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The scanning nuclear microprobe of the Institute of Applied Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine is an analytical channel based on the compact electrostatic accelerator "Sokol" of the Van de Graaff type with the maximum voltage at the high-voltage terminal of 2 MV and is designed for local non-destructive analysis of samples of various origins with high sensitivity (~1 ppm), as well as for the fabrication of three-dimensional small structures of high quality using proton beam writing. The resolution of the microprobe is about 3 μm with a beam current of I ~ 100 pA and 0.6 μm with I ~1 pA. The maximum scanning raster with a focused beam on the sample surface is 1 × 1 mm2. The microprobe implements the techniques of particle-induced X-ray emission, Rutherford backscattering, and secondary electron microscopy. The article also gives examples of the use of the nuclear microprobe in physical research.

Purpose. The purpose of the study was to determine the distinctive features of the goniometric body profile of men aged 26-31 years old engaged in health-improving fitness. Material & Methods. The study involved men aged 26–28 (n=16) and 29–31 (n=17). The studies were conducted in compliance with the requirements of the Helsinki Declaration of the World Medical Association "Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects". Research methods: analysis of literary sources, ascertaining pedagogical experiment. The Torso program was used to determine the distinctive features of the goniometric profile of the male body. All data obtained in the empirical study were processed using mathematical statistics methods. Results. It has been established that there are no statistically significant differences in the measured goniometric indices between men of the 26-28 and 29-31 age groups. The values ​​of these angles for these two groups are similar, and the age factor does not affect their values. That is, the position of the head, frontal bone and spine in men in the period from 26 to 31 years remains stable. This conclusion is quite understandable, since in the first period of mature age, the main physiological changes in the body are completed and the body is in a state of stability. And given the fact that the age difference between group members is small, this is not enough to show significant changes associated with age-related changes. Conclusions. It was found that all the studied goniometric characteristics of men aged 26-31 years have significant differences from the norm, indicating an incorrect head tilt (angle α1 is less than the norm), excessive flexion of the spine (angle α3 is greater than the norm), which indicates a systemic violation of the biogeometric state of posture, requiring correction. It was also found that there are no significant differences in the body goniometry of men aged 26-28 and 29-31 years. Therefore, the development and implementation of special programs for the correction of posture disorders aimed at correcting the tilt of the head and reducing excessive flexion of the spine, maintaining normal body weight, taking into account the individual characteristics of anthropometric indicators for the development of personalized training programs and the correction of violations of the biogeometric parameters of posture are quite capable of improving the physical development indicators of men in the first period of mature age.

Relapsing polychondritis (RPC) is an autoimmune disease manifested by both repeated attacks and a persistent inflammatory process with progressive destruction of cartilaginous structures, in particular, chondritis of the ears, nose, larynx, bronchi, and joints. RPC is a rare disease (about 1000 cases have been described worldwide). Diagnosis of RPC and the choice of treatment tactics are very difficult, which is associated with the rarity of the pathology, undulating, unpredictable course, and the lack of specific laboratory markers.The clinical observations presented in the article confirm the complexity of diagnosing RPC. Before the disease was verified, both patients repeatedly consulted different specialists: the first patient was diagnosed 3 months after the onset of characteristic symptoms of RPC, and the second patient – 1.5 years later. Late diagnosis and the lack of a unified approach to treatment were the reason for the development of prognostically unfavorable lesions in the second patient – chondritis and perichondritis of the larynx.

This paper reports the results on obtaining and investigation of functional parameters of Cs3ZnCl5 crystals grown using Bridgman method from the melts of 3CsCl-2ZnCl2 and 3CsCl-1.995ZnCl2-0.005 EuCl2 compositions. The study of photoluminescence spectra obtained at 237 nm excitation shows the presence of the following emission bands: one at 325 nm caused by the defects or impurities, slightly pronounced band at ca. 450 nm caused by the presence of Eu2+ ions and a series of bands in 590÷700 nm range due to the presence of Eu3+ in the crystals. The presence of said Eu ions is confirmed by the luminescent studies with the use of excitation at wavelengths proper to Eu2+ (340 nm) and Eu3+ (465 nm). X-ray luminescence spectra include the bands with maxima of 235 nm and 285 nm which are caused by the core-valence luminescence, the band with the maximum at 320 nm caused by the defects and impurities and two bands with the maxima at 400 and 520 nm which nature is not clear (probably, it can be connected with the presence of Eu3+ in the samples). The study of light yield performed at the light collection time of 2 μs showed that for all the samples its value is ca. 6% vs. BGO crystal (Bi4Ge3O12) and the form of the pulse-height spectra for the crystals grown from both melts practically coincide. This leads to the conclusion that the transfer of excitation from the matrix to Eu2+ ions is absent and, according to the photoluminescence studies it can be assumed that Eu2+ exists in the said crystals as inclusions of CsCl:Eu2+ solid solution.

