Due to the rapid development of nanotechnologies, materials, in particular , solid dispersions (SDs), which are actively introduced into the life of modern man, have been obtained. Special progress in this area is observed in industry and medicine. The use of SDs in agriculture is lagging far behind, despite the growing number of scientific papers on this topic. At the same time, the prospects for the introduction of SDs in the agro-industrial complex are obvious. The review presents the results of research on the development of innovative preparations based on SD to protect plants from diseases and pests of cultivated plants, as well as parasiticides to protect animal health based on modern achievements of nanotechnology. One of these technologies is the methods of mechanochemistry, which improve the properties of poorly soluble biologically active substances by their joint mechanical treatment with water-soluble polymers and auxiliary substances.

Experimentally tractable organisms like C. elegans, Drosophila, zebrafish, and mouse are popular models for addressing diverse questions in biology. In 1997, two of the most valuable invertebrate model organisms to date – C. elegans and Drosophila – were found to be much more closely related to each other than expected. C. elegans and Drosophila belong to the nematodes and arthropods respectively, and these two phyla and six other phyla make up a clade of molting animals referred to as the Ecdysozoa. The other ecdysozoan phyla could be valuable models for comparative biology, taking advantage of the rich and continual sources of research findings as well as tools from both C. elegans and Drosophila. But when the Ecdysozoa was first recognized, few tools were available for laboratory studies in any of these six other ecdysozoan phyla. In 1999 I began an effort to develop tools for studying one such phylum, the tardigrades. Here, I describe how the tardigrade species Hypsibius exemplaris and tardigrades more generally have emerged over the past two decades as valuable new models for answering diverse questions. To date, these questions have included how animal body plans evolve and how biological materials can survive some remarkably extreme conditions.