polygraphic prerequisites for social reflection of the late Soviet and post-Soviet intellectuals and the connection between the autonomy of intellectual work and the autonomy of the publishing cycle. Based on a comparison of changes in publishing technologies and procedures for preparing manuscripts for printing, the change of large paradigms in the perestroika era is reconstructed as derivatives of the cult of reading and the system of institutions that support it. It is argued that although intellectuals upheld the classical canon, the very ways of canonizing works of the past were deformed by changing publishing procedures. The crisis in publishing planning coincided with a new understanding of the intellectual's mission, which meant the establishment of new types of reading as dominant. Thus, the thought of autonomous culture and the simultaneous reconceptualization of world literature contributed to the understanding of publishing procedures as autonomously significant. The disintegration of the disciplinary order of the Soviet publishing sphere and independent scientific book publishing made it possible to complete the project of describing literature as a place of production of norms for the reception of culture that cast doubt on the previous state of literature, thereby approving the program of post-Soviet cultural studies.

A recently published book of Irina Sirotkina on the specifics of the dance culture of the twentieth century is under review in this article. This book, compiled as an anthology or textbook, surpasses the objectives of such a manual, being a perfect generalization that takes into account the achievements of anthropology. Sirotkina shows the characteristics of dance as a social phenomenon marking “cultural” social practices, and proves that the 20th century was an era of emancipation, that turned dance from a marker of elitist appropriation into one of the universally relevant semiotic models of culture. The book is not constructed as an introduction to the subject or a consistent presentation of its history, but as a series of problem statements. In particular, the book indicates how Nietzsche’s philosophy influenced the change in body status. Dance is considered not as a form of leisure, but as a form of organization of movement, including labor, with reference to such theorists of proletarian labor as Alexey Gastev. The book analyzes the features of choreography and choreographic pedagogy, and how naturalistic approach, which at the beginning of the 20th century was a mask for emancipation, then itself required certain emotional reinforcements and a support system in the intermedial interactions. The book also shows the socio-political consequences of self-awareness of culture in the form of dance and plastic, and it is proved that ideology of plastic (classicism) now is succeeded by ideology of dance (modernism and postmodernism). At the same time, the author of the book argues that the dance metaphor based on general ideas about movement and the body is strong enough, so that the development of choreography in the 20th century is more lasting than contingent. The article raises the question of whether such a training book can refer to the specifics of dance as a cultural phenomenon of the twentieth century, relying only on the philosophy of dance and the difference between classical and non-classical philosophy in general.

Symbiotic microbes affect many aspects of the life of multicellular organisms and may favor their adaptation to a changing environment, but there is little direct experimental evidence of such a contribution. To assess the possible role of the microbiome in the adaptation of Drosophila melanogaster to a high-NaCl feed substrate, we used two laboratory lines of salt-adapted flies (C1, C2) and two control lines cultivated on a standard feed without salt (H1, H2). We have already shown that the presowing of homogenate of flies C1 on the surface of a saline feed increases the breeding efficiency and enhances the development of drosophila larvae in comparison with a homogenate of H1 flies. We repeated this experiment for lines C2 and H2 and obtained similar data, which proves the reproducibility of the revealed effect. In addition, we found contrasting differences in the number and taxonomic composition of yeast in drosophila homogenates of the salt-adapted and control lines. The results correspond to the assumption that changes in the symbiotic microbiome, including its yeast component, may contribute to the adaptation of drosophila to unfavorable feed substrates. The possible evolutionary consequences of such a contribution are discussed in this work.

—Differentiation of body axes during formation of primary body plan is one of the most fundamental processes in metazoan development. How did body axes emerge in the course of animal evolution? How did developmental processes associated with axes differentiation evolve? The basal metazoans, representatives of the phylum Cnidaria, are valuable objects for resolving these questions, since they have an evolutionarily simple body plan and only one (oral-aboral) body axis. The high abundance and diversity of the modes of asexual reproduction is an interesting feature of this group. In this review, we summarized the data on the establishment of primary body axis and differentiation of main morphological structures during asexual reproduction in representatives of the class Scyphozoa. We found that the relative orientation of the parental and offspring body axes varies significantly and depends on the mode of asexual reproduction, and that the same body parts of the offspring polyp or medusa can be formed from different parts of the parental organism. The high plasticity of scyphozoan developmental processes can be explained by assuming that various types of asexual reproduction evolved from regeneration processes in this group. To test this assumption, it is necessary to study the molecular mechanisms of differentiation of the primary body axis and the body parts during regeneration and asexual reproduction of scyphozoans.

