An excavation of the Vesakoyakha II–IV and Nyamboyto I burial grounds was conducted during the 2014 field season, and soil samples from intact burials dating from the 19th and 20th centuries, respectively, were analyzed to determine interactions between parasites and host/vectors. Considering the discovery of Diphyllobothrium sp. and Taenia sp. eggs in soil samples from the pelvic region, diphyllobothriasis was the most frequent helminthic infection among the Taz Nenets. The Nyamboyto Nenets mainly consumed uncooked fish, while the Vesakoyakha Nenets had a bigger variety in food choices, including reindeer meat. Nenets children were given raw fish from early childhood. The paleoparasitological results corroborate rare ethnographic records about the consumption of uncooked reindeer cerebrum which led to beef tapeworm helminthiases. This is the first parasitological report of helminthic diseases among the Taz Nenets, and, as such, it provides insight into their subsistence activities and food patterns and broadens our understanding of their health condition.

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Abstract. The Eurasian (née European) Modern Pollen Database (EMPD) was established in 2013 to provide a public database of high-quality modern pollen surface samples to help support studies of past climate, land cover, and land use using fossil pollen. The EMPD is part of, and complementary to, the European Pollen Database (EPD) which contains data on fossil pollen found in Late Quaternary sedimentary archives throughout the Eurasian region. The EPD is in turn part of the rapidly growing Neotoma database, which is now the primary home for global palaeoecological data. This paper describes version 2 of the EMPD in which the number of samples held in the database has been increased by 60 % from 4826 to 8134. Much of the improvement in data coverage has come from northern Asia, and the database has consequently been renamed the Eurasian Modern Pollen Database to reflect this geographical enlargement. The EMPD can be viewed online using a dedicated map-based viewer at https://empd2.github.io and downloaded in a variety of file formats at https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.909130 (Chevalier et al., 2019).

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We present an arhaeoparasitological analysis of a unique burial from the Neftprovod II burial ground in East Siberia, which dated from the Bronze Age. Analysis of a sediment sample from the sacral region of the pelvis revealed the presence of Taenia sp. eggs. Because uncooked animal tissue is the primary source of Taenia, this indicated that the individual was likely consuming raw or undercooked meat of roe deer, red deer, or elk infected with Taenia. This finding represents the oldest case of a human infected with Taenia sp. from Eastern Siberia and Russia.

The results of post-reactor materials engineering studies of fuel assemblies and control-and-safety system channels, which were unsealed in the reactor of the world's first nuclear power plant in the period from 1987 to 1998, are presented. It is established that the destruction of the fuel element, fuel-assembly tubes and a channel of the control-and-safety system was due to the formation of through transcrystallite brittle cracks and corrosion foci on the outer side of the tubes and outer cladding of the fuel elements which is in contact with the gas medium of the reactor. Chlorine was discovered on the outer surface of the outer cladding of the fuel elements in the damaged zone. The maximum chlorine concentration was observed in cracks and pits. The presence of the chlorine ion is due to corrosion fissuring and pitting corrosion.More than 1500 technological channels (fuel assemblies) were irradiated over the 48-year period of operation of the world's first nuclear power plant (in Obninsk). A fortunate choice of the design of the fuel elements and fuel assemblies made possible reliable operation of the reactor core throughout its service life. Nonetheless, fuel assemblies and control-and-safety channels became unsealed during individual periods of operation. Post-reactor materials-engineering studies of the fuel elements and tubes of the defective channels were performed to determine the character of and reasons for the damage. A part of the results obtained from these studies by scanning electron microscopy and x-ray microanalysis was published in a previous work [1].The present article presents the results of post-reactor studies of the structural elements of fuel assemblies and the control-and-safety system channel of the AM reactor and the reasons for the damage are analyzed.Channel Construction and Irradiation Conditions. A technological channel of the AM reactor consisted of graphite inserts which were joined to one another and in which a 15 mm in diameter tube and four ring-shaped fuel elements were placed, the latter joined at the top and bottom with peripheral 9.4 mm in diameter tubes made of 08Kh18N10T steel [2]. Each tube had spiral compensators at the bottom to compensate thermal elongation. Water descended along the central tube, removing heat from the graphite, to the bottom distributing head whence the water ascended along four peripheral tubes and removed heat from the inner surface of the fuel elements.The fuel elements had two coaxially positioned cylindrical claddings made of 1Kh18N9T corrosion resistant steel. A dispersion fuel composition consisting of fuel pellets dispersed into a magnetic matrix was placed between them. The alloy U-9%Mo (OM-9) was used as fuel pellets in the series D fuel elements; uranium dioxide was used in the Zh and 010 series fuel