Hydrocarbons still give up to 90 per cent of energy, consumed by the mankind. We try to reduce usage of oil and natural gas, at the same time trying to find alternative energy sources and to make the best use of already known sources.

Russian physicists and physiologists have developed a technique for recognition of things people imagine, by means of electroencephalography. NeuroG technology was created by researchers from faculty of physics of Moscow State University and the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology of Russian academy of sciences.

Our heart provides blood supply in our organism via two simultaneous mechanisms. Systemic circuit brings oxygenated blood to all organs and tissues, removing carbon dioxide from them at the same time. Pulmonary circuit is responsible for delivering blood from heart to lungs – this mechanism enriches blood with oxygen and “cleans” it of carbon dioxide. A great mystery of our life is how enormous volumes of blood tend to get oxygen-enriched in lungs within very short periods of time. Little is known about blood microcirculation in lungs.

A technology, known as reflective microscopy, is especially useful for working in soft X-ray radiation range, in which laboratory X-ray lasers and free-electron lasers already work. Researchers from the laboratory of X-ray optics of the Lebedev Institute of Physics currently search for solutions for a parabolic equation with initial conditions, preset on surfaces of various forms and orientations.

Superconductors are known to have zero electric resistance under conditions of extremely low temperatures. Electron flow, responsible for formation of electric current, moves in these conducting materials without colliding with atoms of their crystal lattices, thus without any heating losses. Nowadays superconductors are used for building high-capacity magnets for expensive research equipment and for high-precision diagnostic medical devices.

Good news, everyone who lives in the regions with cold climate – Russian researchers have developed special additives, which help improve quality of local materials and make them suitable for making frost-proof bricks.

Many repair works in our organisms are performed by hard workers, known as stromal progenitor cells, which participate in forming new tissues and extracellular matrix. When we get old, we lose the majority of these cells, which causes bone thinning in elder people, for instance. Russian medics and microbiologists have found out that age-related changes in the population of stromal progenitor cells was not caused only by decreasing numbers of these cells, but also by inhibiting their activity by an organism himself.

Oil under the ground is often contained in so-called “collectors” – layers of porous rocks. In order to reach “black oil” engineers drill wells, to which oil travels from surrounding rocks through highly porous and permeable rocks and later gets extracted. During drilling of wells or after a long-term well operation pores of oil-bearing rocks get clogged and large amount of oil is left inside the Earth forever. Such clogging is also known as “wall cake” or “filter cake”.

Erythropoietin-based treating agents are often used for therapy of anemia, caused by various severe diseases. However, these treating agents have strong side effects. Russian medics know how to treat erythropoietin in order to maintain its efficiency, but eliminate unwanted side effects.

Russian researchers have synthesized a 22-component RNA (ribonucleic acid), which demonstrated hampering of cancer cells’ growth and promoting synthesis of interferon, part of an immune system.

Search for promising treating agents has come a long way from testing all possible substances, hoping, that something would help, to making treatment with given properties in near future. Currently we are between these two stages with choosing from several hundreds substances and then modifying best of them by chemical means.

Russian researchers have developed a simple technique for raw material preparation in order to produce electrically conducting polymers. These polymers are an essential part of flexible displays, another technological breakthrough.

Russian researchers have suggested a new technique for accelerating healing of damaged and broken bones. The “magic” substance, used for this purpose, is called fibrin.

Nanostructured silicon surfaces and silicon nanoparticles were shown to inhibit division of stem cells and cancer cells, and nanoparticles, enforced with ultrasonic sound, kill these cells, Russian physicists and medics say.

Russian researchers study scorpion toxins, able to selectively bind with sodium channels. These studies will help acquire new information about how ion channels – toxin targets – work.

Parkinson disease is a cross, born by about 3.7 million people – about 7% of those, older than 60 years. Common therapy for this disease is called levodopa (L-DOPA or L-3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine), which is known to increase dopamine concentrations. However, levodopa has lots of side effects and cannot be used as a drug for long periods of time. That is why a search for new therapy for the Parkinson disease is a burning issue for the mankind.

Researchers from Russia and China have discovered that adding small amounts of zirconium in tin oxide films changed electrophysical and gas-sensing properties of these films. For instance, tin oxide films become much more sensitive to vapours of ethanol and acetone at temperatures 100 degrees less, than without zirconium.

A new neutrino detector is built within an international Chooz-2 project by Russian and French researchers. New detector will help observe antineutrino from nuclear reactors of the Chooz nuclear power plant, Ardennes, France. Studying fundamental properties of neutrino is important for particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology.

A common means of fighting mosquitoes nowadays is using toxic bacterial proteins. However, these biological substances do not live long after being introduced in the environment; moreover, mosquitoes tend to become resistant to them quite quickly. Russian geneticists and medics united their efforts in solving this problem and suggested encapsulating toxic proteins of Brevibacillus laterosporus in protozoa before treating mosquitoes.

Russian anthropologists and biotechnologists have studied peculiar features of Neanderthal skeletons, which differed from skeletons of modern human beings, and reconstructed walk patterns and hunting strategies of ancient humans.