Knowledge of the biodiversity of the Thala Hills oasis (Enderby Land, East Antarctica) is very limited. Here, we integrate all information available since 1962, when the Russian ‘Molodyozhnaya’ station was established in the western part of the oasis. The published data on local eukaryote diversity (lichens, embryophytes, metazoans) include records of 90 species. Since 2008, Belarusian Antarctic Expedition researchers have worked in the eastern part of the oasis, accessible from the Belarusian station ‘Vechernyaya Mount'. This research revealed 95 species, including 44 species not recorded in the earlier published literature. The level of available information is uneven across major taxa. Lichens are the better-known group, with 51 species recorded in total, including 13 species recently recorded for the first time in the oasis. New records were also obtained for rotifers. Thala Hills biodiversity is consistent with wider patterns of Antarctic biogeography, with a high proportion of regionally endemic species (especially metazoans), the occurrence of both endemic and bipolar species of lichens and generally low numbers of cosmopolitan species (largely limited to aquatic rotifers, with the caveat that up-to-date taxonomic studies are required). The lack of data on marine macrobenthos, soil nematodes and terrestrial rotifers emphasizes the need for studies focusing on these groups.

In this report we present an attempt to find a characteristic set of the space weather parameters allowed to identify the dominant physical connections. This study is based on the data of vertical and oblique sounding of the ionosphere in 2015-2016.

There were four 1.5-hour sessions of Division I business meetings during the XXVIIth IAU General Assembly. The first three were devoted to the reports of Commissions, Working Groups and services associated with the Division, discussion about plans for the next triennium and future structure of the Division. Scientific presentations on the future space astrometric mission Gaia were made at the fourth session.

The major thrust of technological development is the reduction of the demands made by I.T. equipment on its users. The economic pressures which underpin such developments are based on 2 principles: the continuing fall of the cost of processing power (but particularly storage) and the market edge of simple as opposed to complex systems.

The techniques which can no longer be disregarded include voice and vision communication which frees the users' hands from the prison of the keyboard: also the logical power of IT equipment will not only extend excellence of rigorous reasoning, but also the type of person to person reasoning which takes the human factor into account.

Division I provides a focus for astronomers studying a wide range of problems related to fundamental physical phenomena such as time, the inertial reference frame, positions and proper motions of celestial objects and precise dynamical computation of the motions of bodies in stellar or planetary systems in the Universe.

Modeling of high resolution nitrogen adsorption isotherms by the Grand Canonical Monte Carlo (GCMC) method for zirconia-pillared clays containing 20 wt.% of ZrO2 revealed that the pillars are comprised of separate Zr4(μ-OH)8(OH)m (H2O)n units (Zr4 tetramers) and their dimers (Zr8 complexes) as sheets or loose 3D structures. This agrees with the results of modeling of the condensation process in solution using the Density Functional Theory approach (DFT) and the semiempirical PM3 method. Bridging and terminal hydroxyls strongly bound with Zr cations are involved in anchoring supported Cu cations and Pt. This nanostructure of the active component as well as the developed micro- and mesoporosity appear to be responsible for the high performance of Pt+Cu/ZrPILC catalysts in the NOx selective reduction by propylene and decane in realistic feeds.

We measured the far-infrared reflectivity spectra of PbTe(Ga) and Pb1−xSnxTe(In) - materials revealing the Persistent Photoconductivity effect at the low temperatures T<Tc; Tc≈80K and 25K, respectively-The reflectivity spectra display the singuliarity nearby the plasmon-phonon minimum. The spectra may be fitted satisfactory by means of the introduction of an additional oscillator into the dispersion relation. The result is interpreted in the framework of the model taking into account the temperature change of the one-electron metastable impurity state Position in the configuration-coordinate space. The oscillator corresponds to the two-electron - one-electron state transitions. Some previously unexplained results find the satisfactory interpretation in the framework of the model Proposed.