This study analysed the influence of montelukast (MON; 10-8 - 10-4 M), a cysteinyl leukotriene receptor 1 (CysLTR1) antagonist, on the contractility of the porcine uterine smooth muscle in the luteal phase of the oesterous cycle (n=8) and in early pregnancy (n=8). Stimulation of uterine strips in the luteal phase with MON has been shown to significantly reduce the amplitude of con- tractions, but not to affect the tension or frequency of contractions. A statistically significant tension increase and decrease in the frequency and amplitude of contractions was observed in pigs in early pregnancy. This suggests that MON has a different effect on the parameters under study in cyclic and pregnant pigs.

Public and religious ceremonies were part of the daily life of many Jesuit colleges throughout Europe. The Jesuit education was enriched by numerous occasional celebrations and events, of which many were closely related to the academic year. Young noblemen and magnates took part in various school and public celebrations, which marked the culmination of important teaching stages. Leaving the college was linked to a public debate, which was a great event in the life of the college. It gathered an eminent audience and was accompanied by extensive ephemeral decorations. In the Baroque period, young Polish nobles and magnates also took part in numerous ceremonies during their education in the colleges of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the educational travels in the most famous colleges in Europe. In the summer of 1686, Jan Stanisław Jabłonowski and his brother Aleksander Jan, sons of the Grand Crown Hetman Stanisław Jabłonowski and Marianna née Kazanowska, held solemn debates in the famous Collège Louis-le-Grand in Paris. It was one of the stages of their educational journey through Europe in the years 1682–1688. The travel diaries by Aleksander Jan and his tutor Jan Michał Kossowicz attempt to recreate the course of the ceremony, and provide valuable information about its artistic setting. The theses of the Jabłonowski Brothers were published in 1686 in Paris. The sequence of the ceremony and the ephemeral decorations that accompanied it carried a clear message glorifying the Polish Hetman, a commander from Vienna, famed as the Mars Polonicus.

Analizie poddano dwa skarby miedzianych szelągów Jana Kazimierza (1648– 1668) z lat 1659–1666, odkryte w 1981 i 2011 r. na jednym z pól uprawnych w miejscowości Rokitno, w powiecie lubartowskim. Pierwszy, złożony jest wyłącznie z 3530 „boratynek”, a w kolejnym – liczącym 10218 monet – stanowią one 99,9%. Struktura skarbów z Rokitna zbieżna jest z innymi reprezentatywnymi depozytami tych monet z miejscowości: Idźki-Wykno, Przasnysz, Terespol. Widoczne jest to m.in. w rozkładzie procentowym koronnych i litewskich szelągów oraz reprezentacji wśród nich poszczególnych mennic i roczników. Skarb odkryty w 1981 r. został zdeponowany najprawdopodobniej na początku 4. ćwierci XVII w., a znalezisko z 2011 r. niedługo po 1695 r.

The subject of the article is a new classification of 15th-century, anonymous Polish denars of type II, according to Stanisława Kubiak’s classification, attributed to Vladislaus III of Varna (1434–1444). The research is based on the Lublin hoard, concealed after 1455 and consisting of 1654 coins, mainly denars of the Polish king. The analysis of the images on the obverses and reverses led to establishing groups and variants of dies with common stylistic features, resulting in the proposal of a new chronological order for the coins.

The pathologists follow a systematic and partially manual process to obtain histological tissue sections from the biological tissue extracted from patients. This process is far from being perfect and can introduce some errors in the quality of the tissue sections (distortions, deformations, folds and tissue breaks). In this paper, we propose a deep learning (DL) method for the detection and segmentation of these damaged regions in whole slide images (WSIs). The proposed technique is based on convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and uses the U-net model to achieve the pixel-wise segmentation of these unwanted regions. The results obtained show that this technique yields satisfactory results and can be applied as a pre-processing step for automatic WSI analysis in order to prevent the use of the damaged areas in the evaluation processes.

Odkryty 1 lipca 1981 r. na Starym Mieście w Lublinie przy ul. Wincentego Pola 6a (obecnie ul. Archidiakońska) zespół monet składa się z 21 fałszywych groszy Zygmunta III Wazy (1587–1632) i 2 fragmentów nieokreślonych monet. Badania wykazały, że wykonano je z miedzi powleczonej cyną. Mimo, że daty czytelne są tylko na 10 groszach, to wnioskując z tożsamości stempli wiemy, iż 15 z nich (71,4%) nosi rok 1608, a 5 (23,8%) 1607. Na jednej monecie daty nie udało się ustalić. Grosze z 1607 r. – wybite jedną parą stempli – imitują typ popiersie / Orzeł. Wariant ten dominuje także wśród monet z datą 1608 – 13 spośród 15 egzemplarzy – wybitych dwoma parami stempli. 1 grosz z popiersiem oraz 2 grosze z koroną wykonano innymi stemplami. Fakt, że podrobione monety odkryte zostały w miejscu, gdzie wznosiła się kamienica należąca od 1608 r. do burmistrza Jana Szembeka pozwala przypuszczać, że trafiły one tam w wyniku działań administracyjnych wymierzonych w nielegalny proceder. Warunki do jego rozwoju tworzyła od początku XVII w. atmosfera narastającego kryzysu gospodarczego i związanych z nim zakłóceń rynku pieniężnego w Rzeczypospolitej.

Archaeological excavations conducted recently in Kalisz brought about two groups of Jagiellonian pennies. One is a small hoard of less than twenty coins of Vladislaus Jagiełło, found near the St. Joseph Sanctuary. The other comprises 37 coins found separately in archaeological excavations at early mediaeval settlement known as Stare Miasto (Old Town), adjacent to the hillfort at Zawodzie.

This review compiles the pioneers of biological sciences who have been born and educated on the territories, which has got political independence as Poland state in 1918. Their work and passing knowledge to the next generations had a great impact not only on the progress in science but also on a newly formed Polish society. Many of these contributions laid foundations for chemistry, physics, biochemistry, genetics and other biological sciences.

This year we are celebrating 150 anniversary of the discovery of DNA by Friedrich Miescher. His finding initiated a series of discoveries that allowed to depicts life's most famous molecule with novel features with considerable biological interest. In this article we recall the biggest mile stones of 150-year history of DNA and present the context and meaning of several key observations that have brought us closer to understanding DNA. 150 years ago, people had no idea that DNA existed, and they certainly hadn’t heard of DNA structure and sequencing. We now know that DNA is a dynamic, tortuous coil, constantly shuffling and unwinding. Today DNA is all around us, in a physical sense and in a cultural sense. It is really part of our culture. We will discuss also the little known facts, often overlooked in similar discussions. We will focus particularly on Professor Richard Altmann's from Iława, whose contribution to knowledge about nucleic acids is significant, although not well recognized so far.