Aim. To present data from the AURA Registry (real-world data registry on AlbUminuRia detection rate among patients with previously undiAgnosed chronic kidney disease). It is important to perform population studies both to study the occurrence of markers (albuminuria (AU), decreased glomerular filtration rate (GFR)) and the prevalence of chronic kidney disease (CKD), which will provide information on the actual detection rate of CKD and the related markers in territories included in the registry of research centers.Material and methods. The article presents the first data from the AURA registry. Recruitment was carried out from March 6, 2023 to January 23, 2024. Thirty-four research centers in various federal districts of the Russian Federation and 104 doctors took part in the recruitment. We included 4580 subjects over the age of 40 years who had no previously established diagnosis of CKD and did not have type 1 or type 2 diabetes. During recruitment, the researchers were guided by the AURA study protocol (Version 1.7/12-26-2022).Results. AU more than 20 mg/g was detected in 64,9% of cases. At the same time, AU is more common at GFR values that may correspond to stage 3A of CKD. The rarer occurrence of AU in those examined with GFR >60 ml/min/1,73 m2 may be explained by less severe renal damage at this CKD stage. The incidence of AU was significantly higher in men, older people, smokers, people with metabolic syndrome, hypertension (HTN), prediabetes and overweight. The occurrence of AU also increased as HTN grade increased. AU detection rate was associated with hypertriglyceridemia, a high blood level of C-reactive protein, which is an integrative marker of inflammation that negatively affects cardiovascular risk.Conclusion. The presented first data from the AURA registry demonstrated the high AU prevalence in people over 40 years of age. A high incidence of AU was typical for patients with HTN, coronary artery disease, atrial fibrillation, heart failure, and prediabetes. An association has been demonstrated between the high incidence of AU and male sex, age, overweight, hyperuricemia, dyslipidemia, and a number of other cardiovascular risk factors.

The aim – to evaluate the clinical effectiveness, safety, pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, and immunogenicity of seniprutug (BCD-180) in patients with radiographic active axial spondyloarthritis (r-axSpA, or ankylosing spondylitis).Subjects and methods. 260 patients with active r-axSpA and inadequate response to nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) were randomized into three groups: seniprutug (BCD-180) at doses of 5 mg/kg or 7 mg/kg, or placebo. BCD-180 was administered on weeks 0–12–36. Patients in the placebo group were switched to BCD-180 at a dose of 5 mg/kg at week 24 and continued therapy at week 36. The primary endpoint was the proportion of patients achieving 40% improvement by Assessment in Spondyloarthritis International Society scale (ASAS40) at week 24. Secondary endpoints were proportion achieving ASAS20/40, improvement of 5 out of 6 criteria of ASAS (ASAS5/6), ASAS partial remission, clinically important improvement in ASDAS-CRP (Ankylosing Spondylitis Disease Activity Score with C-reactive protein) (ASDAS-CII) and major improvement in ASDAS-CRP (ASDAS-MI). The dynamics of the disease activity status according to ASDAS-CRP, the BASDAI (Bath Ankylosing Spondylitis Disease Activity Index) and BASFI (Bath Ankylosing Spondylitis Functional Index) indices, as well as the dynamics of laboratory markers (C-reactive protein anderythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR)) were analyzed. Safety was assessed by the frequency and profile of adverse events (AEs) and adverse reactions (ARs).Results. The proportion of patients achieving ASAS40 at week 24 with seniprutug (BCD-180) at the dose of 7 mg/kg and 5 mg/kg was 51.4% and 40.8%, respectively, compared with 24% in the placebo group (p=0.0012 and p=0.0417, respectively). Analysis of secondary endpoints showed that in patients with r-axSpA, BCD-180 at both study doses was significantly superior to placebo at week 24 in the following measures: decrease in the proportion of subjects with very high disease activity (ASDAS-CRP>3.5) achieving ASDAS-CII, ASAS20, ASAS5/6. A statistically significant decrease in the ASDAS-CRP, BASDAI, BASFI indices, as well as the concentration of CRP and ESR were demonstrated. Tolerability of seniprutug therapy was assessed as acceptable. Infusion reactions were the most common observed adverse events, the vast majority of which were mild to moderate in severity according to CTCAE 5.0 (Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events) and developed predominantly during the first administration. The proportion of patients with binding antibodies was 5.1%. However, no neutralizing antibodies were detected.Conclusion. Seniprutug (BCD-180) demonstrated superiority over placebo in clinical efficacy with a favorable safety profile and low immunogenicity as a treatment of r-axSpA.