The spatiotemporal variability of environmental conditions is assumed to have a strong impact on the course of microevolution processes, including the efficiency of adaptation to unfavourable conditions and the probability of ecological specialization or, conversely, generalization (the acquisition of multipurpose adaptations). The experimentаl research on these effects is still at the initial stage, and the temporal, rather than spatial, heterogeneity of the environment is analyzed in most studies. We performed an evolution experiment that involved the adaptation of Drosophila melanogaster lines to two unfavourable media: a high-salt (S) medium and a starch-based (St) medium of low nutritional value. Some of the experimental lines had access to one of the two unfavourable media only (homogeneous environment), whereas the others had access to both media and could choose between them (heterogeneous environment). The control lines were reared on a normal laboratory medium (N) that provided favourable conditions for the species. The degree of adaptation of lines obtained on the S, St, and N media was assessed after one and a half years of adaptation. The reproduction efficiency (the amount of adult progeny derived from a pair of parents within a specified time interval), adult lifespan, oviposition rate, and ageing-related changes in the former were assessed. Flies reared in a heterogeneous environment were superior to those reared in a homogeneous one with regard to most adaptation parameters on all three media. The results agree with the hypothesis concerning the promotion of generalization and more efficient adaptation to unfavourable conditions upon spatial heterogeneity of the environment. The obtained data do not support the hypothesis of antagonistic pleiotropy, which leads to “evolutionary trade-offs” and a lower competitiveness of generalists than that of specialists under stable conditions.

Although the heraldry theme does not belong to the main poetry themes of Viktor Krivulin, it is indicative of his poetic reflections on the relationship between self-comprehension of the Russian authorities, the dynamics of Russian art development and the fate of a private person. V. Krivulin’s poems are adjacent to the poet’s numerous ekphrases in which the coat of arms acts as a lyrical motif and the marginality of the theme in his lyrical world proves some of the mechanisms of this type of ekphrasis. The coat of arms acts simultaneously as a representation of authority and an artifact or image, dependent on the general world art development and on the specifics of power and art relationship. Therefore, underlining in the coat of arms such aspects as collectibility, provocativeness, exoticism, correlates V. Krivulin’s heraldry poems with ekphrases, devoted to the presence of art in Saint-Petersburg and to the complex fate of artifacts in the vicissitudes of history. In V. Krivulin’s lyrical heraldry I trace the visual semiotics influence of the Tartu-Moscow semiotic school, primarily in understanding the unity of the material, form, perspective view and conditional symbols of coat of arms, which immediately recalls the method of analyzing iconography as a spiritual authority manifestation in the Russian structuralism. But at the same time V. Krivulin gives enough markers that distinguish the coat of arms from works of art, and thus showing the crisis status of art in the 20th century. I note that these coats of arms are not conditional, a reader can always find real prototypes of these coats of arms, and thus their function turns out to be a historical linkage of the lyrical plot to the historical one. Close reading of these verses allows to clarify relationship between ekphrasis and historical reflections, its paradox and dynamism in V. Krivulin’s lyrical poetry, thereby identifying in a new perspective a combination of deeply melancholic mood and satirical, almost close to Sots Art principles in his works.

The sets by M. V. Dobuzhinsky for the operas by Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky based on Pushkin’s works represent an attempt to reconstruct Pushkin’s world and Pushkin’s attitude to history. The libretto required a stylization and standardization of scenography, but Dobuzhinsky continued to interpret the images of St. Petersburg and central Russia, correlating the plots of operas with a new national upsurge. Thus, the plot of The Queen of Spades was understood as part of Pushkin’s view on the successes and failures of the Petrine reforms, about the connection between adventurism and the imperial style, which corresponded to the general cultural myth of Petersburg but was supplemented by a number of observations on the Pushkin text. The plot of Boris Godunov was read not as a Russian story, but as a common one for countries inheriting the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Russia. The plot of Eugene Onegin was brought closer to the dacha plots of Russian literature, becoming part of the integrated image of a lost Russia. It is proved that Dobuzhinsky in his decisions followed not the structure of the libretto, but a close reading of Pushkin’s texts.

