Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge the referees for careful reading of the manuscript and useful comments. The authors would like to thank L.P. Grishchuk, V.M. Lipunov, M.E. Prokhorov, A.G. Kuranov, N. Chugai, A. Tutukov, A. Fedorova, E. Ergma, M. Livio, S.F. Portegies Zwart, J.-P. Lasota, G. Dubus, A. Renzini, R. Napiwotzki, E.P.J. van den Heuvel, G. Tovmassian, J.-E. Solheim, L. van Haaften, L. Piersanti, and A. Tornambé for numerous useful discussions and joint research in the evolution of binary stars. Writing of this review would have been impossible without the long-term research cooperation of G. Nelemans. We acknowledge him also for useful discussions, help in collecting information, and updating figures. Useful discussions with participants of meetings on stellar evolution, binary stars and SN Ia are acknowledged. An intensive use of the Smithsonian/NASA ADS Astronomy Abstract Service and arXiv is acknowledged. We thank many of our colleagues for sending us (p)reprints of their publications. Y. Pachomov is acknowledged for his help in the preparation of the manuscript.

KAP was partially supported by RFBR grants 12-02-00186, 13-02-92119 and 14-02-00657. LRY was partially supported by the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences program P-21 and RFBR grant 14-02-00604.