Acquired images are often noisy. Since the amount of such images increases, they should be compressed where lossy compression is often applied for several reasons. Such compression is associated with the phenomena of specific image filtering due to lossy compression and the possible existence of an optimal operation point (OOP). However, such filtering is not perfect, and residual noise can be quite intensive even if an image is compressed at the so-called optimal operation point. Then, additional post-filtering can be applied. Thus, the basic subject of this paper is the post-processing of noisy images compressed in a lossy manner. The main goal of this paper is to consider the possible application of a block-matching 3-dimensional (BM3D) filter to images corrupted by additive white Gaussian noise compressed by a better portable graphics (BPG) coder with a compression ratio smaller than that for the optimal operation point and in OOP neighborhood. The tasks of this paper are to analyze the efficiency of compressed image post-processing depending on noise intensity, image complexity, coder compression parameter Q, and filter threshold parameter β according to different quality metrics and to provide practical recommendations on setting the filter and coder parameters. The main result is that the post-processing efficiency decreases when the coder compression parameter increases and becomes negligible for a coder compression parameter slightly larger than its value for OOP. The post-processing efficiency is larger for simpler structure images and larger noise intensity. Compressed image quality due to post-processing improves according to the standard criterion peak signal-to-noise ratio and visual quality metrics. For larger coder compression parameters, the optimal threshold shifts toward smaller values. In conclusion, we demonstrate the efficiency of post-processing and show that the BM3D filter outperforms the standard discrete cosine-based (DCT) filter. We also provide recommendations for filter parameter setting. We also outline possible research directions for the future.

Aim. To study the features of the course of COVID-19 in pregnant women, the outcomes of a new coronavirus infection and pregnancy, the effect of concomitant pathology on the severity of the course and the frequency of complications of COVID-19.Materials and methods. In the course of the work, a retrospective analysis of 109 medical histories of pregnant women who were treated in the infectious diseases department in 2021 with a diagnosis of COVID-19 was carried out. Anamnesis, concomitant pathology, results of objective examination, laboratory and instrumental methods of research, therapy, complications, outcomes of COVID-19 and pregnancy were evaluated.Results. The majority of pregnant women had moderate – 55 % and severe – 24 % COVID-19, 7 % – extremely severe and only 14 % – mild. A third of pregnant women had concomitant pathology, arterial hypertension was the most common; 80 % of pregnant women had complications of COVID-19: cytokine storm – in 50 % of patients, acute respiratory distress syndrome – in 17 %, of which 5 % required artificial lung ventilation. The mortality rate was 4.6 %. The structure of pregnancy complications was dominated by gestational hypertension, gestational diabetes, premature placental abruption, preeclampsia. Complications of childbirth – premature birth and premature discharge of amniotic fluid. However, in most cases, pregnancy (75 %) and childbirth (71 %) proceeded without complications. Women in 95 % of cases were discharged from the hospital with recovery or significant clinical improvement.Conclusion. Despite the prevalence of moderate and severe forms of COVID-19 in pregnant women, a high percentage of concomitant pathology and complications, in most cases favorable outcomes of both COVID-19 and pregnancy were noted. The presence of hypertension syndrome should probably be considered as a prognostically unfavorable marker of severe course and adverse outcomes of COVID-19 in pregnant women.

Aim. To investigate the prevalence and characteristics of polyvascular disease in the Eurasian region's population with one or more previously established locations of atherosclerotic arterial damage, and to evaluate the diagnostic importance of the ankle-brachial index (ABI) as a marker for polyvascular disease (PVD).Material and methods. A total of 1837 patients were included in the main branch of the KAMMA registry (patients with PVD), among which 91,6% had coronary artery disease (CAD) (n=1683). For further analysis, the group of patients with CAD was combined with 1222 patients included in the second branch of the registry — KAMMA-cardio, forming a patient population (n=2905), in which all patients had verified CAD. The mean age of patients was 66,0 [59,0; 72,0] years, with 60,3% being male. Peripheral arteries was assessed using ultrasound examination.Results. PVD was present in 95,6% of patients with coronary atherosclerosis: dual-region involvement was observed in 51,3% of patients, three-region involvement in 37,1%, four-region involvement in 3,4%, and five-region involvement in 2,0%. Stenoses of the common carotid artery were observed in 71% of patients, internal carotid artery — in 68%, lower limb artery — in 52%, and renal and mesenteric artery — in 8,3%. There were following diagnostic effectiveness of the ABI for detecting patients with lower limb artery stenosis was: sensitivity — 58,0%, specificity — 83,6%. The quality of antithrombotic and lipid-lowering therapy was insufficient.Conclusion. In the overwhelming majority (95,6%) of patients with CAD in the KAMMA registry, PVD was revealed, with nearly half of the patients having involvement in three or more arterial zones. In the patient population with CAD, there should be an active effort to identify patients with PVD, using at least the ABI determination and active modern antithrombotic and lipid-lowering therapy according to current clinical guidelines.