Homo sapiens and naked mole rats (Heterocephalus glaber) are vivid examples of social mammals that differ from their relatives in particular by an increased lifespan and a large number of neotenic features. An important fact for biogerontology is that the mortality rate of H. glaber (a maximal lifespan of more than 32 years, which is very large for such a small rodent) negligibly grows with age. The same is true for modern people in developed countries below the age of 60. It is important that the juvenilization of traits that separate humans from chimpanzees evolved over thousands of generations and millions of years. Rapid advances in technology resulted in a sharp increase in the life expectancy of human beings during the past 100 years. Currently, the human life expectancy has exceeded 80 years in developed countries. It cannot be excluded that the potential for increasing life expectancy by an improvement in living conditions will be exhausted after a certain period of time. New types of geroprotectors should be developed that protect not only from chronic phenoptosis gradual poisoning of the body with reactive oxygen species (ROS) but also from acute phenoptosis, where strong increase in the level of ROS immediately kills an already aged individual. Geroprotectors might be another anti-aging strategy along with neoteny (a natural physiological phenomenon) and technical progress.

The article discusses the reasons for referring to the estate text of the poets-“sixtiers”. It is proved that it could not be caused by simple historical interest, but was caused by the crisis of poetics, at the same time the exhaustion of its resources and the inability to embed another existential trial in the inherited resource of existential experience. Then the estate turns out to be a place of remembrance, where nature can be indistinguishable from culture, and in this indistinguishability a drift is possible from simple and routine forms of the “sixtiers” poetry to more complex ones. The specificity of the estate in the poetry of the three leading Russian poets of the sixties, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Andrei Voznesensky and Bella Akhmadulina, is characterized, and it is shown that although the reasons for addressing the estate theme were different, the results, such as dialogue with tradition and updated author’s identity, a new reflection mode, turned out to be the same. This allows us to clarify literary estates as a resource not only of cultural memory in literature, but also of innovations in poetics or of those intermedial combinations and unexpected allusions that lead to innovations that are not limited to the thematic side.

Cambrian Lagerstätten host rocks are frequently composed of kaolinite and chlorite in varying amounts; accordingly, our goal was to study the preservation potential of crustaceans in these two clays. We conducted long-term experiments (12–18 months, the longest duration of actualistic taphonomy experiments from published literature) on the decay of Artemia salina in these clay sediments. The degree of preservation, transformed mineralogical composition of the sediments, and the elemental composition of the nauplial remains were examined. We demonstrate that the kaolinite and chlorite sediment enhanced the preservation (in the kaolinite the effect was considerably higher than in the chlorite) compared with the sediment-free control. pH inside the sediments dropped to 6.5–7.1 and was even lower (

The emergence of behavioural isolation between populations under divergent selection can be crucial for ecological speciation, but the mechanisms underlying such isolation are poorly understood. Several experimental evolution studies have shown that positive assortative mating (preference for similar mates) can arise rapidly in Drosophila laboratory populations reared in different stressful conditions, while other studies failed to confirm this effect. Here, we present the results of an evolution experiment in which outbred lines of Drosophila melanogaster were reared for 1-2 years on one of the three different diets (standard, starch based or high salt). We show that nonrandom mating arose in some, but not all lines, and that the manifestations and possible interpretations of this nonrandomness depend strongly on the type of tests used to assess mating preferences. More specifically, multiple-choice four-fly tests revealed positive assortative mating (prevalence of homogamic matings) in some starch-adapted and salt-adapted lines when paired with a control line reared on the standard diet, but competitive three-fly tests rather revealed competitive advantage of control males and females over the flies reared on stressful diets. The results imply that divergent adaptation can result in differences in mating propensity or competitive ability, which, in turn, may either facilitate or hamper speciation depending on the relative frequency of high- vs. low-competition settings in natural habitats of the diverging populations. The results also emphasize the importance of using diverse tests for assessing mating structure in natural and laboratory populations.