In risk assessment, numerous subfactors influence the probabilities of the main factors. These main factors reflect adverse outcomes, which are essential in risk assessment. A Bayesian network can model the entire set of subfactors and their interconnections. To assess the probabilities of all possible states of the main factors (adverse consequences), complete information about the probabilities of all relevant subfactor states in the network nodes must be utilized. This is a typical task of probabilistic inference. The algorithm proposed by J. Pearl is widely used for point estimates of relevant probabilities. However, in many practical problems, including environmental risk assessment, it is not possible to assign crisp probabilities for relevant events due to the lack of sufficient statistical data. In such situations, expert assignment of probabilities is widely used. Uncertainty in expert assessments can be successfully modeled using triangular fuzzy numbers. That is why this article proposes a fuzzy version of this algorithm, which can solve the problem of probabilistic inference on a Bayesian network when the initial probability values are given as triangular fuzzy numbers.

Political theology is one of the most problematic spheres in modern political theory. The clash of positions between supporters of individual interpretations of this discipline, on the one hand, is a serious problem, however, in this sense, the absence of strict definitions opens an opportunity for the most unusual forms of interaction between politics and religion. Even in the case when religion acts exclusively as an analogy of any other worldview position. The study relies on a comparative historical analysis of various definitions of political theology; the method of philosophical deconstruction is used for a general description of the possible combination of the principles of political theology and materialism. This research considers the possibilities of a conceptual combination of the principles of political theology and materialistic philosophy, the foundations of which in both cases are the concept of the specific angle, which at the worldview level can acquire a characteristic of God as a political founder.

Proton beam writing is a promising lithography method that is being developed in many countries. This method has significant advantages over other lithography methods, amongst all, there is the absence of the need for prefabricated pattern masks and a high aspect ratio of fabricated structures. Numerous publications demonstrate prospective applications of proton beam writing in different fields related to micro- and nanostructures fabrication. Proton beam writing may be used both for nanoelectronics and three-dimensional microstructures with a high aspect ratio. Work on proton beam writing technology is being conducted at the Institute of Applied Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Last years there were introduced vector proton beam writing method, an electrostatic blanker system for proton beam distortion, and experiments on proton beam writing on chitosan films were conducted, including the films covered with thin films of metals and metal compounds.

Over the past two years, the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has dominated all aspects of health care around the world, often leaving other long-term public health problems in the background. Despite the fact that COVID-19 is a viral disease, the use of antibiotics in these patients was common practice, especially at the beginning of the pandemic. The use of antibiotics (ABs) in patients with the novel coronavirus infection (NCI) reaches over 70% cases. Suspected concomitant bacterial infection, lack of effective means of treating NCI, terminological problems associated with the definition of «pneumonia» may have been the motivating factor for such widespread use. The data of the conducted studies indicate that there is currently insufficient evidence for the widespread empirical use of antibiotics in the majority of hospitalized patients, as the total proportion of bacterial infections in COVID-19 is quite low. Thus, according to most researchers, combined bacterial infection is rare and is less than 10%. Unjustified prescription of ABs to patients with COVID-19 can lead to complications that could otherwise have been avoided, including increased bacterial resistance, Clostridioides difficile infection, kidney failure, and much more. The article provides information on the frequency of AB therapy at various stages of medical care. The analysis of data on the nature of antibiotics prescribed to inpatients and outpatients with COVID-19 in different countries was carried out. Recommendations from different countries on AB therapy in patients with COVID-19 are presented. Conclusion. The data reviewed confirm the discrepancy between the unjustified and excessive prescribing of antibiotics to patients with COVID-19 and the small number of evidence of associated bacterial infections.

The nature and severity of mitral/tufted (M/T) cells reactions to odorants presented in anesthesia depend on various factors, and, above all, the nature and concentration of the odor, anesthesia, and the functional state of the olfactory bulb (OB). Compared to wakefulness, under anesthesia, the intensity of OB M/T cells responses to the odorants presented increases. However, the influence of anesthesia dynamics on the intensity of such responses has not been studied. To address this problem in rats, the activity of M/T cells and the local field potentials (LFP) in OB were recorded in the course of xylazine-tiletamine-zolazepam (XTZ) anesthesia. It has been shown that in the course of the anesthesia, the average frequency of background and odorant-induced single-unit activity of M/T cells increases, while the dominant frequency value of LFP in the gamma frequency range (90–170 Hz), on the contrary, decreases. The observed effects are assumed to be associated with changes in the functional state of the OB and systems for processing olfactory information in anesthesia.